Richard P. Appelbaum, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and former MacArthur Foundation Chair in Global and International Studies and Sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He has previously served as chair of the Sociology Department 1988-1992, Director of the Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research 1993-2005 (ISBER), co-founder of the UCSB Global & International Studies Program, and served as the founding Director of its M.A program (2005-2012). He is currently Professor at Fielding Graduate University, where he chairs the doctoral concentration on Sustainability Leadership.
He received his B.A. from Columbia University, M.P.A. from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He has been a Simon Visiting Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Manchester, England, and an Honorary Visiting Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Hong Kong. Between 1964-1966 he served as on a Ford Foundation program a consultant to the Oficina Nacional de Planeamiento y Urbanismo (ONPU), Lima, Peru.
Professor Appelbaum has received numerous awards and commendations for excellence in teaching, including the UCSB Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award in the Social Sciences. He has served as an elected Council Member of the Political Economy of the World-System Section of the American Sociological Association, as well as its President. He is on the Board of Consulting Editors of the Encyclopedia of Housing and the Encyclopedia of Global Studies. He has served as a faculty representative to the University of California Advisory Committee on Trademark Licensing/Designated Suppliers Program, and chairs the Advisory Council of the Workers' Rights Consortium. He is the author of the report of the Los Angeles Jewish Commission on Sweatshops, for which he served as a founding member. In the past, he was co-PI (and served on the Executive Committees of) the NSF-funded Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science, 1999-2004 (CSISS), Spatial Perspectives for Analysis in Curriculum Enhancement, 2003-2009 (SPACE), and the Center for Nanotechnology in Society, 2006-2016 (CNS).
Professor Appelbaum has published extensively in the areas of social theory, urban sociology, public policy, the globalization of business, and the sociology of work and labor. In addition to numerous scholarly papers, he has published policy-related and opinion pieces in the Los Angeles Times and The American Prospect. He has authored or co-authored His recent books include Innovation in China: Challenging the Global Science and Technology System (with Cong Cao, Xueying Han, Rachel Parker, and Denis Simon; Polity Press, 2018; Achieving Workers’ Rights in the Global Economy (co-edited with Nelson Lichtenstein; Cornell University Press, 2016); Can Emerging Technologies Make a Difference in Development? (co-edited with Rachel Parker, Routledge, 2012); Towards a Critical Globalization Studies (co-edited with William I. Robinson, Routledge, 2005); States and Economic Development in the Asian Pacific Rim (with Jeffrey Henderson; Sage, 1992); Behind the Label: Inequality in the Los Angeles Garment Industry (with Edna Bonacich; University of California Press, 2000); Rules and Networks: The Legal Culture of Global Business Transactions (co-edited with William L.F. Felstiner and Volkmar Gessner; Oxford, England: Hart, 2001; and Introduction to Politics and Economics (an edited collection of readings; Kendall-Hunt 2004).
He is also co-author (with Anthony Giddens, Mitchell Duneier, and Deborah Carr) of Introduction to Sociology, currently in its 11th edition (W.W. Norton). He is a founding editor (and currently emeritus editor) of Competition and Change: The Journal of Global Business and Political Economy.
Professor Appelbaum is currently engaged in two principal research projects: a multi-disciplinary study of labor conditions in supply chain networks in the Asian-Pacific Rim, and a study of high technology development in China.
Ph.D., Sociology, University of Chicago, 1971
M.P.A., Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, 1966
B.A., Public Law and Government, Columbia University, 1964
Innovation in China: Challenging the Global Science and Technology System pdf by Richard Appelbaum
China is in the midst of transitioning from a manufacturing-based economy to one driven by innovation and knowledge. This up-to-date analysis evaluates China's state-led approach to science and technology, and its successes and failures.
In recent decades, China has seen huge investments in high-tech science parks, a surge in home-grown top-ranked global companies, and a significant increase in scientific publications and patents. Helped by a flexible business culture, state policies that favor domestic over foreign enterprises, and a still-immature intellectual property rights system, the country has been able to leapfrog its way to a more globally competitive position in the international division of labor.
However, the authors argue that this approach might not yield the same level of progress going forward if China does not address serious institutional, organizational, and cultural obstacles. Since many of these are ingrained into the fabric of China's prevailing culture from the days of state planning and top-down government policy, they will require significant structural change to enable China to truly transform its innovation system. While not impossible, this task may well prove to be more difficult for the Chinese Communist Party than the challenges that China has faced in the past.