Homophily promotes the development of social relationships within social groups and increases segregation across groups. Although prior research has demonstrated that network segregation operates in many dimensions such as race and gender, sexual orientation has received little attention. This study investigates what accounts for the segregation…

Proponents of homeownership policies often argue that homeowners participate more actively in community life and civic affairs than renters. Although research suggests higher rates of participation among homeowners, the underlying mechanisms driving this relationship are unclear. On one hand, the locally dependent financial investments homeowners…

This study outlines a new explanation for homophily in social networks that is neither intended nor imposed by constraints on partner choices. Rather, homophily is an endogenous product of the emergent exchange process, in which actors seek high-value partners who reciprocate their gestures. Whereas all actors initially direct exchange toward…

Drawing on the embeddedness, varieties of capitalism and macrosociological life course perspectives, we examine how institutional arrangements affect network-based job finding behaviors in the United States and Germany. Analysis of cross-national survey data reveals that informal job matching is highly clustered among specific types of individuals…

Using terms like free spaces and havens, conventional wisdom views social ties by subordinate groups to dominant group members as hindering protest participation. In contrast, we draw on ethnic resiliency and social capital perspectives and argue that there are mobilization benefits to having dominant group members as friends. We offer a unique…

Consistent with the hypothesis that heightened visibility and competition lead to greater economic discrimination against minorities, countless studies have observed a negative association between minority population concentration and minority socioeconomic attainment. But minorities who reside in areas with high minority concentration are likely…

This paper engages two core ideas: first, that status mobility is facilitated through connectivity, or having a large number of ties to others, as suggested by theories of social capital and social networks; and second, that aggression is an expressive or irrational reaction to frustrations, humiliations, or social pathologies. In contrast, I…

Most sociological research assumes that social network composition shapes individual beliefs. Network theory and research has not adequately considered that internalized cultural worldviews might affect network composition. Drawing on a synthetic, dual-process theory of culture and two waves of nationally-representative panel data, this article…

Going to college has long been assumed to liberalize students' religious beliefs. Using longitudinal data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, we compare change in the content of religious beliefs of those who do and do not attend college. We find that, in general, college students are no more likely to develop liberal religious beliefs…

Using a nationally representative sample of adolescents, we examine associations among social integration (network size), network cohesion (alter-density), perceptions of social relationships (e.g., social support) and adolescent depressive symptoms. We find that adolescents with either too large or too small a network have higher levels of…

This article explores the plausibility of the conflicting theoretical assumptions underlying the main criminological perspectives on juvenile delinquents, their peer relations and social skills: the social ability model, represented by Sutherland's theory of differential associations, and the social disability model, represented by Hirschi's…

This research examines the gendered nature of cultural legitimacy and consecration in popular music. We explore two related questions. First, which factors affect the likelihood that female performers achieve consecrated status? Second, how are those decisions discursively legitimated? Using a mixed-methods research design, we find that in both…

World polity theory is explicitly relational, implying a global network structure that exists outside of the nation-state. And world polity theory increasingly acknowledges power--that some states and regions are dominant in the international field. But current world polity measures of international non-governmental organizations do not…

Despite great interest in the role of social networks as channels of political mobilization, few studies have examined which types of social networks work more effectively in recruiting political activists. Using the Citizen Participation Study data, this study shows that contrary to the conventional wisdom in the literature, there is little…

We examine the manner in which voluntary associations expose individuals to differing perspectives, or "cross-talk." Specifically we develop hypotheses based on the interactive roles of elite bias and homophily in structuring networks of democratic participation and test them on social network data of Los Angeles neighborhood councils.…