Elena Obukhova

When Politics Froze Fashion: The Effect of the Cultural Revolution on Naming in Beijing

The authors examine the popularity of boys’ given names in Beijing before and after the onset of the Cultural Revolution to clarify how exogenous and endogenous factors interact to shape fashion. Whereas recent work in the sociology of culture emphasizes the importance of endogenous processes in explaining fashion, their analysis demonstrates two ways in which politics shaped cultural expression during the Cultural Revolution: by promoting forms of expression reflecting prevailing political ideology and by limiting individuals’ willingness to act differently. As argued by Lieberson and developed further in this article, the second condition is important because endogenous fashion cycles require a critical mass of individuals who seek to differentiate themselves from common practice. Exogenous factors can influence the operation of the endogenous factors. The authors discuss the implications of their study for understanding the nature of conformity under authoritarian regimes and social conditions supporting individual expression.

Why Not All Sea-Turtles Become Brokers: The Conflict between Category Membership and Brokerage among Returnee-Firms in China

Returnee-entrepreneurs, or nationals from developing countries who start new ventures at home after study or work abroad, appear ideally positioned to act as brokers between developed and developing economies. While this portrayal of returnees is plausible, we have reasons to expect that not all returnees who could become brokers actually do. Specifically, actors face a conflict between actions that help them to establish or maintain their category membership and actions that aim at brokerage. The costs of engaging in brokerage are particularly high for actors whose category membership is insecure. In this paper, using hand-collected qualitative and quantitative data on firms in Shanghai’s semiconductor-design industry, I illustrate this conflict by presenting evidence that for firms established by returnee-entrepreneurs whose identity as domestic firms is insecure, maintaining that identity can conflict with engaging in brokerage by seeking foreign investors. These results imply that institutional factors have an important effect on the ability of returnee-entrepreneurs to act as brokers.

Social Capital and Job Search in Urban China: The Strength-of-Strong-Ties Hypothesis Revisited

Abstract The Strength-of-Strong-Ties Hypothesis (SSTH) suggests that because of cultural and institutional factors, Chinese job seekers benefit more from their strong social ties than weak ones. However, the methodology used to support SSTH has not been subjected to robust empirical examination. Using data from job searches of 172 Chinese college graduates, we compared findings from the commonly used direct effects methodology, which examines the effect on income of the strength of a tie used to find a job, with the more robust social capital methodology, which examines the effect of network resources. We found that compared to the latter, the former overstates the effect of strong ties on getting a high-paying job and understates the effect of weak ties. We discuss methodological and substantive implications of our results for further study of social networks in China.

Do Job-Seekers Benefit from Contacts? A Within-Individual Test with Contemporaneous Searches

While it is intuitively plausible that using contacts in a job search benefits a job-seeker, studies of job-seekers are plagued by theoretical disagreement and inconclusive empirical evidence. In particular, the evidence from between-individual studies — studies that compare outcomes for different individuals — suggests that the relationship between a job-seeker’s social capital and her labor-market outcomes might be spurious. In this paper we exploit a strategic research setting, the school-to-work transition of 291 university graduates who engaged in 3,112 contemporaneous job searches, to conduct a within-individual study comparing outcomes of job searches through contacts and through formal methods for the same individual. We find that even while between-individual tests indicate that contacts do not matter, within-individual tests indicate that job-seekers do benefit from using contacts. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for the literatures on job search and social networks.