Similarity breeds connection. This principle—the homophily principle—structures network ties of every type, including marriage, friendship, work, advice, support, information transfer, exchange, comembership, and other types of relationship. The result is that people's personal networks are homogeneous with regard to many sociodemographic, behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics. Homophily limits people's social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience. Homophily in race and ethnicity creates the strongest divides in our personal environments, with age, religion, education, occupation, and gender following in roughly that order. Geographic propinquity, families, organizations, and isomorphic positions in social systems all create contexts in which homophilous relations form. Ties between nonsimilar individuals also dissolve at a higher rate, which sets the stage for the formation of niches (localize...

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Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks

This paper reviews the origins and definitions of social capital in the writings of Bourdieu, Loury, and Coleman, among other authors. It distinguishes four sources of social capital and examines their dynamics. Applications of the concept in the sociological literature emphasize its role in social control, in family support, and in benefits mediated by extrafamilial networks. I provide examples of each of these positive functions. Negative consequences of the same processes also deserve attention for a balanced picture of the forces at play. I review four such consequences and illustrate them with relevant examples. Recent writings on social capital have extended the concept from an individual asset to a feature of communities and even nations. The final sections describe this conceptual stretch and examine its limitations. I argue that, as shorthand for the positive consequences of sociability, social capital has a definite place in sociological theory. However, excessive extensions of the concept may j...

/pdf/social-capital-its-origins-and-applications-in-modern-1u65djoshv.pdf

Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology

This chapter aims to develop one of perhaps multiple specifications of embeddedness, a concept that has been used to refer broadly to the contingent nature of economic action with respect to cognition, social structure, institutions, and culture. Research on embeddedness is an exciting area in sociology and economics because it advances understanding of how social structure affects economic life. The chapter addresses propositions about the operation and outcomes of interfirm networks that are guided implicitly by ceteris paribus assumptions. While economies of time due to embeddedness have obvious benefits for the individual firm, they also have important implications for allocative efficiency and the determination of prices. Under the conditions, social processes that increase integration combine with resource dependency problems to increase the vulnerability of networked organizations. The level of investment in an economy promotes positive changes in productivity, standards of living, mobility, and wealth generation.

Social Structure and Competition in Interfirm Networks: The Paradox of Embeddedness

A growing number of sociologists, political scientists, economists, and organizational theorists have invoked the concept of social capital in the search for answers to a broadening range of questions being confronted in their own fields. Seeking to clarify the concept and help assess its utility for organizational theory, we synthesize the theoretical research undertaken in these various disciplines and develop a common conceptual framework that identifies the sources, benefits, risks, and contingencies of social capital.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/4134367.pdf

Social Capital: Prospects for a New Concept

The Behavioral Model of Health Services Use was initially developed over 25 years ago. In the interim it has been subject to considerable application, reprobation, and alteration. I review its development and assess its continued relevance.

Revisiting the behavioral model and access to medical care: does it matter?

The urban informal sector in Uruguay: Its internal structure, characteristics, and effects

El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar de que manera las actividades desarrolladas por las empresas informales interactuan con las estructuras sociales existentes y las practicas y politicas de fiscalizacion de los Estados nacionales. Es a traves de estas interacciones como se pone de manifiesto el caracter paradojico de la economia informal y se ilustran con mayor fuerza las conclusiones que se emplean para elaborar las teorias economicas y sociologicas del comportamiento del mercado. Tras analizar varias definiciones y enfoques de medicion posibles, el trabajo centra la atencion en estos factores dinamicos, focalizados en cuatro paradojas: los fundamentos sociales de la economia informal; la ambiguedad de las relaciones con las regulaciones del Estado; las dificultades para definirla; su funcionalidad en relacion con las instituciones economicas y politicas que presuntamente socava.

La economía informal

Contrary to conventional views, the process of illegal Mexican immigration does not necessarily originate in the most backward or rural segments of the Mexican population and is not necessarily destined to the agricultural sector of the U.S. economy. Data from a recent sample of formerly undocumented Mexican immigrants indicate that an important segment of this population has nonrural origins, comparatively high levels of education, industrial and service occupational backgrounds, and that most are headed for urban areas and occupations rather than rural areas and agricultural occupations in the United States. These results question the common interpretation that the illegal flow of immigrants is a consequence of economic dualism and rural backwardness in Mexico. They support instead the idea that such immigration is an outgrowth of the accelerating contradictions brought about by capitalist development in Mexico and in other nations in the U.S. periphery. Such international labor transfers are analyzed here as integral components of the progressive articulation of the world economy, a process quite apt to continue linking the U.S. and the Mexican economies. Recently proposed U.S. programs to deal with illegal immigration are reviewed from this perspective. Limitations of using the nation-state as the main unit of analysis and of having an exclusively national perspective on the illegal movement are highlighted.

Illegal Immigration and the International System, Lessons from Recent Legal Mexican Immigrants to the United States

Modernity and development: A critique

Based on a 1983-1984 random sample survey of 499 Haitians who had recently arrived in the US plus participant observation and intensive interviewing this article examines the following areas: 1) individual background characteristics of Haitian immigrants; 2) their arrival and early resettlement experiences; 3) their education knowledge of English and information about the US; 4) current employment status and occupation; 5) income and use of public assistance; 6) predictors of employment occupation and income; and 7) beliefs and orientations. Few immigrant groups in recent history have suffered unemployment downward occupational mobility and poverty to the extent that Haitians have. In part this situation is a consequence of the modest education and occupational training brought by these refugees--above average in the country of origin but significantly below US standards. However even among the better educated and knowledgeable unemployment rates are unacceptably high and occupational status and income extremely low. The 2nd part of the explanation must be found in the reception accorded to this group. Haitians arrived into a social context unprepared to receive them either as economic immigrants or as political refugees. Their claims for political asylum have been repeatedly rejected by the US. The motivation of individuals who crossed 700 miles of open sea to Florida aboard barely seaworthy craft is high enough to succeed but the Haitians inability to gain more than a temporary entrant status weighs heavily against their eventual success.

Alejandro Portes

Papers

The urban informal sector in Uruguay: Its internal structure, characteristics, and effects

La economía informal

Illegal Immigration and the International System, Lessons from Recent Legal Mexican Immigrants to the United States

Modernity and development: A critique

Flight into despair: a profile of recent Haitian refugees in South Florida.