BU Sociology

BIO AND RESEARCH
I am an economic sociologist with interests in the market formation, particularly the development of new financial and consumer markets in emerging economies of Eastern and Central Europe. My dissertation research on Russia’s emerging credit card market culminated in the publication of Into the Red: The Birth of the Credit Card Market in Postcommunist Russia (Stanford University Press, 2008). Together with Akos Rona-Tas from the University of California, San Diego, I am working on another book project, tentatively titled From Communists to Card-Carrying Consumers: The Construction of Credit Card Markets in Post-Communist Countries, which is based on a collaborative project comparing developing credit card markets in eight countries (Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, Bulgaria, Russia, Ukraine, China and Vietnam). The project was supported by the American National Science Foundation.

Following my long-standing interest in medical sociology, I am starting a new project on markets for medical and health services in the US and globally. I am particularly interested in the cultural and economic underpinnings of the commercial surrogacy market. I want to investigate what is being sold in this market: is it services (“rent-a-womb”), goods (gametes or babies) or life styles (motherhood or parenthood)? How is the price of this product determined? How do market actors (prospective parents, surrogates and medical professionals) communicate ideas about the meaning of surrogacy? And how do they negotiate their relations and identities?

SELECT PUBLICATIONS
Guseva, A. 2008. Into the Red: the Birth of the Russian Credit Card Market. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Guseva, A. 2007. "Friends and Foes: Informal Networks in the Soviet Union." East European Quarterly. 41(3): 323-347.

Guseva, A. 2005. "Building New Markets: A Comparison between Russian and American Credit Card Markets." Socio-Economic Review 3:437-466.

Barman, E. and A. Guseva. 2005. "Max Weber and a New Paradigm for Economic Sociology." (Review essay). Theory and Society. 34: 93-103.

Buerkle, K. and A. Guseva. 2002. "What do you Know, Who Do You Know? School as a Site for the Production of Social Capital and its Effects on Income Attainment in Poland and the Czech Republic." American Journal of Economics and Sociology. 61(3):657-680.

Guseva, A. and A. Rona-Tas. 2001. "Uncertainty, Risk and Trust: Russian and American Credit Card Markets Compared." American Sociological Review. 66 (5) 623-646.

Rona-Tas, A. and A. Guseva. 2001. "The Privileges of Past Communist Party Membership in Russia and Endogenous Switching Regression." Social Science Research. 30 (4): 641-52.