Community ties with friends and relatives are a principal means by which people and households get supportive resources. Quantitative and qualitative data from the second East York study are used to evaluate six potential explanations of why different types of ties provide different kinds of supportive resources: tie strength, contact, group processes, kinship,network members' characteristics, and similarities and dissimilarities between network members in such characteristics. Most relatioships provide specialized support. The kinds of support provided are related more to characteristics of the relationship than to characteristics of the network members themselves. Strong ties provide emotional aid, small services, and companionship. Parents and adult children exchange financial aid, emotional aid, large services, and small services. Physically accessible ties provide services. Women provide emotional aid. Friends, neighbors, and siblings make up about half of all supportive relationships. The ensemble o...

Different Strokes from Different Folks: Community Ties and Social Support

The Community Question has set the agenda for much or much of sociology. It is the question of how large-scale social systemic divisions of labor affect the organization and content of primary ties. Network analysis is proposed as a useful approach to the Community Question, because, by focusing on linkages, it avoids the a priori confinement of analysis to solidary groupings and territorial units. Three contentions about the Question are evaluated: arguments that Community is Lost, Saved or Liberted. Data are presented about the structure and use of the "intimate" networks of 845 adult residents of East York, Toronto. Intimate networks are found to be prevalent, composed of both kin and nonkin, nonlocal, asymmetric, and of sparse density. Help in dealing with both emergencies and everyday matters is available from almost all intimate networks, but from only a minority of intimate ties. The data provide broad support for the Liberated argument, in conjunction with some portions of the Saved argument.

The Community Question: The Intimate Networks of East Yorkers

In this article, we draw on five case studies in health care organizations to develop a process theory of strategic change in pluralistic settings characterized by diffuse power and divergent objectives. The creation of a collective leadership group in which members play complementary roles appears critical in achieving change. However. collective leadership is fragile. We identify three levels of “coupling” between leaders. organization, and environment that need to be mobilized to permit change. Since it is difficult to maintain coupling at all levels simultaneously, change tends to proceed sporadically, driven by the effects of leaders' actions on their political positions.

The Dynamics of Collective Leadership and Strategic Change in Pluralistic Organizations

Symbolic interactionist view of self-concept: Through the looking glass darkly.

Network Analysis: Some Basic Principles

This paper suggests that there are three important types of reference groups which act together to foster achievement level striving. These are the normative group, the role model and the audience. The normative group defines the roles the individual is to assume, the model provides exemplification of how the role is to be performed, at least adequately, and the audience provides anticipation of rewards for outstanding performance in the role. Expectations for performance level attained in two types of situations are discussed: (a) instances where one or more of the three reference groups is missing in the individual's reference group reporters, and (b) instances where the three reference groups are not "located" in the same concrete group or person. Finally, the reference group theory of achievement is compared with David McClelland's theory of n-Achievement and Max Weber's theory of achievement implicit in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

Reference groups, socialization and achievement.

Though we quite properly value Durkheim's discussion of the division of labor, a close look shows that he limited his concept to specialization. I propose that the ineluctable condition of humans is interdependence and that this implies divided labor to complete the tasks that no one actor can do alone. Importantly, actors may or may not be specialized in their interdependent activity. It is possible to examine different forms of the division of labor, as well as properties of whole systems of divided labor. The method adopted here is a nontechnical, discursive analysis based on graph theory, which deals with the abstract properties of arrangements of points and lines. This analysis reveals several properties of the division of labor relatively common in sociological usage as well as several that are relatively uncommon.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/2093584

The Division of Labor: A Post-Durkheimian Analytical View

The Executive Role Constellation.

(1966). Self-Conceptions and the Expectations of Significant Others. The Sociological Quarterly: Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 323-343.

Self‐Conceptions and the Expectations of Significant Others*

The concept of ascription introduced into sociology by Linton has enjoyed an enviable career by virtue of the breadth of its acceptance and the shallowness'of examination to which it has been subjected. The basic, widely accepted position on ascription by Linton, Davis and Parsons is that it is useful for society to ascribe functions in the division of labor so that socialization for various roles can be successfully carried out. Parsons adds the view that ascription of father's work-role status to children is inevitable, given the solidarity of the nuclear family. These and other arguments supporting ascription are examined in light of the various reference points used for ascription. Of these, age and sex, in strictly delimited ways, are found to be useful bases of ascription, because they relate to performance capacity. Other reference points for ascription, e.g. race, religion, ethnicity, residence, etc. are not inherently related to performance capacity and their use for purposes of ascription is better explained by power relations between ascriptive sub-categories. Similarly, Parson's treatment of kinship as a basis for ascription to children of father's status can also be viewed in terms of the distribution of power among families.

Theodore D. Kemper

Papers

Reference groups, socialization and achievement.

The Division of Labor: A Post-Durkheimian Analytical View

The Executive Role Constellation.

Self‐Conceptions and the Expectations of Significant Others*

On the Nature and Purpose of Ascription