Lijun Song
Associate Professor of Sociology
Director of Graduate Studies
Director of Graduate Studies, Affiliated Faculty, Center for Medicine, Health and Society, Asian Studies Program, and American Studies
What are the causes and consequences of social networks across society and time?
Since the classic work of Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, and Ferdinand Tönnies, there has been a thirteen-decades-long research tradition on the social causes and consequences of various aspects of social networks. Aiming to advance this tradition, my scholarly work connects and contributes to four specialty areas: social networks, medical sociology, social stratification, and comparative historical sociology. I investigate three major research themes: how social networks produce inequalities in health and well-being, how social networks generate social stratification, and how social stratifiers shape social networks.
The central network-based concepts I study include accessed status (network members’ status), social capital, social cost, reference groups, social comparison, social support, social integration, tie strength, homophily and homogamy, and social cohesion. The key social stratifiers I analyze include gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), and class. The major well-being outcomes I examine include status attainment, physical and mental health, health information search, life satisfaction, health lifestyle, body weight, medical treatment adherence, environmental concern, and genetics.
Does who you know protect or hurt? My current work centers on the puzzling double-edged (protective and detrimental) role of accessed status in the social dynamics of health and well-being. I propose social cost theory in contrast with social capital theory to explain this double-edged role. I also develop competing institutional explanations (collectivistic advantage, collectivistic disadvantage, inequality structure) to interpret the variation of this double-edged role by culture and society. In brief, nine of my studies suggest that accessed status is more protective (as social capital theory predicts) in more egalitarian and individualistic societies but detrimental (as social cost theory expects) in more unequal and collectivistic societies.
Links to My Website and Google Scholar Citations.
Selected Publications
(Student or Postdoctoral Co-Author)
Song, Lijun. 2020. “Social Capital, Social Cost, and Relational Culture in Three Societies.” Social Psychology Quarterly 83(4): 443-62.
Song, Lijun and Philip J. Pettis. 2020. “Does Whom You Know in the Status Hierarchy Prevent or Trigger Health Limitation? Institutional Embeddedness of Social Capital and Social Cost Theories in Three Societies.” Social Science & Medicine 257.
Ronald S. Burt, Yanjie Bian, Lijun Song, and Nan Lin (eds.). 2019. Social Capital, Social Support and Stratification: An Analysis of the Sociology of Nan Lin. London: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Song, Lijun, Philip J. Pettis, and Bhumika Piya. 2017. "Does Your Body Know Who You Know? Multiple Roles of Network Members’ Socioeconomic Status for Body Weight Ratings. " Sociological Perspectives 66(6): 997-1018. Editor’s Pick.
Song, Lijun. 2015. "Does Knowing People in Authority Protect or Hurt? Authoritative Contacts and Depression in Urban China." American Behavioral Scientist59(9): 1173-1188.
Song, Lijun. 2015. "Does Knowing People in the Positional Hierarchy Protect or Hurt? Social Capital, Comparative Reference Group, and Depression in Two Societies." Social Science & Medicine 136-137: 117-127.
Song, Lijun. 2014. "Is Unsolicited Support Protective or Destructive in Collectivistic Culture? Receipt of Unsolicited Job Leads in Urban China." Society and Mental Health 4(3): 235-54.
Song, Lijun and Wenhong Chen. 2014. "Does Receiving Unsolicited Support Help or Hurt? Receipt of Unsolicited Job Leads and Depression." Journal of Health and Social Behavior 55(2): 144-60.
Song, Lijun and Tian-Yun Chang. 2012. "Do Resources of Network Members Help in Help Seeking? Social Capital and Health Information Search." Social Networks 34(4): 658-69.
Song, Lijun. 2012. "Raising Network Resources While Raising Children? Access to Social Capital by Parenthood Status, Gender, and Marital Status." Social Networks 34(2): 241-52.
Song, Lijun. 2011. "Social Capital and Psychological Distress." Journal of Health and Social Behavior 52(4): 478-92.
Song, Lijun. 2009. "The Effect of the Cultural Revolution on Educational Homogamy in Urban China." Social Forces 88(1): 257-70. *ASA Best Graduate Student Paper Award, Asia and Asian America Section.
Song, Lijun and Nan Lin. 2009. "Social Capital and Health Inequality: Evidence from Taiwan." Journal of Health and Social Behavior 50(2): 149-63.