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...

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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?

What does it mean to speak of 'national development' in the 1990s? As a result of the tumultuous changes in global economic and political structures, scholars and policymakers specializing in the study of national development must reassess the interpretive models they have relied upon in the past. This book brings together essays by a distinguished group of social scientists that address the dilemmas facing development theory today. These essays, grounded in sociological research, reclaim the important role once played by sociological theory in development studies. The collection provides an overview of traditional theories of development, assessing their strengths and weaknesses, and identifies the new actors, issues, and processes that future analysis must address. The essays discuss the impact of technological innovations in production and commerce, the changing relations of states and markets, regional development inequalities, and the emergence of new social groups as participants in development processes. from the book Contents: 'Sociology and Development in the 1990s: Critical Challenges and Empirical Trends,' by A. Douglas Kincaid and Alejandro Portes 'Rethinking Development Theory: Insights from East Asia and Latin America,' by Gary Gereffi 'The New Dependency: Technological Change and Socioeconomic Restructuring in Latin America,' by Manuel Castells and Roberto Laserna 'Predatory, Developmental, and Other Apparatuses: A Comparative Political Economy Perspective on the Third World State,' by Peter B. Evans 'Regional Development Theory and the Subordination of Extractive Peripheries,' by Stephen G. Bunker 'Broadening the Scope: Gender and International Economic Development,' by M. Patricia Fernandez Kelly 'Path Dependence and Privatization Strategies in East Central Europe,' by David Stark 'Urbanization, Development, and the Household,' by Bryan R. Roberts

Comparative national development : society and economy in the new global order

This paper analyses determinants of the aspirations and expectations among immigrant offspring on the basis of a representative sample of second generation adolescents interviewed at schools in the metropolitan area of Madrid. Seven hypotheses are formulated in relation to status attainment in general and aspirations and expectations in particular. We present breakdowns of educational and occupational aspirations and expectations by gender, parental education and school. The analysis is completed with structural equation models which offer an integrated theoretical perspective on the causal structure of ambition in the Spanish context. We examine the consequences of our conclusions for theory and policies.

Progresar en Madrid: aspiraciones y expectativas de la segunda generación en España Making Headway in Madrid: Second Generation Aspirations and Expectations in Spain

En este ARI se sintetizan los resultados preliminares de la primera fase de un estudio longitudinal sobre la adaptacion social y economica de los hijos de inmigrantes la segunda generacion en Espana. La fase inicial del estudio consiste en una muestra estadisticamente representativa de estudiantes de segunda generacion en colegios de las areas metropolitanas de Madrid y Barcelona, incluyendo tanto colegios publicos como concertados. El documento incluye los resultados iniciales del estudio en Madrid.

La segunda generación en Madrid: un estudio longitudinal

Este articulo presenta un esquema evolutivo de la relacion entre migracion y ciudad. Describo los aspectos centrales de tal relacion historica como preambulo para examinar tres aspectos de la situacion actual: los diversos determinantes de flujos contemporaneos de trabajadores, los origenes politicos de la resistencia a la migracion internacional y el renovado papel protagonista de areas metropolitanas en calidad de nodulos estrategicos del sistema internacional. Como parte del tercer tema, esbozo el surgimiento del transnacionalismo como forma novedosa de adaptacion inmigrante y como una respuesta potencial a la logica prevaleciente del capitalismo global. Por ultimo, discuto las implicaciones teoricas y de politica publica que se desprenden de este analisis. ABSTRACT This article presents an outline of the relationship between migration and the city in its evolution over time. I sketch the central aspects of this historical relation as a prelude to examining three aspects of the contemporary scene: the various determinants of contemporary labour flows; the political sources of resistance to international migration; and the renewed protagonist role of metropolitan areas as strategic nodes of the international system. As part of the latter process, I sketch the rise of transnationalism as a novel form of adaptation to immigration and as a potential response to the overriding logic of global capitalism. Implications of a migration-centered approach to cities for theory and policy are dismissed.

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Inmigración y metrópolis: Reflexiones acerca de la historia urbana

The long war between English-only and bilingual education appears to have been settled, with English-only education winning But its costs are high for immigrant families, the communities where they reside and society as a whole

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/ctx.2002.1.1.10

Alejandro Portes

Papers

Comparative national development : society and economy in the new global order

Progresar en Madrid: aspiraciones y expectativas de la segunda generación en España Making Headway in Madrid: Second Generation Aspirations and Expectations in Spain

La segunda generación en Madrid: un estudio longitudinal

Inmigración y metrópolis: Reflexiones acerca de la historia urbana

English-only Triumphs, but the Costs are High