SOCI 101 InQuisitive Ch. 5

C. H. Cooley's theory of groups

(1) Primary group: limited/enduring membership; end in themselves (2) Secondary group: impersonal; membership is based on pursuing a course of action, not on building/deepening friendships; open-ended/contingent membership; instrumental in purpose

Duncan Watts

- Found that while it's not true that everyone is connected, at least half the population in the world are connected to each other through about six steps - used email to send messages around the globe - revealed that the world was remarkably egalitarian; superconnectors played a small role in completing worldwide networks

Isomorphism

- a constraining process that pushes one player to become like the others in its group - organizations facing similar conditions will begin to look like each other over time

Small Group vs Party/Large Group

- a small group is unifocal and at any given time there is only one center of attention - both can come together on a regular basis - both can be formed around a common purpose or may not exist for a specific reason - a small group has no formal structure or roles

Examples of social capital

- a steelworker knows a lot of people in the Chicago construction trade - an artist who vacations in a Colorado town has a few very close friends among the locals

Asch Experiment

- a student will be tempted to join the group, particularly if it comprised the majority of the class - individuals may or may not follow the majority, but they do feel an extra pressure when faced with a majority - the size of the group matters - conforming to group norms is more common when the group is comprised of friends - "size of line experiment"

In-Group

- about real power, not formal position - is usually, though not always, in the majority - powerful group - not necessarily the group there the longest

Defining characteristics of an organization

- clear distinction between those who belong and those who do not - members have come together for a common purpose

Social capital

- consists of ties to other people - involves personal ties

Examples of isomorphism

- department faced pressure to offer classes with traditional grading scales - company faced pressure to resemble other, similar stores - company faced pressure from competitors to fix prices at a similar rate

"divide et impera"

- divide and conquer - a situation where someone benefits from stirring up conflict between two other people

Small groups

- equality - formally symmetric, but still unequal - a dyad is intrinsically symmetric, but not necessarily equal - equality means that no member has greater sway than the others

Multiplex ties

- ex. your neighbor whose dog you walk for extra money (neighbor/employer) - best friend who you met in soccer/had crush on sister/gives financial advice

Social network

- group of people bound together by ties between individuals - each tie is a story about the shared history of two people and the sum of all the stories in the network constitutes a narrative

Organizational Culture Examples

- how employees feel about their work environment - which employees are part of the in-group within the company

Organizational Structure Examples

- how much paid time off an employee accrues each month - who writes each employee's performance reviews

Dyad vs Triad

- membership is voluntary in both - in a triad secret actions are possible - the addition of a third person introduces a possibility of power politics in a triad - a dyad dissolves if either person leaves whereas the triad would survive as a dyad

Consequences of the weakening of social ties

- more frequent job changes - less likely to feel committed to jobs - greater sense of social isolation (disconnected) - less time spent in face-to-face volunteer work - more communication (less of it face-to-face though)

Inverse Core Model

- network in which the infected members are connected to initially uninfected members, but not to one another - infected members are not directly connected to one another

Stanley Milgram

- sent out letters trying to reach a certain person - six degrees study

Relationship between social capital and cultural capital

- social capital provided access to cultural capital

Examples of structural holes

- the lack of ties between neighborhood parents and the teachers at their school - the lack of ties between factory workers and senior management in a manufacturing plant

Robert Putman

- the personal ties through which we are socialized in the first place are probably the most important ones - informal social ties promote more efficient bureaucracy - a tightly connected social fabric has a higher level of trust, reciprocity, and accountability

"tertius gaudens"

- the third that rejoices - a situation where someone benefits from being involved in a preexisting conflict between two other people

Key features of a dyad

- there are no secrets regarding actions taken - no majority-vs-minority dynamic - symmetric relationship - most intimate form of a group

Uniplex ties

- there is only one way you know the person and you don't see them outside of that setting - ex. your lab partner at school who isn't doing very well in class - ex. mom's boss you see at holiday parties

When are weak ties useful for jobs

- weak ties are most useful for opening doors in high-status, highly credentialed professions - strong ties may be more useful in low-status, low-credential job markets

Strength of Weak Ties

- weak ties provide benefits that strong ties do not - weak ties fill structural holes, thereby bridging gaps between network clusters - weak ties provide access to valuable information - the information resides in parts of the network that without the weak ties would not be accessible

Structural hole

A gap between network clusters

Difference between a party and a large group

A party has no formal structure (Simmel)

The people with whom we only interact occasionally tend to be the ones who can do us the most good, socially and professionally

People with whom we are only weakly connected are the ones most able to put us in touch with people we don't know

"Iron Law" of the triad

a triad contains three actual (not just possible) relationships

Reference Groups

help us understand or make sense of our position in society relative to other groups

Entrepreneur

in a social network, person A brings together persons B and C in such a way that all three benefit

Community social capital

more beneficial when it is dense because a network of dense ties engenders trust, reciprocity, and a collective sense of responsibility

Georg Simmel

placed great emphasis on the innate differences between dyads and triads

Spanning Tree Model

this model is difficult to contain because infection is carried along the center line and out to the edges of the network over a series of different partnerships