Social Structure and the Refraction of Social Control: Naming Names During the Hollywood Blacklist

Research Seminar

Management & Human Resources

Speaker: Giacomo Negro

Emory University

Abstract

Although social control is often conceived as a macro phenomenon imposed on a population, individuals embedded within communities, such as members of a professional group, provide critical information as to who is and is not violating laws and regulations. By calling the police, whistleblowing, or notifying the authorities in other ways, community members simultaneously facilitate and mediate the imposition of social control. Yet reporting others within a community involves potentially endangering neighbors, colleagues, and friends by identifying them for punishment. In this paper, we theorize the ways in which social structure shapes the imposition of social control by influencing individuals’ patterns of reporting others to the authorities. Specifically, we argue that social environments that are more cooperative lead to different patterns of reporting than environments that are more competitive, holding constant the laws, the means of enforcement, and the transgression. We evaluate this theory using data from the Hollywood film industry during the late 1940s and 1950s, when fear of Communist influences in Hollywood led to a series of investigations by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). Over 100 creatives were forced to testify, with anyone named in the hearings immediately blacklisted from the industry. Differentiating between writers (who were structurally more cooperative) and actors (who were structurally more competitive), we show how social control diffused differentially through these two populations, revealing a greater impact of accuracy and publicity in competitive environments, and of network diffusion in more cooperative ones.