Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-x4r87 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-29T03:09:28.035Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

EVEN SUPERHEROES NEED A NETWORK

Harriet Tubman and the Rise of Insurgency in the New York State Underground Railroad

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2009

Nicholas Maurice Young ,
Binod Sundararajan ,
Mary Liz Stewart  and
Paul Stewart
Binod Sundararajan
Affiliation:
School of Business Administration, Dalhousie University
Mary Liz Stewart
Affiliation:
Underground Railroad History Project of the Capital Region (URHPCR)
Paul Stewart
Affiliation:
Underground Railroad History Project of the Capital Region (URHPCR)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We analyze historical data to conduct an exploratory structural investigation into the process that Harriet Tubman used to free her family and friends as a member of the New York State Underground Railroad (UGRR). We suggest that she accomplished this feat because of her ability to rely on embedded (Granovetter 1985; Uzzi 1996) network contacts that allowed her to bridge structural holes (Burt 1992) and link with people with whom she was not previously linked (Lin et al., 2001). We conclude by discussing the importance of network analysis for providing empirical meaning to historical events and episodes.

Keywords

Harriet TubmanRaceNetworksUnderground RailroadSlavery
Type
STATE OF THE ART
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , Fall 2009 , pp. 397 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Blumer, Herbert (1969). Symbolic Interactionism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bordewich, Fergus M. (2005). The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America. New York: Harper Collins (Amistad) Press.Google Scholar
Borgatti, Steve P., Everett, Mitchell G., and Freeman, Linton C. (2002). UCINET 6 for Windows. Harvard: Analytic Technologies.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1986). The Forms of Capital. In Richardson, J. E. (Ed.), Handbook of Theory of Research for the Sociology of Education, pp. 241–258. Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Bradford, Sarah (1886). Harriet, The Moses of Her People. Sarah Bradford Publisher.Google Scholar
Brass, Daniel J. (1995). A Social Network Perspective on Human Resources Management. Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, 13: 39–79.Google Scholar
Brown, Catherine S. (1849). Memoir of Abel Brown. Catherine Brown, Publisher.Google Scholar
Burt, Ronald S. (2000). The Network Structure of Social Capital. Research in Organizational Behavior, 22: 345–423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burt, Ronald S. (1998). The Gender of Social Capital. Rationality and Society, 10(1): 5–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burt, Ronald S. (1997a). The Contingent Value of Social Capital. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42: 339–365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burt, Ronald S. (1997b). A Note on Social Capital and Network Content. Social Networks, 19: 355–373.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burt, Ronald S. (1992). Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burt, Ronald S. (1982). Toward a Structural Theory of Action. New York: Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burt, Ronald S. and Knez, M. (1996). Trust and Third-party Gossip. In Kramer, R. M. and Tyler, T. R. (Eds.), Trust in Organizations, pp. 68–89. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Clifford-Larson, Kate (2004). Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. New York: Ballantine Books.Google Scholar
Coleman, James S. (1988). Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94: S95–S120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conrad, Earl (1942). Harriet Tubman: Negro Soldier and Abolitionist. New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Cook, Karen (2001). Trust in Society. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google ScholarPubMed
Ducksworth, Elizabeth (2005). Foreward to the 2005 Edition of William Still's The Underground Railroad. Plexus Publishing.Google Scholar
Gambetta, D. (1988). Trust: Making and Breaking Co-Operative Relations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Gara, Larry (1961). The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.Google Scholar
Granovetter, Mark S. (1985). Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 91(3): 481–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griffler, Keith (2004). Front Line of Freedom. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.Google Scholar
Krebs, Valdis (2008). Social Network Analysis: A Brief Introduction. http://www.orgnet.com/sna.html.Google Scholar
Lin, Nan, Cook, Karen, and Burt, Ronald S. (2001). Social Capital: Theory and Research, pp. 3–31. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine De Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, Nan (2000). Social Capital. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McAdam, Doug (1982). Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McAdam, Doug (1988). Freedom Summer: The Idealist Revisited. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McAdam, Doug (1995). “Initiator” and “Spin-off” Movements: Diffusion Processes in Protest Cycles.” In Traugott, M. (Ed.), Repertoires and Cycles of Collective Action, pp. 217–39. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
McCarthy, John D. and Zald, Mayer (1977). Resource Mobilization and Social Movements. American Journal of Sociology, 82: 1212–1241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minkoff, Debra C. (1997). The Sequencing of Social Movements. American Sociological Review, 62: 779–799.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Misztal, Bruce A. (1996). Trust in Modern Societies. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Mollering, Guido (2001). The Nature of Trust: From Georg Simmel to a Theory of Expectation, Interpretation and Suspension. Sociology, 35(2): 403–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morris, Aldon (1984). The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1896). Thus Spoke Zarathustra. New York: Macmillan Co.Google Scholar
Padgett, John and Ansell, Christopher (1993). Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici, 1400–1434. American Journal of Sociology, 98(6): 1259–1319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, Walter W. and Smith-Doerr, Laurel (1992). Networks and Economic Life. In Smelser, Neil and Swedberg, Richard (Eds.), The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 368–402. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert (1995). Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital. Journal of Democracy, 6: 65–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quarles, Benjamin (1969). Black Abolitionists. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ripley, Charles P. (1985). The Black Abolitionist Papers, Volume I. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Michael (1976). Radical Protest and Social Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Scott. John (1992). Social Network Analysis: A Handbook. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Sernett, Milton C. (2002). North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.Google Scholar
Siebert, William (1898). The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom. Oxford: Macmillan and Company.Google Scholar
Simmel, Georg (1990). The Philosophy of Money. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Still, William (1872). The Underground Railroad Records. Medford, NJ: Plexus.Google Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney (1994). Struggle, Politics, and Reform: Collective Action, Social Movements, and Cycles of Protest (Western Societies Program, Occasional Paper No. 21, 2nd ed.). Center for International Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.Google Scholar
Thomas, Sara (2004). An Autobiography of the Life of Frederick Douglass. New York: Balantine Books.Google Scholar
Titus Certificate of Membership in Manumission Society (1785). New York State Historical Association Library.Google Scholar
Tocsin of Liberty (1842). October 12, 1842. Vol. 2, Number 2.Google Scholar
Uzzi, Brian (1996). The Sources and Consequences of Embeddedness for the Economic Performance of Organizations. American Sociological Review, 61: 674–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vigilance Committee Flier (1856). Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass., p. 150.Google Scholar
Wasserman, Stephen and Faust, Katherine (1994). Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolff, Kurt H. (1964). The Sociology of Georg Simmel. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Zald, Mayer N. (1988). The Trajectory of Social Movements in America. Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, 10: 19–41.Google Scholar