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Social capital theorists have shown that inequality arises in part because some people enjoy larger, more supportive or otherwise more useful networks. But why do some people have better networks than others? Unanticipated Gains argues that the answer lies less in people's deliberate "networking" than in the institutional conditions of the colleges, firms, gyms, and other organizations in which they happen to participate routinely. The book introduces a model of social inequality that takes seriously the embeddedness of networks in formal organizations, proposing that what people gain from their connections depends on where those connections are formed and sustained. It studies an unlikely case: the experiences of mothers whose children were enrolled in New York City childcare centers. As a result of the routine practices and institutional conditions of the centers-from the structure of their parents' associations, to apparently innocuous rules such as pick-up and drop-off times--many of these mothers dramatically increased their social capital and measurably improved their wellbeing. Yet how much they gained depended on how their centers were organized. The daycare centers also brokered connections to other people and organizations, affecting not only the size of mothers' networks but also the resources available through them. Social inequality then arises not merely out of differences in skills or deliberate investments - as the conventional social scientific and political wisdom would have it - but also out of the differences in the routine organizations in which people belong. In addition to childcare centers, Small also identifies the social forces at work in many other organizations, including beauty salons, bath houses, gyms, and churches.
One's ability to manage the trials of poverty depends on their networks-the relationships, support, information, and resources they cultivate from them. Social ties come with obligations; whether networks ultimately help or hinder those living in poverty remains in question. This volume of The ANNALS examines the uncertain role of network systems in the context of low-income populations in the 21st century. Applying new fieldwork from subject experts across the globe, this volume highlights networks and the complex relationships that shape them, the local organizations that foster them, and the policy changes needed to bolster their value in times of economic distress.
Suppose you were given two qualitative studies: one is a piece of empirically sound social science and the other, though interesting and beautifully written, is not. How would you tell the difference? Qualitative Literacy presents criteria to assess qualitative research methods such as in-depth interviewing and participant observation. Qualitative research is indispensable to the study of inequality, poverty, education, public health, immigration, the family, and criminal justice. Each of the hundreds of ethnographic and interview studies published yearly on these issues is scientifically either sound or unsound. This guide provides social scientists, researchers, students, evaluators, policy makers, and journalists with the tools needed to identify and evaluate quality in field research.
When people are facing difficulties, they often feel the need for a confidant-a person to vent to or a sympathetic ear with whom to talk things through. How do they decide on whom to rely? In theory, the answer seems obvious: if the matter is personal, they will turn to a spouse, a family member, or someone close. In practice, what people actually do often belies these expectations. In Someone To Talk To, Mario L. Small follows a group of graduate students as they cope with stress, overwork, self-doubt, failure, relationships, children, health care, and poverty. He unravels how they decide whom to turn to for support. And he then confirms his findings based on representative national data on adult Americans. Small shows that rather than consistently rely on their "strong ties," Americans often take pains to avoid close friends and family, as these relationships are both complex and fraught with expectations. In contrast, they often confide in "weak ties," as the need for understanding or empathy trumps their fear of misplaced trust. In fact, people may find themselves confiding in acquaintances and even strangers unexpectedly, without having reflected on the consequences. Someone To Talk To reveals the often counter-intuitive nature of social support, helping us understand questions as varied as why a doctor may hide her depression from friends, how a teacher may come out of the closet unintentionally, why people may willingly share with others their struggle to pay the rent, and why even competitors can be among a person's best confidants. Amid a growing wave of big data and large-scale network analysis, Small returns to the basic questions of who we connect with, how, and why, upending decades of conventional wisdom on how we should think about and analyze social networks.
For decades now, scholars and politicians alike have argued that
the concentration of poverty in city housing projects would produce
distrust, alienation, apathy, and social isolation--the
disappearance of what sociologists call social capital. But
relatively few have examined precisely "how" such poverty affects
social capital or have considered for what reasons living in a poor
neighborhood results in such undesirable effects.
Winner of the James Coleman Award for Best Book from the Rationality and Society section of the American Sociological Society Winner of the Outstanding Recent Contribution from the Social Psychology section of the American Sociological Association Winner of the Best Publication Award from the Mental Health section of the American Sociological Association Honorable Mention, PROSE Book Award, Cultural Anthropology and Sociology, from the Association of American Publishers When people are facing difficulties, they often feel the need for a confidant. How do they decide on whom to rely? In Someone To Talk To, Mario Luis Small follows a group of graduate students as they cope with stress, overwork, self-doubt, failure, relationships, children, health care, and poverty. He unravels how they decide whom to turn to for support. And he then confirms his findings based on representative national data on adult Americans. Small shows that rather than consistently relying on their "strong ties," Americans often take pains to avoid close friends and family, as these relationships are both complex and fraught with expectations. In contrast, they often confide in "weak ties," as the need for understanding or empathy trumps their fear of misplaced trust. In fact, people may find themselves confiding in acquaintances and even strangers unexpectedly, without having reflected on the consequences. Amid a growing wave of big data and large-scale network analysis, Small returns to the basic questions of whom we connect with, how, and why, upending decades of conventional wisdom on how we should think about and analyze social networks.
Suppose you were given two qualitative studies: one is a piece of empirically sound social science and the other, though interesting and beautifully written, is not. How would you tell the difference? Qualitative Literacy presents criteria to assess qualitative research methods such as in-depth interviewing and participant observation. Qualitative research is indispensable to the study of inequality, poverty, education, public health, immigration, the family, and criminal justice. Each of the hundreds of ethnographic and interview studies published yearly on these issues is scientifically either sound or unsound. This guide provides social scientists, researchers, students, evaluators, policy makers, and journalists with the tools needed to identify and evaluate quality in field research.
Social capital theorists have shown that some people do better than
others in part because they enjoy larger, more supportive, or
otherwise more useful networks. But why do some people have better
networks than others? Unanticipated Gains argues that the practice
and structure of the churches, colleges, firms, gyms, childcare
centers, and schools in which people happen to participate
routinely matter more than their deliberate "networking."
Culture has returned to the poverty research agenda. Over the past decade, sociologists, demographers, and even economists have begun asking questions about the role of cul-ture in many aspects of poverty, at times even explaining the behavior of low-income populations in reference to cultural factors. Unlike their predecessors, contemporary researchers rarely claim that culture will sustain itself for multiple generations regardless of structural changes, and they almost never use the term "pathology," which implied in an earlier era that people would cease to be poor if they changed their culture. The new generation of scholars conceives of culture in substantially different ways. In this latest issue of the ANNALS, readers are treated to thought-provoking articles that attempt to bridge the gap between poverty and culture scholarship, highlighting new trends in poverty research. The authors identi-fy the scholarly and policy-related basis for why poverty researchers should be deeply concerned with culture, noting the importance of understanding better how people cope with poverty and how they escape it. They then tackle the perplexing question-what is "culture"?-and propose that sociologists and anthropologists studying culture have developed at least seven different analytical tools for cap-turing meaning that could help answer a number of questions central to the study of poverty, including those centered on marriage, educa-tion, neighborhoods, and community participation, among others. While not denying the importance of macro-structural conditions-such as the concentration of wealth and income, the spatial segregation across classes and racial groups, or the persistent international migration of labor and capital-they argue that human action is both constrained and enabled by the meaning people give to their actions and that these dynamics should become central to our understanding of the production and reproduction of poverty and social inequality. By considering poverty in the United States and abroad, examining both the elite, policy-making level and the daily lives of low-income people themselves, the articles convey a composite and multileveled picture of the ways in which meaning-making factors into the production and reproduction of poverty. The volume aims to demonstrate the importance of cultural concepts for poverty research, serve as a model and a resource for poverty scholars who wish to incorporate cultural concepts into their research, assist in the training of future scholars working at the nexus of poverty and culture, and identify crucial areas for future methodological, theoretical, and empirical development. The volume also serves to debunk existing myths about the cultural orientations of the poor for those formulating policy; as the editors point out, "ignoring culture can lead to bad policy." This volume is vital reading, not only for sociologists but also for researchers across the social sciences as a whole.
For decades now, scholars and politicians alike have argued that
the concentration of poverty in city housing projects would produce
distrust, alienation, apathy, and social isolation--the
disappearance of what sociologists call social capital. But
relatively few have examined precisely "how" such poverty affects
social capital or have considered for what reasons living in a poor
neighborhood results in such undesirable effects.
One's ability to manage the trials of poverty depends on their networks-the relationships, support, information, and resources they cultivate from them. Social ties come with obligations; whether networks ultimately help or hinder those living in poverty remains in question. This volume of The ANNALS examines the uncertain role of network systems in the context of low-income populations in the 21st century. Applying new fieldwork from subject experts across the globe, this volume highlights networks and the complex relationships that shape them, the local organizations that foster them, and the policy changes needed to bolster their value in times of economic distress.
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