Product Description: This volume is a collection of original studies based on one of the first research programs on comparative analysis of social capital. Data are drawn from national representative samples of the United States, China and Taiwan. The three societies selected for study allow the examination of how political-economic regimes (command versus market) and cultural factors (family centrality versus diverse social ties) affect the characteristics of social ties and social networks from which resources are accessed and mobilized...read more

Product Description: ‘Social capital’ is a major conceptual and theoretical idea that has received in the last three decades much attention across many social-science disciplines. In this relatively short period, it has developed into a major research paradigm guiding voluminous research conducted in North America, Europe, Asia, and elsewhere...read more

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Leading scholars in the field of social networks from diverse disciplines present the first systematic and comprehensive collection of current theories and empirical research on the informal connections that individuals have for support, help, and information from other people. Expanding on concepts originally formulated by Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman, this seminal work will find an essential place with educators and students in the fields of social networks, rational choice theory, institutions, and the socioeconomics of poverty, labor markets, social psychology, and race. The volume is divided into three parts. The first segment clarifies social capital as a concept and explores its theoretical and operational bases. Additional segments provide brief accounts that place the development of social capital in the context of the family of capital theorists, and identify some critical but controversial perspectives and statements regarding social capital in the literature. The editors then make the argument for the network perspective, why and how such a perspective can clarify controversies and advance our understanding of a whole range of instrumental and expressive outcomes. Social Capital further provides a forum for ongoing research programs initiated by social scientists working at the crossroads of formal theory and new methods. These scholars and programs share certain understandings and approaches in their analyses of social capital. They argue that social networks are the foundation of social capital. Social networks simultaneously capture individuals and social structure, thus serving as a vital conceptual link between actions and structural constraints, between micro- and macro-level analyses, and between relational and collective dynamic processes. They are further cognizant of the dual significance of the "structural" features of the social networks and the "resources" embedded in the networks as defining elements of social capital. (view table of contents)

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Product Description: This work examines the environment and events of the spring 1989 Tiananmen Square tragedy. The author argues that the mass movement, which climaxed in Beijing, can be understood only if attention is given to the external environment that provided both opportunities and constraints to the interactions of participating groups, to the shifting participants and their goals and interests, and to the historical and cultural factors which guided the behavior of those participants (on both the student and government sides)...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Network analysis is being increasingly looked to as a means of understanding social structure. It can shed light on how individual actions create social structure, how social structure constrains the individual, and how attitudes and behaviour are determined by social structure...read more