Literature Review #5

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   2. Armstrong, Elizabeth and Laura Hamilton.  Paying for the Party: How College Maintains
   Inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2013. Print.
2. 3. In this book, Paying for the Party, Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton conduct a study in a residence hall where they discover that some students thrive and others fail, labeled as "social isolates." They contribute a lot of this to the different pathways in college, the mobility pathway, the professional pathway, and the party pathway and how each can help with upwards mobility. Some of the social isolates were unsuccessful in socialization in the community because of a lack of trying but others attributed it to social class. 
   
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4. 4. Both Laura Hamilton and Elizabeth Armstrong, who conducted the study and wrote the book, are professors of sociology. Hamilton, who has a P.H.D in Sociology and teaches at the University of California, focuses most of her research and studies on social class, gender and education. Armstrong, who has a P.H.D from University of California-Berkeley and teaches at the University of Michigan, focuses her research on gender, social patterns and groups, and education.
   
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6. 5. Social Isolate: Individuals in a residence hall who are unable to make social connections with others and get involved in the overall community (this results in low retention rates and low GPAs)
7. Social Dynamics: The interaction between individuals within a group and/or interactions between groups as a whole 

1. 6. "In fact, an astonishing twenty-five women - nearly half of the floor - could be described as social isolates. We defined social isolates as those who, by the end of the year, could claim only one person on the floor (outside of a roommate) as a ‘friend’” (96).
2. "Theoretically, more extensive Residence Life programming might have also helped the women to get to know each other better" (99).
3. "Initially we assumed that floor isolates would find each other and create their own friendship groups. However, the interactional strategies of socially ambitious women made it difficult. For example, those who moved into the dorm who were genuinely open to meeting people, quickly acquired the impression that everyone else on the floor had a million friends" (104).

1. 7. This book has given me the key term for my paper, social isolate, and the case of Alana as well. With the example of the different types of students on the floor, I found the social isolates as the most interesting group and was able to develop an argument around it. This book also gave me an interesting perspective on Residence Life, because it left me wondering whether the lack of an RA presence in the hall attributed to the amount of social isolates living in the community (25).