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March 26, 2005
Homophily Bias
Among the many intriguing ideas offered by Ronald Burt in the chapter draft of "Social Capital of Structural Holes," (PDF) from Brokerage and Closure, homophily bias--or the echo chamber effect--returned me to some questions I was thinking about at CCCC in San Francisco last week. We're reading Burt's chapter for CCR711 this week, taking it up alongside a chapter on postmodern mapping as research methodology from Porter and Sullivan's Opening Spaces. Earlier this semester, we read about homophily parameters in Duncan Watts' Six Degrees; commonly framed as echo chambers, the concept circulates in correspondence to like-mindedness, absolution of dissent, or the kind of diminished, unproductive parroting bound to stagnate--an abundance of closed-group gestures. Homophily bias, then, is the orientation of a particular network structure toward such a closed-ness.
And so I find the connection to CCCC in the structuring of Special Interest Groups or SIGs--the interest-defined clusters that form around a particular issue, cause, political imperative or specialization. SIGs meet each year, and, of course, they make possible a forum for collegiality, perhaps even solidarity, organizational focus and expert niche. Variously, they serve social, political and professional needs; as defined structures (form-alized with the petition to be listed in the program), they give us one way to imagine the field--embodied in the annual flagship conference--as a clustered topology. Fair to say?
If we apply Burt's analysis to these clusters, however, we might begin--productively--to find vocabulary for understanding the rules, roles and power dynamics enforced in a particular SIG. The groups have membership rosters, but what would happen if we started to differentiate the members as connectors (people who have multiple ties across special interest groups) and brokers (people who, because of their multiple ties, are able to pitch the group's interest to other, perhaps larger, bodies in the organization)? Should the SIG accumulate too high a homophily bias, it would stand to disconnect from the more active channels in the organization. Through particularly well-connected agents--active connector-brokers capable of bridging structural holes in the organization's topology--might the SIG sustain itself beyond a kind of isolation and connect meaningfully with the organization at-large, provided, of course, that such broader persuasions are mutually valued to the SIG's members. For what it's worth, I'm not thinking about any particular SIG; instead I'm trying to reconcile Burt's terms with network formations related to CCCC. Furthermore, I'm interested in exploring what it might mean to convene a heterophily-biased interest group--maybe something that would have different interest groups co-mingle for fruitful partnerships and cooperatives.
Posted by dmueller at March 26, 2005 08:55 PM
Comments
I don't know if you're asking on a theoretical or practical level, but...
One of the things that reading Sullivan and Porter reminded me about is that English departments rarely partner with Business departments. I think there is missed opportunity there. Well, and, I think there are many opportunities that could bear fruit if we just ask.
Hm...most departments have grad student associations (high density info flow w/n group) and then there is usually a grad school student organization at the university (providing low desity circulation between dept and univ. groups).
What if egsa's from different universities partnered in some way?
What if more students were encouraged to take independent-study courses (called a "Problems course" here at MU. (hee!)) and paralleled courses at other universities? Here at MU, MA students may take one such course and have it count toward the required 15 hours of 8000-level coursework, but PhD students can only take 1 such course and it doesn't fulfill any of the required 18 hours at the 8000 level. I was told that such things are, generally speaking, frowned upon: one should seek professors one wants to study with and take whatever courses they are teaching. I see where they're coming from, but if one examines one's standpoint as Sullivan and Porter would have us do, then there is, I think, unpicked fruit.
Posted by: Marcia at March 27, 2005 06:53 PM
As long as it challenges us to sort through some of the possibilities, Marcia, I suppose the question could be taken both theoretically and practically. Your examples make me wonder how departments and disciplines can be attributed with homophily biases, whether that's the right way of terming it. Could this just be a more caustic frame than "focus" or "concentration"?
I suppose you're right that universities (egs associations, small-ish departments) might find useful partnerships. I hadn't thought much about those possibilities when I developed this entry. The connections work well enough, and I agree that they would have us adapt pomo mapping to re-imagine more conventional/ordinary/received clusters, relationships and organizational orientations.
Posted by: Derek at March 27, 2005 09:10 PM
I think it would be interesting to look at the SIGs that convened at the SF conference and think about which ones would enhance/further/reinscribe the thinking of the others. I would also be interesting to find out who's in multiple SIGs and so, potentially, who the connectors are. Collin and I were talking about comp/rhet's diverse factions and how it seems impossible to keep these special interests from spinning off into discrete disciplines (well, I was musing about that, not Collin, necessarily). In any case, what would a look at SIGs from this standpoint tell us about how to reinfuse our discipline with energy derived from the collaboration of multiple expertises in tangentially related areas (ie, they all have emerged from comp/rhet). Or maybe it's the nature of complex systems to emerge and differentiate...?
Posted by: di at March 27, 2005 09:33 PM
It's hard to gauge because the SIGs are slotted for one hour each on Thursday and Friday, so doubling up is fairly difficult. A quick glance through the index of participants shows these three folks are the ones SIGging double-duty:
Margaret Strain
TSIG05: Opening the Gates of Academe through Mentoring: How to Help Students and Colleagues Enter and Succeed
FSIG09: Oral Histories, Interviews, and the Voices in Between: Establishing the Rhetoric and Composition Sound Archives
Jenn Fishman
TSIG04: American Society for the History of Rhetoric
FSIG15: Accessing the Profession: The CCCC Graduate Student SIG
Judy Artz
TSIG22: Helping Students through the Gates: College and University Writing Assessment in the 21st Century
FSIG21: Intercollegiate E-Democracy Project
Are the SIGs an appropriate cluster-set for thinking about these organizational, network-ic dimensions? Whether or not the question would lead us to any insights, it reminds me of recent suggestions (by cgb) that CCCC should do more with the data it collects. I'd be interested to see the clustering coefficient by instutution reflected across the SIGs, for example.
Posted by: Derek at March 27, 2005 10:57 PM
Good grief. I just read what I wrote and I don't know what I was thinking to go off on such a tangent. Sorry about that. Please continue.
Posted by: Marcia at March 28, 2005 11:26 PM