Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton, “Friendship as Social Process: A Substantive and Methodological Analysis,” in Freedom and Control in Modern Society, ed. Morroe Berger, 18–66 (New York: Van Nostrand, 1954), 22.
Ibid., 23
Mark Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” The American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 6. (May, 1973): 1360–1380, 1373.
Jeffrey Travers and Stanley Milgram , “An Experimental Study of the Small World Problem” Sociometry 32, no. 4 (December, 1969): 425–443.
Alexander H. (Alexander Hamilton) Leighton, The Governing of Men; General Principles and Recommendations Based on Experience at a Japanese Relocation Camp (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945).
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, “Queerying Homophily,” Pattern Discrimination (Meson Press and Minnesota University Press, 2019).
Arnold R. Hirsch, “Containment on the Home Front: Race and Federal Housing Policy from the New Deal to the Cold War,” Journal of Urban History 26, no. 2 (January 1, 2000): 158–189; and Marie Jahoda and Patricia Salter West, “Race Relations in Public Housing,” Journal of Social Issues 7, no. 1/2 (January 1951): 138–145.
Among them, in 1948, the US Supreme Court issued a landmark decision, Shelley v Kraemer, that deemed racially restrictive covenants in the sale of private homes unconstitutional. This prompted debate within federal level housing agencies about how to comply and/or further this new law in subsequent housing acts. Arnold R. Hirsch, “Searching for a ‘Sound Negro Policy’: A Racial Agenda for the Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954,” Housing Policy Debate 11, no. 2 (2000).
Catherine Bauer, “Social Questions in Housing and Community Planning,” Journal of Social Issues 7, no. 1/2 (January 1951): 28.
Ibid., 23.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., 28.
Ibid.
Lazarsfeld and Merton, “Friendship as Social Process,” 26. It is worth noting that Patricia Salter West and Marie Jahoda authored an essay about their findings from the survey in which they argue that the white residents who prefer segregated housing are primarily those who have never experienced integrated living: "expectations of racial conflict were thus largely determined by previous housing experience; those with biracial experience bad expectations both more favorable and more realistic than those without" (Jahoda & Salter West 1951, 133). Segregation begets segregation. They go further: "{t}his points up a methodological caution for social research. Questions on preferences or expectations are likely to be misleading if they do not take into account the bases for these opinions"(Jahoda & Salter West 1951, 134). This is something which was entirely left out of the paper authored by Merton and Lazarsfeld.
Lazarsfeld and Merton, “Friendship as Social Process,” 27.
Ibid.
Ibid., 35.
Robert K. Merton, Patricia Salter West, and Marie Jahoda, “Patterns of Selection in Interpersonal Relations,” in “Patterns of Social Life: Explorations in the Sociology and Social Psychology of Housing,” chapter 7, box 9, Robert K. Merton Papers 1928–2003, Columbia University Libraries Archival Collections, Columbia University Libraries, New York, Chapter 7, 26.
Lazarsfeld and Merton, “Friendship as Social Process.”
Ibid., 36–37.
Merton, Salter, and Jahoda, “Patterns of Selection in Interpersonal Relations,” in “Patterns of Social Life.”
Ibid., 41.
Publications that use the term “homophily,” Clarivate, 2019, Web of Science database, retrieved June 10, 2019.
Merton explained the concept through examples such as financial collapse, segregated unions, and integrated housing, the latter showing how institutions can intervene to reverse the conclusions that fuel prejudice. Robert K. Merton, “The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy,” Antioch Review 8, no. 2 (1948): 196.
Ibid.
Ibid., 195.
Ibid., 210.
Ibid., 210.
Stefan Müller-Doohm, Adorno: A Biography (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2005).
Thomas C. Schelling, “Dynamic Models of Segregation,” Journal of Mathematical Sociology 1, no. 2 (July 1971): 143–186.
Lazarsfeld and Merton, “Friendship as Social Process,” 31.
This work was produced for the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial and is part of an ongoing research project undertaken by the Center for Spatial Research, GSAPP, Columbia University (CSR) about Spatial Inequality in collaboration with the Digital Democracies Group, SFU.
Research was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Canada 150 Research Chairs Program, and the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Alanna Browdy, Rebecca Cook, Audrey Dandenault, Tola Oniyangi, Andrea Partenio, Juvaria Shahid worked as Graduate Research Assistants. With thanks to the Columbia Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Harriet Zuckerman, Robert Lazarsfeld for assistance and reproduction permissions on archival materials.
Are Friends Electric? is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and Moderna Museet within the context of its exhibition Mud Muses: A Rant about Technology.