SASE Networks
This section provides a description of each of SASE’s permanent research networks.
Research networks provide a stable spine of research at the SASE conference. As of 2026, there is a two-year moratorium on the creation of new networks.
For established SASE networks that would like to change their current name, see the name change request process here.
Network A: Community, Democracy, and Organizations
Network A is devoted to the examination of alternative, participatory, and/or solidaristic forms of economic enterprise and entrepreneurship, community organizations, third-sector organizations, or political organizations. By alternative, participatory, and/or solidaristic, we mean to encourage the analysis of how communities, enterprises, and societies can be organized around: (1) principles of democratic governance; (2) processes that build social solidarity and cooperation; and/or (3) substantive values and purposes that go beyond calculative self-interest and instrumental relations.
Network B: Globalization and Socio-Economic Development
This network considers how, at a time of a polycrisis, domestic, transnational, and international institutions and markets influence the contours of developmental opportunities in the global economy and beyond.
Network C: Gender, Work and Family
This network focuses on exploring the current state, and the changes in institutions concerned with gender and family roles and workplace organization.
Network D: Professions and Expertise
Through the Professions and expertise network we seek to develop critical analysis of the dynamics of professions and expertise.
Network E: Comparative Capitalisms
The aim of this network is to advance research on changing labor markets, industrial relations, and systems of social protection within the study of contemporary capitalisms.
Network F: KITE: Knowledge, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship
This network focuses on innovation and entrepreneurship as well as its underlying technologies and knowledge sources. On these topics, we particularly welcome, but do not require, an institutional perspective.
Network G: Labor Markets, Education, and Human Resources
The network welcomes contributions on the general issues of labor market segmentation, unemployment, human resources, and the link between training, skills and jobs.
Network H: Markets, Firms and Institutions
This network focuses on the interrelationships between markets, firms, and institutions.
Network I: Alternatives to Capitalism
The broad aim of this research network is to advance the international, comparative and interdisciplinary study of alternatives to capitalism.
Network J: Digital Economy
Digital technologies are contributing to radical, growing and unpredictable transformations of economic life, raising a broad range of new issues for scholars of the economy. This research network is dedicated to the study of these issues.
Network K: Institutional Experimentation in the Regulation of Work and Employment
This network focuses on making work better through actor experimentation with institutions to regulate work.
Network L: Regulation and Governance
This network promotes the interdisciplinary study of regulation and governance at national and global levels.
Network M: Spanish Language
A lively Spanish-speaking section that was established in 2011.
Network N: Finance and Society
The goal of this network is to promote cross-disciplinary dialogue on the study of finance and include perspectives from social sciences outside of economics.
Network O: Global Value Chains
This network aims to bring together social scientists interested in analyzing the causes and consequences of this offshoring-outsourcing phenomenon.
Network P: Accounting, Economics, and Law
This network focuses on the intersection of accounting, economics and law. Institutional design, rules and social norms are critical to the working of organizations in economy and society.
Network Q: Asian Capitalisms
The basic idea of this first area network within SASE is to make Asia a central field of investigation for theories of institutional change and diversity of capitalism.
Network R: Islamic Moral Economy and Finance
This network aims at bringing scholars and practitioners together to consider and discuss the role of Islamic moral economy and Islamic finance in achieving its stated ideals by highlighting the tension areas as well as the dynamism observed in the practice of Islamic finance.
Network S: Environment and Climate Change
This Network aspires to advance a broad, interdisciplinary, and critical dialogue on the interactions between the economy, society, and the environment.
Network T: Health
This network focuses on the social scientific study of health and medicines, broadly defined. It explores four key areas: the embeddedness of health and medicines within broader economic, political, and social structures and systems; health equality and equity, including access to medicines; organizing and the organization of health; and innovation in and pricing and valuation of health and medicines.
Network U: Postcolonialism and Legacies of Empire
This network is devoted to engaging the connections between imperialism, colonialism, racism, slavery, and capitalist expansion and global socio-economic development.
Network V: Geoeconomics
This network explores the intersection between geopolitics, international political economy, and national capitalist systems in an era of ongoing global transformation.
Network W: Elites and Power Structures
This network examines how economic, political, and cultural elites shape contemporary socio-economic systems. It brings together scholars exploring elite formation, power, and networks, and their influence on inequality, institutions, markets, and social change through comparative and interdisciplinary research.