Wellman asked the Community Question: How does the nature of a given community affect and are affected by the the community at large” How does the macro structure affect the composition, structure and contents of interpersonal ties and how does the constellation of social ties that form a network affect larger social structures (1999,p. 2). He, I think rightly, refers to Granovetter’s findings on the functions of weak ties vs strong ties[1]. In the Wellman quote I see Fischer nodding his head in agreement when describes the interpersonal bonds as creating society interaction. Everything, from getting advice to gossiping to falling in love, is another building block that forms (or hinders the formation of) network ties. Our interlocked network ties are what form the fabric of what we find community. This reminds me of Fairhurst and Putnam’s article on how discourse forms community (2004). And while they use the term “organization” this can just as easily reflect a community structure. In finding work in the community with people he knows and getting married and building his family in that same community, Mr N is at once being shaped by as well as helping to shape the community. Being shaped by in the manner in which the community serves as a template for his life and shaping it in his and his wife’s addition to the existing social structure, reinforcing its behaviors and attitudes towards things such as government agencies, for example.
Bott’s (1957) examination of the effect of spousal relationships on the social network they form and the networks those ties comprise. Succinctly, the greater the separation of the masculine and feminine domains was in the family, the denser, and more localized the strong ties were. This was also was also predictive of a higher degree of multiplexity, something that Haythornethwaite (2005) would point to as an indicator of greater tie strength. One of the things I extrapolated from her discussion of the N’s was that while weak ties can be helpful in getting employment, those weaker ties weren’t as important for employment in these network. I would put forth that because Mr N’s network was formed by men he had long standing ties to, when a young man looked for his first job (1957 being the age where one got a job and stayed with that company until retirement), he automatically followed his longtime friends (and probably elder men in his geographically close family) to the same factory or trade where they worked. While the strong tie didn’t necessarily pass on information to get the job, it did create an environment where a man wouldn’t have to give much thought to,” what do I want to be when I grow up?”[2]
References
Bott, Elizabeth. (1955). Urban Families: Conjugal Roles and Social Networks. Human Relations 8:345-83.
Fischer, Claude. (1982). To Dwell Among Friends. Berkeley: University of California Press. [Ch. 1, 7-10]
Kalmijn, M. (2003). Shared Friendship Networks and the Life Course. Social Networks, 25, 231-249.
Klofstad, C., Sokhey, A,. & McClurg S. (in press). Disagreeing About Disagreement: How Conflict in Social Networks Affects Political Behavior. American Journal of Political Science.
McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Brashears, M. E. (2006). Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades. American Sociological Review, 71, 353-375.
Price-Spratlen, T. (2008). Urban Destination Selection among African Americans during the 1950s Great Migration. Social Science History, 32(3), 437-469. doi:10.1215/01455532-2008-005
Sides, J. A. (2000, January). Working Away: African American Migration and Community in Los Angeles from the Great Depression to 1954. Dissertation Abstracts International, 2652.
Wellman, Barry, and Scot Wortley. (1990). Different Strokes from Different Folks: Community Ties and Social Support. American Journal of Sociology 96(3):558-88.
[1] I would identify this paper as the one that triggered my intense interest in social network ties. I found his basic theory an elegant way of explaining the different role played by the connections we have with the various people in our lives. I think so much of what has been written since then is a refinement or criticism of this initial work. I want to add to this by exploring how it is situated within the age of Computer Mediated Communication age, including email, message boards, blogs, and any other format that facilitates online communities.
[2] I see so much of my parents’ neighborhood experiences in the story of the N family.
My mother grew up in a small town where her family had lived for many generations. Her grandfather ran the produce store and the town’s only taxi. They were working class people and my mother’s generation almost all grew up and lived their lives within a few miles of their home town. As a child I don’t think we ever had to drive more than 15 minutes in any direction to get to almost any family member’s home. The story of the tightly interwoven social network where people depended on family (because in this community almost everyone was related, however distantly) to each other was their story. Gender roles were proscribed and this is no more evident than in my grandmother’s advice to her daughters to, “marry a man who has a pension”. There was no thought that the women would have a job of any significance, it was up to the man to provide for the family from marriage until his death (because it was always assumed that they man would die first) and having a pension to supplement Social Security was one of the important ways of doing it.
My father’s family was part of the Second Great Migration of Blacks (roughly 1940 into the late 60s) when people moved out of the primarily still agrarian South to the Western states which were where the industry (especially for the aerospace industry) was booming. They relocated from New Orleans to the Bay Area of California in 1950 and my aunt tells the story of being a little girl and coming over the bridge for the first time (unfortunately, I’m not sure which bridge). It was a structure far bigger than anything she had ever seen; something awesome. However, within this vast metropolis, the working class families that moved west, instead of adopting the behavior of the upwardly mobile families in Bott, moved into neighborhoods where people they already knew from their neighborhoods back home already lived. Often the move was prompted by a letter that said, “There are plenty of good paying jobs and I know where you can find a place to live. My aunt says that each street or two was peopled by people who knew each other from , “back home”. In recreating the neighborhood, the roles and behaviors of the community were reinforced, as opposed to weaked, by the move.
By contrast, my generation of the family, (with my sister and I being the youngest of the group) is populated with people who, even if they live in a more wirking class environment, have a more egalitarian division of labor. We are better traveled and more open to different ideas and ways of comporting our families. (And on a non-academic note, every time I use that moniker, I realize that Bott had *no* idea of the significance referring to people by the initial “N” would have today).