Читать книгу Contemporary Sociological Theory - Группа авторов - Страница 58

A common avenue out of the structure–action duality rests on social networks. The root of this idea is that in most social situations, action is not independent, but rather “embedded” with the actions of others (Granovetter 1985; see Part III of this volume). That is, people’s actions are in response to the prior actions of others and are mutually interdependent. Through social relations ranging from trivial fleeting interactions to deeply meaningful patterns of kin, social networks provide a way to simultaneously situate meaningful interaction within an extant, realized structure of prior action. Arguably, one of the theoretically richest accounts of this perspective has been made by Harrison White (b. 1930).

Harrison White entered Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at the age of 15 years and went on to receive a PhD in theoretical physics 5 years later. He leveraged a Ford Foundation fellowship at Princeton University to earn his PhD in sociology with a dissertation based on management conflict (White 1961). His early work on the structural implications of kinship patterns (White 1963) formalized earlier ideas from structural anthropology and laid the foundation for his later work on abstracting structural patterns from observed networks. Kinship systems provide a clear example of how primary relations (marriage and descent) can extend to other known roles (for example, your mother’s mother is your “grandmother” and your mother’s mother’s daughter’s daughter is your cousin). The various concatenations of the two primary relations can be used to describe the full kinship system. Moreover, rules about who is allowed to marry provide a constraint that shapes social action in ways that reinforce the system. White recognized that one can extend this argument to other kinds of relations and discover roles in systems by empirically tracing the most common patterns of extended network ties. Known as “blockmodeling,” this approach founded a long tradition of research building on earlier role theories. The ultimate, abstract extension of these ideas takes White beyond actors to “identities” and from the specific analyses of particular networks to the general strategies actors use to gain control (White, 1992; 2004).

White’s second major contribution to social theory is a direct attack on classical economic market models. In a series of papers culminating in his book Markets from Networks (2004), White demonstrates that the basic competition model for commodities that is the foundation for most work on markets is really just a special case of the many possible ways markets can be organized. Instead of focusing on the supply and demand for commodities, White focuses on observable relations among product producers and how they negotiate a trade-off between the quality of goods produced and the prices for those goods in comparison to similar other firms. In White’s model, firms choose a position along a quality–price array to offer goods. For example, Walmart seeks to offer low-quality goods at the lowest prices, while Target offers slightly higher-quality goods at slightly higher prices. As you move up the quality–price curve, you would find retailers, such as Macy’s, deliberately eschewing low prices in an effort to signal high quality. This insight has deep implications for market failures, prices, and control.

The piece reprinted in the following text existed as a mimeographed copy in circulation among White’s students (and students of students of students) that we first published in our third edition. While we are typically used to thinking of categories, such as “race” and “sex,” as essential fixed characteristics of people, White argues for a conception of categories that rests on the correspondence of network ties (Nets) with categories (Cats). A “catnet” is thus the correspondence between these two features of a population. Substantively, the idea reflects notions that we regularly observe – category membership (such as being “male” or “female”) is only relevant to the degree that it shapes our relations with others. Or, to flip it around, features come to have structural meaning when they shape social relations. The reality of a category is only meaningful when enacted in relations.