Networks and Inequality

Today’s Dad Joke

How can you identify a dogwood tree?

By its bark

Housekeeping

• Get feedback to your peers on Thursday! (And upload to Brightspace)
• Presentations on Tuesday and Thursday
• Final draft DUE May 1
• Self Assessment Reflection
• Feedback for me (Purdue / Google Form / email / Discord)
• Sign up to meet with me (virtually is great)

Presentation Assignments

• Tuesday
  • Julia / Bonnie
  • Noah / Canaan / Ella / Madison
  • Ayush
  • Gunveer
  • Sahil
  • Xiaoyang
  • Trinity
  • Noelle C.
• Thursday
  • Maria M.
  • Logan C.
  • Paige B.
  • Dean C.
  • Kiara C.
  • Colin B.
  • Rafael D.
  • Noelle W.

Networks and racism

• How can networks produce or maintain racially biased outcomes?
• How does this tie into ideas about social/cultural/economic capital?
• How can we use what we know about networks to reduce racial inequality?

Discussion Questions

• What are some examples of invisible social capital that you have utilized in your own network?
• Do you think that upcoming technology like AI, will help get rid of inequality, or like companies and laws maintain that inequality or make it worse?
• When addressing inequality, do you think it is more important to focus on fixing hiring practices or improving everyone’s access to networks?

Discussion Questions

• How much should policy focus on building cross-class social connections versus improving economic resources directly? What are things policymakers could do to increase economic connectedness?
• The readings suggest increasing cross-class ties could raise income mobility by ~20%. What kinds of policies could realistically increase economic connectedness?
• If social networks shape economic outcomes so strongly, should society focus more on changing who people are connected to, or on improving the opportunities within existing networks?

Discussion Questions

-I’m still a little confused about how we actually separate the effects of social capital from other factors like income or education. It seems like they are all really connected, so I don’t fully understand how researchers can tell that networks themselves are the cause of differences in outcomes and not just a reflection of those other things.