Communities Roles
This week’s readings brought in some good information to add on to our previous week’s readings. I was most interested in the ideas presented in Bott’s and Kalmijn’s studies on how relationships with spouses and significant others change our overall network.
Bott deals with the role of marriage in networks, and how families with joint role couples (couples shared equal responsibility of the tasks) had more disconnected networks from one another than couples with segregated roles. This point reminds me of our recent McPherson et al article which told us that more and more, our spouses are becoming our strong ties, whereas 20 years ago, this was not the case. However if this were occurring, I would assume that there would be an instance or two where the forbidden triangle would occur. I know that men and women try to give each other space in relationships, but is it possible for your spouse (a strong tie) to have a best friend that you hardly know? I think this is very prevalent in today’s world as men and women are able to talk about issues previously thought taboo. Now they are not only husband and wife but best friend, whereas before men relied on their male companions and women on female for that same bond. Though the wife/husband may know their spouse’s best friend/strong tie, I do not think that there is an automatic strong tie here.
Kalmijn looked more at the transformation that occurs in men’s and women’s social networks as they aged, and went through changes in their relationships. He found that an individual’s network decreases over time which I find both odd and intriguing. I believe that when I am very old, I will have a small core network with whom I stay in contact with, however I will still consider all my other friends as weaker ties. I think that this issue also has some relevance to my earlier question on the forbidden triangle. While we may think that finding a spouse/significant other will increase our network and they will be our bridge to a broader network, this may not be necessarily true. Though they will keep friends they had prior to you, that does not mean you will ever meet them or hear of them. They may still consider these strong ties because of the years put into the relationship, but they now have less time to devote to keeping these ties strong. Does this mean they are weak ties? Or does technology play a role in helping us to globalize and maintain these ties even if the time spent may be miniscule?
Fischer’s article “To Dwell among Friends” explains the role of our networks outside of our geographical community and shows how our networks involve outside influences. As we have discussed in class, proximity plays a negligible role in most cases when dealing with social networks. Instead our interests are what bring us close to others. One key aspect I found interesting was that middle-income participants were closer to their kin than either the low or high income. I would like to know what theories people have for this. Personally for high income families I would imagine that these people have more pressing jobs, increased travel and similar issues that keep them either away from their own homes, or force them to move into a rural environment. As Fischer says, in these cases we are more likely to make friends with co-workers or people with similar interests. As for the low income people however, I could not think of a good theory as to why they have less kinship ties. So classmates, I ask you.
Lastly is Wellman and Wortley’s article, “Different Strokes from Different Folks”. The authors claim that the different ties we maintain play different roles in our network of social support. They break it up into 5 subcategories: emotional aid, small services, large services, financial aid, and companionship. Though some ties may overlap, I believe this is a fairly sound model, at least in my experience. This relates to the bridge theory from last week, and the idea that there are different types of characters who play roles in our networks, and they have their own networks with similar characters. Just as a last food for thought, is it possible for someone to play each role separately for 5 different people? What type of person would you expect this from?