Colloquium in November 2023
Harris Kim (Professor, Department of Sociology, Ewha Womans University, South Korea)
Conventional wisdom has it that social capital provides certain advantages or benefits and that differential access to it partly accounts for unequal distribution of material rewards and other outcomes. Indeed, a large and growing literature exists on the implications and consequences of social capital across individual and contextual levels of analysis. In stark contrast, however, there is a scarcity of research on the antecedents of social capital.
The present study thus shifts the analytic focus to this vastly understudied topic. Its primary goal is to investigate key historical factors contributing to differential social capital endowments across the contemporary America. Why and how does social capital vary across different regions of the US? In this study, I propose that it has much to do with the country’s past: the legacy of chattel slavery.
By merging and analyzing 1860 US Census data with recent administrative data on friendship networks, I show that there is a significant causal connection. Net of historical and contemporary covariates, the US regions more dependent on slave during the antebellum period exhibit distinct patterns of network formation today. Specifically, they are characterized by more bonding, as opposed to bridging, social capital as measured in terms of interclass friendship ties and triadic closure.
