Alya Guseva

Ph.D., Sociology, University of California-San Diego
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Boston University
Center Associate, Davis Center

Contact Information
617.358.0639 (work)
aguseva@bu.edu

Research Interests
Economic sociology; consumer credit markets; transitional economies of East and Central Europe and China; medical sociology.

Current Projects
A book tentatively entitled "From Communists to Card-Carrying Consumers: The Construction of Credit Card Markets in Postcommunist Countries" (coauthored with Akos Rona-Tas). The book examines the emergence and development of credit card markets in eight postcommunist countries: Bulgaria, China, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and Vietnam.

Selected Publications
Into the Red: The Birth of the Credit Card Market in Postcommunist Russia. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.

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

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

 “What a Weberian Approach to Interests Can Contribute to Economic Sociology,” coauthored with Emily Barman, Theory and Society. 34: 93-103, 2005.

 “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,” co-authored with Karen Buerkle, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 61(3):657-680, 2002.

“Uncertainty, Risk and Trust: Russian and American Credit Card Markets Compared,” co-authored with Rona-Tas Akos, American Sociological Review, 66 (5) 623-646, 2001.