Social Network Blog - g33

In "Social Isolation and the Underclass" a number of different hypotheses are presented regarding the social networks of poor African-Americans in poor neighborhoods. In this article, poor is definied as 125% below the official poverty line and social isolation is defined as "the lack of contact or of sustained interaction with the individuals or institutions that represent mainstream society." The definition used here by Roberto Fernandez and David Harris is what drives the creation of the survey they administered as a result. The results displayed greater gender differences than class or neighborhood differences as a whole. Black males' personal networks were not affected by class effects in terms of multiplexity, volume or range. Black women on the other hand had more constricted networks as a result of their poverty. When I read this, it seemed a little inconsistent with what we read in the class earlier about women being kin-keepers. If women are kin keepers as Smith-Lovin had suggested and their networks circle around the home, why then did Black women not have as many multiplex relationships through kin? Does poverty changes the amount of people in Black women's network significantly enough to change even this common-held theory? Ironically as well, the range of Black men's contacts also increase with the level of neighborhood poverty. This pattern seems odd, but at least things are not as bleak as they could are for Black women, who suffer the most from their social isolation as a result of poverty and lack of work.
In the article by Peter Marsden and Jeanne Hurlbert they replicate the effect of job-matching on tie-strength and other social network measures. The major findings were that the prestige of the contact has a significant effect on the prestige of the job outcome. The only inconsistent finding in the article "Social Resources and Mobility" and the original study performed by Lin et al. is that tie strength in Marsden and Hurlbert's work has a siginificant negative effect on status. Lastly, homophily is has a substantial role in the industrial sector of a contact and the respondent. To synthesize this article to the preceding reading, if homophily can be used to gain access to an industry and it is proven that Black males are not affected by their neighborhood or level of poverty, Black men may not be at an disadvantage. However, Black women still are lag behind their male counterparts for some reason. Do you have any ideas as to what causes this difference? If homophily and occupational prestige were the only two barriers preventing greater amounts of poor African-Americans from entering the work-force wouldn't there be more? I think that one key issue that the article "Social Mobility and the Underclass" fail to address is the theory of social capital. Although many Black men may have diverse networks despite their class still does not change their status in social and cultural capital which plays a large role in how people attain upward mobility and hence can extend the invitation to others. Before this discussion can be considered complete I think these two factors social and cultural capital should be addressed.