|
***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org *****
Dear colleagues,
A book that may be of interest was just released. A critique of social
capital theory, it examines how the institutional conditions of routine
organizations affect network formation.
Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life
Mario Luis Small, 2009
Oxford University Press
http://tinyurl.com/laomzd
From the publisher:
Social capital theorists have shown that some people do better than
others in part because they enjoy larger, more supportive, or otherwise
more useful networks. But why do some people have better networks than
others? *Unanticipated Gains* argues that the practice and structure of
the churches, colleges, firms, gyms, childcare centers, and schools in
which people happen to participate routinely matter more than their
deliberate "networking."
Exploring the experiences of New York City mothers whose children were
enrolled in childcare centers, this book examines why a great deal of
these mothers, after enrolling their children, dramatically expanded
both the size and usefulness of their personal networks. Whether, how,
and how much the mother's networks were altered--and how useful these
networks were--depended on the apparently trivial, but remarkably
consequential, practices and regulations of the centers. The structure
of parent-teacher organizations, the frequency of fieldtrips, and the
rules regarding drop-off and pick-up times all affected the mothers'
networks. Relying on scores of in-depth interviews with mothers,
quantitative data on both mothers and centers, and detailed case studies
of other routine organizations, Small shows that how much people gain
from their connections depends substantially on institutional conditions
they often do not control, and through everyday processes they may not
even be aware of.
Emphasizing not the connections that people make, but the context in
which they are made, *Unanticipated Gains* presents a major new
perspective on social capital and on the mechanisms producing social
inequality.
--
_________________________________
Mario Luis Small
Associate Professor of Sociology and the College
University of Chicago
1126 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
http://home.uchicago.edu/~mariosmall
_____________________________________________________________________
SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social
network researchers (http://www.insna.org). To unsubscribe, send
an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line
UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message.
|
