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...

/pdf/birds-of-a-feather-homophily-in-social-networks-3kjmeyr23w.pdf

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?

ConclusionThe Forging of a New America: Lessons for Theory and Policy

Este ensayo revisa el concepto de ´instituciones´ que utiliza la literatura economica reciente sobre las firmas y el desarrollo nacional, y senala sus limitaciones. Propone un marco alternativo que recurre a la teoria sociologica clasica y contemporanea para superar algunas de ellas, relacionando el concepto de instituciones con otros elementos basicos de la cultura y la estructura social. Luego lo usa para analizar el fracaso de los intentos de trasplantar las instituciones de los paises desarrollados a los paises del Sur y la privatizacion en Mexico. Tambien examina la influencia de este marco en las teorias institucionales del cambio social e identifica las fuentes de cambio en diferentes niveles de significancia y alcance causales. La teoria del cambio modificada se aplica a los debates demograficos sobre los factores historicos e institucionales que determinan la transicion de la fertilidad. Por ultimo, discute el valor de este marco institucionalista para la teoria social y las politicas de desarrollo.

Instituciones y desarrollo: Una revisión conceptual

Institutions and Development

The Party or the Grassroots: A Comparative Analysis of Urban Political Participation in the Caribbean Basin*

People who are in the business of making revolutions have long known that there is nothing inevitable in their unfoldings On the eve of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky reflected with profit on what had happened in Austria in 1848: "When the population of Vienna took de facto possession of the city, when the monarchy by this time was on the run, had lost all meaning, when under the people's pressure the last troops were removed from the city, when it seemed that Austrian state power could be had for the asking, no political force was available to take over,    the workers were courageous enough to smash the reaction, but not organized enough to become the successors" (Trotsky [1909] 1971, pp 71-72) The Bolsheviks learned the lesson well For a long while, their leaders lashed out at those who would settle comfortably into the arms of historical necessity When their opportunity came in those fateful days of 1917, they made sure that the power vacuum would not go unoccupied Political sociologists have long been fascinated by these dramatic events Unlike historians, who have been generally content with chronicling the conditions and deeds leading to revolutions, sociologists have sought to isolate the deep constants that precede these episodes and account for their emergence In the process, they have produced persuasive retrospectives Their record at prospectively anticipating new explosions, however, has been much less encouraging The articles that form the core of this symposium take quite different positions with regard to the possibility of prediction of macropolitical events Kuran argues that we will continue to be surprised by them and offers a rationale based on concealment of private preferences Collins believes that prediction is possible if you have the right theory and accurate data and offers, as an example, his own prediction of the demise of the Soviet Union Tilly argues, on the contrary, that the business of

Alejandro Portes

Papers

ConclusionThe Forging of a New America: Lessons for Theory and Policy

Instituciones y desarrollo: Una revisión conceptual

Institutions and Development

The Party or the Grassroots: A Comparative Analysis of Urban Political Participation in the Caribbean Basin*

On Grand Surprises and Modest Certainties: Comment on Kuran, Collins, and Tilly