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140 Chapter 8 The Extension of the Local Culture areas are coterminous with communication channels. —Tamotsu Shibutani, “Reference Groups as Perspectives” (1955, 566) A SOCIOLOGY THAT focuses exclusively on small, interacting groups is a limited discipline. Apart from a few microscopic “tribal” societies, most groups connect with other groups. This recognizes the presence and power of networks in creating and extending social control, shared perspectives, and normative order and, at times, in generating divisions, inequalities, conflicts, and resistance. Culture extends from local scenes through processes of domain extension. Scenes build on each other to create a more extensive and robust social system. Local domains of knowledge are expanded when groups come into contact through the linkages of members, the deliberate diffusion of information, or the use of resource power to force others to heed the choices of those more dominant. Just as groups vary in their authority, control, and resources, they vary in their effect on the choices of communities , large and small. Networks are never simply linkages among individuals but rather linkages among individuals embedded in groups; as such, they lead to advantages for those who are widely known and have extensive ties (Burt 2010). Mark Granovetter’s (1973) influential distinction between strong and weak ties showed that an associational network constitutes clumps of strong ties linked by weaker acquaintanceship ties. As Craig Calhoun (1993, 37–38) phrases it, in “nearly any imaginable case there will be clusters of relatively greater density of communication within the looser overall field.” Since most individuals participate in multiple groups or shift their group affiliations (Ikegami 2000, 1002; Mische 2007), the pattern of linkages is complex. Brokers who are tied into several groups and who can link groups are particularly influential (Burt 2005; Hillmann 2008); agents of control can bring demands from one group (a police unit or legislative assembly) to another (a gang or small business). As Harrison White (1995) argues, those sites at which groups (or, more precisely, group members) gather become points of connection and diffusion, permitting the coordination of a society composed of many sites (Omar Lizardo, personal communication, 2009). The bridging and brokerage function of salient group members helps establish interstitial networks (Emirbayer and Sheller 1999). Moments of group activation are crucial to the expansion of a cultural context. In this light, Lewis Yablonsky (1959) spoke of the activation of “near-groups” in describing how groups (in his case gangs) extend the local culture by involving those who belong to the penumbra of the group. The same can be said of political parties when dramatic occurrences—such as legislative campaigns and, more particularly, elections—generate excitement and participation among partisans. In my research with political volunteers, I found that for most of the year these men and women were engaged in other activities—the mundane activities of their own lives—and only occasionally did they come together in emotion-drenched solidarity. Their world changed as I observed them in the thrill of political gatherings. At these times and places, they truly felt that they were political actors. Wearing buttons and chanting rhythmically as orators assailed their opponents, they believed that they mattered in creating an engaged civil society. Such quasi-groups recognize that boundaries are flexible and can be expanded under conditions in which the scene is defined as “where the action is” (Goffman 1967; Sato 1988). Those who have detailed the cultural components of subcultures emphasize the salience of linkages that connect groups (Barnes 1969). These ties capture the reality that, within a social system, institutions knit communities and spread culture because they are organized through small groups that, while often spatially and temporally bounded, are also intersecting. Small groups are specialized publics in an institutional division of labor, and thus people participate in groups in several life-world domains (work, family, religion, education, leisure). Involvement in multiple groups raises the possibility of boundary spanning. Wispy occasions that bring sequestered groups together (movement rallies, Boy Scout jamborees, gaming convocations, political conventions, scholastic chess tournaments) extend and integrate networks. These linkages are evident in the ethnographic examination of group cultures. For instance, many political tasks are organized on the local level. The political activists I studied volunteered in a state representative district, and the participants knew each other from being neighbors and working on the same local campaigns. However, they could be recruited for congressional, gubernatorial, or national campaigns, and when these similar-minded participants from numerous local districts met, their local cultures...

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