Victor Nee

Brett De Bary

Beginning with the immigrants who left poverty-ridden villages in China to try for a better livelihood in America, the narratives and extensive interviews of Longtime Californ’ tell the true story of the Chinese in America. A young Chinese girl tells of being sold into slavery, brought to America, and rescued by a missionary; men of Chinatown recall the awful conditions and long waits on Angel Island before being allowed into the country, and remember the backbreaking experience of building the railroads that opened the West. The young Chinese are also here: some are angry and frustrated, spending their time on street corners and in gang fights; other are Marxist radicals trying to create social, political, and economic change in Chinatown ghetto. And there are the workers who go back and forth each day to the garment factories and the shops, each with his or her own story to tell, each contributing his or her share to the country that is San Francisco Chinatown. Throughout these and other stories the intricate patterns of Chinese life emerge as Chinese traditions and American customs combine to create the unique experience of Chinese-Americas, Longtime Californ’ goes beyond the hand laundries and restaurants with which Americans often associate the Chinese and unveils the secret societies, the powerful family associations, and the daily lives of the people of Chinatown.

A Documentary Study of an American Chinatown

Longtime Californ'

Richard Swedberg

This book represents a major step forward in the use of economic sociology to illuminate the nature and workings of capitalism amid the far-reaching changes of the contemporary era of global capitalism. For the past twenty years economic sociologists have focused on mesa-level phenomena of networks, but they have done relatively little to analyze capitalism as an overall system or to show how such phenomena emerge from and shape the dynamics of capitalism. The Economic Sociology of Capitalism seeks to change this, by presenting both big-picture analyses of capitalism and more focused pieces on institutions crucial to capitalism. The book, which includes sixteen chapters by leading scholars in economic sociology, is organized around three broad themes. The first section addresses core issues and problems in the new study of capitalism; the second considers a variety of topics concerning America, the leading capitalist economy of the world; and the third focuses attention on the question of convergence stemming from the global transformation of capitalism and the challenge of explaining institutional change. The contributions, which follow a foreword by economic historian Avner Greif and the editor's introduction, are by Mitchel Abolafia, James Baron and Michael Hannan, Mary C. Brinton, John Campbell, Gerald Davis and Christopher Marquis, Paul DiMaggio and Joseph Cohen, Peter Evans, Neil Fligstein, John Freeman, Francis Fukuyama, Ko Kuwabara, Victor Nee, Douglass C. North, AnnaLee Saxenian, Richard Swedberg, and Viviana Zelizer.

The Economic Sociology of Capitalism

Richard D. Alba

In this age of multicultural democracy, the idea of assimilation--that the social distance separating immigrants and their children from the mainstream of American society closes over time--seems outdated and, in some forms, even offensive. But as Richard Alba and Victor Nee show in the first systematic treatment of assimilation since the mid-1960s, it continues to shape the immigrant experience, even though the geography of immigration has shifted from Europe to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Institutional changes, from civil rights legislation to immigration law, have provided a more favorable environment for nonwhite immigrants and their children than in the past. Assimilation is still driven, in claim, by the decisions of immigrants and the second generation to improve their social and material circumstances in America. But they also show that immigrants, historically and today, have profoundly changed our mainstream society and culture in the process of becoming Americans. Surveying a variety of domains--language, socioeconomic attachments, residential patterns, and intermarriage--they demonstrate the continuing importance of assimilation in American life. And they predict that it will blur the boundaries among the major, racially defined populations, as nonwhites and Hispanics are increasingly incorporated into the mainstream.

Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration

Remaking the American Mainstream

Sonja Opper

Over 630 million Chinese escaped poverty since the 1980s, the largest decrease in poverty in history. Studying 700 manufacturing firms in the Yangzi region, the authors argue that the engine of China’s economic miracle—private enterprise—did not originate at the top but bubbled up from below, overcoming initial obstacles set up by the government.

Capitalism from Below

Markets and Institutional Change in China

Tom A.B. Snijders

Rafael Wittek

The Handbook of Rational Choice Social Research offers the first comprehensive overview of how the rational choice paradigm can inform empirical research within the social sciences. This landmark collection highlights successful empirical applications across a broad array of disciplines, including sociology, political science, economics, history, and psychology. Taking on issues ranging from financial markets and terrorism to immigration, race relations, and emotions, and a huge variety of other phenomena, rational choice proves a useful tool for theory- driven social research. Each chapter uses a rational choice framework to elaborate on testable hypotheses and then apply this to empirical research, including experimental research, survey studies, ethnographies, and historical investigations. Useful to students and scholars across the social sciences, this handbook will reinvigorate discussions about the utility and versatility of the rational choice approach, its key assumptions, and tools.

Victor Nee

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