Residential mobility and the spatial dispersion of personal networks: Effects on social support

Using a representative national sample of personal networks, this article explores how the spatial dispersion of networks, residential mobility and social support are linked. Three issues will be addressed here. Firstly, how is the spatial dispersion of personal networks related to individuals’ social characteristics, network composition and residential mobility? Secondly, how do the spatial dispersion of networks, residential mobility and their combined effect influence the number and (thirdly) the structure of emotional support ties? Results showed that the extent of the support was affected neither by the geographical distribution of the networks nor by residential mobility. Living far from one's birthplace, however, exerted two distinct, and opposite effects on the support network structure. On the one hand, mobility led to high spatial dispersion of personal contacts, which in turn favored a sparsely knit network centered around the mobile individual. On the other hand, by controlling for the effect of distance between the contacts, we found that individuals that cited long-distance ties tended to be part of more transitive support networks than those that cited local ties. We interpreted the latter effect as evidence that transitive ties may survive greater spatial distances than intransitive ones. These findings are discussed in view of spatial mobility and social network research.     

Educational ties,social capital and the translocal (re)production of MBA alumni networks

Research on elite, transnational networks has identified social and cultural capital associated with particular academic credentials as being an important element in network formation. How and why such networks are reproduced after graduation, however, has received less attention. In response, in this article I combine work on social capital and personal networks to explore the reproduction of MBA alumni networks in London's financial services district that were created in leading business schools in the USA and UK. My analysis documents the ways in which business schools and individual alumni combine forms of virtual and corporeal co‐presence to reproduce translocal educational ties. I then argue that the motivation for sustaining these educational ties lies in the potential to convert the social and cultural capital of MBA alumni networks into different types of value ranging from enhanced career progression to increased alumni donations. In doing so, I develop debates on the intersections between social capital, academic credentials and the reproduction of elite networks.     

Social Resources and Occupational Status Attainment: Comparison of Japanese and American Employees' Personal Networks

Abstract: The present study compares Japan and the USA in the ways in which individuals’ personal relationships affect the social standing they achieve. The conceptual framework applied here is similar to that used in established research in Western countries, which examines the effects of both human capital and social capital. The analyses are based on the data collected from a random sample of adult residents in Tokyo, which contains information about their personal networks. This data set is compared with the social network module of the 1985 General Social Survey in the United States. The analyses supported both human capital and social capital theories in the process of status attainment in both countries. Human capital, however, seems to have a stronger influence especially in the USA sample, because certain structural characteristics are associated with one's own educational achievement, which in turn are instrumental in attaining social capital. Unlike the USA, however, the access to social capital in Japan was found primarily through homophily, showing little effect based upon the type of networks they have. The results suggest the difference between the two countries in terms of the function of social resources and the strength of ties that are instrumental in the process of status attainment.     

Social capital or group style? Rescuing Tocqueville’s insights on civic engagement

Social capital has become the preeminent concept for studying civic relationships, yet it will not help us assess their meanings, institution-like qualities, or potential for social capacity. Alexis de Tocqueville’s insights on these three features of civic relationships continue to be highly influential, and the popular social capital concept claims a strongly Tocquevillian heritage while systematically missing what a Tocquevillian imagination illuminates. Scenes from volunteer group settings in a midwestern US city show how a concept of group style apprehends the varying meanings, routines, and social capacities of civic ties. Group style also illuminates the process by which civic groups create “bridging” ties beyond the group. Without rejecting the social capital concept entirely, I highlight research questions and findings that social capital would ignore or misapprehend. A concluding discussion draws out implications for democratic theory, and sketches an agenda for future research on civic group style that makes good on Tocquevillian insights while moving beyond Tocqueville’s own limits.     

Ethnic ties: social capital and the question of mobilisability

This paper reflects on the concept of social capital through a discussion of the differential uses of ethnic ties for minority ethnic groups. It is argued that we should confine the notion of social capital to mobilisable social ties and networks. Resources such as those found in ethnic networks and bonds will only be social capital if they are mobilisable and usable in pursuing social advantage. This will only happen in the presence of a number of factors including the social valuation of the ethnic ties both within and outside the ethnic category, the social location of the actor (for example their gender) and the social context. The paper elaborates a concept of social capital which recognises the need to embed it within social hierarchies.     

Neighborhood social capital, parenting strain, and personal mastery among female primary caregivers of children

Neighborhood social capital-resources inherent within community networks-has been identified as a potential facilitator of personal well-being. We test hypotheses concerning how neighborhood social capital moderates the influence of parenting strain on mastery (individuals' understanding of their ability to control personal life circumstances) for female primary caregivers of children. First, we test how different forms of neighborhood social capital-social support, social leverage (information exchange), informal social control, and neighborhood organization participation-modify the association between parenting strain and mastery. Second, we test whether such moderation depends on one's access to these forms via neighbor ties. Analyses of Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey data (N = 765) indicate that the negative relationship between parenting strain and mastery worsens as informal social control increases. Social support and informal social control, however, buffer this parenting strain-mastery relationship when caregivers have stronger ties to neighbors. Our findings implicate mechanisms of "negative social capital" and warrant more nuanced considerations of neighborhood social capital's health-promoting potential.     

Place of Origin,Types of Ties,and Support Networks in Mexico–U.S. Migration*

Previous studies explored how urban or rural place of origin influences the source of social capital. There remains a need to consider how the place of origin affects the type of ties—family, friends, or paisanos (countrymen)—with those who provide support to migrants. We use data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP128) and perform multinomial logistic regression models to predict who (among family, friends, or paisanos) provides lodging to first‐time undocumented male migrants from Mexico, taking into account the size of their place of origin. We find that paisanos are important in providing lodging to those from rural areas, and family members are more likely to assist those from urban settings. Paisanos are more likely to help at the beginning of the migratory flow of the community (rural or urban), and family members to do so once the flow has matured. Also, paisanos are more likely to help those in rural areas during more difficult times, such as after the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement. We suggest that paisanos fulfill a role similar to that in Granovetter's (1973) concept of the strength of weak ties in which they act as substitutes for other ties (such as to friends and family) to provide social capital, making the first‐time undocumented migration possible.     

Recreating Social Capital

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the establishment of a pilot neighbourhood-based intergenerational programme and its evaluation in one town in England. It sets this in both the context of English inter-generational programmes involving schools and of English social policy. The latter is currently influenced by Putnam's concept of social capital. It argues that intergenerational programmes of all kinds are likely to be useful contributions to the development of social capital. The paper reports how the evaluation of the pilot has lead to the refinement of the original model. The pilot highlighted the need for more systematic measures of the process and outcomes, including the project's contribution to development of social capital. The revised model is being implemented in a number of contrasting neighbourhoods and will be evaluated in both outcome and process terms. These developments will be reported in further articles.     

Marital Therapy — The Therapist

This article applies systems principles to an appreciation of the couple therapist. It offers an overview of the changing role of therapists and addresses the philosophical debate of the therapist as scientist or artist. It demonstrates how the worldviews, beliefs and values of clients and therapists are influenced by, and in turn influence, the therapeutic and wider social contexts to which they belong. The question of how a therapist simultaneously maintains personal values and neutrality is considered. The implications of examining the therapist's role from a systems framework are discussed. It is concluded that research needs to adopt a more holistic methodology and that impasses need to be analysed by examining beliefs at different levels within the systems involved. Finally, a personal account of the effect that therapy has on the therapist is offered.     

A theory of happiness-wealth relationship with status-sensitive communication

Personal happiness might not solely depend on the individual's level of wealth but also on the individual's level of sincere social capital. This paper argues that if sincere interpersonal communication is sensitive to economic status disparities, the accumulation of personal wealth beyond the community's average erodes the individual's sincere social capital. A measure of sincere social capital that is based on such sensitivity is constructed. Its consideration leads to the depiction of the individual's happiness-wealth relationship as an inverted U-shaped curve that peaks at personal wealth that is greater than the community mean.     

The intersection of class origin and immigration background in structuring social capital: the role of transnational ties

The study investigates inequalities in access to social capital based on social class origin and immigration background and examines the role of transnational ties in explaining these differences. Social capital is measured with a position generator methodology that separates between national and transnational contacts in a sample of young adults in Sweden with three parental backgrounds: at least one parent born in Iran or Yugoslavia, or two Sweden‐born parents. The results show that having socioeconomically advantaged parents is associated with higher levels of social capital. Children of immigrants are found to have a greater access to social capital compared to individuals with native background, and the study shows that this is related to transnational contacts, parents’ education and social class in their country of origin. Children of immigrants tend to have more contacts abroad, while there is little difference in the amount of contacts living in Sweden across the three groups. It is concluded that knowledge about immigration group resources help us predict its member's social capital, but that the analysis also needs to consider how social class trajectories and migration jointly structure national and transnational contacts.     

The Role of Social Networks in Immigrant Women’s Political Incorporation

This article examines how immigrant women’s social networks affect their propensity to vote and to participate in unconventional political activities, as well as their knowledge of politics and government services and programs. Our primary source of data is a telephone survey of women living in Canada’s two largest metropolitan areas. Our findings show that contrary to the social capital literature, bonding ties do not exert strong negative effects on political incorporation, while bridging ties are not as helpful as hypothesized. What is important for immigrant women are the resources that are embedded in their social networks.     

A Social Capital Basis for Environmental Concern: Evidence from Northern New England*

This study, based on a random‐digit‐dialing telephone survey of adults in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, uses ordinary least squares regression to examine a relatively neglected element in the sociological literature on environmental concern, namely, the influence of an individual's social capital on the formation of environmental attitudes. We argue that it is those individuals with a greater diversity of social connections who are most likely to be influenced by ecological perspectives grounded in conservation and environmental protection. Controlling for other theoretically relevant variables, we regress an index of environmental concern that gives special emphasis to environmental‐economic trade‐offs on our measures of relational and community social capital. While confirming much of the earlier work in this area, our model provides evidence that connections to other people play an important role in determining individual concern for the environment. Specifically, the number of respondents' “weak ties”—that is, not their closest relationships—and the average occupational status of respondents' social ties, in general, were both positively correlated with environmental concern. Additionally, one of our three measures of community social capital, the number of visits from friends over the past month, was statistically significant and negatively correlated with environmental concern.     

‘Sticking with your Mates?’ Children's Friendship Trajectories during the Transition from Primary to Secondary School

For many children, the transition to secondary school is marked by both anxiety and excitement, particularly in relation to friendship. This article draws upon the concept of social capital — the resources individuals and collectives derive from their social networks — in order to understand the significance of change and continuity in children's friendships during a challenging period in their lives. Children's social networks often provide important, but under‐researched resources which aid their progress through the transition. This article presents findings from a three‐year ESRC study exploring children's and parents’ use of social capital during their secondary school transfer.     

Rescuing a small village school in the context of rural change in Hungary

The paper discusses local responses to schooling policy in the context of the uneven differentiation and sharp social polarisation of the Hungarian countryside. Counter-urbanisation, on the one hand, has brought affluent urban middle classes to suburban spaces, on the other hand, peripheral areas are becoming impoverished with high unemployment, while there are rural areas where a process of ghettoisation is taking place. Parallel with these processes, rural education has had to face demographic decline and the shrinking ability of municipalities to maintain schools. The case study presented in this article illustrates the cultural and spatial barriers impeding the creation of co-operation in the field of education. Given that the community of the village concerned is remarkably vibrant, with strong intra-community horizontal ties, the concept of social capital is used to explain how bonding and bridging networks as well as “missing links” influence community actions, in this case a school-rescue operation.     

The magic of mundane objects: culture,identity and power in a country vets' practice

This article explores and extends the idea that material objects lie at the heart of many of our social, and specifically workplace, interactions. The site of exploration is an ethnography of a British farm animal veterinary surgery. Drawing upon traditional cultural studies approaches alongside contemporary sociological understandings about the place of materials in social life, the article analyses how objects function to track and structure the ways that people of different professional status experience work at a veterinary surgery. It is argued that the power of the veterinary elite in this setting is best understood by paying close attention to ‘mundane’ artefacts. The article argues that such objects, having almost no meaning on their own, can become potent cultural symbols if actors have the necessary social capital to ‘transform’ them. Here, Latimer's concept of ‘strong moves’ (2004) is extended to consider how the reinterpretation of objects might constitute a form of ‘cultural magic’. This article seeks to uncover some of the practical scenarios in which such ‘magical’ transformations play out and describes, through a series of tales from the field (Van Maanen, 1985), the ways in which vets control and regulate their interactions with those outside the professional elite.     

Social capital and child welfare

Social and economic inequalities have risen steeply in the UK over the past 20 years. Children and their families have been particularly disadvantaged by this creeping impoverishment, which is associated with negative effects on parenting capacity and developmental outcomes for children. The social capital of communities, which consists of the cultural resources and inter‐personal relationships between members, is also eroded by inequality and social exclusion. Evidence is presented that demonstrates the way in which children's welfare and family functioning are crucially dependent upon the social support available within local communities. It is argued that building social capital in poor communities is a more effective way of promoting children's welfare than the present emphasis on formal child protection and family support services and efforts to increase parenting skills and responsibilities. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social Capital and Internet Use: The Irrelevant,the Bad,and the Good

The social effects of Internet use have been a major concern for social scientists and society alike. How the Internet affects social capital has been a hot topic in sociology and other social sciences: Is the Internet reinforcing and complementing social capital? Or is it isolating people and diminishing their social capital? Social capital is here defined as the resources that are embedded in one's social ties. This article reviews the literature on the subject, looking at three perspectives: one that suggests no relationship between the Internet and social capital, a second that suggests a negative relationship between the Internet and social capital, and a third that suggests a positive relationship between the Internet and social capital. I conclude by showing that despite the prominent dystopian view of the Internet in the public and in some academic discourse (and the moral panic associated with it), research supports a positive relationship between Internet use and social capital. In addition, I discuss new trends and directions for future research.     

Book Review

This article is concerned with current understandings of the relevance of urban community studies within sociology. It starts by revisiting some of the major critiques made of community studies in the 1960s and 1970s, and briefly reviews whether network analysis, and in particular a focus on ‘personal communities’, provided a satisfactory alternative approach. The main part of the article argues that despite the criticisms there have been there is still much to be gained from a focus on people's attachments to locality, including the networks to which they are linked. Taking processes of globalization and migration as its major themes, the article explores how research has demonstrated the continuing relevance of ‘locality’ and ‘community’ for understanding the ways that contemporary social and economic transformations shape people's experiences. As well as considering different aspects of social exclusion, the article reviews how recent studies have explored the increasingly complex interplay of locality and identity.