Bott’s article “Urban Families: Conjugal Roles and Social Networks” examined the roles that spouses took on in their relationships and how these roles were related to each couple’s role within a social network. I found this article interesting, but not entirely surprising. The author found that families with highly segregated roles (where there was a strict division between the roles of the husband and the wife) had highly connected networks and that joint role couples had more dispersed networks. If a couple is not very socially connected (their friends and family don’t know each other etc.), this probably means that they are not spending very much time with these ties and therefore have more time to spend with each other and share these roles. Additionally, the author discussed difficulty with finding subjects for this study. I found it extremely interesting that she said “introductions were most successful when the contact person was well known and trusted by both husband and wife, and the most satisfactory channel of contact was through friends of the family,” (351). *Red flag: strong ties. Seeing as how we just read Granovetter’s article about the strength of weak ties, I found it interesting that this study found strong ties to be much more helpful in making contacts. Perhaps strong ties are stronger than Granovetter gave them credit for…
Do you think that there is something specific about this situation (discussion of one’s marriage) that might explain the importance of strong ties rather than weak ties here?
I found the chapters from the Fischer book to be especially interesting. I think that he made a ton of really excellent and thought-provoking points (unfortunately, too many to discuss in a blog that is supposed to be 300-500 words). In Chapter 1, I was at first a little taken aback by his comment that “by adulthood, people have chosen their networks,” (4). My initial thought here was, while people may in some ways chose their networks, there are many factors that greatly restrict this choice. Therefore, I was very happy to see that he went on to explain that “these are hardly free choices,” (4). Where one grows up greatly influences his or her personality, which will in turn influence the kind of people they associate with, as well as how they interact with them. Although we may choose who we spend time with within our own subculture, we often have very little choice as to what subculture we inevitably end up associated with. I also found his discussion of the relationship between kinship ties and urbanism in Chapter 7 to be very interesting. He commented that “people largely maintain kin ties out of a sense of concern and obligation, whereas they maintain nonkin ties because of compatibility and enjoyment,” (80). While I agree that, these days, many people only maintain relationships with their family members because they feel obligated to do so, I don’t entirely agree with the second part of his statement. If, as he discussed in Chapter 1, a fair number of our nonkin ties are somehow linked to our kin ties (people we have met through our families), isn’t it also possible that we maintain many nonkin ties out of obligation as well? Should we have a third subgroup of ties: kin, nonkin and really-old-ties-that-we-met-through-family-and-might-as-well-be-kin? I think that this is a point that would have been interesting for him to address. I also was intrigued by his findings that “middle-income respondents named more [close kin] than either low or high-income respondents,” (81). One last issue that I found very interesting was his conclusion that “respondents who had left their communities of origin did thereby reduce their involvement with kin,” (81). I think that this could explain the differences between the urban and non-urban results in this instance. I think that many people move into a city if they are trying to start up a career and maybe cannot afford a house in a suburb where they grew up, for example. Although this is obviously not the only reason that people move to cities, situations like this could lead to the distancing of kin, rather than simply the setup of a city.
Wellman and Wortley’s article “Different Strokes from Different Folks: Community Ties and Social Support” discusses the different kinds of social support that are provided by each of our different ties. One issue that I had with this study was the way that the researchers obtained their information. They said that they conducted interviews of 29 randomly sampled respondents that lasted 10-15 hours. This might seem like a stupid question, but I was unclear as to whether each of the respondents was there for 10-15 hours, or if this was the total time for all of the interviews, but the respondents were not there the whole time (the authors’ wording did not make this clear). Either way, having such long interviews with subjects could greatly skew results because after sitting there for that long, many respondents probably just wanted to leave and therefore were not answering completely truthfully. I agree with the authors’ hypothesis that different ties will provide different types of social support. I think that everyone has certain friends or family members who they rely on for certain things and others who they rely on for other things. In fact, this reminds me of one of the Cathy comics from our Freeman article a few weeks ago, in which Cathy explains to her date which friends she discusses which issues with. The authors divide this social support into 5 subcategories: emotional aid, small services, large services, financial aid, and companionship.
Do you think that these 5 categories accurately cover all types of support that we receive from our ties? What other types of support might they be missing?
In Kalmijn’s article on “shared friendship networks” he examines the way that one’s friendships change when one enters an intimate relationship and throughout the course of said relationship. I thought that this was a really interesting topic to examine, especially from the perspective of a college student who is now frequently seeing people enter serious relationships and witnessing these changes in friendships. One issue that I had with this study, though, is that the researcher asked subjects about their “five best friends”. The term “best friend” holds a lot of stigma and I think that use of this terminology could have very easily influenced how a subject responded. If asked about my “best friends”, I would probably list some of my friends that I grew up with and that have been my “best friends” for many years, not those who I currently spend the most time with or who I might have become close with since entering a relationship with a boyfriend. I think that many couples share friends, but don’t necessarily share best friends. Especially because, I would argue, females would most often consider other females their best friends and males would most often consider other males to be their closest friends. I found the results of this study very interesting, but I do feel that they could be very skewed because of the use of the term “best friends”.