Types of innovation and degrees of social support in status attainment

There is a hierarchy of domicile type running from the small rented apartment to the large mansion. This research concerns a unique form of status attainment in his hierarchy—building one's own home. One hundred eight owner-builders constitute the data base.

Owner-building is innovative status seeking. There are three kinds of innovator: the first house financial innovator, the second house financial innovator, and the design innovator.

Each type of innovator depends on the social support of others. The least affluent first house financial innovator receives the most support; the most affluent design innovator the least. There are 7.94 people in the first house innovator's ad hoc construction company, 8.32 in the second house financial innovator's, and 8.9 in the design innovator's.

The innovators elicited the above support by engaging in exchange with their helpers. They conducted two types of exchange: restricted exchange with the subcontractors and generalized exchange with the other helpers. Generalized exchange is governed by the norm of unilateral reciprocity which, unlike the norm of reciprocity, does not require that the exchange be balanced. Imbalance disrupts social relationships under the conditions of restricted exchange. However, under the conditions of generalized exchange, it produced improved relationships and enhanced social solidarity. The exchange type also impacted the reported satisfaction with the exchange.

Friendship differs from kinship in that it is a two-party voluntary relationship combining elements of both restricted and generalized exchange. The results of the study indicate that friendship elicits the norm of unilateral reciprocity. Two cognate forms of the norm of unilateral reciprocity--the norm of need and the norm of noninstrumental concern--are developed to discuss the occurrence of imbalanced exchange in the two-party situation of friendship. In all, seven predictions derived from the theory of generalized exchange are tested and six are supported.

The findings support Levi-Strauss' belief that there are two types of exchange and two types of exchange process.