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Having a good job and living in a nice community was not an unrealistic dream in the United States for the first half of the twentieth century. There was a golden age when U.S. companies built and nurtured the towns in which their workers lived. But that era began to decline in the early 1970s because of changes in the U.S. economy that allowed for more global competition and increased capital mobility. Through historical processes research an analysis of the end of the American Social Compact was applied to a small paper manufacturing community in Wisconsin. Following a series of corporate acquisitions, the community that was built to make and depend on paper is in decline. Workers and residents no longer have the leverage to make companies care about the communities in which they operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains the mechanism by which mentoring produces benefits? What explains why mentoring benefits some more than others? While extant scholarship is focused on the characteristics of mentors/protégés or the content of mentoring relationships, I show that the success of mentoring is a function of structural factors like mentors' field position. Using data from interviews with 27 art school professors, I show how mentors (professors) activate capital on behalf of protégés (students) and how the capital activation process is constrained by the structure of the art world and mentors' position within it. I found that professors activate capital through four primary activities: giving advice or instruction (cultural capital), passing information (social capital), mining networks (social capital), and exerting influence (symbolic capital). I also found that capital activation--thus, the success of mentoring relationships--was constrained by professors' position at field intersections. Professors positioned at field intersections--e.g., professors with gallery representation--were more valuable to protégés, on average, than mentors positioned in one field only. This paper addresses the mentoring literature by showing how the structural context of mentoring can constrain protégé outcomes. This paper also addresses organizational field theory, where research on field intersections and capital activation are underdeveloped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical analysis of the globalization process and its impact throughout the world. It examines the nature and dynamics of globalization and its economic, social, and political manifestations on a world scale, highlighting the historical and international dimensions of this process. The paper explores various theoretical and empirical issues concerning globalization and takes up a discussion of some of the major problems generated by this process – problems that are affecting societies around the world and will lead to the emergence of forces to effect social change and transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are two main lines of conceptions of social capital ? individual level and group level social capital. Questions have been raised by individual level social scholars concerning the validity of group level social capital. Burt (1992) replies to the challenge by advocating that individual social capital aggregates into group level social capital. This paper moves beyond simple summation of lower level capital and presents a game theoretical model through which micro to macro production of social capital is accomplished. The paper also addresses the debate on social ties vs. social resource in the social capital literature. By explicitly modeling differential distribution of resources, the proposed model also redirects theoretical attention to hierarchical social structures that are prevalent in reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the production and uses of chapbooks within poetry communities. While books are usually longer than chapbooks the key differences between the two are that chapbooks are cheaply produced and distributed hand-to-hand. This paper examines how the meaning of ?cheaply produced? varies according to social and historical contexts, as do the identity and motives of participants in hand-to-hand sales or distribution. My analysis draws from in-depth interviews with poets as well as ethnographic observation of literary events. I explore key constitutive tensions within the field of poetry production and address the ongoing and historical context of chapbook production, distribution and use/consumption. Through teasing out the implications and enmeshments of the field of poetry, the traditions surrounding chapbooks, and the forms and uses of contemporary chapbooks I argue that chapbooks and the practices surrounding them make manifest the tensions of the field of poetry production. I conclude that chapbooks help to support, maintain and enrich the artistic values (symbolic capital) of the poetry field in a way that resists commodification and challenges the values and profit motive of the culture industry and larger fields of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Transaction costs theories attribute the rise the firm to the costs of using the market. The existence of the firm is approached from the angle of vertical integration. The underlining assumption is that before the rise of the firm, the industry is dominated by specialized producers, each taking the output of the upstream producer as input and supplying its output as the input for the downstream producer. The firm arises when it is more efficient to coordinate such transactions internally than through the market. This paper, based on an empirical case study, explores the rise of the firm from a different avenue, horizontal integration. Different from the transaction cost theory, where it is assumed that the division of labor pre-dates the rise of the firm, this paper shows that it is the firm that makes the division of labor possible. Rather than assuming ?in the beginning there were markets?, we empirically investigate the relationship between the firm and the market. Our finding suggests first that social structure plans an important role in the rise of the firm. Secondly, the far-reaching economic significance of social structure has not duly recognized in current economics or sociology literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ethnic conflicts around the globe have sparked renewed attention to the long-debated, oft rejected concept of national culture (or national character) and its effect on politics. Japan, with its Western institutions and East Asian culture, enhanced by its economic successes, has been one natural locus classicus of this debate. Led by empirical findings about networks of extended reciprocity among political organizations in Japan, this paper considers national culture and other explanations for these findings. The network approach allows empirical distinction among different relational qualities and sanctions that can generate power. This paper distinguishes among tangible-coercive, practice-normative and symbolic-emotive relational exchanges, operationalized (imperfectly) as political support, expected reciprocity, and information, respectively. In Japan, national culture has strong symbolic and normative qualities stressing relational harmony. The findings indicate that distinct practice-normative exchanges stressing harmony ?glue? together the Japanese polity. But in the US, more tangible-instrumental relationships predominate, while in Germany, a norm of role-formalism seems pervasive. The contrasts arise from historical, demographic circumstances as well as specific relational content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explicate the inequalities in education between Arabs and Jews in Israel. The main argument of this paper is that the Israeli authorities, addressing the Arab citizens, favored the ?conflict" approach in which education is used to indoctrinate the Arab minority and to mold its culture. The historical and demographical context of the Arab minority in Israel is introduced via the major developments in politics and education .Finally , the educational ethnic inequalities in Israel are presented and discussed as outcomes of the exclusive nature of Israel as a Jewish state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managers? careers and career orientations have changed significantly since the era of organizational change that began around 20-30 years ago. This paper focuses on how managers have responded to these changes. It suggests that there is evidence of a significant change in the kinds of ?capital? that managers mobilise, and the uses to which they put it. At least some managers now mobilise a form of ?human capital? in the form of reputations that are grounded in informal networks that constitute managers? ?social capital?. For various reasons, managers find this melded social/human capital difficult to stabilise and therefore risky to hold. Evidence is presented that they attempt to convert it into wealth ? economic capital. The paper considers the extent and implications of these developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This descriptive paper analyzes the role of ethnic networks and organizations among the Indian diaspora in North America. Such networks are etched around the place of worship, ethnic stores, family gatherings, social occasions, cyberspace etc. and together with ethnic organizations, they serve as the basis of social capital, which is very useful for a diasporic community. This carved social capital not only helps fight discrimination in the ?host? society but also help negotiate diasporic identity and sets in social mobility. The paper highlights the role of prominent Asian Indian organizations in Canada and United States of America, NACOI and AIA included, along with religious and transnational organizations. These organizations apart from advocating India?s good relation with their adopted country (Canada and U.S), also lobby for India?s image and foreign policy along with enormously helping in ?homeland? development in the present era of resurgent globalization and transnationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will analyze strategies and experiences of Chinese women, who migrated into East Central Europe and achieved a certain degree of recognition in receiving societies. Even though the horizon of most Chinese women has not exceeded margins of the ethnic economy, a small number of them managed to built their independent careers in cultural and to lesser extent also in business fields. The first group of women under study drew upon their cultural capital in order to establish their individual networks within the host society. Social integration through intermarriage, knowledge of local language and culture combined with a great deal of flexibility in their career paths gave them a competitive advantage over their compatriots. Forming the small ?Chinese elite?, some of these women enjoy almost celebrity status in the Czech Republic. They act as cultural brokers, but the same time prefer to keep a distance from the Chinese ?community?. The second group of successful Chinese women in Prague is involved in the male-dominated business arena. Although their business networks are deeply embedded in the ethnic economy, the Chinese businesswomen also draw on support from religious ties and from the host society. Contrary to the studies emphasizing importance of ethnic networks for survival in an alien environment, this paper will argue that the Chinese women built up their careers by reaching outside of the Chinese networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Programme for International Study Assessment (PISA) is a large-scale study in which more than forty countries participated in 2000-2002. Hong Kong students had been revealed as the ?star performers? with the ranking of first in mathematics, third in science and sixth in reading in PISA. Parental involvement was identified as one of the major contributors to the outstanding performance of Hong Kong (Ho et al, 2003). In this paper, parental involvement was conceptualized as a form of family-based social capital. The discourse of social capital has fueled a growing interest in the field of sociology, economics and education as one of the strategies to solve a number of socioeconomic problems and to enhance children?s education. However, it appears that the meaning of social capital varies with researchers (Lin, 2001). This paper attempts to clarify the meaning and generation of social capital in the field of education. In particular, this paper will focus on the family based social capital created by parental involvement. Data for this study were collected as the main study of a larger international project called PISA, which was conducted by 2000-2002 in over 40 countries. The present paper will focus on the Hong Kong dataset. A total of 4405 fifteen-year-old students from 140 Hong Kong secondary schools completed student assessment in reading, mathematics and science. Descriptive analysis and Hierarchical linear modeling are used for analysis in this paper. The results suggested that four types of family-based social capital, created by parent involvement, have significant impact on students? literacy performance. The findings support Coleman?s (1987, 1988, 1994) thesis that not all but certain types of social capital are of great value for children?s academic outcomes at this stage of schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust is an essential component of social capital yet is understudied relative to other components like association memberships. In this paper, I examine generalized trust with a quantitative multi-level cross-national study. The paper begins by outlining a theoretical rationale for the production of trust, discussing the importance of both individual propensities and social and institutional structures. I pay particular attention to the role of associations in promoting trust, hypothesizing that associations that are connected to other associations are more beneficial for the creation of trust than associations isolated from other associations. The theory is tested with a multi-level model, including both individual-level and country-level variables to predict the placement of trust. The dataset I use, the World Values Survey, has information from 35,144 individuals in thirty-one countries. Overall, this is the first large-scale, comprehensive test of trust across a variety of nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concepts of social and cultural capital are heuristic for understanding civic participation in urban U.S. communities as these theories help determine how decisions are made, who makes them and when does real decision-making occur. This paper examines the decision-making processes in a Southern California urban community targeted for renewal. Resident participation in the redevelopment of this area is analyzed through the social and cultural capital frameworks to ascertain the methods by which the transmission of participatory inequality continues to occur. This analysis shows that the acquisition of knowledge as a tool for meaningful civic participation is a gendered, classed and racialized process. Furthermore, the rules are not known to all participants. Similar to the ‘hidden curriculum’ that exists in educational settings, there are unwritten rules and knowledge of political processes that those from racialized minority groups are not fully made aware. As a result, participatory processes may on the surface appear democratic and inclusive, when in practice they are not open and available to everyone. This paper analyzes participation through cultural resource theory to problematize cultural and social capital within a culturally diverse urban setting. Through ethnographic methods this paper illustrates the ways that cultural resources are valued and devalued within the civic participatory sphere. More specifically, an analysis of three cultural resources integral to civic participation are examined through the eyes of Latino, Vietnamese, African American and Anglo residents active in the revitalization of City heights. The cultural resources analyzed are general cultural awareness, verbal facility and scientific knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common model of labor market incorporation among immigrants in the United States analyzes earnings as a function of standard human capital variables, such as age, education, language competence, and employment experience in the host society. Yet, whether this model is applicable in other countries, where immigrants encounter different labor market conditions, is unclear. Drawing on data from a comparative study of immigrant labor in the United States and Japan, this paper estimates multivariate models of wage determination among samples of foreign workers in San Diego County, United States and Hamamatsu, Japan. In addition to the usual human capital variables, our models also incorporate social capital variables. Social capital variables are rarely introduced in US wage determination arguments; however, such variables may contribute to earnings in the US and may also prove important abroad. Findings reveal important variations in the explanatory power of individual-level, human capital and group-level, social capital from one national context to the other. In San Diego, human capital variables have a greater effect on foreign workers' wages, while social capital variables do not. In contrast, social capital significantly increases workers' wages in Hamamatsu, while human capital does not. The paper draws on data from ethnographic studies in Japan and the US to suggest explanations for these divergent results. More generally, the paper illustrates the importance of a comparative framework that considers the context of reception (host societies) in determining labor market outcomes for immigrant workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on previous evidence regarding the influence of venture capita... funding on individual start-up companies to examine the diffusion of institutional logics among the broader set of venture capital funded start-ups. We develop propositions regarding the interaction between venture capital firms and incumbent firms on the institutions that influence start-up companies when they enter an industry. A review of the current literature suggests that the field of venture capital funding establishes a relevant community among firms that receive such funding. We propose that there are significant regulative, normative, and cognitive isomorphic pressures exerted on venture-capital funded start-up companies that cross field-level boundaries through the action of venture capital firms. This paper builds a framework for understanding field-level institutional effects of venture capital funding and extends the application of institutional perspectives into entrepreneurship research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will examine some aspects of the emergence of new ventures in Russia. My analysis deals with the issues of use of different forms of capital by the new entrepreneurs. Although I will consider the use of human and financial capital, the main focus of the paper will be on the empirical aspects of the use of social capital by capital owners in Russia. I will discuss different patterns of transition to private enterprise ownership by individuals with varied amounts of social, human and financial capital and offer models of venture start-up risks based on the evidence collected in Russia. On the macro level, I will argue that the stage of the society's economic and political development and the aspects of society's institutional and socio-cultural past affects the type of social interaction in which entrepreneurs engage when they are starting their ventures. In addition, I will consider micro level aspects of socio-economic circumstances that the entrepreneurs find themselves in when they are about to start their ventures, and analyze how such circumstances as education, past employment, prior position within the industry, and the lack or presence of organizational and/or personal social capital mediate the risks of starting a new venture. My focus will be on small and medium-sized business owners from Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transformation of the agrarian structure in Eastern Europe in the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union during the 1990s and the adoption of market-oriented reforms and privatization to promote the development of the rural economy have become a central focus of discussion and debate in development studies in recent years. This paper argues that the structural changes undertaken during this period, opening these economies to foreign capital, and the adoption of market-oriented policies in response to these changes in the context of a developing capitalist economy have produced adverse results in terms of the production and distribution of agricultural goods and services for the local population as well as the standard of living and quality of life of the great majority of the people in the entire East European region. The paper shows that the post-Soviet market-oriented transformations and privatization that East European countries have undergone have had a great impact on various sectors of the economy, especially the agricultural sector. The effects of changes that East European agriculture has undergone during this period of transition have most visibly surfaced in one of the most prosperous agrarian economies of the region -?Romania -? which has experienced dramatic transformations in its social, political, and economic structure during the past decade. The paper explores the dynamics and contradictions of these changes and highlights their impact on the future course of development of Romanian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing numbers of multilateral and transnational organizations have decentralized their functions and established control centers in world cities. These centers concentrate political and cultural capital within world cities and threaten to deterritorialize these cities. However, the interaction of these different forms of capital result in nationalized and territorialized reactions to the deterritorializing field. This paper maps these new political and cultural concentrations of capital. Using the historical case of Bangkok, the paper shows how these other forms of capital concentration promote socio-cultural and political change. The focus on the economic functions of cities within the international system has left their political, cultural, and ideological functions in the shadows. For international economic integration to progress, common understandings must be forged. These understandings are the cognitive capacities that render contracts intelligible and the goals of economic action matter-of-fact. This paper is an initial step in understanding where these cognitive capacities are developed within the international system of linked cities and what practices enforce these cognitive understandings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores selectively the thought of Pierre Bourdieu with attention to images of capital acquisition and conversion in order to conceptualize the career and scholarly work conditions of American academics employed as professors in major research universities. Much has been written about the terrains of higher education, viewed sociologically, psychologically, anthropologically, and politically. Yet, few scholarly contributions have examined the contexts of professors' work relative to their support for or constraint upon knowledge production as a desirable social aim. Although concerns have been raised about the applicability of Bourdieu's work to settings beyond the specific context of French higher education, it is possible to use his writings as opportunities to explore academic contextual issues (with attention to contextual constraint) in generic ways and relative to their resonance with American higher education. The paper capitalizes on these opportunities to frame the content of professors' scholarly careers and the "social sites" that shape their knowledge production efforts. The paper employs Bourdieu's ideas to address this aim, due to his concern with the social and cultural contexts -- and power dynamics -- that frame lives, individually and collectively, in institutions and in society more broadly. The paper closes with a set of ideas drawn from the works of social, sociocultural, and cognitive psychologists to consider possibilities for supporting scholarly learning, even within contexts of constraint as outlined by Bourdieu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital is broadly defined as those sets of resources that are obtainable by virtue of an individual's membership in a group. The purpose of this paper is to review and critique the literature on social capital by examining in detail the work of four contemporary theorists -- James Coleman, Robert Putnam, Nan Lin and Pierre Bourdieu. Though similar in many ways, these four approaches to social capital differ in how they resolve two fundamental epistemological tensions in the social sciences. First, while Putnam and Coleman view social capital primarily as a component of social cohesion, Bourdieu and Lin implicate social capital in class conflict and social reproduction. Second, while scholars following Coleman and Lin privilege individuals and small groups as the objects of observation, those drawing on Putnam and Bourdieu focus their analyses on higher levels of aggregation including class fractions and even national cultures. This paper will outline the emergence and treatment of the social capital concept within each of these traditions, arguing in particular for a re-visitation of Bourdieu's conflict perspective in order to resolve some of the inconsistencies and inadequacies within the social capital literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the long history of transnational labor activists' attempts to institutionalize international labor norms and law through bilateral and multilateral United States free trade agreements, emphasizing that present scholarship ignores the importance of the symbolic dimensions of law in evaluating this history. The transnational labor movement has hoped that creating international institutions that protect labor rights will create systems that globalize labor in parallel to capital's globalizing legal institutions, such as the World Trade Organization. Labor's ability to globalize depends on whether international labor law is understood merely as instrumental law, dependent on central state power, politics, and enforceability, or whether international law also gains force from symbolic dimensions of normcreation that help construct identities, values, and global norms. This paper builds on concepts of transnational advocacy networks to describe the development and actualization of transnational norms through the mediating domestic social structures of national states. This approach highlights how present scholarship fails to fully account for activist definitions of success and considers how the symbolic dimensions of law explains the processes through which labor globalizes under conditions of severe constraint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper scrutinizes the determinant mechanism of beauty by proposing a concept of "beauty capital" as one form of human capital. The literature has revealed diverse social consequences of physical attractiveness. Still, it has been left unsolved whether beauty is naturally determined or intentionally attained. Data were collected in 2018 Opinion Survey on Local Governance in Indonesia. A representative sample in Java was chosen and analyzed with 3,212 respondents. Interviewers evaluated respondents' beauty and skin brightness on five-point scales. Key findings include, first, that education and income increased skin brightness. Second, while skin brightness did boost beauty levels, education and income also raised it. This implies that different socio-economic status groups use different strategies of investment in beauty capital, which is changeable and controllable. Therefore, beauty depends, at least partly, on individual attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper re-evaluates the concept "hyper-selectivity". Hyper-selectivity, that immigrants are more highly educated than nonmigrants and the average American, is thought to explain the exceptional academic and occupational achievements of Asian Americans, yet hyper-selectivity seems to be limited for one very large Asian American group: Filipino Americans. Unlike their counterparts who display incredible levels of upward mobility, Filipino Americans demonstrate a decline; they report lower levels of B.A. attainment compared to the first generation. Drawing on a five-year ethnographic study of middle-class Filipino Americans in the New York City metro area, I contend that one reason that hyper-selectivity is limited for Filipino Americans is their ethnic capital. Specifically, occupational niches in nursing and the U.S. Navy, have significantly impacted the ideas about success and social networks among Filipino Americans such that second-generation youth desire jobs in health care and enlisting in the military. Findings pose important implications to the study of second-generation mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of culture as a form of capital, originating in the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, has found fertile research ground in American sociology of education. The concept of cultural capital has generated a significant and growing body of educational research. It has helped increase awareness of cultural as well as economic sources of unequal educational attainment. Yet the concept has often been employed in ways not anticipated nor intended by Bourdieu himself. This paper identifies key ways in which Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital has been transformed by historical context and disciplinary specialization in its importation into American educational research. The paper points to some recent American work that draws on a broader understanding of cultural capital that, seems consistent with Bourdieu's thinking, and that offers a richer portrayal of how cultural resources can stratify groups in interactions among parents, students, and educational professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can living proof be the basis upon which we claim transnational subjectivity? If a person provides living proof of her existence, can she then claim citizenship? In this paper, I address questions of subjectivity and agency by focusing on the living proof provided by women's everyday experiences as garment workers in Dhaka, San Salvador and New York City. "Living proof," in this instance, is what I am calling the offering of life stories, subjectivities, bodily materialities and practices by women, as acts of courage and political claimstaking. By theorizing the living proof offered by garment workers in production and protest, I analyze transnational organizing through a closer attention to subjectivity, citizenship and capital (re)production, on the one hand, and the practice of testimony, on the other. I hope to shed light on circuits of subjectivity as they travel transnationally, and the practice of agency by women within the production of modernity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an introduction to a doctoral dissertation on contemporary share ownership amongst Australian households. The study uses the tools of class analysis and the theoretical work of Wright to examine this phenomenon and argues that it is an example of embourgeoisement in which the capitalist field of finance widens to incorporate proletariat class locations. Applying the social theory of Bourdieu, the study asks whether this process of field widening represents a heterodox transformation of the field or an expansion along orthodox lines. In examining the internal processes of the field, the study then employs the work of Habermas on deliberative democracy and of Arendt on public political spaces to analyse the features of contemporary corporate governance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do all collegiate achievers hold equally wealthy positions in society therefore become powerful in the end? Thirty-two American Rhodes Scholars are annually selected for academic excellence, exemplary character, and potential for leadership roles from their collegiate institutions. A central question asked in this paper focuses on the relationships among cultural capital, social capital (embedded resources in social networks) and status attainment of these exceptional achievers. Our analysis shows that neither the access to childhood cultural capital nor the influence of the prestige of baccalaureate credentials has contributed to acquiring better jobs and earning higher income. Oxford experience and social relations among Rhodes Scholars have not yielded significantly. We find, however, that professional school degrees and training particularly from law and medicine have substantially contributed their later socioeconomic standing. Finally, perhaps the most notable finding of this study is that the likelihood of getting better jobs and higher income is greatly enhanced by the aggregate of social networks and political resources mobilized by these high achievers. Reviewing across five historical cohorts of former American Rhodes Scholars from 1947 to 1992, the role of social capital and political ties in advancing their socioeconomic standing seems to have progressively increased. The study is based on the 2001 survey of 1100 Rhodes Scholars covering classes from 1947 to 1992 that yielded 875 respondents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public health strategies for disease prevention in the U.S. traditionally approach risk reduction through behavior change. An increasingly vocal collaboration of social scientists, public health researchers, policymakers and community activists who engage in challenging the notion of ?risk? to include social structure(s) that characterize individuals, groups, communities. The amalgam of these efforts is arguably embodied in use of the concept ?social capital?, a recent acquisition for public health researchers in the search for explanatory factors in rates of disease and other health-related risk behaviors across U.S. communities. The purpose of this paper is to integrate the sociological origins of social capital with its empirical applications in public health, thereby providing a meaningful guide for critiquing the concept as it proliferates in the research on disease prevention. These questions lead us to examine foremost, what exactly constitutes social capital, and secondarily, how do scholars validate these theoretical origins as well as measure its existence for practical use? Future questions remain to be explored, including our understanding of if, and how, social capital is a macro-micro bridge that accurately connects the meaning and influence of structure(s) and individual behavior into new strategies for disease prevention. Theoretical frameworks for HIV/AIDS prevention in the 21st century must be guided by the understanding of how social structure(s) produce HIV risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1980s were the high water mark of concern and public programming directed at (curbing) teen pregnancy rates, which have declined in the years since (Child Trends, 2002). This might lead one to conclude that participation in sex education programs was an effective deterrent to teenage premarital fertility. This paper simultaneously tests this idea with a competing hypothesis, that social capital has a greater effect on adolescent fertility than sex ed programs. The rationale is based on Coleman?s (1988) argument that social capital facilitates both the internalization and enforcement of societal norms for behavior, in this case adolescent childbearing. An important feature of social capital is what Coleman termed ?closure? ? where the people one knows also know each other. I find that certain forms of social capital ? that between an adolescent and his/her parents and his/her school officials ? have significant effects in lessening the odds of a teenage birth by the tenth grade, while neither parental relations with the school and its officials, nor sex ed participation, has any effect. While this runs counter to the closure hypothesis, these results strengthen social capital as an important concept for the process of teenage premarital fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the result of ethnographic research conducted in a sending community in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico. This study calls into question the stereotypical view of Mexican women as passive and traditional. There are several conclusions reached during this study. First, the results reject Menjivar´s (1999) and Levitt?s (1998) arguments. In the community studied, an unfulfilled economic or emotional absence encourages women to challenge the system of practice of Nurangi (participation in the labor force) even in the absence of a migration experience. Second, the analysis shows that contrary to our hypothesis, the physical absence of the male is not a trigger mechanism for women?s participation in the labor force. Third, women from both migrant and non-migrant related groups have increased their human capital. However, migrant and non-migrant related women who participated in market activities not only expanded their human capital but also gained an economic and emotional benefit. Finally, the interviews have also shown that contrary to some literature that views Mexican women as passive and subordinate agents, the women in the Nurangi community are active agents, and what is sometimes perceived as a static gender division of labor is rather a fluid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using ethnographic and social science survey methods, the formation of social networks among the socio-economically disadvantaged students of the Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP) at Barnard College were examined in an effort to determine the effects of the types of networks formed by these students on post-graduate job attainment and their opportunity to achieve upward mobility through their network usage. It was found that the social networks of these students tend to be HEOP focused, but that the class ?disadvantage? of these networks do not negatively affect their employment prospects as these students tend to use their more ?advantaged? weak ties in the job search. It was further found that the type of social tie used by the HEOP student was dependent on the monetary nature of the objective that was to be achieved through network usage. Among the sample, strong ties were used to obtain non-monetarily beneficial objectives, like housing, while weak ties were used to obtain monetarily beneficial objectives, such as employment. It is argued that there is a strong correlation between this differential network usage, the SES of the user, and the objective of network usage. It is therefore suggested that ?weak ties? theory be ?commodified? so as to reflect the influence of class on network usage. This paper concludes by arguing that due to degree inflation and the utility of network usage on job attainment, programs such as HEOP are integral to providing opportunities for the upward mobility of ?high risk? students in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies social capital theory to the Iraqi Governing Council, established in July, 2003 by the American Civil Administration. Representatives of prominent opposition parties on the Council have historically developed social capital with both each other and the Iraqi populace. This social capital will have significant implications for the creation of an Iraqi state, democratic or otherwise. Social capital of the Council and the party representatives on the Council is examined through an analysis of embeddedness, trust, and structural holes. Based on this examination, future directions for the Iraqi Governing Council with respect to the creation of an Iraqi state are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term social capital has gained enormous cachet in the policy world regarding economic and community development. One has only to visit the World Bank web page to see a clear example of a very powerful global organization that has tied much of its research agenda and program implementation to the development of so called ?social capital?. Policy think-tanks all over the world are devoting time and resources to examining this concept. As localities begin to incorporate the term social capital into their jargon and base policy decisions on the assumption that building social capital in a community is a ?good thing?, it is useful to outline the importance of thinking critically about the definition of social capital, if we are to use it. The question ?what is social capital? is much like the questions ?what is social life? or ?what is society?? The ways in which social capital has been defined becomes a laundry list of describing a society, or a group of individuals. It is also a contested concept. What follows is a critical assessment of definitions and measurements of social capital and map of suggested critical questions and paths that should be followed when defining and measuring social capital. In this paper I push past Putnam?s popular conceptualization drawing upon critical examinations of social capital to suggest a theoretical map that uncovers the normative elements in current definitions. My approach requires the normative stance of the researchers to be put on the table for criticism rather than subsumed in unexamined assumptions. I then address four methodological issues that arise in much of the research on social capital because of its functionalist roots, identifying independent and dependent variables, time order/cause and effect, unit of analysis and historical context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper examines the sociological concept ?social capital? as a predictor of school success. Interviews were conducted with a statewide sample of parents of children primarily in the third grade. Social capital was examined as a construct that differs among these parents by social class, race, income, and educational levels. This construct was then further analyzed as a predictor of school success in English, Math, and Fourth Grade Readiness domains. Results reveal that social capital varies among the different social groups, but its use as a predictor is inconclusive. Suggestions for future research indicate that salient measures for social capital should still be explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States? population is aging. As our population ages, the need for social support of our elderly is undoubtedly increasing with more weight expected to placed on the family as a source of support. At the same time, families have diversified over the past fifty years to the point that no one conception of family holds true for all ?families? in the population. To this end, the sociology of family needs new concepts that allow for such variation but also maintain validity and reliably. This paper motivates and tests the concept of familial efficacy, a term which is an extension of Coleman?s conception of social capital and Sampson?s elucidation of collective efficacy. High levels of familial efficacy are hypothesized to increase the overall health of family members and increase the odds of instrumental actions. The preliminary results show that familial efficacy is a useful factor in predicting the odds that a family can mobilize specific instrumental actions (such as helping a disabled mother), but is less clear in predicting day to day actions which maintain health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a multilevel conceptual framework and set of hypotheses about how social capital differences among American families arise and how the differences affect various educational outcomes in the early primary grades. The hypotheses are then assessed with data from a recent national longitudinal sample survey, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey of the 1998-1999 Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K). Currently-available data from the ECLS-K cover the first two grades of mandatory formal schooling. Social capital is conceptualized in terms of parental involvement in the school, and measured in terms of parents? contacts with other parents, and parent attendance at school events. Outcomes examined include cognitive achievement in reading, mathematics, and general knowledge, and teacher ratings of the child?s behavior and social skills. The main hypotheses are that levels of social capital are affected by characteristics of families? neighborhoods and schools, as well as parental human capital; and that individual and school-aggregate levels of parental social capital will have positive effects on individual students? cognitive outcomes and comportment ratings. These hypotheses are assessed with a series of multilevel (student and school) regression models. Results indicate strong effects of parental education, residential stability, perceptions of neighborhood safety, and two-parent households on measures of social capital. Social capital in turn has positive effects on children?s outcomes, but only at the individual level ? positive effects of school-aggregate social capital are not detected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High social capital in an organization does not necessarily encourage questioning of decisions and directions and may actually have the opposite effect in cases where the cohesiveness of members tends to produce a ?closed society.? When activists maintain networks that include a considerable proportion of members outside of the party membership, the relationship is likely to help the pursuit of accountability claims. My doctoral research investigates the role of activists’ networks in their prosecution of claims for elite accountability. The main example studied is the demand for leaders of the New Zealand Alliance to account for their voting to send troops to Afghanistan in support of the U.S. ‘war on terrorism.’ The paper presented here concentrates on the multidisciplinary methods used in this research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on preliminary findings of a longitudinal qualitative study evaluating an NIH funded program designed to increase the participation of underrepresented minority students in biomedical research. Forty students at different stages of the program were interviewed during the first half of the study. Students displayed large variations in their levels of previous exposure to specific kinds of social and cultural capital that according to the literature are associated with success in scientific careers. Exposure to these types of capital through the intervention program had a positive impact on all students, particularly on those entering the program with little or no previous exposure. Students acquired the skills to develop professional relations with senior researchers in their fields of interest and had opportunities to create these relationships. Preliminary analysis of the data indicates that students embodied these kinds of capital and were activating them in order to further their careers. It is still too early to ascertain whether these program benefits will have a long term impact on their career paths. Findings point to the need for interventions for underrepresented groups to include exposure to social and cultural capital as well as their traditional academic components. Theoretical implications include the need for researchers to examine whether students can acquire social and cultural capital outside of the home environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, concepts such as networks, social capital, and weak and strong ties have become ever more widely used and often overburdened by imprecise or incorrect use; left out of this popularity, however, has been the concept of community. We argue that reintroducing the concept of community as a central one will sharpen the sociological understanding of networks by introducing a related but distinct concept rather than parsing ever more finely these already heavily-loaded terms of weak ties and social capital. We propose that a community is a fluid set of ties inhabiting the overlap between shared culture, networks, and individual identity. While previous research has conceptualized community as either a geographic area or a primarily aspatial concept, we argue that elements of both neighborhood and networks should be combined in order to arrive at a unique definition of community. We utilize Eliasoph and Lichterman’s concept of group style as an indicator of the strength and boundedness of a given community, and we highlight the idea of communities as social actors, conferring advantages and disadvantages and acting with agency. In this paper, we explore past and present ideas of community, and challenge sociologists with the task of reintroducing the concept of community, bringing it to the table in discussions of ties, networks, and social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After reviewing some of the widely used definitions of social capital, this paper presents a theoretical model of two analytically and empirically different types of social capital, which emerge from distinct types of social relations. The typology draws on anthropological and cultural theory to distinguish reciprocity and trust. Reciprocity is the type of social capital embedded within personal relations, which are triply defined in the factual, social and temporal dimensions by co-presence, reciprocity and memory, respectively. Trust is the type of social capital embedded within relations with strangers, which constitute an increasingly larger fraction of social interactions in contemporary society. As a sociological category, relations with strangers are the opposite of personal relations, and they are defined by the condition of impersonality or anonymity. The distinction between reciprocity and trust is important because these two types of social capital are not fungible, and while reciprocity is by definition particularistic (this is the source of its strength as a linking mechanism), trust has a universalistic potential. Empirical and conceptual implications of the distinction between these two types are sketched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural areas of the country have seen an increase in the number of economic development programs in recent years. Most of these initiatives have been government driven. The literature suggests that for many of these programs success can be problematic. In contrast to government programs, this paper investigates a privately driven economic development organization in a distressed rural county of Pennsylvania. The analysis indicates that a privately driven initiative can be effective in certain aspects. Specifically, the establishment of a loan fund to aid local businesses along with being able to set an agenda and pursue it based upon the best available inforamtion can be viewed as positives. Conversely, the inability to attract new manufacturing firms that pay higher wages has not proven sucessful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we expand Peterson?s (1997) concept of omnivorous cultural consumption to the realm of cuisine. A review of North American culinary history indicates a broadening in the number of high status food genres in recent decades. Through a discourse analysis of contemporary food writing for high status audiences, we identify three discursive strategies that food writers employ to construct a logic of food quality: authenticity, rusticity, and exoticism/obscurity. This food discourse of quality legitimates certain foods as high status options that are acceptable for omnivorous consumption. Unlike prior work on omnivores, this work allows us to better understand how and why certain cultural options enter the omnivorous repertoire and the implications for cultural exclusivity and social inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a descriptive analysis of the uses of the concept social capital in sociological research over a fifteen-year period. Our data consist of three parts. First, we identify 651 articles searching for ?social capital? in the Sociological Abstracts database as a keyword from 1988 through 2002. Second we analyze definitions of social capital in the top five sociological journals, identified using the criterion of the Social Science Citation Index impact factor. There were 38 total articles that used social capital in either the title or abstract within these five journals over the 15 years. Finally, from the universe of 651 articles we identify the sociological specialty areas most frequently using social capital: complex organizations, sociology of education, social change and economic development, political sociology, sociology of health and medicine, the family and socialization, and social differentiation (stratification). From this we analyze definitions from a stratified random sample of these specialties. Mainstream definitions are then compared to the specialty area definitions to identify similarities and differences. Conclusions are drawn about areas of agreement in the definition of social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the importance of the credential requirements used by employers to attract graduates who will use their education on the job. The framework of this study is embedded within the theoretical debates between proponents of the human capital and credentialist perspectives. Past research related to these debates has focused largely on issues such as earnings, underemployment, and productivity, while less empirical treatment has focused on the issue of skill utilization. The statistical analysis suggests that there is a strong correspondence between employees? credentials and the needs of their employers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we demonstrate how spatial variation in social capital (e.g., civic associations) affects the support networks families rely on which, in turn, affects their ability to avoid economic hardships (e.g. the inability to pay rent, hunger). We find widespread economic hardship, with nearly 1 in 3 families having experienced at least one of eight hardships. Families experience more hardship when support networks (kin, friends, charities) are weaker. Multilevel models show that metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas with higher levels of social capital provide stronger support networks to families who, therefore, suffer less economic hardship. The type of social capital also makes a difference: civic social capital (e.g., civic associations, labor unions, religious organizations) is associated with more social support and less hardship, but elite social capital (e.g., business associations) is associated with more hardships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological research has increasingly focused on the role of network-embedded resources, i.e., social capital, in economic stratification and market inequality. In this paper, we contribute to this growing literature by examining the role of social capital in lawyers' earnings in an urban setting. More specifically, we analyze how and to what extent the causal impact of legal professionals' social capital on their income attainment has changed over time. Our empirical evidence comes from two random surveys of Chicago lawyers taken in 1975 and 1995. We find that as the Chicago bar has changed during the twenty-year period, so too has the role of social capital in shaping the economic life chances of lawyers. We elaborate on this dynamic relationship below by exploring the shifting values of network resources conceptualized at both organizational and interpersonal levels: lawyers' participation in voluntary associations and their colleague discussion networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dominant explanations of gender differences within the institution of capital punishment point to the many ways in which gender relations in society at large have come to pervade, and thus are reflected in, the workings of the criminal justice system. Expressed differently, these explanations view the criminal justice system as a more or less passive recipient of gender patterns established elsewhere. In this paper, in contrast, we examine how the criminal justice system generally, and capital punishment specifically, has been an active contributor to the gender constructions it displays. To support our argument we examine the "clash" between gender and capital justice that surfaced during nineteenth century executions of women. In other words, capital punishment is a prine site for exploring the tensions between the rationalization of justice that derived its legitimacy in part from being ‘gender blind,’ and a social system that sought to retain gender as a primary organizing principle despite challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role that a charismatic figure plays in social movements. Using two prominent leaders--Stephen Bantu Biko and Martin Luther King, Jr.--as case studies, I examine the manner in which charisma is historically understood and explained in the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) of South Africa and the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) of the United States. In addition, I attempt to provide counterarguments to four traditional charismatic leadership frameworks. More specifically, I address and challenge the following theoretical premises: (1) Charisma is an innate characteristic (2) A single charismatic leader is necessary for movement success (3) A charismatic figure becomes an indispensable, almost "God-like," role model for people to emulate, and (4) The death of a charismatic leader signals the inevitable decline of the movement. Finally, my thesis attempts to further complicate these perspectives by suggesting that charisma be understood as a form of cultural capital. This explanation, I hope, will add another layer to the current literature on social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the relationship between family structure and childhood well-being typically measure outcomes that reflect children's future economic self-sufficiency, not their happiness. In order to better reflect how children experience life, this study uses concept of childhood thriving when examining the effects of family on children's well-being. In addition, this study posits that family configuration (or structure) is a poor proxy for other family dynamics that affect childhood thriving, and is largely irrelevant when these other dynamics are accounted for. Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households, this paper examines the effect of family social capital--resources that emerge from parent-child relationships that are useful for a child's development--on childhood thriving. Findings show that increased family social capital contributes to increased childhood thriving, regardless of family configuration. However, family structure has clear implications for the family social capital that parents provide children, and in that way indirectly affects childhood thriving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]