| Abstrakt: |
Immigrants often face institutional barriers within an intercultural context, which affects their ability to engage in economic activity. This article examines how cultural embeddedness of Laotian (Mien) immigrants has shaped their entry into California commercial strawberry production. Ethnographic interviews of immigrant farmers and key informants on Mien culture and local agriculture were conducted. From the data emerged six major themes: (1) family and clan relationships, (2) knowledge sharing, (3) purchasing economies, (4) labor, (5) timely marketing, (6) competition and pricing, and (7) environmental sustainability. Cultural emeddedness has both positive and negative aspects, simultaneously being both enabling and restricting and creating a social order based upon a trajectory of cultural logics. The Mien experience in strawberry production has been shaped by cultural embeddedness, fostering new institutional connections and social processes in ways that could not have occurred within a strict (labor, consumer, factor input, financial) market structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
