Class, Culture, and Participation in the Collegiate Extra-Curriculum

With larger percentages of high school students entering higher education, it becomes increasingly important to look at how processes occurring on college campuses contribute to social stratification. Using in‐depth interviews with 61 students, I ask: How does social class structure students’ participation in the collegiate extra‐curriculum? I argue that the collegiate extra‐curriculum is an important site for stratification because it is there that students gain access to social and cultural resources valued by the privileged classes. I find that upper‐middle‐class students arrive on campus with cultural resources that motivate their participation and social resources that facilitate their involvement. Among working‐class students, limited financial factors constrain their involvement, while social and cultural resources further curtail their interest in such activities. These findings contribute to theories of social and cultural reproduction by showing that those who have more valued social and cultural resources at the outset are in a better position to gain additional such resources throughout their college careers. Moreover, these analyses show that symbolic and cultural hierarchies are sustained by the interdependent relationship between social and cultural capital.     

Homo ludens im sozialwissenschaftlichen Seminar

The teaching of social sciences consists of social interactions and is, therefore, an appropriate object for scientific analysis. A game-theoretic approach reveals that ”chicken games“ and ”prisoner’s dilemmas“ are abundant in university level courses. It can also deliver systematic solutions to the problems of cooperation students and teachers are confronted with in everyday a cademic life. One of these solutions is the reforming of courses into games, as based on a perspective borrowed from cultural anthropology. ”Excitement and fun“ become the ”selective incentives“ which may boost seminar interaction and output, and forge ”privileged groups“, i.e. ”teams“.     

Network domains in social networking sites: expectations,meanings, and social capital

This paper examines why the use of social networking sites (SNSs) leads to different results in cultivating bridging and bonding social capital for different groups of people. Based on in-depth interviews of 45 university students in Hong Kong, I find that Mainland Chinese students studying in Hong Kong actively use SNSs for seeking practical information about offline matters, and they obtain substantial enacted support from other Mainland students of the same university through SNS use. As a result, they accumulate both bridging and bonding social capital. Local Hong Kong students, however, use SNSs mainly for social information seeking and are only able to accrue limited bridging social capital through SNS use. Drawing on the theory of network domains, I argue that the different offline network structures in which students are located – namely, homogeneous and closed networks versus heterogeneous and open networks – explain this difference. Students with closed offline networks have defined expectations of online ties; they think of their online activities as practical and leading to real changes in their status among peers. Those with open networks have indefinite expectations of their online audience; thus, they interpret online activities differently, thinking of them as recreational, and they are playful in their online behaviour. These different outcomes of online activities consequently lead to diverse results in social capital accrual.     

Community Connections: Social Capital and Community Success1

This article examines the impact of two types of community social capital—ties between civic organizations formed through shared members and ties between residents formed through socializing in local gathering places—on residents’ subjective appraisals of community success. Community social capital studies tend to focus on the first of these types of ties, networks of civic engagement, while the second, gathering place networks, has received relatively little scholarly attention. Studying both allows me to assess the formal and informal arenas of community sociability, providing a more thorough understanding of social capital and community life. I assess the effects of community‐level social capital networks on the individual‐level experience of residing in the community using survey data on 9,962 residents from 99 small towns in Iowa. This rich data set allows me to avoid two shortcomings common in social capital research: I construct genuine network measures of social capital (rather than infer network structure from community attributes) and conduct multi‐level analyses (rather than rely on disaggregation). My findings indicate both types of social capital are positively and significantly associated with resident ratings of community success, suggesting community networks—in both the formal and informal sectors—have important consequences for small towns and their residents.     

Ask Not What Your Mentor Can Do for You…: The Role of Reciprocal Exchange in Maintaining Student–Teacher Mentorships

Mentoring relationships between adolescents and adults are an important source of social capital that facilitates young people's academic and social development. Studies show that close relationships with teachers especially benefit socioeconomically disadvantaged adolescents, yet little is known about teacher‐mentors’ perspectives on mentorship. This study draws on in‐depth interviews with teachers in low‐income high schools and ethnographic observations to examine the dynamics that sustain student–teacher mentoring relationships. I engage social exchange frameworks to show that reciprocal exchanges that generated intangible rewards for teachers, such as gratitude and purpose, helped maintain mentorships. I find that teachers’ motivations to invest in students were contingent on the strength of the relationship. Teachers withdrew assistance when they perceived that relationships became nonreciprocal. The context in which teachers interacted with mentees and the form of support they had given also influenced their evaluations of reciprocity. These findings contribute to a growing body of literature on relationships that challenge strict divisions between the function of strong and weak ties. Further, these findings contribute to social capital literature by showing that once accessed, social capital does not lie latent as network ties maintain the same willingness to help. In actuality, resourceful ties must be maintained.     

When Bourgeois Utopias Meet Gentrification: Community and Diversity in a New Urbanist Neighborhood*

Abstract

Scholars have recently begun to explore how social and politically liberal gentrifiers make sense of the classed and racial inequalities linked to gentrification. In this article I ask how residents of one new urbanist “bourgeois utopia”—the Mueller Development in Austin, Texas—experience and give meaning to their neighborhood in a context of gentrification. Drawing on 31 in-depth interviews I explain how new urbanism has reimagined and marketed “diversity” and “community” to middle-class and wealthy consumers and provides these to affluent people as neighborhood amenities. I show how residents draw on diversity ideology and multicultural capital to neutralize what they see as their neighborhood’s role in gentrification. In doing so this article adds to our theoretical understanding of how contemporary urban development exploits pursuits for the social good as rhetorical tools to assuage privileged guilt while promoting profitable enterprises.     

Fickle Families and the Kindness of Strangers: Social Capital in the Lives of Low-Income Single Mothers

This article is a qualitative study that examines the social capital in the lives of 20 formerly homeless and nearly homeless single mothers with children in their care. The findings for this study indicate that the mothers' close social ties simultaneously served as a resource and a hindrance to their progress into sustainable work or education. Findings also show that nearly all of the women in this study benefited from “weak” ties by receiving information or other kinds of resources from strangers or friends of friends. Implications for policy and practice are also discussed.     

Fashioning Futures: Life Coaching and the Self‐Made Identity Paradox

Contemporary processes of individualization push people to construct single‐handedly their own identities. This urge runs counter to a fundament of sociology, which proposes that identities are social products that must be validated through social relations. Based on participant observation and in‐depth interviews with life coaches and their clients, I investigate life coaching as a social institution that aims to resolve the paradoxical nature of the desire for self‐creation. Locating life coaching in the larger identity‐fashioning market, this article illustrates how the artificial nature of outsourced social relations reconciles two apparently contradictory desires: the “need for help” and “wanting to find it on my own.” Three mechanisms are involved: creating an independent social space where identities can be crafted away from significant others; deliberately deemphasizing the coach and intentionally underwriting personal authorship; and encouraging clients to root identities in the social world while promoting an instrumental view of sociality. The article discusses the blurring of boundaries between intimate social relations and utilitarian market logic, and the implications of the ongoing outsourcing of identity support that reinforces the privileged ideal of self‐made identities.     

Do rich teens get richer? Facebook use and the link between offline and online social capital among Palestinian youth in Israel

Studies have shown that using social networking sites contributes to social capital. This study investigated the association between specific features of Facebook and online social capital. Two contrasting hypothesis were tested. The first posits that the rich get richer, meaning that the creation of social capital online reflects the stock of offline resources already available. In contrast, the compensation hypothesis argues that disadvantaged ethnic minorities are more likely to use social media to compensate for their lack of social capital offline. We tested these two theories among a representative sample of Palestinian teenagers (N?=?567). While we found no gender differences in the use of Facebook’s features, our results highlight the positive correlation between the use of active and passive communication features and perceived social capital online. Moreover, the results support the rich-get-richer model; in that, even among this socially disadvantaged group, the youngsters who already had a store of social capital offline benefitted more from using Facebook.     

Rethinking Families and Community: The Color,Class, and Centrality of Extended Kin Ties1

Although a focus on marriage and the nuclear family characterizes much sociological research and social commentary, this article suggests that this focus ignores the familial experiences of many Americans, particularly those on the lower end of the economic spectrum for whom extended kin are central. African Americans and Latinos/as are more involved with kin than whites, but class trumps race in this regard: African Americans, Latinos/as, and whites with fewer economic resources rely more on extended kin than do those more affluent. The emphasis on marriage and the nuclear family may actually promulgate a vision of family life that dismisses the very social resources and community ties that are critical to the survival strategies of those in need. In contrast to those who have argued that marriage is the foundation of the community or even, in that overused phrase, the “basic unit of society,” this article suggests that marriage actually detracts from social ties to broader communities just as an emphasis on marriage and the nuclear family, to the exclusion of the extended family, distorts and reduces the power and reach of social policy.     

Outsider Scholars and Outsider Sociologists

If we take the time to look at the academy writ large and sociology as a discipline specifically, we can readily find the evidence to confirm a long‐standing exclusion of certain scholars from the academic mainstream. This exclusion is especially evident in the case of scholars of color, but also includes women, nonelites (e.g., college and graduate students who lack academic social capital from elders who have been through it and could help), and those who wish to push for a more humanist scientific agenda over purist positivist science. Sexism and racism keep us from seeing the best of our ideas emerge to bring the discipline forward. As if the pursuit of good work and good works are mutually exclusive, an embrace of purist positivism leads us to shun antiracist, antisexist, nonhumanist science, labeling it “advocacy” or worse, “activist,” and conversely, ceding ground to those who wrap themselves in “objectivity” even as they may further regressive agendas. This article makes a case for the existence of an “outsider scholar,” and outlines sociology's outsider problem. I argue that this problem endures at all levels of the academic endeavor, from undergraduate education all the way through to the ranks of administration. I conclude by offering remedies to lead us toward a more inclusive and social justice‐oriented sociology.     

Social mobility and social capital in contemporary Britain

This paper seeks to contribute to social capital research by linking measures of formal and informal forms of social capital to social mobility trajectories and assessing their impact on social trust. Drawing on data from a recent national survey – Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion (2003/2004 ) – we analyse formal civic engagement and informal social connections. The latter data are obtained using, for the first time in a study in Britain, Lin's (2001 ) 'Position Generator' approach as a means to identify the volume, range and position of individuals' informal social contacts. The pattern of contacts suggests that access to social ties is strongly conditioned by mobility trajectory. We also show that civic engagement in formal associations is especially high among second-generation members of the service class. It is also shown that both class trajectory and possession of two types of social capital have significant impacts on trust. Among the social groups disadvantaged in terms of bridging social ties are not only those in lower classes but also women and members of minority ethnic groups.     

The relational costs of crossing class lines

How do low socioeconomic status students navigate cross-class interactions in extremely unequal contexts? Previous research has described the high costs of college integration for underprivileged students, which in turn, negatively impact academic performance and general wellbeing. These studies tend to concentrate on cultural capital costs, such as catching up with assumed middle-class or elite capital and dealing with two worlds. Less has been said about social capital costs, the costs of making friends, especially more privileged friends. Through 61 in-depth interviews with various types of students as part of a broader ethnographic fieldwork, this article analyses the experiences of low-income scholarship holders in an elite institution in a very unequal society, Colombia. Rather than isolating themselves or resorting to safe homophilic relations, they faced their new elite environment engaging with the hidden relational cost of making friends with more affluent students. In so doing, they had to overcome fears and experiences of discrimination and micro-aggressions, as well as cultural and economic capital barriers, and employed either camouflaging or disclosure strategies, sometimes becoming culturally and socially omnivorous. Symbolic belonging to the institution and the acquisition of middle-class cultural capital were among the benefits that made overcoming the costs worthy. Our results shed light on what institutions can do to reduce the costs for underprivileged students and, theoretically, unveil an important mechanism and barrier for social mobility: building cross-class ties.     

You Catch More Flies With Honey: Sex Work,Violence, and Masculinity on the Streets

Violence among inner‐city men is a pressing social concern, and the central focus of much academic research. Many frame it as a phenomenon that certain men perpetuate—those who inhabit disadvantaged, impoverished communities—and argue it is linked to performances of “street” masculinity. In this article, I examine male street‐based sex workers’ willingness to become embroiled in violent exchanges. In a departure from theoretical predictions, my findings reveal these men expend considerable effort to remain nonviolent with others immersed in the sex trade, a decision based upon their desire for the acquisition of capital as well as their calculation of risks. In doing so, they construct and perform a nuanced version of masculinity, which I call pacifist masculinity. Few studies analyze peaceful and conciliatory interactions among men in these contexts, an absence that only serves to reify assumptions about rampant hostility and aggression. I draw on interviews with 19 men involved in street prostitution in Chicago in 2012. This article contributes to a clearer understanding of male–male violence in high‐risk environments, examines the prominent factors that inform decisions to assault others, and explores how such actions challenge hegemonic masculinity.     

“We're gonna get you through it”: The role of bonding social capital in the development of bridging social capital

Many programs that place low-income students of color in high-achieving college preparatory high schools seek to nurture bridging social capital, connections across class lines that provide leverage in the process of “getting ahead.” Bonding social capital, which focuses more on emotional support and “getting by,” is frequently characterized as less useful for social mobility. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with alumni from one such program, we challenge the notion of bridging and bonding social capital as discrete, countervailing forms of social capital, and demonstrate how the two may complement each other. Specifically, we find that bonding social capital served as a critical resource that students drew upon as they navigated their elite high schools in the face of racism and classism. In doing so, this bonding social capital ultimately facilitated the development of bridging social capital by encouraging student persistence at these institutions. Our findings support critiques of traditional accounts of social capital that devalue the capital possessed by marginalized communities and fuel deficit ideologies. Furthermore, they highlight the personal costs that youth may face in the pursuit of bridging capital, complicating the narrative of social mobility as an unmitigated good.     

The Declining Significance of Delinquent Labels in Disadvantaged Urban Communities1

Labeling theory posits that formal sanctions contribute negative defining information to a youth’s reputation and that novice delinquents internalize these negative appraisals. Reflected appraisals and social rejection, in turn, reinforce delinquency. In the context of severely disadvantaged inner‐city communities—where arrests have become a normal and expected ritual of male adolescence, and official labelers and labels have less legitimacy—the alleged preconditions for a “labeling” effect of an arrest are generally not met. Retrospective, personal interviews with 20 minority youth (aged 18–20) from high‐poverty urban neighborhoods, who experienced at least one juvenile arrest, suggest that juvenile arrests typically carry little stigma and do little discernible harm to self‐concept or social relationships. Micro‐level labeling theory is an inadequate framework to understand the social impact of mass criminal justice intervention in inner‐city communities. Whereas the individual social psychological impact of the official labeling process has weakened, the mass criminalization of inner‐city African‐American youth has exacted collective costs in terms of social exclusion and diminished social expectations.     

“He's Doing Fine”: Hope Work and Emotional Threat Management Among Families of Seriously Ill Children

In this study, I examine how people in emotionally fraught circumstances strategically structure social interactions in order to protect fragile emotional states. Data come from interviews and observations with 18 families of children being treated for life‐threatening conditions at an elite university research hospital. I show how families worked to ward off emotional threats to their ability to maintain hope that their children would recover by preempting and restructuring social interactions with friends and family members and pruning social networks. These efforts allowed families to minimize reciprocal obligations and avoid encountering pessimistic reflected appraisals that might trigger “emotional shortcuts” leading to states of fear and anxiety. Similar efforts to reconstruct social interactions and social networks may be common among those working to maintain fragile emotional states in a variety of challenging circumstances.     

Role of Facebook use in predicting bridging and bonding social capital of Pakistani university students

ABSTRACT

The explanatory study aimed to examine the role of Facebook use (intensity of Facebook use, Facebook relationship maintenance behaviors, duration of use, and number of ties), motives of using Facebook (making new social ties, maintaining existing social ties, seeking and sharing information, self-expression, self-documentation, and recreation), and sociodemographic characteristics (age, education, gender, and monthly family income) in predicting the formation of bridging and bonding social capital among youth. Opting Putnam’s theory of social capital, a survey was conducted from eight randomly selected universities of Lahore, Pakistan. A total of 1,245 students, had an average age of 21, were participated in this study. Stepwise multiple linear regression technique was used to explain bridging and bonding social capital. The study found that motives of using Facebook had a major role in predicting bridging and bonding social capital of the students. The intensity of Facebook use and Facebook relationship maintenance behaviors were also positively correlated with bridging and bonding social capital. Except for the age for bonding social capital, no other sociodemographic variables had an influence on bridging and bonding social capital.     

Not to Be Hungry Is Not Enough: An Insight Into Contours of Inclusion and Exclusion in Affluent Western Societies

In its view of the contemporary world, social theory—and particularly its postmodern trends and proponents—attributes a dominant role to the realm of consumption and consumerism in shaping both individual lifeworlds and the system of social hierarchies as a whole. In this article, building on the case of middle‐aged to late‐middle‐aged post–Soviet Jewish immigrants in contemporary Germany and illuminating a particular condition that I call “condemned to consume,” I seek to reexamine this tendency to celebrate consumption and consumerism while downplaying and marginalizing realm of work and employment. I interconnect this examination with questions regarding the distribution of resources and the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. Drawing on the “condemned to consume” condition, I seek to claim that in affluent Western societies, which are able to provide relative material well‐being or at least subsistence even to those at the margins, the main contours of inclusion and exclusion are not grounded primarily in one's ability to enter the realm of consumption but, rather, in one's ability to participate equally in the realm of work and employment. I underscore this idea by connecting lack of regular, meaningful employment with the concept of exclusive inclusion.