Social Network Blog - y7

Race, The Plastics & The Missing Pieces

With race, is it black and white?.
Stanley Milgram’s article “The Small World Problem” examines the probability that any two people, selected from a population, will know each other (62). The small world method consists of giving several “starting people” the task of passing selected information in a folder to a “target person”. Korte & Milgram’s article “Acquaintance Networks Between Racial Groups” breaks this study down to examine what happens to acquaintanceship chains as they are impinged upon by social structure (102). A major finding was that white target chains exhibited a greater chance of completion than the black chains.

Many people today are trying to convince us that the world is getting smaller and closer with technological advances. However, this study also reflects that we may not be as close to living in a small, interconnected world as we think- in fact, the world is still a place divided by social barriers, class and race. The most common reason for the crossing of racial barriers was the occupational similarity- most acquaintances ties crossed were male and had professional status. In fact, more shockingly, 80% of incompleted “Negro” targeted chains never crossed the racial barriers, proving that perhaps it is only a small world within and not outside of racial groups.

The Plastics
The reality is, that many times people network to meet the rich and the beautiful. For those of you who haven’t seen Mean Girls (2004), "The Plastics" are the A-list clique, the groups everyone wants to meet, know and be. Gladwell’s article “Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg” examines some interesting connections between power and quality vs. quantity of relationships. As Gladwell states, “the old idea was that people got ahead by being friends with rich and powerful people—which is true, in a limited way, but as a pratical lesson in how the world works is all but useless…the old-boy network is always going to be just for the old boys” (12). In fact, you want to get to know “connectors”- not someone who is necessarily charismatic, beautiful, rich or extremely extroverted- but someone who can spread information and ideas, has the ability to connect varied and isolated parts of societies and someone with social power.

A very interesting aspect of this is power in our relationships. Gladwell discusses Granovetter’s argument that “what matters in getting ahead is not the quality of your relationships but the quantity –not how close you are to those you know but, paradoxically, how many people you know whom you aren’t particularly close to.” While I agree that this may help with networking for jobs and climbing the social and corporate ladder, your emotional well-being is still dependent on the quality of relationships. No matter how many people we are friends with, in the end, it is your close friends that are going to be there when you need comforting, support and a shoulder to lean on.

“Poverty is not deprivation. It is isolation”

In last week’s readings, Wellman stated that “larger, more heterogeneous and denser networks provide more support” (25). Lois Weisberg argues that this also applies when helping the poor: "I don't believe poor kids can advance in any way by being lumped together with other poor kids (10). She started a program where poor kids would be able to mix with middle class kids in their afterschool extracurricular activities and it was a great success. While I agree that many times poverty is about isolation and not having the access or the knowledge of the necessary networks and resources, it is not about finding “a way to get out of [your] neighborhood altogether” (Gladwell, 12).

While Wellman established that “neighborhood” is not synonymous with “community” in terms of its provision of support, the Watts article on “The ‘New’ Science of Networks” shows that network structure is important locally (because an individual neighborhood provides one with information and resources) as well as globally (in that it enables him to navigate when searching for information or resources outside his neighborhood). Leaving the “problem area” will only worsen the situation and is not a solution to the root of the problem. On a global scale, the human capital flight (or “brain drain”) phenomenon is widespread and increasingly problematic when the trained and most talented individuals leave the country. Simply put, the importance of the neighborhood community should not be lost in the development of impoverished areas.

Missing Pieces

Three major issues came up when I read the Milgram article. Firsty, while some of the cases were remarkably successful, such as the case with two intermediaries, how many were not completed, and what conclusions could we draw from this? As mentioned in the beginning of my blog, Milgram’s study was also not representative of the ‘real world’ with its predominantly white, upper middle class, professional makeup. Lastly, does the selection of the “target person” affect the outcome of the study? Had the target been someone less well established and of a different race/class, would the results be replicated?

Killworth et. al also illustrates that in the real world, limited information available to individuals lead to more mistakes and is in fact predominant, leaving us with serious implications for deductions for issues like the spread of infectious diseases. Despite the limitations, in today’s increasingly technological and internet-based world, Milgram’s study could be stronger and more relevant than before. It would be interesting to further investigate a Milgram-style study via electronic mail and perhaps on a global scale.