Neil Fligstein

Neil Fligstein is an American sociologist, born May 23, 1951, who is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His research in economic sociology, political sociology and organizational theory examines how social fields shape economic and political orders, including how markets are shaped by actors' shared conceptions of control, state regulation and institutional structures rather than by abstract economic forces alone. He has applied this political-cultural approach to studies of the European Union's development of a single market through cooperative political processes. In 2012 he co-authored A Theory of Fields with Doug McAdam, presenting a general framework for analyzing social orders across politics, economics and social movements.