Adam Smith And The Ideas Of Economic Sociology

Adam Smith primarily is famous as an economist, but he is not an economist only, from his theory system, his methodology, and from relation between economics and sociology during classic period can we see that Adam Smith is a sociologist. The biggest characteristics of Adam Smith's research consist in synthesizing. His research contains the extensive society life that many sociologist are interested in, even the "invisible hand" theory discusses in fact a basic problem that later sociologists pay attention to, namely individual and society, personal benefits and social benefits, personal behavior and the relation of the social order.Adam Smith does not establish his economic theories on the abstract concept and also does not separate economic behavior and economic process from their interdependence with social, juristic, political behavior and process. On the contrary, Adam Smith attaches importance to the comprehensive environment of society and history. The supposition of stable social construction and its allowing of that kind of profession division impenetrate through the whole theory system, and he leads into juristic, historical, social and mental factors when analyzing the economic problems. He demonstrates the relations between economy and morals, economy and law, economy and political.This research regards the basic theories of the economic sociology as the foundation to study the economic sociology thoughts of Adam Smith. This research divides three parts: The first part introduces the research background of Adam Smith, and looks back the research about Adam Smith's thoughts for more than 200 years, mainly analyzing the excavation of scholars to his sociology thoughts; The second part is from the theoretical system, his methodology ,and relation between economics and sociology during classic period to announce his body of economic sociologist; the third part detailed introduces Adam Smith's thoughts, including his social division theory, system theory, rational choice theory and justice theory; the fourth part is the realistic meaning of Adam Smith's thoughts, analyzing theelicitation of Adam Smith's market economy theory and dual effect theory between moral and economic to Chinese market economy development, harmony theory of Adam Smith to harmonious social development in our country , and the leading meaning of Adam Smith's cognition about Chinese economic to economic development.