The ambivalence of cultural homophily: Field positions, semantic similarities, and social network ties in creative collectives

Abstract

This paper utilizes a mixture of qualitative, formal, and statistical socio-semantic network analyses to examine how cultural homophily works when field logic meets practice. On the one hand, because individuals in similar field positions are also imposed with similar cultural orientations, cultural homophily reproduces ‘objective’ field structure in intersubjective social network ties. On the other hand, fields are operative in practice and to accomplish pragmatic goals individuals who occupy different field positions often join in groups, creatively reinterpret the field-imposed cultural orientations, and produce cultural similarities alternative to the position-specific ones. Drawing on these emergent similarities, the cultural homophily mechanism might stimulate social network ties between members who occupy not the same but different field positions, thus contesting fields. I examine this ambivalent role of cultural homophily in two creative collectives, each embracing members positioned closer to the opposite poles of the field of cultural production. I find different types of cultural similarities to affect different types of social network ties within and between the field positions: Similarity of vocabularies stimulates friendship and collaboration ties within positions, thus reproducing the field, while affiliation with the same cultural structures stimulates collaboration ties between positions, thus contesting the field. The latter effect is visible under statistical analysis of ethnographic data, but easy to oversee in qualitative analysis of texts because informants tend to flag conformity to their positions in their explicit statements. This highlights the importance of mixed socio-semantic network analysis, both sensitive to the local context and capable of unveiling the mechanisms underlying the interplay between the cultural and the social.