Social Capital and Its Institutional Contingency: A Study of the United States, China and Taiwan

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.

Nan Lin is Oscar L. Tang Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Duke University, and was Distinguished Research Fellow at Academia Sinica at the time of the reported research program.

Yang-chih Fu is research fellow in the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.

Chih-Jou Jay Chen is Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology of Academia Sinica, a jointly appointed Associate Professor at the Institute of Sociology, National Tsing Hua University, and Director of the Center for Contemporary China, National Tsing Hua University.