Princeton Analytical Sociology

"Winner of the 2016 James Coleman Award for Outstanding Book, Rationality and Society Section of the American Sociological Association" "Winner of the 2016 Gaddis Smith International Book Prize, MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University" "Co-Winner of the 2015 Ralph Gomory Prize, Business History Conference" "Co-Winner of the 2015 Sharlin Memorial Award, Social Science History Association" Emily Erikson is an assistant professor in the department of sociology and the school of management (by courtesy) at Yale University, as well as a member of the Council of South Asian Studies. The English East India Company was one of the most powerful and enduring organizations in history. Between Monopoly and Free Trade locates the source of that success in the innovative policy by which the Company's Court of Directors granted employees the right to pursue their own commercial interests while in the firm's employ. Exploring trade network dynamics, decision-making processes, and ports and organizational context, Emily Erikson demonstrates why the English East India Company was a dominant force in the expansion of trade between Europe and Asia, and she sheds light on the related problems of why England experienced rapid economic development and how the relationship between Europe and Asia shifted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Though the Company held a monopoly on English overseas trade to Asia, the Court of Directors extended the right to trade in Asia to their employees, creating an unusual situation in which employees worked both for themselves and for the Company as overseas merchants. Building on the organizational infrastructure of the Company and the sophisticated commercial institutions of the markets of the East, employees constructed a cohesive internal network of peer communications that directed English trading ships during their voyages. This network integrated Company operations, encouraged innovation, and increased the Company's flexibility, adaptability, and responsiveness to local circumstance. Between Monopoly and Free Trade highlights the dynamic potential of social networks in the early modern era. "It offers a fresh perspective on a key aspect of the Company's development and provides some impressive data to support the idea that private trade was the crucial dynamo driving Company innovation and expansion."---John McAleer, Journal of Maritime History "Between Monopoly and Free Trade is a spectacular debut that will mark Erikson as a luminary of historical sociology and earn her many intellectual followers. . . . Though the sociologist familiar with, but not in thrall to, analytical sociology will be prone to approach the text with skepticism (as I was), he or she will soon be won over by the author's excellence in scholarship."---Isaac Ariail Reed, American Journal of Sociology "Erikson's extraordinary book is, on the one hand, a major contribution to the study of the development of the British East India Company and its role in the formation of capitalism and British Eastern imperial expansion, and on the other, an exemplary and essential work in historical and analytic sociology. Its rigorous, multilevel analysis topples conventional explanations of the relation between British imperialism and capitalism. The book also brilliantly demonstrates the full potential of network analysis for the understanding of the diffusion of information, while remaining sensitive to the roles of context, locality, and culture."-Orlando Patterson, Harvard University "This innovative book makes an essential contribution to debates on the origins of capitalism, imperialism, and globalization, and economic and organizational sociology. With rich qualitative studies of a number of key Asian ports, Erikson's network analysis uses the most sophisticated techniques and her findings are accurate and honestly presented."-Richard Lachmann, University at Albany, State University of New York

"Winner of the 2018 Mirra Komarovsky Book Award, Eastern Sociological Society" "Co-Winner of the 2017 Best Book Award, Migration and Citizenship Section of the American Political Science Association" "Winner of the 2017 Otis Dudley Duncan Award, Section on Population of the American Sociological Association" "Honorable Mention for the 2019 ENMISA Distinguished Book Award, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration Section the International Studies Association" Filiz Garip is professor of sociology at Cornell University. Why do Mexicans migrate to the United States? Is there a typical Mexican migrant? Beginning in the 1970s, survey data indicated that the average migrant was a young, unmarried man who was poor, undereducated, and in search of better employment opportunities. This is the general view that most Americans still hold of immigrants from Mexico. On the Move argues that not only does this view of Mexican migrants reinforce the stereotype of their undesirability, but it also fails to capture the true diversity of migrants from Mexico and their evolving migration patterns over time. Using survey data from over 145,000 Mexicans and in-depth interviews with nearly 140 Mexicans, Filiz Garip reveals a more accurate picture of Mexico-U.S migration. In the last fifty years there have been four primary waves: a male-dominated migration from rural areas in the 1960s and '70s, a second migration of young men from socioeconomically more well-off families during the 1980s, a migration of women joining spouses already in the United States in the late 1980s and '90s, and a generation of more educated, urban migrants in the late 1990s and early 2000s. For each of these four stages, Garip examines the changing variety of reasons for why people migrate and migrants' perceptions of their opportunities in Mexico and the United States. Looking at Mexico-U.S. migration during the last half century, On the Move uncovers the vast mechanisms underlying the flow of people moving between nations. "Garip's analysis is focused and fresh, representing an innovative approach to understand which theories of migration work for whom, when, and why. . . . [On the Move] provides an intricate and thorough analysis of the conditions, contexts, and composition of Mexican cohorts of migration since 1965, providing readers with a comprehensive understanding of the complex social, economic, and political processes that have led to this particular point in the trajectory of Mexican migration. This is a must read for anyone seeking to understand the history of Mexican migration to the United States over the past 50 years."---Elizabeth Aranda, American Journal of Sociology "This analytically acute and beautifully written book expands our understanding of Mexican migration flows to the United States. Filiz Garip explores stimulating theoretical questions while bringing her analysis alive through portraits of individuals and families. Her masterful study will reshape how scholars investigate the causes and dynamics of migration movements."-Nancy Foner, coauthor of Strangers No More: Immigration and the Challenges of Integration in North America and Western Europe "On the Move offers a creative and entirely original analysis to demonstrate convincingly why individuals have migrated from Mexico to the United States at different times for different reasons. Filiz Garip teaches us how seemingly contradictory propositions are often, in fact, quite complementary. Few people in the field today can match the methodological sophistication and substantive knowledge on display in this book."-Douglass Massey, Princeton University "Mexicans and their descendants make up the largest immigrant group in the United States. Yet our theories for explaining this massive, intergenerational population transfer are incomplete. On the Move offers a comprehensive theory for the changing and diverse nature of Mexican migration: its composition, origins, destinations, and settle

"Winner of the Harrison White Book Award, Mathematical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association" Damon Centola is an associate professor in the Annenberg School for Communications and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is director of the Network Dynamics Group. A new, counterintuitive theory for how social networks influence the spread of behavior New social movements, technologies, and public-health initiatives often struggle to take off, yet many diseases disperse rapidly without issue. Can the lessons learned from the viral diffusion of diseases be used to improve the spread of beneficial behaviors and innovations? In How Behavior Spreads, Damon Centola presents over a decade of original research examining how changes in societal behavior--in voting, health, technology, and finance-occur and the ways social networks can be used to influence how they propagate. Centola's startling findings show that the same conditions accelerating the viral expansion of an epidemic unexpectedly inhibit the spread of behaviors. While it is commonly believed that "weak ties"-long-distance connections linking acquaintances-lead to the quicker spread of behaviors, in fact the exact opposite holds true. Centola demonstrates how the most well-known, intuitive ideas about social networks have caused past diffusion efforts to fail, and how such efforts might succeed in the future. Pioneering the use of Web-based methods to understand how changes in people's social networks alter their behaviors, Centola illustrates the ways in which these insights can be applied to solve countless problems of organizational change, cultural evolution, and social innovation. His findings offer important lessons for public health workers, entrepreneurs, and activists looking to harness networks for social change. Practical and informative, How Behavior Spreads is a must-read for anyone interested in how the theory of social networks can transform our world. "[Centola's] ideas have exciting implications for social engineering, whether related to vaccination adoption in the developing world or a reduction of energy use in the West. . . . [They] present an appealing possibility to meet one of the challenges of democracy in the internet age."---Nina Jankowicz, New Scientist "Overall the book is well written and engaging, with plenty of discussion about the experiments that go into the conclusions, and on reading it, it is clear that there is a lot more to be done so that we can better implement lasting health strategies, and political engagement amongst many, many other complex behaviours."---Jonathan Shock, Mathemafrica "In social networks, as in media networks, content matters-the types of behaviors that propagate through networks shape the kinds of structures best able to propagate them. Clearly and elegantly written, brimming with fresh ideas, and based on cutting-edge experimental techniques, How Behavior Spreads is an essential addition to the core bookshelves of social scientists who care about networks and social change."-Paul DiMaggio, Princeton University "Just when we thought there was nothing new to say about diffusion through networks, along comes How Behavior Spreads. Filled with refreshing, novel arguments that distinguish simple from complex contagions, this book concludes with innovative online experiments and provocative proposals for beneficial social engineering. I urge widespread diffusion of its outstanding ideas."-Mark Granovetter, Stanford University "Well-organized and well-written, How Behavior Spreads shows that complex and simple contagion processes are different, and that these differences are important for understanding a wide class of diffusion outcomes."-Peter Bearman, Columbia University "Developing an original perspective on diffusion via networks, this book's model and evidentiary approach are distinctive."-Peter Marsden, Harvard Univer