Social Network Blog - y10

Fernandez & Harris assert that social isolation, instead of cultural poverty, leads to the formation of an “underclass” in the urban ghetto. Their study concentrates on the African American population although they would have liked to consider the differences caused by ethnicity. They look at socioeconomic class, role of neighborhood, individual vs. neighborhood poverty, and gender differences in this study. Their findings suggest that the nonworking poor, as opposed to the working poor and the nonpoor, are worse off than the other groups in many dimensions, such as having friends.

There were also significant gender differences in many areas, including dependence on kin. Homophily was an important part of their findings as well. Since people are inclined to be friends with people who are like themselves, the isolation of the underclass from the mainstream society becomes more defined.

In general, it was interesting to see that the interaction of classes could be pertinent in avoiding the formation of an underclass. However, the authors’ suggestion about intermixing the nonworking poor into better neighborhoods as a solution seems to be somewhat problematic to me. I feel like there could be other changes in public policy that could improve things. For instance, since the working poor seems to be less isolated than the nonworking poor, trying to solve unemployment issues could be a possible answer.

QUESTION: What do you think would be a good way of changing public policy to solve the problems associated with the formation of the underclass?

Marsden & Hurlbert look at the effects of social network resources on mobility outcomes in terms of job changes and conclude that they are outcome specific. They address issues like the selection bias and absence of controls in previous studies while they try to replicate and expand on these results.

While their analysis showed the benefits of having weak ties in a broad network, they also provided possible alternatives to Granovetter’s idea of strength of weak ties and suggest that this might not be the most important feature of networks. Content of information accessible to individuals might have a more important role than the nature of the tie according to the authors.

Although I agree with Marsden & Hurlbert that measures for social resources need to be improved, I wish they would have provided more ideas as to how this can be accomplished.

QUESTION: In your opinion, what could be some alternative measures in this area?