Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T19:43:59.320Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

25 - On Culture

The Problem of Culture Flows in Weak Ties

from IV - New Perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2021

Mario L. Small
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Brea L. Perry
Affiliation:
Indiana University, Bloomington
Bernice Pescosolido
Affiliation:
Indiana University, Bloomington
Edward B. Smith
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Illinois
Get access

Summary

Some kinds of useful culture flow well through weak ties, bringing more useful culture to people with a more diverse set of weak ties to acquaintances with a diverse cultural repertoire, as in Granovetter’s “Strength of Weak Ties.” But some kinds of culture do not flow well through most kinds of weak ties. To begin an understanding of such variations, I argue we should consider ties within and between unequal status groups in some form of inequality, since inequality powerfully shapes the kind of culture that people will be willing to send and receive in weak ties. I use my recent study of weak ties within and between the three most important ethnic groups in Toronto (White, Chinese, and Black) to explore when which kinds of culture flow, and to develop a theory of such flows using Weber on status groups, Simmel on sociability, a pinch of Bourdieu, and insights from leading qualitative work on interethnic relationships and culture.

Type
Chapter
Information
Personal Networks
Classic Readings and New Directions in Egocentric Analysis
, pp. 651 - 674
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Banerjee, Rupa, Reitz, Jeffrey G., and Oreopoulos, Phil. 2018. “Do Large Employers Treat Racial Minorities More Fairly? An Analysis of Canadian Field Experiment Data.Canadian Public Policy 44: 112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bearman, Peter, and Parigi, Paolo. 2004. “Cloning Headless Frogs and Other Important Matters: Conversation Topics and Network Structure.Social Forces 83: 535–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bird, Karen. 2016. “Understanding the Local Diversity Gap: Supply and Demand of Visible Minority Candidates in Ontario Municipal Politics.” In Just Ordinary Citizens? Towards a Comparative Portrait of the Political Immigrant, edited by Bilodeau, Antoine. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2019. “Feeling Race: Theorizing the Racial Economy of Emotions.American Sociological Review 84: 125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bottero, Wendy, and Crossley, Nick. 2011. “Worlds, Fields and Networks: Becker, Bourdieu and the Structures of Social Relations.Cultural Sociology 5: 99119.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Branker, Ron R. 2017a. “Labour Market Discrimination: The Lived Experiences of English-Speaking Caribbean Immigrants in Toronto.Journal of International Migration and Integration 18: 203–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Branker, Ron R. 2017b. “How do English-Speaking Caribbean Immigrants in Toronto Find Jobs? Exploring the Relevance of Social Networks.Canadian Ethnic Studies 49: 5170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers. 1985. “Rethinking Classical Theory: The Sociological Vision of Pierre Bourdieu.Theory and Society 14: 745–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cardon, Dominique and Granjon, Fabien. 2005. “Social Networks and Cultural Practices: A Case Study of Young Avid Screen Users in France.” Social Networks 27(4): 301–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carter, Prudence L. 2003. “‘Black’ Cultural Capital, Status Positioning, and Schooling Conflicts for Low-Income African American Youth.” Social Problems 50: 136–55.Google Scholar
Chen, Wenhong. 2015. “Mediatizing the Network Model of Cultural Capital: Network Diversity, Media Use, and Cultural Knowledge along and across Ethnic Boundaries.Social Networks 40: 185–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Zoey, and Berger, Jonah. 2013. “When, Why, and How Controversy Causes Conversation. Journal of Consumer Research 40: 580–93.Google Scholar
Cote, Rochelle R. 2012. “Networks of Advantage: Urban Indigenous Entrepreneurship and the Importance of Social Capital.” In Well-Being in the Urban Aboriginal Community, edited by Newhouse, D., Fitzmaurice, K., McGuire-Adams, T., and Jette, D.. Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing.Google Scholar
Cowan, Sarah K., and Baldassarri, Delia. 2018. “‘It Could Turn Ugly’: Selective Disclosure of Attitudes in Political Discussion Networks.” Social Networks 52: 117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denis, Jeffrey S. 2015. “Contact Theory in a Small-Town Settler-Colonial Context: The Reproduction of Laissez-Faire Racism in Indigenous-White Canadian Relations.American Sociological Review 80: 218–42.Google Scholar
DiMaggio, Paul. 1987. “Classification in Art.” American Sociological Review 52: 440–55.Google Scholar
DiMaggio, Paul, and Ostrower, Francie. 1990. “Participation in the Arts by Black and White Americans.” Social Forces 68(3): 753–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eliasoph, Nina. 1999. “‘Everyday Racism’ in a Culture of Political Avoidance: Civil Society, Speech, and Taboo.Social Problems 46: 479502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erickson, Bonnie H. 1996. “Culture, Class, and Connections.American Journal of Sociology 102: 217–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erickson, Bonnie H. 2001. “Good Networks and Good Jobs: The Value of Social Capital to Employers and Employees,” pp. 127–58 in Social Capital: Theory and Research, edited by Lin, Nan, Cook, Karen, and Burt, Ronald S. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Erickson, Bonnie H. 2004. “The Distribution of Gendered Social Capital in Canada,” pp. 2750 in Creation and Returns of Social Capital: A New Research Program, edited by Flap, Henk and Völker, Beate. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Granovetter, Mark. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.American Journal of Sociology 78: 1360–80.Google Scholar
Granovetter, Mark. 1995. Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers, 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press (including his Afterword 1994).Google Scholar
Lewis, Kevin, Kaufman, Jason, Gonzales, Marco, Wimmer, Andreas, and Christakis, Nicholas. 2008. Social Networks 30: 330–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, Nan. 1999. “Social Networks and Status Attainment.Annual Review of Sociology 25: 467–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lizardo, Omar. 2016. “Why ‘Culture Matters’ Matter: Culture Talk as the Mobilization of Cultural Capital in Interaction.Poetics 58: 117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lizardo, Omar, and Collett, Jessica L.. 2013. “Embarrassment and Social Organization: A Multiple Identities Model.” Social Forces 92(1): 353–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lizardo, Omar, and Skiles, Sara. 2015. “Musical Taste and Patterns of Symbolic Exclusion in the United States 1993–2012: Generational Dynamics of Differentiation and Continuity.” Poetics 53: 921.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lu, Wei-Ting. 2013. “Confucius or Mozart? Community Cultural Wealth and Upward Mobility among Children of Chinese Immigrants.Qualitative Sociology 36: 303–21.Google Scholar
Mannheim, Karl. 1952. “The Problem of Generations.Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. By Karl Mannheim. Edited by Paul Kecskemeti. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Philosophy 28(106): 278–9. doi:10.1017/S003181910005960XGoogle Scholar
Meng, Yunliang. 2017. “Profiling Minorities: Police Stop and Search Practices in Toronto.Human Geographies 11: 523.Google Scholar
Owusu-Bempah, Akwasi, and Wortley, Scot. 2014. “Race, Crime, and Criminal Justice in Canada.The Oxford Handbook of Ethnicity, Crime, and Integration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Reitz, Jeffrey G., Banerjee, Rupa. 2007. “Ethnocultural Communities: Participation and Social Cohesion,” pp. 489545 in The Art of the State, Volume III: Belonging? Diversity, Recognition and Shared Citizenship in Canada, edited by Keith Banting, J. Courchene, and Leslie Seidie, F.. Montreal: The Institute for Research on Public Policy.Google Scholar
Siemiatycki, Myer, and Saloojee, Anver. 2002. “Ethnoracial Political Representation in Toronto: Patterns and Problems.Journal of International Migration and Integration 3: 241–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simmel, Georg. 1971. “Sociability,” pp. 12740 in Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms, edited by Levine, Donald N.. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Sandra. 2010. “A Test of Sincerity: How Black and Latino Service Workers Make Decisions about Making Referrals. The Annals of the American Academy of Social Sciences 629: 3052.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, Max, as translated by Dagmar Waters et al. 2010. “The Distribution of Power within the Community: Classes, Stande, Parties.Journal of Classical Sociology 10: 137–52.Google Scholar
Weeden, Kim A., and David, B. Grusky. 2005. “The Case for a New Class Map.American Journal of Sociology 111: 141212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wimmer, Andreas. 2008. “The Making and Unmaking of Ethnic Boundaries: A Multilevel Process Theory.” American Journal of Sociology 113(4): 9701022.Google Scholar
Wortley, Scot, and Owusu-Bempah, Akwasi. 2011. “The Usual Suspects: Police Stop and Search Practices in Canada.” Policing and Society 21(4): 395407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wortley, Scot, Macmillan, Ross, and Hannigan, John. 1997. “Just Des(s)erts? The Racial Polarization of Perceptions of Criminal Injustice.Law and Society Review 31: 637–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×