Comparative Network Research in China

ABSTRACTUsing recent substantive results on China and the West, we highlight some virtues to Mill's method of residues for comparative network research. The result is research that combines the emic-etic approaches discussed by Leung (2009) with the spirit of Whetten's (2009: 49) efforts to make ‘theory borrowing more context sensitive’. We draw on recent comparative research about the competitive advantage enjoyed by network brokers, trust facilitated by embedding a relationship in a closed network, the subset of Chinese relations that constitute guanxi, the idea of American and European guanxi, different business environments maintained by the same network mechanism, cocoon networks, small-world networks, the longer history apparent in Chinese networks, and job search via colleagues, friends, and family. We also illustrate the value of data graphs for the expository value of the method of residuals in comparative network analyses.

Propagation of electronic longitudinal modes in a truncated maxwellian plasma

This paper is a theoretical and experimental study of the propagation of longitudinal electron waves in a collisionless, homogeneous, isotropic plasma, whose velocity distribution function is a truncated Maxwellian. Using the method of residues and numerical calculation, the behaviour of the electric field is found to be in good agreement with experimental results. The plasma parameters can be deduced from the theoretical dispersion curves matching the experimental points; they are found to agree well with those measured by electrostatic probes. In conclusion, a pragmatic approach to the resolution of the plasma inverse problem is discussed.