Capitalism from Below: Markets and Institutional Change in China
Capitalism from Below
Victor Nee and Sonja Opper
(Harvard University Press, Spring 2012)

More than 630 million Chinese have escaped poverty since the 1980s, reducing the fraction remaining from 82 to 10 percent of the population. This astonishing decline in poverty, the largest in history, coincided with the rapid growth of a private enterprise economy. Yet private enterprise in China emerged in spite of impediments set up by the Chinese government. How did private enterprise overcome these initial obstacles, to become the engine of China's economic miracle? Where did capitalism come from? Studying over 700 manufacturing firms in the Yangzi region, Victor Nee and Sonja Opper argue that China's private enterprise economy bubbled up from below. Through trial and error, entrepreneurs devised institutional innovations that enabled them to decouple from the established economic order to start up and grow small, private manufacturing firms. Barriers to entry motivated them to build their own networks of suppliers and distributors, and to develop competitive advantage in self-organized industrial clusters. Close-knit groups of like-minded people participated in the emergence of private enterprise by offering financing and establishing reliable business norms. This rapidly growing private enterprise economy diffused throughout the coastal regions of China and, passing through a series of tipping points, eroded the market share of state-owned firms. Only after this fledgling economy emerged as a dynamic engine of economic growth, wealth creation, and manufacturing jobs did the political elite legitimize it as a way to jump-start China's market society. Today, this private enterprise economy is one of the greatest success stories in the history of capitalism.

The Ambiguities of Experience
James March
(Cornell University Press, 2010)

In The Ambiguities of Experience, James G. March asks a deceptively simple question: What is, or should be, the role of experience in creating intelligence, particularly in organizations? Folk wisdom both trumpets the significance of experience and warns of its inadequacies. On one hand, experience is described as the best teacher. On the other hand, experience is described as the teacher of fools, of those unable or unwilling to learn from accumulated knowledge or the teaching of experts. The disagreement between those folk aphorisms reflects profound questions about the human pursuit of intelligence through learning from experience that have long confronted philosophers and social scientists. This book considers the unexpected problems organizations (and the individuals in them) face when they rely on experience to adapt, improve, and survive.

Illiberal Politics in Neoliberal Times
Mabel Berezin
(Cambridge University Press, 2009)

The rise of rightwing populism has brought into question prevailing assumptions in social science about multicultural Europe. In this compelling study of populist politics, Mabel Berezin argues that the emergence of the movement in the 1990s was a historical surprise rather than an expected event. She questions whether rightwing populism would exist in the absence of the Maastricht Treaty and the subsequent intensification of cultural and economic Europeanization. Using an innovative methodology, Berezin analyzes the French National Front in relation to the broader context of Europeanization and globalization. She unpacks the political and cultural processes that evoke the thin commitments characterizing citizen support, and shows that we cannot make sense of rightwing populism without considering the historical legacies and practices, both national and international, within which it arises. This book makes a novel argument about the relationship between democracy and political and social security.

On Capitalism
Victor Nee
Richard Swedberg
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007)

Introduction -- Victor Nee and Richard Swedberg

Part 1: The Dynamics and Contradictions of Capitalism

The Systemic Anti-Culture of Capitalism
Russell Hardin

Tocqueville and the Spirit of American Capitalism
Richard Swedberg

Income Inequality and the Protestant Ethic
Robert Frank

Part 2: Politics, Legal-Rational Institutions and Corruption

On Politicized Capitalism
Victor Nee and Sonja Opper

Law, Economy, and Globalization: Max Weber and How International Financial Institutions Understand Law
Bruce G. Carruthers and Terence C. Halliday

The Social Construction of Corruption
Mark Granovetter

Part 3: Religion

The Role of Spiritual Capital in Economic Behavior
Barnaby Marsh

Political Economy and Religion in the Spirit of Max Weber
Robert J. Barro and Rachel M. McCleary

Beyond Weber
Michael Novak

Part 4: Methodological and Conceptual Issues

The Collective Dynamics of Belief
Duncan J. Watts

Analytical Individualism and the Explanation of Macrosocial Change
Ronald Jepperson and John W. Meyer

Bootstrapping Development: Rethinking the Role of Public Intervention in Promoting Growth
Charles F. Sabel

New Developments in Economic Sociology
Richard Swedberg
(Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2005)

Economic sociology has gone through an explosive development, both in the United States and in Europe, in recent years. These new developments are well represented in this work. Forty-two articles, dating from 1989 to 2003, by key economic sociologists, such as P. Aspers, P. Bourdieu, B. Carruthers, F. Dobbin, N. Fligstein, M. Granovetter, K. Knorr Cetina, D. McKenzie, H. White, V. Zelizer, have been included as well as studies by members of a new and rising generation.

The topics that are covered include several classical ones, which modern economic sociologists have worked on for a long time, such as firms, markets, networks and the economics/sociology interface. During the last few years several studies have also appeared which deal with new areas, such as finance, law and economics, and entrepreneurship. The reader will finally also be able to follow recent advances in the understanding of the classics in economic sociology, including Weber, Schumpeter and Polanyi. The result is a colourful and unorthodox two volume collection which will be of interest to scholars and researchers alike.

This book is volume 186 in the "The International Library of Critical Writings in Economics series".

Economic Sociology of Capitalism
Victor Nee and Richard Swedberg
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005)
Link to review on PUP website

Handboook of Economic Sociology, 2nd edition
Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005)
Link to .pdf of Chapter One

State-Building
Francis Fukuyama
(Cornell University Press, 2004)

Francis Fukuyama famously predicted "the end of history" with the ascendancy of liberal democracy and global capitalism. The topic of his latest book is, therefore, surprising: the building of new nation-states. The end of history was never an automatic procedure, Fukuyama argues, and the well-governed polity was always its necessary precondition. "Weak or failed states are the source of many of the world's most serious problems," he believes. He traces what we know—and more often don’t know--about how to transfer functioning public institutions to developing countries in ways that will leave something of permanent benefit to the citizens of the countries concerned. These are important lessons, especially as the United States wrestles with its responsibilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond. Fukuyama begins State-Building with an account of the broad importance of "stateness." He rejects the notion that there can be a science of public administration, and discusses the causes of contemporary state weakness. He ends the book with a discussion of the consequences of weak states for international order, and the grounds on which the international community may legitimately intervene to prop them up.

Principles of Economic Sociology
Richard Swedberg
(Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003)
Link to .pdf of Chapter One
Intended as a general introduction to the subject of economic sociology, this text attempts to present the major concepts, ideas and findings within this field and introduces a fresh perspective oriented toward the inclusion of individual interests.

Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration
Richard Alba and Victor Nee
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003)

Europe Without Borders: Remapping Territory, Citizenship, and Identity in a Transnational Age
Mabel Berezin and Martin Schain
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003)