A comparative study of informal support networks in Culver City, California.

Abstract

Two years of fieldwork in a small, diverse Los Angeles area city provide the means to examine informal support networks in a comparative way. The research, shaped by a practice theory framework, is based on surveys, interviews, and ethnography. Variations in support exchange, as well as motivations for and feelings about network participation, are examined across categories of race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status. Factors such as proximity to relatives and life course status also are considered. Issues that are addressed include: the form aid takes, whether financial, emotional, material, or instrumental; quantification of the various forms of assistance; the relationship links along which support moves; and the ideologies that motivate and accompany exchange actions. Results show that responses to structurally based socioeconomic stressors are mediated by culture, i.e., that similar situations evoke group-specific responses. Culture, however, is shown to be a multifaceted construct, involving intersecting and overlapping domains. Race and ethnicity interact with gender, socioeconomic status, and age in shaping support practice and ideology. Specific findings include that African Americans stress an ideology of independence, and manifest corresponding practices: they exchange fewer types of support less frequently, and with fewer types of people than do whites. Asian Americans also value independence, and they likewise exchange fewer types of support less frequently than whites, but they do so with different types of relatives than do African Americans. Latinos, however, stress independent ideologies less than whites. They are not as likely as whites to have non-family members in their networks, and they exchange more types of aid more frequently. Other findings of interest include that for middle class African Americans the generation of middle class attainment corresponds to differences in network composition and dynamics, and that the level of acculturation for both Asian Americans and Latinos similarly affects exchange. Gender is seen to cause differences in support ideology and behavior as well: women, for example, are more likely than men to have helped any type of person except a grown child and are more likely to have exchanged any type of assistance except monetary aid.