A closer look at the sociological perspective of Alejandro Portes

Alejandro Portes; Manuel Fernández Esquinas

doi:10.22325/fes/res.2020.41

Autores/as

Alejandro Portes Princeton University and University of Miami, United States of America http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0864-878X
Manuel Fernández Esquinas Instituto de Estudios Sociales Avanzados, CSIC http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8677-9462

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22325/fes/res.2020.41

Palabras clave:

sociología económica, migraciones, instituciones, teoría sociológica, conceptos, entrevista, Alejandro Portes

Resumen

Alejandro Portes ocupa la cátedra Howard Garrison y Grabiel S. Beck de la Universidad de Princeton (emérito) y es profesor distinguido de la Universidad de Miami. Sus investigaciones más recientes se ocupan de la integración de los inmigrantes de segunda generación, las organizaciones transnacionales de inmigrantes, la urbanización y el desarrollo en perspectiva comparada. En el año 2019 recibió el Premio Princesa de Asturias de Ciencias Sociales. Esta entrevista refleja el punto de vista del autor en asuntos fundamentales de la investigación y la práctica sociológicas. La primera parte comienza con una descripción de la trayectoria biográfica y profesional. La segunda parte realiza un análisis de la perspectiva utilizada en sus trabajos de investigación. La tercera parte se dedica a discutir aspectos centrales en la sociología, entre
ellos, el papel de los conceptos y la teoría, la interdisciplinariedad, la sociología aplicada y el propósito general de la sociología como disciplina.

Biografía del autor/a

Alejandro Portes, Princeton University and University of Miami, United States of America

Alejandro Portes is Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Princeton University and Research Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Miami. He is the founding director of the Center for Migration and Development at Princeton. He has formerly taught at Johns Hopkins University, where he held the John Dewey Chair in Arts and Sciences; Duke University, and the University of Texas-Austin. In 1997, he was elected president of the American Sociological Association and served in that capacity in 1998-99. Born in Havana, Cuba, he came to the United States in 1960. He was educated at the University of Havana, Catholic University of Argentina, and Creighton University. He received his M. A. and Ph. D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Portes is the author of more than 240 articles and chapters on national development, international migration, Latin American and Caribbean urbanization, and economic sociology. He has published 40 books and special issues. His books include City on the Edge – the Transformation of Miami (California 1993), co-authored with Alex Stepick and winner of the Robert Park Award for best book in urban sociology and the Anthony Leeds Award for best book in urban anthropology in 1995; and Immigrant America: A Portrait, 4th edition, (California 2014), designated as a Centennial Publication by the University of California Press in 1996. His most recent book Spanish Legacies: The Coming of Age of the Second Generation has just been released.

His current research is on the adaptation process of the immigrant second generation in comparative perspective, the role of institutions on national development, and the comparative study of immigrant transnational organizations. In 2001, he published, with Rubén G. Rumbaut, Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation and Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America (California 2001). Legacies is the winner of the 2002 Distinguished Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association and of the 2002 W. I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki Award for best book from the International Migration Section of ASA.

His books and articles have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese. Ten volumes of his collected essays have been published in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. His most recent articles have appeared in the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, International Migration Review, Population and Development Review, and the British Journal of Sociology.

Portes is a former fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences and of the Russell Sage Foundation. He has received honorary doctorates from the New School for Social Research, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Genoa (Italy), and Roskilde University (Denmark). He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

In 2008, he received the annual Award for Scientific Reviewing (Social and Political Sciences) from the National Academy of Sciences. In 2010, he was the recipient of the W.E.B. DuBois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association and, in 2012, he was named as the James Coleman Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. In 2019, he received the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences (Spain).

Portes has been elected to Phi Beta Kappa and the American Philosophical Society, the country’s oldest honorary academic organizations.

Manuel Fernández Esquinas, Instituto de Estudios Sociales Avanzados, CSIC

Manuel Fernández-Esquinas holds a PhD in Sociology and Political Sciences (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain). His main fields of research are sociology of innovation, sociology of science, innovation polities and knowledge transfer. He is a research scientist at the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). Currently he serves as President of the Spanish Sociological Federation.