Jason Kaufman

Tastes, ties, and time: A new social network dataset using Facebook.com

Scholars have long recognized the potential of Internet-based communication technologies for improving network research—potential that, to date, remains largely underexploited. In the first half of this paper, we introduce a new public dataset based on manipulations and embellishments of a popular social network site, Facebook.com. We emphasize five distinctive features of this dataset and highlight its advantages and limitations vis-a-vis other kinds of network data. In the second half of this paper, we present descriptive findings from our first wave of data. Subgroups defined by gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status are characterized by distinct network behaviors, and students sharing social relationships as well as demographic traits tend to share a significant number of cultural preferences. These findings exemplify the scientific and pedagogical potential of this new network resource and provide a starting point for future analyses.

Social selection and peer influence in an online social network

Disentangling the effects of selection and influence is one of social sciences greatest unsolved puzzles: Do people befriend others who are similar to them, or do they become more similar to their friends over time? Recent advances in stochastic actor-based modeling, combined with self-reported data on a popular online social network site, allow us to address this question with a greater degree of precision than has heretofore been possible. Using data on the Facebook activity of a cohort of college students over 4 years, we find that students who share certain tastes in music and in movies, but not in books, are significantly likely to befriend one another. Meanwhile, we find little evidence for the diffusion of tastes among Facebook friends—except for tastes in classical/jazz music. These findings shed light on the mechanisms responsible for observed network homogeneity; provide a statistically rigorous assessment of the coevolution of cultural tastes and social relationships; and suggest important qualifications to our understanding of both homophily and contagion as generic social processes.

Cross-National Cultural Diffusion: The Global Spread of Cricket

This article explores the dynamics of cross-national cultural diffusion through the study of a case in which a symbolically powerful cultural practice, the traditionally English sport of cricket, successfully diffused to most but not all countries with close cultural ties to England. Neither network ties, nor national values, nor climatic conditions account for this disparity. Our explanation hinges instead on two key factors: first, the degree to which elites chose either to appropriate the game and deter others from participating or actively to promote it throughout the population for hegemonic purposes; and second, the degree to which the game was “popularized” by cultural entrepreneurs looking to get and keep spectators and athletes interested in the sport. Both outcomes relate to the nature of status hierarchies in these different societies, as well as the agency of elites and entrepreneurs in shaping the cultural valence of the game. The theoretical significance of this project is thus the observation that the diffusion of cultural practices can be promoted or discouraged by intermediaries with the power to shape the cultural meaning and institutional accessibility of such practices.

Corporate Law and the Sovereignty of States

This article explores the origins of a social form with lasting and profound sociological implications: the corporation. Though corporations date back as far as the Roman Republic, the early United States fostered a significant transformation in corporate law. Shortly after the American Revolution, several states pioneered a system whereby corporate charters became available to almost anyone (at a price), leading (eventually) to a proliferation of corporate charters unlike anything ever seen before in world history. This proliferation of corporate charters first occurred in colonies that were originally chartered as corporations: Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, all of which used the corporate organizational form for a wide array of social pursuits. These colonies also experienced repeated conflict with the Crown over the rights and privileges of corporations. As American “states,” they built on these experiences to liberalize access to the means of incorporation and to elucidate the rights and freedoms of corporations. Other studies aptly document the diffusion of the corporate organizational form after 1800; this article takes up the antecedents to the use and popularity of the modern corporate organizational form. These observations do not supersede scholarly work regarding the economic origins of the American business corporation, but they do shed valuable light on the interdependence of states and markets, as well as the nature of institutional-legal transformation more generally.

The Best of the Brightest: Definitions of the Ideal Self Among Prize-Winning Students

This paper documents and explains characteristics of the ideal self rewarded by the American educational system as defined and projected by high school students who have been selected as Presidential Scholars in a national academic competition sponsored by the Department of Education and a White House Commission. Drawing on analysis of competition essays written by 119 Presidential Scholars and interviews conducted with 19 of them, we identify how these students implicitly and explicitly define the ideal self and what they do to demonstrate that they embody the characteristics of the self they perceive as rewarded by the American educational system. The data show that morality is the most salient dimension of the ideal self displayed by Scholars, and that they define it in terms of self-actualization, authenticity, and interpersonal morality; that Scholars present negative or ambivalent views concerning the importance of socioeconomic status; and that culture as a dimension of the ideal self is highlighted only by a subset of Scholars. In general, their displayed definitions of the ideal self are individualist in content but highly institutionalized in form. We explain our findings by the cultural repertoires that are made available to students and by their life experience and the broader structural characteristics of American society that lead them to draw on specific repertoires.

Social-Capital Formation and American Fraternal Association: New Empirical Evidence

Rare membership and lodge data from a late nineteenth-century American fraternal order provide support for the existence of bridging ties among its members along class and neighborhood lines, though not across racial or gender lines. Lodge-related political activity centered on issues of exclusivity, such as the desirability of non-English speaking members. The orders system of government was more top-heavy and hierarchical than democratic; decisionmaking power resided with established members at the organizations national level. Overall, the data paint a picture of an American fraternal lodge unlike that represented in the contemporary literature about social-capital formation in the Golden Age of Fraternity.

The Political Economy of Interdenominational Competition in Late-Nineteenth-Century American Cities

Religious life in late-nineteenth-century American cities presents an intriguing set of questions for scholars of urban and religious history. Comparatively speaking, religious life was, and still is, notable in its diversity of practices. America stands apart in having neither a state-sanctioned religion nor any single dominant religious tradition. Thus, many denominations proliferated, flourished, and suffered in an atmosphere of intense competition for parishioners, which raises the question, How did this competition affect individual religious communities? The late-nineteenth-century boom in voluntary organizational activity— the so-called “GoldenAge of fraternity”—presents a second and related question. Given the proliferation of fraternal organizations, social clubs, and benevolent organizations in American cities after the Civil War, religious groups faced potential competition from secular organizations offering comparable opportunities for community, social support, and sociability. How did the associational boom of the late nineteenth century affect religious life in American cities? Together, these two questions highlight an element of American religious life not generally considered in historical accounts thereof: the emergence of religiously based voluntary organizations founded to provide secular comforts for converts and parishioners, such as life insurance collectives, elaborate

Groups or Gatherings? Sources of Political Engagement in 19th Century American Cities

There is broad agreement that citizen participation is critical for successful democracy. Recently, scholars have linked such political participation with the notion of social capital—community-level resources, such as trust, norms, and networks, that foster collective action. Much uncertainty remains regarding the sources of social capital, however. Here we examine two different features of community life that are believed to nurture social capital, and political participation in turn: public venues where relative strangers can meet anonymously, socialize, and share information and opinions (i.e., venues for informal interaction); and venues for organized exchange between familiars, such as voluntary organizations and social clubs. Using quantitative data from Americas largest cities at the end of the 19th century, we examine the relationship between both supposed sources of social capital and respective rates of voter participation. We find little support for the role of informal interaction in fostering an active and engaged citizenry. We do, however, find evidence that citizen participation was related to some types of associationalism (or organized exchange). In particular, associations that fostered high levels of mutual interdependence among members seemed the most strongly linked to higher levels of political participation.

Rent-Seeking and Municipal Social Spending: Data from America’s Early Urban-Industrial Age

The term rent-seeking refers to special interest group efforts to seek special benefits at little or no cost to themselves. Because government spending has the potential to create both costs and benefits for taxpayers, fiscal policy is commonly viewed as a primary arena of rent-seeking activity. At least five different theories of nineteenth-century American urban development fit this general rubric. Each theory predicts different winners and losers as well as different underlying strategies and distributions of interests incumbent upon municipal decision making. This study uses two-wave panel data on special interest group representation and municipal social spending to examine the validity of these different theories of rent-seeking. Though all such theories share in commonan emphasis on self-seeking, this study points to the role of competition between different sectors of the local economy as a motivating force for the formation and mobilization of special interest group organizations. This finding contrasts with those rent-seeking theories that predict widespread cooperation among communities and/or classes in pursuit of common goals. Suggestions for future research on this topic are offered as well.

The Conversion of Cultural Tastes into Social Network Ties1

In recent years, sociologists have focused less on cultural tastes as “effects” of social structure and more on their causal efficacy in the creation and maintenance of social ties. Progress on this agenda has been hindered, however, by limitations in theory, methods, and available data. This article attempts to advance all three fronts. First, it clarifies, integrates, and expands upon prior work to develop a more comprehensive theoretical framework for examining the conversion of cultural tastes into social relationships. Second, it introduces a powerful network modeling tool, stochastic actor-based modeling, that is uniquely capable of implementing this framework. Third, it illustrates the utility of these advances using an original, longitudinal data set based on the behavior of a cohort of college students on Facebook. Findings from this application suggest several general substantive propositions about capital conversion, providing a starting point for future research.