Social and spatial networks: Kinship distance and dwelling unit proximity in rural Thailand
Highlights
► Preferred proximity to kin may determine people's residential locations. ► Kin live nearer to each other than non-kin as do close kin than less close kin. ► Co-residence accounts for much of the kinship–proximity relationship. ► Social networks affect the spatial distribution of individuals. ► The effect of network ties on residential proximity is ripe for additional research.
Introduction
A large literature examines co-residence patterns of close kin as a measure of the structure of family organization (Le Play, 1884, Wirth, 1938, Parsons, 1943, Parsons and Bales, 1955, Linton, 1959). Because of data limitations, however, little attention has been given to the spatial proximity of close kin living in different dwelling units, or to the geographical patterning of more weakly related kin. Looking beyond household co-residence and beyond the kinship ties of closely related individuals has the potential to offer valuable insight into the structure of the family and extended kin groups as well as the role that kinship might play in reinforcing proximity effects on interaction. It also informs the coincidence of social and spatial distance more generally. A more thorough understanding of the mechanisms underlying the relationship between dwelling unit proximity and kinship is important because of its implications for contact and association among members of a society.
This paper explores the relationship between dwelling unit proximity and kinship in agricultural villages in Nang Rong, Northeast Thailand. As we discuss in the next section, the literature tends to view spatial proximity as a factor affecting social ties, but it is also likely that social ties—in this case, kin ties—influence spatial arrangements. To explore the spatial patterning of kin ties, we use a unique dataset that contains dwelling unit locations (GPS) and saturated kinship networks of over 50,000 individuals from 51 villages in Nang Rong. After introducing the data, we describe our approach to constructing a data set of person-to-person dyads in each village. Each dyad is characterized by residential proximity and the closeness of the kin tie involved. In the analysis, we use a variety of descriptive techniques to explore the relationship between kinship association and dwelling unit proximity within villages and how these patterns vary between villages. We take two approaches, one focusing on extended kinship groups and the other on dyads of varying degrees of kinship relatedness.
Section snippets
Background
Studies of the association between spatial proximity and social networks have most often viewed spatial proximity or other features of the environment as affecting the likelihood of social ties between individuals. Festinger et al. (1950) classic study found that friendships in a graduate student housing community were closely related to the proximity of apartments. Similarly, Coombs, 1973, Coombs, 1975 found that apartment orientation and visibility affected the likelihood of exchange of
Case study: Nang Rong, Thailand
Nang Rong district is a rural, primarily rice-growing region located in Northeast Thailand. The district is the approximate size of a typical county in the Eastern United States (1300 km2). In contrast to the American Midwest, where historically, families lived on their land and dwellings were dispersed over the landscape, villages in Nang Rong are clusters of dwellings surrounded by agricultural lands more similar to the arrangement of small towns in rural Europe or New England. A few villages
Data
In this paper, we use data from the Nang Rong Projects’ 2000 wave of data collection (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/nangrong), which, in addition to collecting sociodemographic information on individuals, households, and villages, contained two design elements crucial for our purposes. One is the collection of saturated social network data (Rindfuss et al., 2004, Entwisle et al., 2007). All individuals in a sample of 51 villages were enumerated within households and then linked to network
Approach
We take two approaches to the study of kinship networks; one is global and focuses on extended kinship groups, the other is local and pertains to kinship dyads of differing degree. The system-oriented or global network perspective follows a classic anthropological approach to kinship (e.g., Weil, 1949) and examines whether dwelling unit distances are closer, on average, between individuals in a given extended kinship group than between individuals in separate extended kinship groups. We expect
Methods
To construct kin networks, we use data on the identity and locations of mothers, fathers, siblings and spouses collected as part of the household surveys.6 Combining
Results
We begin our discussion of the relationship between kinship and dwelling unit proximity in Nang Rong with results from a system-oriented analysis of whether or not distances between dwelling units are closer within extended kin groups than between them. From there, we present results from our individual-oriented analyses, which, we argue, add significant value to the insights taken from the system-oriented approach.
Discussion
Our motivating research questions concern the association between kinship and residential proximity. This general question requires refinement to consider the various levels and ways we can operationalize both kinship networks and residential proximity. Our analyses are also affected by characteristics of our study site and the data available in the Nang Rong surveys. In this section we consider these issues and how they impact the scope of our conclusions. In particular, we highlight the
Conclusions
Previous research on the relationship between social networks and geographic space has given little attention to the spatial proximity of close kin living in different households, or to the geographical patterning of more distantly related kin at all, largely as a result of data limitations. Prior studies provide limited understanding of the residential choices made by individuals and consequently have painted an incomplete picture of kinship integration in communities. For instance, the
Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge support from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (R21 HD051776), the National Institute for Environmental Health Science (R21 ES016729), and the National Science Foundation (HSD 0728822). We would also like to thank Rick O’Hara and Philip McDaniel for their programming expertise and Bridget Riordan for assistance with manuscript preparation.
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