Contexts of Social Capital

Social Networks in Markets, Communities and Families

Ray-May Hsung, Nan Lin, Ronald L. Breiger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781134220748
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Économie
• Subtopic: Microéconomie

The concept of social capital refers to the ways in which people make use of their social networks in "getting ahead." Social capital isn't just about the connections in networks, but fundamentally concerns the distribution of resources on the basis of exchanges.

This volume focuses on how social capital interacts with social institutions, based on the premise that markets, communities, and families are the major contexts within which people meet and build up social networks and the foci to create social capital. Featuring innovations in thinking about exchange mechanisms, resource distribution, institutional logics, resource diversity, and the degree of openness or closure of social networks, these chapters present some of the most important advances in this essential field.

Paralleling these theoretical developments, the chapters also improve practical methodological work on social capital research, using new techniques and measurement methods for the uncovering of social logics.

Part I
Advances in Theory and Methods of Social Capital

1 Position Generators, Affiliations, and the Institutional Logics of Social Capital

A Study of Taiwan Firms and Individuals

Ray-May Hsung and Ronald L. Breiger

Two of the important tools that have been developed for measuring social capital are position-generated networks and affiliation networks of voluntary associations. Affiliation networks have long been formulated and analyzed as two-mode networks (conceived as linking, for example, persons and the organizations to which they belong). However, very few network researchers have noticed that the structure of position-generated networks could also be conceived as a form of two-mode network data. In this chapter, we employ a two-mode network formulation to map the classification systems that underlie the processes by which actors categorize their social contacts into different occupational positions. In other words, we exploit the embedding of position-generated networks within a two-mode formulation. We therefore see the two-mode network formulation as, in certain respects, capable of unifying the study of position-generated networks (how actors classify their social contacts) and networks of voluntary associations (how actors choose different associations). The institutional logics of these classification and affiliation systems indicate the collective and structural characteristics of social capital.

On the collective level of analysis, network researchers have used correspondence analysis and related techniques to analyze the overall structuring of two-mode network data (Wasserman, Faust, and Galaskiewicz 1990; Borgatti and Everett 1997; Roberts 2000; Pattison and Breiger 2002; Faust 2005) and organizational logics (Breiger and Mohr 2004). With respect to position-generated networks, the two modes are the positions and the types of social ties used to access those positions. (For example, data on these two modes might come from answers to the question, “Do you know anyone who holds the job of division head, and if so, what is their relationship to you?”) With respect to affiliation data, the two modes are a set of voluntary groups and a set of actors. (For example, data on these two modes might come in answer to the question, “What kinds of professional associations do you belong to?”) For each type of network, the coconstitution of the two modes creates a structure of institutionalized style. This chapter uses correspondence analysis to uncover the institutional logics from the two-mode structuring of position-generated networks and affiliation networks for 369 knowledge workers in four high-tech firms.

On the individual level of analysis, diversity of position-generated networks and memberships in voluntary associations indicate the characteristics of individual social capital (Lin 2001a; Lin, Fu, and Hsung 2001). We classify the position generators and voluntary associations into two types of social capital, according to two criteria. One criterion is based on associational logic between ranks of employees, and access to position and participation in voluntary associations. The other criterion uses the phrase good position-generated social capital to refer to the positive consequences that often accrue or become available on the basis of access to valued positions. We use the phrase bad position-generated social capital to refer to the negative consequences that may possibly accrue on the basis of accessing disvalued positions or those of low value. Moreover, we identify the income returns to good and bad social capital in regression analyses that control for many other human and social capital and job characteristics.

This chapter first describes our major indicators of human capital and social capital. The data we analyze are drawn from a study of four firms in Taiwan’s semiconductor sector. Taiwan’s capability in integrated circuit technology has made it a world leader since 1995, and the excellent quality of engineering in the Zones from which we draw our data (the Science Park and Export Processing Zone) has played an important role. Knowledge workers are classified into the ranks of engineers, technology managers, administrative staff, and administrative managers.

INSTITUTIONAL LOGICS OF SOCIAL CAPITAL

Social capital has been conceived in terms of collective assets and individual assets (Lin 2001a). Bourdieu (1984), Coleman (1988, 1990), and Putnam (1993, 1995) conceived social capital as the norms, cultural values, and trust inherent in organizations, classes, or communities. They are concerned with the question of how groups or communities develop and maintain their social networks and enhance their collective interests and identity. Bourdieu (1984) stressed that people of high economic status tend to build up high-density networks with those people who share similar cultural tastes; such networks are, therefore, one mechanism for the reproduction of the collective class identity of the upper classes. Bourdieu went on to posit the semiautonomy of economic and cultural forms of capital (for example, university professors manifest high cultural capital but relatively lower economic capital). Coleman (1988) conceived social capital with reference to the closure of networks that produce social control and norms of obligation. Putnam (1993, 1995) pointed out that the civic engagement of voluntary associations facilitates general trust and a form of democracy that he viewed as efficacious.

The institutional logics of position-generated networks and affiliation networks indicate the collective or structural characteristics of social capital. As mentioned, position-generated networks include a two-mode structure featuring occupational positions (the resource opportunity structure) and types of social ties that actors make use of in daily life. Memberships in voluntary associations have long been conceived as two-mode affiliation networks manifesting a duality of persons and groups (Breiger 1974). These two-mode networks can demonstrate the institutional logics that unify, on the one hand, the meaning structures or classification systems that actors use to classify their social contacts into a set of occupational positions, and, on the other hand, the classifications of voluntary associations that actors develop to organize their affiliations.

These institutional logics are the clustering of meanings that govern how actors arrange the system of their social actions. The institutional logics provide for the “relational structuring of actors and classification” (Breiger and Mohr 2004, p. 18). The idea of institutional logics for action systems is based on action theory and the concept of meaning structure (see Mohr 1998 for a review). Two-mode networks include the meaning structure composed by “a set of material practices and symbolic constructions” (Friedland and Alford 1991, p. 248).

In our study, access to a set of positions or participating in a set of voluntary associations represents a set of material practices (the set of resource opportunities). A set of socially recognized and shared classifications of social ties in daily life represents a set of symbolic constructions.

Social capital is conceived as “the investment in social relations with expected returns” (Lin 2001a, p. 19). Lin proposed that “institutionalized social relations with embedded resources are expected to benefit both the collective and the individuals within the collective” (2001a, 9). On the collective level, the “returns” earned by social relations come in the form of social identity or social recognition (Lin 2001a, 20). Linking social contacts with occupational positions and with participation in voluntary associations provide two avenues for constructing the meaning system of social identity.

We follow Breiger and Mohr (2004) in focusing on two kinds of institutional logics for two-mode networks: logics of structural equivalence of actors’ relations, and the logic of mutual constitution of material practices and symbolic constructions. Structural equivalence (along with its generalizations in automorphic and regular equivalence) is an important structuring logic of the classification system of two-mode networks. The basic idea (Borgatti and Everett 1997; Breiger 2000) is that actors organize their relations and social activities in similar ways if they share an equivalent location within a field of action. DiMaggio and Powell (1983) proposed that actors in similar structural positions conform to similar or isomorphic institutional forces or logics (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; DiMaggio 1986; Fligstein and Brantley 1992; White 1992). Structural equivalence, along with its generalizations, provides a foundation for modeling institutional logics.

Duality or mutual constitution is another form of institutional logic. Breiger (2000) used correspondence analysis to compare and contrast Bourdieu’s (1990) concept of field and Coleman’s (1990) concept of the linear system of action based on dual structures of actors and actions. Bourdieu (1990) realized that the concept of a field is a convenient instrument with which to represent the joint construction of agency and structure. Bourdieu’s construction includes one dimension of the pertinent structural properties and another dimension comprising a set of agents. Coleman’s (1990) concept of an action system emphasizes the duality of actors and events (or valued outcomes), as well as the dual relations of power and value. (Thus, for example, one actor has power over another, in Coleman’s system, to the extent that she controls outcomes that the first actor desires; dually, one event is more valued than another to the extent that it is desired by actors who control the first event.) Social theorists conceived the mutually constitutive character of the relationship between actors and actions or between relations and resource distributions as an empirical linkage between two orders of social phenomena.

SOCIAL CAPITAL AND CORRESPONDENCE ANALYSIS

Correspondence analysis is among the appropriate tools for representing the structural logics of such dual linkages pertaining to social capital. Bourdieu’s (1984) social theory makes direct use of correspondence analysis in portraying the relation between positions (such as occupations) and dispositions (such as musical tastes). As to Coleman, although it is not widely known or appreciated, techniques related to correspondence analysis are at the heart of Coleman’s theory of social capital. Specifically, Coleman wrote explicitly that “the power of an actor in the equilibrium linear system of action is a direct measure of the social capital available to the actor within that system” (1990, 313). Moreover, Breiger (2000, Appendix) is among those who have shown that Coleman defined an actor’s “power” in the equilibrium action system as an eigenvector of a particular network, and this eigenvector is intimately related to the same technique of correspondence analysis that Bourdieu employed (see also Tam 1989). Thus both Bourdieu’s and Coleman’s concepts of social capital are related, in theory and in practice, to correspondence analysis.

This study explores the institutional logics of two-mode networks for 369 knowledge workers in the field of semiconductor design and production in Taiwan. Different ranks of knowledge workers are interdependent with one another. Knowledge workers at the same rank tend to share similar patterns of position-generated networks and affiliation networks. This means that employees at the same rank tend to share a common framework of organizing rules that pertain both to their social networks and to their social capital. Fields are composed of actors who take each other’s actions into account in the framing of their ow...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• List of Abbreviations
• Preface
• Part I Advances in Theory and Methods of Social Capital
• Part II Markets and Social Capital
• Part III Social Capital in Communities
• Part IV Families and Social Capital
• Contributors