Soci 10.3
Name__________________________
Assignment 2
Please print out this sheet, complete it, and turn it in.
An example from the Rytina & Morgan paper is the tipping of adolescent
subcultures. Let's
look at a high school in a small town. There are about 2000 teens in
the town, and about 48,000
adults. We also know that teens have less ties than adults: they simple
know less people. Let's
assume that each kid has 300 friends and each adult has 500.
Complete the following table assuming that it is a random table - that
is, assume that age has no
bearing on friendship choice and thus friendships are distributed randomly
based on percent of
population.
| Ties
to --->
from |
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Now, let's make a much more reasonable assumption: kids are much
more likely (at least in contemporary American society) to be friends with
other kids. Let's say that kids on average (mean) are friends with
200 other kids.
Complete the table now.
| ties to---->
from |
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If adults try to increase their ties to kids, by activities in community
centers, in clubs, tournaments, leagues, and so on, they can effectively
block the emergence of adolescent subcultures.
Complete the following chart, assuming that kids have a mean number
of 100 ties to other kids.
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ties to ---->
from |
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1) How many more ties does the average adult have to have to decrease
adolescents' "groupness" (from the chart above)?
2) How much does this decrease the percentage of ties of the average
adult to other adults?
3) You can calculate the density of social relations of a group by dividing
the mean number of in-group ties by the total size of the group.
Calculate the density of social relations for kids and adults based on
the last chart (express as a percentage).
4) How much higher is the density of social relations for adults
than kids? (Divide adult density by kid density)
What do Rytina and Morgan suggest this might
mean?
Thus, group identity is governed by the proportion of in-group ties
and by in-group tie density. We
saw how minorities can be simply overrun or tipped by subtle changes
in the network composition of
majority groups. This process is what we call assimilation, or the
destruction of a category's salience.
There are two competing ideals in regard to intergroup relations: the
first ideal is that a just society
ignores categories. The second ideal is that we want minority groups
to be able to sustain
independent cultures. The arithmetics of social relations explain why
it is so hard to realize both ideals
at the same time and have salient minority identities but equality
on other dimensions.