1st Edition

Contexts of Social Capital Social Networks in Markets, Communities and Families

Edited By Ray-May Hsung, Nan Lin, Ronald L. Breiger Copyright 2009
    388 Pages
    by Routledge

    388 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    The concept of social capital refers to the ways in which people make use of their social networks in "getting ahead." Social capital isn’t just about the connections in networks, but fundamentally concerns the distribution of resources on the basis of exchanges.

    This volume focuses on how social capital interacts with social institutions, based on the premise that markets, communities, and families are the major contexts within which people meet and build up social networks and the foci to create social capital. Featuring innovations in thinking about exchange mechanisms, resource distribution, institutional logics, resource diversity, and the degree of openness or closure of social networks, these chapters present some of the most important advances in this essential field.

    Paralleling these theoretical developments, the chapters also improve practical methodological work on social capital research, using new techniques and measurement methods for the uncovering of social logics.

    Part 1: Advances on Theory and Methods of Social Capital  1. Position Generators, Affiliations, and the Institutional Logics of Social Capital: A Study of Taiwan Firms and Individuals Ray-May Hsung and Ronald L. Breiger  2. Changing Places: The Influence of Meeting Places on Recruiting Friends Beate Völker, Henk Flap and Gerald Mollenhors  3. Does the Golden Rule Rule? Rochelle R. Côté, Gabriele Plickert and Barry Wellman  4. Making Democracy Work via the Functioning of Heterogeneous Personal Networks: An Empirical Analysis based on a Japanese Election Study Ken'ichi Ikeda and Tetsuro Kobayashi  Part 2: Markets And Social Capital  5. The Context Challenge: Generalizing Social Capital Processes Across Two Different Settings Bonnie H. Erickson  6. The Transaction Cost: Embeddedness Approach to Studying Chinese Outsourcing Jar-Der Luo and Yung-Chu Yeh  7. Constructed Network as Social Capital: The Transformation Of Taiwan’s Small And Medium Enterprise Organization Chieh-Hsuan Chen  Part 3: Social Capital in Communities  8. Production And Returns Of Social Capital: Evidence From Urban China Nan Lin, Dan Ao And Lijun Song  9. The Distribution and Return of Social Capital in Taiwan Chih-Jou Jay Chen  10. Social Capital in Communities, Development and Integration: The Four-Village Case Study in Hungary, 2000 Róbert Tardos  11. Distinctiveness and Disadvantage among the Urban Poor: Is Low Network Capital Really the Problem Jeanne S. Hurlbert, John J. Beggs and Valerie A. Haines  Part 4: Families and Social Capital  12. Parental Closure Effects on Learning: Coleman’s Theory of Social Capital on Learning Revisited Ly-Yun Chang  13. Childcare Networks and Embedded Experiences Joseph Galaskiewicz, Beth M. Duckles and Olga Mayorova  14. The Immediate Returns on Time Investment in Daily Contacts: Exploring the Network–Overlapping Effects from Contact Diaries Yang-Chih Fu

    Biography

    Ray-May Hsung is Professor of Sociology at the National Chengchi University, Taiwan.

    Nan Lin is Professor of Sociology at Duke University, USA.

    Ronald L. Breiger is Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona, USA.