Social Networks 7 (1985) 341-351 North-Holland

341

BOUNDARY MAINTENANCE IN SUPPORT NETWORKS *

David JACOBSON Brandeis Chuersiry **

Most studies of social networks, whether they are viewed as the context of stressful expertences or of supportive interactions, assume fixed network boundaries. This assumption is necessary in order to analyze structural characteristics such as network density. Actual networks, however, change over time and across situations and the assumption of fixed boundaries is inappropriate for processual questions, Examination of such changes reveals limitations in the structural analysis of social networks and points to mechanisms and strategies by which network boundaries are drawn and redrawn.

Recently several analysts have discussed problems in the study of open and bounded networks and have focused attention on the ways in which network boundaries are drawn (Barnes 1979, Knoke and Kuklin- ski 1982: 22-26), pointing to biases and misrepresentations in the structural characteristics of networks which either follow from or are a by-product of research methodology. A related concern is the distortion induced by synchronic, cross-sectional research (cf. Wellman 1981: 179-181; Barnes 1979; Minor 1983; Erickson 1984). Here the difficulty is the “snapshot depiction of ties ‘frozen’ at the moment of investiga- tion” (Craven and Wellman 1973: 63), problematic not only because ties change over time but also because relationships beyond those activated at the point of investigation may be undetected or discounted. However, such unobserved ties can be important. They may influence behavior because, as Barnes put it, “individuals bring into the observed

* This paper was read at a symposium on “Bounded and Open Networks” at the Sunbelt Social Network Conference, February 15, 1985, Palm Beach, Florida. I appreciate the comments of Robert A. Manners, my colleague at Brandeis University, and of Manfred Kochen and Susan Greenbaum, co-participants at the conference session.

** Department of Anthropology, Brown 228, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02254, U.S.A.

0378-8733/85/$3.30 0 1985. Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)

patch of reality all of their latent roles, their past commitments, loves and hates [and] histories of previous interactions” (1979: 415). Since people have pasts as well as futures, their support networks cannot be comprehended only in terms of the structural characteristics of their present connections.

Studies depicting networks at more than one point in time begin to address this latter issue, but a problem remains. The difficulty is that although change in network boundaries or composition may be dis- cerned, their underlying dynamics may be overlooked. For example, Shulman (cf. Craven and Wellman 1973: 67) found that nearly half of those named as “intimates” at one point in time had changed within a year. And Minor, in a panel study of the social networks of former heroin addicts, reports that of some 4200 people described as network members in three waves at six month intervals, only 19 percent were mentioned at all three points in time, and that of those mentioned at the first interview, only 51 percent were mentioned six months later and 37 percent were mentioned a year after the initial interview (1983: 95). While these accounts illustrate the turnover in network members, they do not examine who left the network, who was recruited into it, nor do they explore the reasons or mechanisms for such losses and gains. In short, such diachronic studies leave us with several snapshots and little understanding of the expansion and contraction of networks nor do they tell us how the boundaries are manipulated or maintained.

This, then, is the problem which I begin to address in this paper: how to describe and analyze the processes which result in stability and change in network boundaries. One answer is to adopt an “organiza- tional” perspective (Firth 1954, 1955) which examines not only what people do (behavioral choices) but also what are the different courses of action available to them, the limits upon them, and in particular, the “adjustments” made in response to the interplay between alternatives and constraints. By emphasizing alternatives and constraints, an “organizational” model goes beyond personal dispositions in explaining the bounding of networks. Mitchell, for example, referred to personal inclination when he describes network mobilization. He noted that a discrepancy between potential and actual members of a network might be explained by the “intensity” of a relationship, by which he meant the willingness of those in it to honor their obligations to one another regardless of constraining or enabling conditions (1969: 27-29). He did not, however, explain what produced “intensity” in a relationship, and,

operationally, he and other researchers infer it from observed behavior (cf. Fischer 1977). This, of course. involves circular reasoning: “inten- sity” is defined as caring enough to honor an obligation, an attitude which is known by the fact of its having been so honored. Instead, an “organizational” perspective directs attention to the conditions under which such obligations are discharged, evaded, or ignored. Accordingly, I suggest that boundary maintenance is a function of a balance between resources and demands within a network on the one hand and an ideology which permits flexibility in the inclusion and exclusion of network members on the other. To illustrate this perspective. I refer to studies focussing on changing network boundaries, including pilot research I have been doing on the support networks of old people in Boston.

Although not characteristic of structural studies of social networks, an “organizational” perspective is not new to network research. It informs interactional models of social networks (cf. Mitchell 1969) or “choice-constraint” models, as Fischer labels them (1977, 1982). The difference between the two types of models is that in structural models the choices which constitute social relationships are taken as given and description and analysis focus on their patterning. In interactional models, the choices are taken as problematic and attention is directed to their formation, maintenance, and dissolution. The issue of network boundaries is not problematic in structural studies until their delimita- tion raises questions for the interpretation of structural characteristics: in interaction models, the ways in which networks are bounded are significant precisely because the processes which bring them into being and by which they are maintained or changed are of central analytical importance.

Mitchell’s work (1969: 43) on the relationship between potential and actual members of a network exemplifies the focus on questions of process in interactional models. He distinguishes between a category of potential relationships and a set of actual relationships which emerge in response to a precipitating,event. The potential members of a person’s network consist of a category of people who are expected, in terms of normative rules, to provide that person with various types of support, and, conversely, can expect to be supported by that person. Potential relationships, however, need not be activated and therefore do not become actual network links. Actual links become manifest only when they are mobilized in relation to some event or activity.

Boissevain (1971) elaborated on this scheme in his analysis of the relationship between “categories” and “coalitions”. For Boissevain, a network is a social category, or mental list, of others whom a person believes he can mobilize as an action-set or coalition around some event. The category may include those persons mobilized by an individ- ual in the past as well as those whom he might be able to recruit in the future. The category refers to potential supporters; the coalition refers to those persons who are actually mobilized at a particular point in time. Both category and coalition are liable to change over time. The crucial questions are how and why such changes occur and what accounts for the transformation of certain potential supporters into providers.

More recently, Hammer (1983) has conceptualized this issue as the relation between core and extended social networks, a distinction similar to the difference between Mitchell’s action-set and network and Boissevain’s coalition and category. The “extended” network con- stitutes the pool of potential supporters and the “core” network, those who are mobilized around some precipitating event. Failure to mobilize support or “ vulnerability” in the core network, as Hammer describes it, is related to the characteristics of the extended network. In document- ing this point, Hammer refers to studies which show that social class conditions the vulnerability of core networks (cf. Finlayson 1976; Eckenrode and Gore 1981; Erickson 1984).

This is an important observation, and it raises several questions. First, it is unclear whether the “characteristics” of the extended net- work refer to structural properties such as density or reachability or to factors such as resources and/or normative principles regarding their distribution. If the latter, then it may not be the extended network in particular but the context in general which influences the activities of those who comprise a core network. Secondly, while it is evident that core networks, particularly among populations with limited resources, are vulnerable and subject to periodical failure, it is also the case that they are often described as oscillating between phases of contraction and expansion, where an expansion phase may be viewed as network “resistance”. In this sense, it is important to examine not only network vulnerability but also the sources or conditions of its resilience. Finally, Hammer notes that lower class core networks tend to be characterized by kin connections and suggests that this may “indicate a more bounded set of social resources” (1983: 410, cf. Chrisman and Klein-

man 1983: 581-583). An alternative hypothesis is that limited economic resources tend to limit the size of core networks and that kin are disproportionately included within them, specifically selected from among all the potential members of the extended network because they typify enduring relations, which serve as a basis of social exchange (cf. Jacobson 1973). It certainly seems that kinship is an idiom of differen- tial mobilization, even if it entails fictive or metaphorical relationships. Why kinship would provide such an idiom or principle of selection has been a topic of considerable interest to anthropologists and sociologists (cf. Schneider 1968; Fortes 1969; Schneider and Smith 1973; and Farber 1981). In any case, it seems worthwhile pursuing this problem by looking at the activation and deactivation of core networks as examples of network bounding.

Colson (1978), for example, describes a case in which network contraction is intentional and indicative of effective coping behavior rather than vulnerability. She analyzes a situation of technological and demographic change which results in a flooding of networks because of the increasing ease with which people can contact and communicate with one another. Through exclusionary strategies, individuals seek to maintain the size or boundaries of their networks (in order to preserve resources, including time, energy, and emotions, as well as their tangi- ble assets) in the face of increasing demands by others who are attempting to tap into them. This results in a proliferation of social circles, temporarily bounded and relatively isolated from one another, through which individuals attempt to control the forces impinging upon them (cf. Jacobson 1978).

Two points should be noted about Colson’s argument. First, she confirms the view, long established in urban studies, that withdrawal and the attenuation of contacts with others, both psychologically and sociologically, is seen as a response to increasing demands and threats of intrusion (cf. Simmel 1950; Wirth 1938; Suttles 1968; Milgrim 1970). ’ Secondly, and especially relevant to the study of support networks, Colson’s conceptual framework is consistent with transac- tional theories of stress (cf. McGrath 1970; Lazarus 1980; Lazarus and Folkman 1984). In the transactional view, stress occurs when the demands on an individual exceed his or her resources and the conse-

’ The inclusion and exclusion of others has its anthropological roots in the situational selection of socml identities (cf. Evans-Pritchard 1940: Leach 1954: and Barth 1969. among others).

quent imbalance is perceived as detrimental to the individual’s well- being. Coping behavior includes either decreasing demands, increasing resources, or neutralizing consequences. The first two strategies, de- creasing demands and/or increasing resources, typically involve con- tracting and expandin g network boundaries, either to slough off per- sons who represent claims or to incorporate others who bring with them psychosocial assets. Much anthropological research on social networks is directed to exploring the cultural mechanisms (symbols and idioms) which facilitate such changes.

Several ethnographic studies describe the expansion and contraction of network boundaries. Liebow’s analysis (1967) of changing friend- ships among p oor ‘streetcorner men’ is one example (cf. Jacobson 1975). Liebow depicts their friendships in terms of a personal network anchored on a focal individual. Its inner part, or core, contains “good” and “best” friends and its outer edges are populated by “acquaintan- ties” and “former friends”. The category of “former friends” is im- portant in its implication of relational changes, indicating not only the beginnings of relationships but their endings as well. Liebow analyzes the transformation of acquaintances into friends and friends into best friends, which occurs, he suggest, primarily for instrumental reasons. Friends exchange goods and services. Reciprocity is expected, but limited resources restrain individuals from meeting expectations, lead- ing to the breakdown of relationships and to a corresponding re-evalua- tion of people as “fair-weather” friends. Liebow thus relates changes in the network of friends to changing socioeconomic circumstances and to fluctuations in the relation between resources and demands within a person’s network. Liebow, however, does more. He analyzes the roman- ticizing of friendships, the “upgrading” of casual contacts to close intimates, through the idiom of kinship (e.g., “going for brothers”). revealing the symbols that facilitate such processes. In this case, cult- ural assumptions about the continuity of kinship relations (in Liebow’s phrase, its “bony structure”), in contrast to the transiency and fragility of friendships, are linked to estimations of trust and the bases of social exchange.

Cohen’s study (1969) of Hausa trading networks in Nigeria is another example. He is particularly concerned with the ways in which Hausa maintain their network boundaries in order to resist the efforts of others to undermine their control over long distance trade. He looks at several points were the network might break down and the strategies

for insuring boundary maintenance. First, Cohen describes the ways in which traders become encapsulated in the systems through investment in scarce resources, showing also the constraints on their withdrawing from it. Then he depicts the ways in which non-Hausa are kept out by reference to exclusive ritual practices. He also analyzes the institution of begging which serves as a safety valve allowing individuals to remain within the system during times of economic recession. Finally, Cohen describes beliefs and customs which both discourage Hausa men from marrying non-Hausa women and which permit Hausa women to adapt to changing sociodemographic distributions by entering and exiting marriages within the network.

Stack’s description (1974) of support networks among people stressed by chronic poverty is another case study, particularly interesting for its exploration of the dynamics of boundary maintenance. She analyzes the ways in which people attempt to balance resources and demands by participating in support networks in which goods and services are exchanged. Stack argues that coping with poverty requires these sup- port networks, and the problem is to maintain them despite conditions which undermine their existence. Like Liebow, Stack analyzes the ways in which others are recruited into such networks through the devices of fictional kinship and fosterage. Like Cohen, she examines gossip and other techniques of social control through which individuals are dis- couraged or prevented from leaving a network. She also describes the beliefs which enable people to make and break friendships, thereby enlisting some and shedding others as the resources and demands in the network fluctuate.

The tension in all of these networks is that they must be bounded to conserve resources against the potentially excessive demands of other- wise unlimited others and yet they must be open in order to have access to required goods and services at those times when their own are temporarily depleted.

The final example I cite draws on fieldwork that I conducted on support networks among old people in Boston. ’ Here I am concerned with the differential mobilization of “core” networks (action-sets or coalitions), and, in particular, I focus on the interaction between normative principles and organizational factors. The research popula-

’ The fieldwork was supported by grants from Bernard Gordon of Analogic Corporation and John L. DuBois of Dytron Inc., to whom I express my apprrciatlon.

tion consisted of a sample of elderly men and women (between 65 and 85 years old) living alone and relying on others for various types of support (primarily goods and services). 3. When asked to whom they would turn for help, they typically stated who should provide assis- tance, their answers constituting cultural “rules”. They expect support from others in this order: kin, friends, and then formal (bureaucratic) providers. Moreover, kin support is sequenced by generation and gender: they expect to get help first from children, preferably daughters, then siblings, preferably sisters, and then grandchildren, preferably granddaughters. 4. These people, in this order, constitute their category or extended network of potential supporters.

In actuality, the order in which help was sought, and received, departed from the ideal, reflecting instead organizational principles. Demands from others (in the network) on their potential supporters limit the help the elderly get. And, in practice, they acknowledge that. Requests for support were directed to and were met by those who had a positive balance of resources and demands. This balance, in turn, was determined not only by the giver’s resources but also by the needs of others who had claims on them. Typically, informants asked their (adult) children and their siblings for help, but the actual sequence in which they sought it and the likelihood of their getting it depended on the choices and constraints confronting these potential supporters. Children would be asked first, but only when they had relatively few demands on them - that is, when they did not have their own children (the grandchildren of the informants) living at home. In that case, the elderly would turn to their siblings, again in order of their ratio of resources and responsibilities. The brother or sister with no children or no grandchildren would be approached first, those with dependents later. The flow of support followed a similar course. Thus, family life cycle, other things being equal, became a useful index of the dynamics

The research population consisted of twenty “cases” - focal individuals and others in their networks, including relatives, friends. nevghbors. and formal service providers. Each focal individual was interviewed for at least ten hours, many Kerr seen for longer periods. and still other network members were interviewed irregularly, for varying lengths of time. This pattern is consistent with Farber’s findings about priorities among relatives in what he describes as the Standard American Kinship Model (1981: 50). In as much as conceptions of kinshlp are a basis for mobilizing action (support) hy relatives, the standard American kinship model indicates that a focal individual (ego). in old age. would he closest to and would call on. In this order, children. grandchildren. metes and nephews. first cousins, great-grandchlldren. and grandnieces and grandnephew.

D. Jacobsor? / Boundan’ tnaimertance 349

of network mobilization (cf. Estes and Wilensky 1978). This pattern is also evident in early studies of the developmental cycle in domestic groups (cf. Fortes 1949a, 1949b; Goody 1958).

To sum up: boundary maintenance in support networks involves not only structural characteristics but also cultural rules and organizational factors. From the perspective of an interactional model, a relationship can be activated or a network mobilized when its resources are equal to or greater than the demands on them. Both will be vulnerable when demands exceed resources. When that happens, it is useful to look at the ways in which a “core” network is “opened” and a balance is restored. Conversely, at some other location in the “extended” network, efforts may be initiated to slow down or halt the outflow or redistribu- tion of resources. Studying the equilibrium between these tendencies and the optimal points and cultural mechanisms of expansion and contraction, will, I believe, help us to a clearer understanding of change and stability in network boundaries.

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