Monetization, Trust and Social Exchange Networks

James Hull, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The paper establishes a theory of the driving forces behind monetization investigates associations between monetization and core social network structures, asking “how do monetized and non-monetized social exchange networks differ and why?” I describe what follows when a particular type of exchange network “becomes” monetized. Within the context of Nang Rong, Thailand, Southeast Asia, the rice harvest labor exchange networks that I investigate are an important means of social and economic affiliation. When the basis of exchange shifts, corresponding shifts in the structure of social exchange networks are a visible sign of changing contexts of interaction and association. I utilize innovative data from a complete census of households on the sources of labor, means of compensation, and number of workers to investigate social distance between exchange partners, permeability of networks (ratio of in-network vs. out-of-network exchanges), and network centrality of transactors, finding notable differences based on monetization status.