Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

This paper reviews the origins and definitions of social capital in the writings of Bourdieu, Loury, and Coleman, among other authors. It distinguishes four sources of social capital and examines their dynamics. Applications of the concept in the sociological literature emphasize its role in social control, in family support, and in benefits mediated by extrafamilial networks. I provide examples of each of these positive functions. Negative consequences of the same processes also deserve attention for a balanced picture of the forces at play. I review four such consequences and illustrate them with relevant examples. Recent writings on social capital have extended the concept from an individual asset to a feature of communities and even nations. The final sections describe this conceptual stretch and examine its limitations. I argue that, as shorthand for the positive consequences of sociability, social capital has a definite place in sociological theory. However, excessive extensions of the concept may j...

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Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology

This chapter aims to develop one of perhaps multiple specifications of embeddedness, a concept that has been used to refer broadly to the contingent nature of economic action with respect to cognition, social structure, institutions, and culture. Research on embeddedness is an exciting area in sociology and economics because it advances understanding of how social structure affects economic life. The chapter addresses propositions about the operation and outcomes of interfirm networks that are guided implicitly by ceteris paribus assumptions. While economies of time due to embeddedness have obvious benefits for the individual firm, they also have important implications for allocative efficiency and the determination of prices. Under the conditions, social processes that increase integration combine with resource dependency problems to increase the vulnerability of networked organizations. The level of investment in an economy promotes positive changes in productivity, standards of living, mobility, and wealth generation.

Social Structure and Competition in Interfirm Networks: The Paradox of Embeddedness

A growing number of sociologists, political scientists, economists, and organizational theorists have invoked the concept of social capital in the search for answers to a broadening range of questions being confronted in their own fields. Seeking to clarify the concept and help assess its utility for organizational theory, we synthesize the theoretical research undertaken in these various disciplines and develop a common conceptual framework that identifies the sources, benefits, risks, and contingencies of social capital.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/4134367.pdf

Social Capital: Prospects for a New Concept

In this paper I try to take the term of embededness out of the framework of the common program assumption and to disclose how the embededness and network structure influence economic action. Basing on the existed theory and ethnographic analysis of the 23 clothes production companies I worked out the methodological scheme which depicts the details, functions and the sources of embededness. On the basis of this scheme I formulated and tested a list of hypotheses with the help of the data on network interactions of all the companies producing qualitative female clothes in the New-York sewing industry. It was found out that the embededness is the exchange system providing unique opportunities in comparison to the market and that firms organized as networks had better chances to survive than those who support casual market ties. However there is a pick of positive effect of embededness at a particular level after which it starts going down.

The Sources and Consequences of Embeddedness for the Economic Performance of Organizations: The Network Effect

We examine various approaches to explaining ethnic enterprise, using a framework based on three dimensions: an ethnic group's access to opportunities, the characteristics of a group, and emergent strategies A common theme pervades research on ethnic business: Ethnic groups adapt to the resources made available by their environments, which vary substantially across societies and over time Four issues emerge as requiring greater attention: the reciprocal relation between ethnicity and entrepreneurship, more careful use of ethnic labels and categories in research, a need for more multigroup, comparative research, and more process-oriented research designs

Ethnicity and Entrepreneurship

Foreword - John H Stanfield II Preface Opportunities, Group Characteristics, and Outcomes - Roger Waldinger, Howard Aldrich and Robin Ward Trends in Ethnic Business in the United States - Roger Waldinger and Howard Aldrich European Trends in Ethnic Business - Jochen Blaschke et al Spatial Dimensions of Opportunity Structures - Roger Waldinger, David McEvoy and Howard Aldrich Ethnic Entrepreneurs and Ethnic Strategies - Jeremy Boissevain et al Business on the Ragged Edge - Roger Waldinger, Mirjana Morokvasic and Annie Phizacklea Immigrant and Minority Business in the Garment Industries of Paris, London, and New York Conclusions and Policy Implications - Roger Waldinger et al

Ethnic Entrepreneurs: Immigrant Business in Industrial Societies

This article seeks to critically engage the new literature on immigrant transnationalism. Connectivity between source and destination points is an inherent aspect of migrations, but migration networks generate a multiplicity of “imagined communities,” organized along different, often conflicting principles. Consequently, what immigration scholars describe as transnationalism is usually its opposite: highly particularistic attachments antithetical to those by-products of globalization denoted by the concept of “transnational civil society.” Moreover, migrants do not make their communities alone: states and state politics shape the options for migrant and ethnic trans-state social action. International migrants and their descendants do repeatedly engage in concerted action across state boundaries, but the use, form, and mobilization of the connections linking “here” and “there” are contingent outcomes subject to multiple political constraints.

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Transnationalism in Question

Dedication Terms used in this book Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: What Empoyers Want Chapter 3: Doing the Job: Skills and the Social Organization of Work Chapter 4: The Language of Work Chapter 5: Network, Bureaucracy, Exclusion Chapter 6: Ethnic Networks and Social Closure Chapter 7: Bringing the Boss Back In: Selection and Hiring Decisions Chapter 8: Whom Employers Want Chapter 9: Us and them Chapter 10: Diversity and Conflict Chapter 11: Black/Immigrant Competition Chapter 12: How the other half works Appendix: the Local and economic context The six industries Conclusions

How the Other Half Works: Immigration and the Social Organization of Labor

"Still the Promised City?" addresses the question of why African-Americans have fared to so poorly in securing unskilled jobs in the postwar era and why new immigrants have done so well. Does the increase in immigration bear some responsibility for the failure of more blacks to rise, for their disappearance from many occupations and for their failure to establish a presence in business? The two most popular explanations for the condition of blacks invoke the decline of manufacturing in New York and other major American cities: one claims that this decline has closed off job opportunities for blacks that were available for ealier immigrants who lacked skills and education; the other emphasizes "globalization" - the movement of manufacturing jobs offshore to areas with lower labour costs. But Roger Waldinger shows that these explanations do not fit the facts. Instead, he points out that a previously overlooked factor - population change - and the rapid exodus of white New Yorkers created vacancies for minority workers up and down the job ladder. Ethnic succession generated openings both in declining industries, where the outward seepage of whites outpaced the rate of job erosion, and in growth industries, where whites poured out of bottom-level positions even as demand for low-level workers increased. But this process yielded few dividends for blacks, who saw their share of the many low-skilled jobs steadily decline. Instead, advantage went to the immigrants, who exploited these opportunities by expanding their economic base. Waldinger explains these disturbing facts by viewing employment as a queuing process, with the good jobs at the top of the job ladder and the poor ones at the bottom. As economic growth pulls the topmost ethnic group up the ladder, lower-ranking groups seize the chance to fill the niches left vacant. Immigrants, remembering conditions in the societies they just left, are eager to take up the lower-level jobs that natives will no longer do. By contrast, African-Americans, who came to a city a generation ago, have job aspirations similar to those of whites. But the niches they have carved out, primarily in the public sector, require skills that the least educated members of their community do not have. Black networks no longer provide connections to the lower-level jobs, and relative to the newcomers, employers find unskilled blacks to be much less satisfactory recruits. The result is that a certain number of well-educated blacks have good middle-class jobs, but many of the less educated have fallen back into an underclass. Grim as this analysis is, it points to a deeper understanding of America's most serious social problem and offers fresh approaches to attacking it.

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Roger Waldinger

Papers

Ethnicity and Entrepreneurship

Ethnic Entrepreneurs: Immigrant Business in Industrial Societies

Transnationalism in Question

How the Other Half Works: Immigration and the Social Organization of Labor

Still the Promised City?: African-Americans and New Immigrants in Postindustrial New York