Jonathan Haynes
Labor Mobility and Social Structure
Understanding the linkages between social action and social structure continues to be a central issue within sociological theory. The mutually generative nature of social action and social structure makes this process both difficult to study yet critical for understanding the extent of causal determinism in social life. For my dissertation, I am studying how social structure affects labor mobility. This project focuses on two specific aspects of social structure: 1) How variations in the structure of regional social networks impact the potential for information flow, and thereby, knowledge transfer and innovation. 2) How existing network structure and institutional context condition micro-structural network evolution. The ultimate goal is to develop a general theory of labor mobility and social network cohesion that has specific consequences for innovation, group relations, and group stability.
Committee: M. Granovetter (Chair); S. Olzak; and D. McFarland