人际关系中"弱纽带"比小圈子有用

This may be a statement of the obvious at Christmas, but our families can sometimes let us down. Evidence comes from a little-noticed survey published by the US Census Bureau in September.
我们的家庭有时会让我们失望。美国人口普查局(US Census Bureau) 2013年9月发布的一项调查为这一观点提供了证明，不过没引起多少关注。

The findings are conveyed in a sad and simple graph. It reports a survey of “households experiencing hardship” in 2011 - and who helped them when times were tough. What counted as tough times? Having a phone disconnected, missing utility bill payments, falling into rent or mortgage arrears, or not seeing a doctor or dentist when needed.
该项调查针对2011年“经历困境的家庭”，以及陷入困境时得到过谁的帮助，调查结果通过一幅简单而令人悲哀的图表呈现。那么怎样算是陷入困境呢？电话停机，漏缴公用事业账单，拖欠房租或房贷，或者生病了看不起医生或牙医。

More than half of such households expected help from family members, as did almost half from friends. Rather fewer - about a fifth - hoped for help from a social agency, charity or church.
一多半家庭期望得到家人的帮助，还有近一半则指望朋友帮助。只有很少一部分家庭（大约五分之一）希望得到社会机构、慈善团体或教堂的援助。

The overwhelming majority were disappointed. It was rare for family members to provide help with rent arrears - about one time in six - and it was rarer still to receive financial help from other sources or for other purposes.
结果绝大多数家庭的希望都落了空。家人极少帮忙付租金（大约六分之一），而从其他来源（或者为了其他目的）获得资金援助就更加罕见了。

In short, hard-up Americans were confident of help in need from those close to them - and that confidence was misplaced. (If you're looking for an explanation of the popularity of payday loans, this finding isn't a bad start.)
简言之，手头拮据的美国人相信能从亲友那儿得到帮助，但这种信任是没有根据的。（如果你想了解“发薪日贷款”为何如此流行，不妨从这份报告入手。）

An optimistic reading of this research is that there are plenty of people whose families or friends did help them and thus never featured in the sample. Perhaps.
这份研究当然也不乏乐观解读：也许有许多人得到了亲友的帮助，因此根本不在调查对象之列——或许吧。

But as the economist Timothy Taylor comments, enough people experience disappointment to leave “lasting shadows”.
但正如经济学家蒂莫西•泰勒(Timothy Taylor)所言，生活中有太多人经历深切失望，这种失望给他们留下“持久的阴影”。

This dispiriting stuff reminded me of Mark Granovetter's work on “the strength of weak ties”, published in 1973. Granovetter, a sociologist, brought together two disparate strands of work: a survey of how people with professional or managerial jobs had found those jobs; and a theoretical analysis of the structure of social networks.
这种令人沮丧的现实让我想起马克•葛兰诺维特(Mark Granovetter)在1973年发表的《弱纽带的力量》(the strength of weak ties)。葛兰诺维特是社会学家，他将两项不相干的研究拉到一起：一个是关于人们怎样找到专业或管理工作的调查；另一个是对社会关系网结构的理论分析。