Box 1916

Maxcy Hall

112 George Street

Providence, RI 02912

Telephone: (401) 863-2367

Sociology@brown.edu

 

A.M. in Sociology, Brown University

Contact Information:
Brown University
Department of Sociology
Box 1916
Providence, RI 02912
T el: (401) 863-3459
Fax: (401) 863-3213
Todd_Bridges@brown.edu

Year of Entry: 2004

Previous Degrees:
A.M. in Sociology, Brown University, 2006
B.S. in Finance/Economics, St. Mary's College, 2001
B.A. in Philosophy, St. Mary's College, 2001

Research Page:
http://mrtoddbridges.com/

Areas of Interest:
Economic Sociology, Social Stratification, and Social Theory

Profile:
I am a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University with research and teaching interests in economic sociology, social stratification, and social theory. During the 2007 academic year, I will be an exchange scholar and teaching fellow at Harvard University.

Sociologists have a long history of attempting to break down the disciplinary boundary between economics and sociology. From its inception, the founders of the discipline--Marx, Weber, and Durkheim--focused on understanding how markets and the actions of individuals in those markets are influence by society. These three theorists have each focused on particular mechanisms such as class interests, religious institutions, power relations, legal institutions, and networks in order to show how society shapes markets.

As the discipline has evolved, the sub-discipline of economic sociology has come to the forefront of understanding how each of these particular mechanisms operates to construct, regulate, change, and reproduce markets. Contemporary scholars such as Polanyi, Granovetter, White, Bourdieu, Fligstein, Abolafia, and Knorr Cetina have each chosen particular markets to analyze (labor, housing, and financial markets, etc.) and each scholar has contributed the overall project to show how economic life and markets are dependent on, and embedded within, social and cultural foundations. That being said, however, markets are constantly evolving and it is of great sociological importance to stay up on the new developments in market societies. Therefore, my research focuses on the evolution of markets and analyzes the social and cultural embeddedness of these market evolutions.