Résumé

The growing inequality, diversity, and polarization of contemporary societies make it urgent to understand what binds societies together and how these bonds can be strengthened. Two of the “constituent components” of social cohesion are social solidarity and reduction in wealth disparities (an ideational component; Kearns and Forrest, 2000), and social networks (the relational component; Moody and White, 2003). However, these two are mainly studied separately (cf. Dragolov et al., 2016; Schiefer and Van der Noll, 2017), which is unfortunate because people do not live in a social void or are solely informed about society by the evening news. They can be expected to form their beliefs about what is a just distribution of resources also based on their exposure to low and high incomes in their social networks – specifically, in the broad acquaintanceship networks most likely to shape individuals’ perceptions of society. In this talk, I present results from a study in Spain using a new methodology for measuring these broader acquaintanceship networks, which hybridizes the Network ScaleUp Method (cf. McCormick et al., 2010) with personal network analysis. I show how the composition of individual acquaintanceship networks is indeed related to individuals’ opinions regarding economic redistribution in rather complex ways. Last, I will briefly explain how the ERC Advanced Grant project “A network science approach to social cohesion in European societies” will advance the line of research that this Spanish project initiated.

Référence

Miranda Lubbers (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona), « Cancelled _ Do individuals’ acquaintanceship networks shape their support for economic redistribution? », IAST General Seminar, Toulouse : IAST, 29 novembre 2022, 11h30–12h30, salle Auditorium 4.