Fringe groups and their fight for legitimacy: A social network approach.

摘要

Every individual is categorized according to the groups to which he or she belongs and others then evaluate these groups. These evaluations impact every aspect of our lives---from the jobs we can access to the neighborhoods in which we live. Those groups evaluated highly are viewed as more legitimate, giving them greater access to resources and opportunities. Weber's discussion of legitimacy was one of the first formal statements in sociology and today the literature spans a wide range of specialty areas, from organizational studies to economic sociology to social psychology. A review of the literature indicates that we still do not understand three key issues---(1) how do inter-group ties and intra-group ties affect legitimacy, (2) how does the legitimate standing of a group change when it seeks entrance into a new social or cultural context, and (3) how do more diverse groups arrive at consensus and stability when their members do not have shared cultural accounts?;In this study I propose a structural theory of legitimacy that links prior work through a social networks perspective. Specifically, I argue that two different group processes---group solidarity (in the form of intra-group ties) leads to a level of group identity, which then affects group endorsement (in the form of inter-group ties). Group endorsement then determines group legitimacy. In this exploratory study, I examine whether the data are consistent with the new structural theory of legitimacy by comparing the social networks of parapsychologists and cognitive psychologists. Data were obtained through structured face-to-face interviews, participant's completion of sociometric tables, and submission of their curriculum vitae. Descriptive analyses indicate that the two groups are largely different in terms of their age and current social class. The social network analysis provides tentative support for implications of the theory, showing that there are meaningful differences in social network ties between the less legitimate and the more legitimate group. The interpretive analysis shows that parapsychologists have broader, vaguer criteria than cognitive psychologists for defining group identity, the importance of social endorsement ties, and legitimacy. The exploratory nature of the project limits the internal validity of the data, precluding formal hypothesis testing, and there are some variables that may explain differences between the two groups other than social network ties. However, these findings provide encouraging initial support of the structural theory of legitimacy.