Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines the Golden Age of Black Capitalism with the making of US Empire in the 19th/20th centuries and the recent 21st century US Empire. It draws attention divergent waves of capital accumulation and the segregationist economic models and Jim Crow Business models they spawn as well as the post-Fordist and globalization model of black capital formation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper tries to explore the concept of capital accumulation through crafts, self-employment, and micro enterprises. In particular I will delineate emergence of black women entrepreneurs in the urban contexts, these women proved to be the most imaginative and success tasting black capitalists. Whites have had "affirmative action," so long built into the system that they sanctimoniously talk of as free enterprise. This they translate as ability, individual initiative, and skillful business techniques as though they were endowed with them at birth and ordained with clever means of making money. Coming to the modern period, the story revolves around many enterprising such as Mary Kay, Oprah Winfrey, Sylvia to a new wave of immigrants. _x000d_I will then examine the linkages and interconnections between labor, race and democracy with reference to industrialization and postwar development. The paper will try to grapple with the examination of capital accumulation revolving around Fordist to the deindustrialization of the post Fordist era; how industrial capital relegates black capitalism to the periphery, and how that impacted the subsequent division of labor from globalization through neoliberal globalization.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Though the term is widely used by social scientists, theory and research on social capital has an ad-hoc quality, i.e., social relationships “matter” but it is unclear which aspects of relationships matter for what types of outcomes. I use research on social networks and social control norms to examine how, when and why members of micro-credit borrowing groups use social control to create social capital. Using unique ethnographic, survey and loan data from approximately 100 borrowing groups operating in the U.S., I examine the conditions under which group members use social relationships in micro-credit borrowing groups. I find that peers do actively evaluate and screen fellow members before approving them as borrowers, though not always effectively. Moreover, different aspects of social relationships lead to social control, which provides members with adequate social capital to increase their financial capital through micro-credit.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper analyzes the intertwined projects of Third World development and tourism promotion in terms of their unequal social and spatial manifestations in a setting recently beset by transformative overhauls in this regard: Buenos Aires, Argentina. I train a comparative lens on three areas of the Argentine capital and their divergent paths of recovery from economic and political crisis (2001-2002) that have all adopted tourism as their survival strategy. I analyze the following differentiating axes for each urban area: (1) historical relationship to the local and national state, (2) predominant form of economic activity since international market opening in the 1990s, and (3) ethnic composition of area residents. The backdrop for this comparison is the documented boom in tourist entries since mid-2002 and the overarching tourism campaigns promoting the city since then, with the significant slogans of “Buenos Aires: Cultural Capital of Latin America,” and “Smile. We have visitors.” I find that older hierarchies of culture and place undergo reinvention in a conflictive politics of spatial claims that recasts the social cartography of the city for tourists and residents alike. By way of conclusion, I delineate the trajectories of those competing kinds of capital and their highly contingent resolutions.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines and empirically tests theories of media exposure, cultural capital, government intervention and social disorganization to predict geographic variation in social capital nationally at the county scale of analysis. Secondary data are derived from Applied Geographic Solutions Inc., the US Census Bureau’s Population and Housing Summary Tape Files, Census Bureau’s Census of Governments, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports. Geographic information systems, bivariate, and multivariate statistical methodologies are used. Results confirm Robert Putnam’s claim the heavy television exposure corrodes county social capital. Heavy newspaper use, cultural capital, percent of persons 65+ years of age, and local government direct expenditure per capita are positively associated with county social capital. Percent African American, urbanization, and public order crime negatively predict social capital. Model performance is robust.