Conversations on Europe."From Communists to Foreign Capitalists: The Social Foundations of Foreign Direct Investment in Postsocialist Europe."

February 05, 2009 - February 05, 2009
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM, 1636 II/SSWB, 1080 S. University

Host Department: CESEUC

Nina Bandelj, assistant professor, Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine. Sponsored by the Center for European Studies-European Union Center, Center for Russian and East European Studies, and Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies.

Further Information

The talk is based on Nina Bandelj’s recent book which explores the intersections of two momentous changes in the late 20th century: the fall of communism and the rise of globalization. Delving into the economic change that accompanied these shifts in eleven countries of Central and Eastern Europe, Bandelj presents a pioneering sociological treatment of the process of foreign direct investment. Macro level analyses demonstrate that postsocialist states do not withdraw to create an open market economy but actively play a role in institutionalizing FDI as a development strategy. Organizational case studies show how both investors and hosts rely on social networks, institutions, politics, and cultural understandings to make decisions about investment, employing practical rather than rational economic strategies to deal with the true uncertainty that plagues the postsocialist environment.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Nina Bandelj is assistant professor of sociology and faculty associate at the Center for the Study of Democracy, University of California, Irvine. Originally from Slovenia, Bandelj completed her Ph.D. at Princeton University and received the Martin Seymour Lipset Dissertation Award from the Society for Comparative Research. She held a Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Society and was Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute. Her research in economic sociology, culture, organizations, and social change is forthcoming or has been published in American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Socio-Economic Review, Sociological Forum, International Journal of Comparative Sociology and East European Politics and Societies, among others. She is the author of From Communists to Foreign Capitalists (Princeton University Press, 2008) and editor of Economic Sociology of Work (Emerald, forthcoming). Bandelj serves as Co-Chair of RC09 Social Transformations and Sociology of Development of the International Sociological Association and as Council Member of the Economic Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association.

Contact Information: ces-euc@umich.edu 734.647.2743