Emily Erikson

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Emily Erikson is the Joseph C. Fox Academic Director of the Fox International Fellowship and professor of sociology and the school of management (by courtesy). Her book Trade and Nation: How Companies and Politics Reshaped Economic Thought (Columbia University Press) argues that political discourse and the adoption of the company form actively encouraged the development of classical economic thought in the early modern era. Previously she worked on the emergence of early multi-national firms and the structure of early modern global trade in Between Monopoly and Free Trade: The English East India Company (Princeton University Press). Erikson is chair of the American Sociological Association’s economic sociology section and serves on the executive council for the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, the editorial board for Social Science History and Sociological Theory, the executive council of the Social Science History Association, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Senate of Yale University. Her work has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Annual Review of Sociology, Sociology Theory, The Journal of Economic History, and Social Science History, among others. She has received numerous book and article awards.

Books

• Erikson, Emily. 2021. Trade and Nation: How Companies and Politics Reshaped Economic Thought. New York: Columbia University Press

• Erikson, Emily, ed. 2015. Chartering Capitalism: Organizing Markets, States, and Publics. Political Power and Social Theory/Emerald Publishing.

• Erikson, Emily. (2014) Between Monopoly and Free Trade: The English East India Company. Princeton University Press.
  • Co-winner, Allan Sharlin Memorial Award, 2015, Social Science History Association
  • Co-winner, Ralph Gomory Prize, 2015, Business History Conference and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
  • Gaddis Smith International Book Prize, 2016, MacMillan Center, Yale University
  • James Coleman Award for Outstanding Book, 2016, Rationality & Society Section of the American Sociological Association

Selected Articles

• Emily Erikson & Hirokazu Shirado. 2021. “Network Structure, Property, and the Division of Labor.” American Sociological Review 86(1): 758-86.

• Erikson, Emily. 2020. “State-Merchant Relations and Economic Thought: The Dutch Republic and England, 1580 to 1720” Socio-Economic Review. 

• Erikson, Emily and Mark Hamilton. 2018. “Companies and the Rise of Economic Thought” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 124, no. 1.

• Erikson, Emily. 2018. “How Group Events Can Shape Network Processes” Sociological Theory, Vol. 36, Issue 2, p. 187-193.

• Erikson, Emily and Sampsa Samila. 2018. “Networks, Institutions, and Uncertainty: Information Flow in Early Modern Markets,” Journal of Economic History. Vol. 78, Issue 4.

• Erikson, Emily and Nicholas Occhiuto.* 2017. “Social Networks and Macro-Social Change,” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 43.

• Erikson, Emily and Valentina Assenova.* 2015 “New Forms of Organization and the Coordination of Political and Commercial Actors” in Chartering Capitalism: Organizing Markets, States, and Publics. Political Power and Social Theory, Vol. 29.

• Erikson, Emily. 2013. “Formalist and Relationalist Theory in Social Network Analysis” Sociological Theory 31 (3): 219-242

Selected Reviews and Chapters

• “Power and the people.” 2021. Review of Isaac Reed’s Power in Modernity: Agency Relations and the Creative Destruction of the King’s Two Bodies, Cultural Sociology.

• Erikson, Emily & Eric Feltham.* Forthcoming. “Structure” Research Handbook on Analytical Sociology.

• Emily Erikson & Eric Feltham.* 2020. “Historical Social Networks” in the Oxford Handbook of Social Network Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Erikson, Emily. 2018. “Relationalism and Social Network Analysis” in Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology, Francois Depelteau, ed.

• Erikson, Emily. 2018. “Relationalism and Social Network Analysis” in Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology, Francois Depelteau, ed.

•  “Masters of the Mint.” Review of Money Talks: Explaining How Money Really Works, edited by Nina Bandelj, Frederick F. Wherry, and Viviana Zelizer. Contemporary Sociology 48(1), 2019.

Media

• Interview on The MacMillan Report, Erikson speaks about her award-winning book, ”Between Monopoly and Free Trade: The English East India Company, 1600-1757. 

Courses and Seminars

Undergraduate

• SOCY 151/Hums 302/PLSC 290, Foundations of Modern Social Theory
• SOCY 167, Social Networks and Society
• SOCY 219, Economic Sociology

Graduate

• SOCY 542, Sociological Theory
• SOCY 564, Advanced Topics in Social Theory
• SOCY 573, Social Capital and Small Group Processes
• SOCY 632, Social Network Analysis

Affiliations

• Yale Institute of Network Science
• South Asian Council
• The Center for Comparative Research (CCR)
• The Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course (CIQLE)
• Social Network Working Group
• Transitions to Modernity Colloquium