Victor Nee is the Frank and Rosa Rhodes Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Economy and Society at Cornell University. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology at Harvard University in 1977. Nee received the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007, and has been a visiting fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York.

Work

Nee's research interests focus on studies in economic sociology, new institutionalism

New institutionalism

New institutionalism or neoinstitutionalism is a theory that focuses on developing a sociological view of institutions--the way they interact and the way they affect society...

, stratification and inequality, and immigration. He contributed influential theories explaining a variety of macro-societal phenomena. He developed market transition theory, which has launched a broad research program on the interplay between market transition and stratification effects. In his recently published book "Remaking the American Mainstream" (co-authored with Richard Alba) he compares the late European and new immigration from Latin America and Asia to the United States and demonstrates the importance of assimilation in American society.

Selected articles and chapters

“On Politicized Capitalism” (with Sonja Opper) in On Capitalism, edited by Victor Nee and Richard Swedberg. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.

“The New Institutionalism in Economics and Sociology.” In The Handbook of Economic Sociology (2nd ed.) edited by Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).

"Path Dependent Societal Transformation: Stratification in Mixed Economies." (with Yang Cao) Theory and Society 28 (1999): 799-834.

"Norms and Networks in Economic and Organizational Performance." American Economic Review Vol. 87 (1998), No. 4, pp. 85–89.

"Embeddedness and Beyond: Institutions, Exchange and Social Structure." (with Paul Ingram). pp. 19–45 in The New Institutionalism in Sociology, edited by M. Brinton and V. Nee (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998).

"Immigrant Self-Employment: The Family as Social Capital and the Value of Human Capital" (with Jimy Sanders), American Sociological Review 60 (1996):231-250.

The Emergence of a Market Society: Changing Mechanisms of Stratification in China. American Journal of Sociology 100 (1996): 908-949.

"Job Transitions in an Immigrant Metropolis: Ethnic Boundaries and Mixed Economy." (with Jimy M. Sanders and Scott Sernau), American Sociological Review 59 (1994): 849-872.

"Social Inequalities in Reforming State Socialism: Between Redistribution and Markets in China." American Sociological Review 56 (1991): 267-282.

"A Theory of Market Transition: From Redistribution to Markets in State Socialism." American Sociological Review 54 (1989): 663-681.

Books

• On Capitalism, Co-editor and contributor with Richard Swedberg (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007)

• The Economic Sociology of Capitalism. Co-editor and contributor with Richard Swedberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).

• Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and the New Immigration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).

• The New Institutionalism in Sociology, coeditor and contributor with Mary Brinton (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998).

• with Brett de Bary Nee, Longtime Californ': A Documentary Study of an American Chinatown (New York,: Pantheon Books, 1973).

• The Cultural Revolution at Peking University (New York: [Monthly Review Press, 1969).