For decades now, scholars and politicians alike have argued that the concentration of poverty in city housing projects would produce distrust, alienation, apathy, and social isolation the disappearance of what sociologists call social capital. But relatively few have examined precisely "how" such poverty affects social capital or have considered for what reasons living in a poor neighborhood results in such undesirable effects. This book examines a neglected Puerto Rican enclave in Boston to consider the pros and cons of social scientific thinking about the true nature of ghettos in...
For decades now, scholars and politicians alike have argued that the concentration of poverty in city housing projects would produce distrust, alienat...
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...
Social capital theorists have shown that some people do better than others in part because they enjoy larger, more supportive, or otherwise more usefu...
Culture has returned to the poverty research agenda.
Over the past decade, sociologists, demographers, and even economists have begun asking questions about the role of culture in many aspects of poverty, at times even explaining the behavior of low-income populations in reference to cultural factors. Unlike their predecessors, contemporary researchers rarely claim that culture will sustain itself for multiple generations regardless of structural changes, and they almost never use the term pathology, which implied in an earlier era that people would cease to be poor if they changed...
Culture has returned to the poverty research agenda.
Over the past decade, sociologists, demographers, and even economists have begun asking que...
Someone To Talk To reveals the often counter-intuitive nature of social support, showing that Americans often take pains to avoid close friends and family-their "strong ties"-when deciding on whom to rely. In contrast, they often confide in "weak ties," as the need for understanding or empathy trumps their fear of misplaced trust. Amid a growing wave of big data and large-scale network analysis, Mario L. Small returns to the basic questions of who weconnect with, how, and why, upending decades of conventional wisdom on how we should think about and analyze social networks.
Someone To Talk To reveals the often counter-intuitive nature of social support, showing that Americans often take pains to avoid close friends and fa...
