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What Are They Thinking?

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Book cover Social Capital in American Life

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Abstract

Picking up from his previous volume, Social Capital in America, Brian Jones here sets out the building blocks of everyday life—voluntary association, family, social networks, and work—around which he builds a research model of social capital that takes into account the structures which frame our lives.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The (somewhat stylized) description was inspired by the novella Sand Kings by George R.R. Martin (Timescape, 1981).

  2. 2.

    Brian J. Jones, Social Capital in America: Counting Buried Treasure (Paradigm Publishers, 2011), 3.

  3. 3.

    James Allan Davis and Tom W. Smith: General Social Surveys, 1972–2008 [machine-readable data file]. Principal Investigator, James A. Davis; Director and Co-Principal Investigator, Tom W. Smith; Co-Principal Investigator, Peter V. Marsden, NORC ed. Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, producer, 2005; Storrs, CT: The Roper Center for Public Opinion and Research, University of Connecticut, distributor. 1 data file (51,020 logical records) and 1 codebook (2552 pp).

  4. 4.

    Katherine Beckett and Theodore Sasson, The Politics of Injustice: Crime & Punishment (Sage, 2004). Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (Sage, 2006). In the words of a renowned commentator on social capital, “Pseudo-problems have their costs.” Alejandro Portes and Erik Vikstrom, “Diversity, Social Capital and Cohesion,” in Annual Review of Sociology (2011, Vol. 37), 477.

  5. 5.

    Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 2 (Random House, 1990), 106.

  6. 6.

    Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (Free Press, [1893] 1964), 28.

  7. 7.

    This encapsulization of the Marxist model is provided by Randall Collins in Theoretical Sociology (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), 90.

  8. 8.

    Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Scribner’s, [1904–5] 1958).

  9. 9.

    Max Weber, “The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited by Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Oxford University Press, 1972), 311–312.

  10. 10.

    See Collins, op. cit., 152–153.

  11. 11.

    Emile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology (Free Press, 1951), 386.

  12. 12.

    Peter L. Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, To Empower People: From State to Civil Society (American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1977), 21.

  13. 13.

    Nan Marie Astone, Constance A. Nathanson, Robert Schoen, and Young J. Kim, “Family Demography, Social Theory, and Investment in Social Capital,” Population and Development Review (March 1999), 6.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., 18.

  15. 15.

    Brian J. Jones, Bernard J. Gallagher III , and Joseph A. McFalls , Jr., Sociology: Micro, Macro, and Megastructures (Harcourt Brace, 1995), 103.

  16. 16.

    Ibid., 109–113. This is not to imply that networks are universally beneficial. The negative side of networks is discussed on p. 113.

  17. 17.

    Nan Lin, Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 25.

  18. 18.

    Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Simon & Schuster, 2000).

  19. 19.

    Putnam, op. cit., 407.

  20. 20.

    David Halpern, Social Capital (Polity, 2005), 53.

  21. 21.

    Alejandro Portes, “Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology,” Annual Review of Sociology (Vol. 24, 1998), 2.

  22. 22.

    John Ehrenberg, Civil Society: The Critical History of an Idea (NYU Press, 1999), 248.

  23. 23.

    Astone et al., op. cit., 12. This point is also made by Portes, op. cit., 4.

  24. 24.

    Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, XXXIX.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., XXXVIII.

  26. 26.

    Refer to Gudmund R. Iversen and Helmut Norpath, Analysis of Variance (Sage Publications, 1985).

  27. 27.

    Emile Durkheim, Education and Sociology (Free Press, 1956), 72.

  28. 28.

    Ibid., 244.

  29. 29.

    Halpern, op. cit., 233.

  30. 30.

    Putnam discusses the methodological matter of using statistical controls for education in Appendix I of Bowling Alone. He is acutely aware that education tends to raise social capital and that education itself has risen over this period. Given that, Putnam reasons “… the more conservative course is not to control for education,” when arguing that social capital in America is in decline. This is true as far as it goes but of estimating his overall (downward) effects, Putnam says the following: “Virtually every generalization in this book has been subjected to detailed statistical analysis of this [multiple regression] sort, controlling simultaneously for age (or year of birth), gender, EDUCATION, income race, marital status, parental status, job status (working full-time, part-time, or not at all), and size at community of residence” [emphasis added]. This practice would render many of my findings invisible. Entering education directly into the ANOVA model allows a direct view of what is happening for each level while retaining the technical rigor of regression-style models.

  31. 31.

    Glen C. Loury, “Why Should We Care about Group Inequality?” Social Philosophy and Policy (1987: 5), 249–271.

  32. 32.

    Rodney Hero, Racial Diversity and Social Capital: Equality and Community in America (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 31.

  33. 33.

    Its general relevance is strongly suggested by Putnam’s routine inclusion of gender as a control in his analyses. Halpern offers a nice overview of age and social capital in op. cit., 248.

  34. 34.

    According to classical theorist Max Weber, “relevance to value” is the very thing that distinguishes the social from the natural sciences. See “‘Objectivity’ in “Social Science and Social Policy,” in The Methodology of the Social Sciences (Free Press, 1949), 50–112).

  35. 35.

    P.R. Amato, A. Booth, D.R. Johnson, and S.J. Rogers, Alone Together: How Marriage in America is Changing (Harvard University Press, 2000).

  36. 36.

    Clare M. Kamp Dush, Miles G. Taylor, and Rhiannon A. Koreger, “Marital Happiness and Psychological Well-Being Across the Life Course,” Family Relations (April 2008, Vol. 57), 211–226.

  37. 37.

    Mamadi Corra, Shannon K. Carter, J. Scott Carter, and David Kno, “Trends in Marital Happiness by Gender and Race, 1973 to 2006,” Journal of Family Issues (May 2009, online), 1379–1404, 1398.

  38. 38.

    Those “other areas” in the GSS series are: “The city or place you live in,” “Your non-working activities—hobbies and so on,” “Your friendships,” and “Your health and physical condition.”

  39. 39.

    P.E. Spector, Job Satisfaction: Application, Assessment, Cause, and Consequences (Sage, 1997).

  40. 40.

    Felix Requena. “Social Capital, Satisfaction and Quality of Life in the Workplace,” Social Indicators Research (July 2002, Vol. 61), 331–360. Yoav Gonzarch, “Intelligence, Education and Facets of Job Satisfaction,” Work and Occupations (2003, Vol. 30), 97–112. Lori J. Ducharme and Jack K. Martin, “Unrewarding Work, Coworker Support and Job Satisfaction: A Test of the Buffering Hypothesis,” Work and Occupations (2000, Vol. 27), 223–243.

  41. 41.

    Requena, ibid., 359. See also Filip Agneesens and Rafael Wittek, “Social Capital and Employee Well-Being: Disentangled Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Selection and Influence Mechanisms,” Revue Francaise de Sociology (2008, Vol. 49), 613–637.

  42. 42.

    See Peter Hazard Knapp, One World-Many Worlds (Harper-Collins, 1994), 46–47.

  43. 43.

    Arthur P. Brief and Howard M. Weiss, “Organizational Behavior: Affect in the Workplace,” Annual Review of Psychology (2002, Vol. 53), 279–307. Hank Flop and Beate Volker, “Goal Specific Social Capital and Job Satisfaction: Effects of Different Types of Networks on Instrumental and Social Aspects of Work,” Social Networks (2001, Vol. 23), 297–320.

  44. 44.

    Pamela Paxton, “Is Social Capital Declining in the U.S.? A Multiple Indicator Assessment,” American Journal of Sociology (July 1999, Vol. 105), 88–127.

  45. 45.

    Pierre Bourdieu, “Forms of Capital,” in Handbook of Theory in Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by John G. Richardson (Greenward Press, 1983), 241–258. Quote p. 248.

  46. 46.

    James C. Coleman, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,” American Journal of Sociology (1988, Vol. 94), 95–120.

  47. 47.

    Paxton, op. cit., 91. Given the recommendation of multiple indicators and more complex measurement models, Paxton also incorporates additional measures of trust and associations to those utilized here.

  48. 48.

    Putnam, Bowling Alone, op.cit., Chap. 8.

  49. 49.

    Francis Fukuyama, Trust: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (Simon and Schuster, 1996).

  50. 50.

    Yang Yang, “Long and Happy Living: Trends and Patterns of Happy Life Expectancy in the U.S., 1970–2000,” Social Science Research (2008, Vol. 37), 1235–1252, Quote p. 1239.

  51. 51.

    L.K. George, “Perceived Quality of Life,” in Handbook of Aging in the Social Sciences, edited by R.H. Binstock and L.K. George (Elsevier, 2006), 320–336. Ruut Veenhaven, “Developments in Satisfaction Research,” Social Indicators Research (January 1996, Vol. 37), 1–46.

  52. 52.

    Debra Umberson, Meichu D. Chen, James S. House, Kristine Hopkins, and Ellen Slaten, “The Effect of Social Relationships on Psychological Well-Bring: Are Men and Women Really So Different?” American Sociological Review (October 1996, Vol. 61), 837–857, Quote p. 839.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, USA

    Brian J. Jones

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Jones, B.J. (2019). What Are They Thinking?. In: Social Capital in American Life. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91180-9_1

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