The Sociology of Harry Potter: 22 Enchanting Essays on the Wizarding World

by Unknown

  Analysis and Findings

  Network Size and Reachability

  In order to analyze the two friendship networks at Hogwarts, basic network properties of connection and distance were first examined. A total of two measures were used relating to connection and distance: network size and reachability. To determine the size of Network A and Network B, a simple count of nodes was performed. The total number of nodes for Network A was sixteen. This means that a total of sixteen ties were possible, since the network is symmetric. In other words, by using the equation, k* (k-1) / 2, where k is number of nodes, and plugging in the count of nodes, 16, the total number of ties was found. It is important to establish a count of ties in order to determine the Network’s density. The total number of nodes for Network B was twenty-two, and the total number of ties, therefore, was twenty-two. The difference in sizes between Networks A and B is important because as the number of nodes increases, so does the number of potential relationships. This generally means that the level of complexity increases as the size of a network increases. Figures 1a and 1b (see end of chapter) show the differences in network structure before the formation of Dumbledore’s Army and after.

  Reachability can be defined as the set of connections or links that exist between actors, even if those actors are not adjacent or directly connected. In a symmetric network, if actors are not reachable, the network can become divided and sub-populations can form. A division was encountered in this study: a major rift existed between the actors belonging to the Slytherin House, and all other actors. This is true for both Network A and Network B (refer to Figures 1a and 1b). For Network A, the actors Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil are not reachable to any other actors, and gaps exist between actors within the House of Gryffindor. However when Network B is examined, we see that all actors are equally reachable, and a natural block formation appears, showing the divisions between Dumbledore’s Army members and non- Dumbledore’s Army members.

  The results from the Reachability measure lead us to the conclusion that the friendship ties that sprung up due to the formation of Dumbledore’s Army led to a cohesion in the friendship network, further resulting in direct paths being formed between all actors in that group. Therefore, due to the high level of connection between members of Dumbledore’s Army, we would expect the flow of information and mobilization of resources to be high[viii].

  Homophily at Hogwarts

  The first objective of this study was to identify the presence of homophilous friendship ties by determining if young adolescents interact predominantly with friends who are similar in terms of gender and organizational association, or association with House-members. The methods used to test this procedure were fairly straight-forward. To test the hypothesis, external group ties and internal group ties were measured by running the E-I Index procedure on Ucinet. Social actors were coded separately for gender and House and were used as attribute vectors for comparing Network A and Network B.

  E-I Index was used to measure the percentage of ties being sent outward and the percentage remaining internal. The E-I Index was run for Network A and Network B, to compare the changes in homophily after the formation of Dumbledore’s Army. For gender, the re-scaled E-I Index was found to be -.185. The negative value shows a weak tendency for internal ties. However, when the same procedure was run for Network B, the E-I index was found to be .083, showing a higher tendency for external ties.

  The friends in Network A consist of a total of six females and ten males. The node Hermione Granger had a total of three ties, all of which were connected to males. The node Hannah Abbott had two ties, both of which were connected to boys. Both Millicent Bulstrode and Pansy Parkinson had four ties, three of which were to males, and one of which was to a female. The nodes Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil stood out: not only did they constitute a sub-division in the network, but they were tied to only each other, showing them as isolates from the rest of the network.

  In the case of Network A, it does not appear that females show a tendency towards friendship with members of the same gender. However, when the males in the network were examined, there was a considerable difference. The actors Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan each had three ties, all of which were directed at males. Ron Weasley had a total of five ties, four of which were directed at males. The actor with the most ties, Harry Potter, had a total of seven ties, and six of these seven ties were directed towards males. Although there was a disproportionate ratio of males to females, it is clear that within Network A, there was a discrepancy between males’ tendency to befriend other males and females’ tendencies to befriend other females. These findings are therefore partially inconsistent with Shrum, Cheek, and Hunter’s (1988) observations that gender homophily is strong among young adolescents: although males showed a strong tendency for gender homophily, females did not. Shrum et al. (1988) found females to be much more likely to associate with same-gender friends beginning in early adolescence, and the reverse appears to be true for females at Hogwarts.

  When ties were measured for house membership, Network A was shown to have an E-I Index of -.852, representing a strong tendency towards internal ties. The results were even stronger for Network B, which had an E-I Index of -1. However, this can be attributed to formation of Dumbledore’s Army to not have external ties.

  The Chosen One

  In order to determine if Harry Potter was the most central and powerful actor in Network A and Network B, Freeman’s measures of closeness centrality and betweenness centrality were calculated. The idea behind closeness centrality is that actors who are closer to others have greater power. Betweenness centrality is the idea that actors who serve as intermediaries between other actors have the most power. According to Freeman’s closeness centrality measure, the most powerful actors in Network A were Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Ernie Macmillan. The weakest actors were Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown. However, when the same measure was performed for Network B, all members of Dumbledore’s Army had the same amount of closeness centrality, which was substantially more than the non-members. The change from Network A to Network B can be attributed to the decreased distance between actors from Network A to Network B. In other words, all actors were at an equal distance from one another, so no one actor had a greater amount of power.

  Freeman’s betweenness centrality measure yielded very interesting results between Network A and Network B. In Network A, the most powerful actors for betweenness were Harry Potter, Ernie Macmillan, Justin Finch-Fletchley, and Ron Weasley. All other actors had the same amount of betweenness power. However, when these results were compared to Network B, it was found that no actors had betweenness power: all actors had a betweenness power of 0. The reason for this is that the creation of Dumbledore’s Army removed intermediaries, neutralizing the power of Harry Potter and the other formerly powerful nodes. It should also be noted that the actors who were not a part of Dumbledore’s Army had the same amount of power between actors because they also had no intermediaries: all actors were the same distance, a distance of 1, from other actors. The results of Freeman’s centrality measures show that Harry Potter did have the most power in terms of betweenness and closeness prior to the formation of Dumbledore’s Army, but that power was voided after the formation of Dumbledore’s Army.

  Discussion and Conclusions

  The first objective of this study was to test existing theories about homophily, specifically the idea that adolescents are friends with those who are similar to them in terms of race, gender, and organization. This was accomplished by comparing changes in friendship patterns before Dumbledore’s Army, when the students were between the ages of 11-14, and after, when they were 15 and older. The results of this study showed a decrease in gender homophily between friends over time, further supporting Shrum, Cheek, and Hunter’s (1988) findings that gender homophily decreases over time. However, in contrast to their research, these findings showed that males were more likely to be friends with other males prior to the formation of Du
mbledore’s Army, whereas females exhibited many cross-gender ties. Organizational homophily was not shown to have a significant change over time, but a strong tendency towards internal ties was discovered, suggesting that the placement of students into Houses played a heavy role in the friendships those students formed. At Hogwarts, students are required to share dormitories and common rooms, attend classes, and eat lunch with members of the same House; so it is not surprising to find that ties of friendship within Houses are stronger than ties of friendships outside Houses.

  The unexpected finding in this study that among early adolescents, males were more likely to exhibit gender homophily than the females had one notable exception. Until the formation of Dumbledore’s Army, Hermione Grainger did not have friends of the same gender in her grade. She spent the majority of her time with Harry and Ron. Although I did not measure the intensity of friendship ties, or examine the social dynamics between close friends or “best friends,” this would be an interesting avenue for future research. The witches and wizards Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan, Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil, Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, are understood to be best friends; and an analysis of the similarities between those dyads, or triads, could further support sociological studies pertaining to the nature of adolescent friendship. Another useful study that could be conducted in the future would be to examine the break-down of gender in the friendship networks at Hogwarts. There are a disproportionate number of males to females within the friendship networks studied, and a comparison study could be drawn up between Hogwarts and Beauxbatons or Durmstrang.

  The second objective of this study was to determine if Harry Potter, the boy who lived, the Chosen One, wielded the most power and influence within his social network. Although I did prove my hypothesis that Harry held the most power and connection in his friendship network as a young adolescent, it was interesting to discover that the level of power dispersed as Harry lost his position as an intermediary. Future research could place more emphasis on the power of intermediaries in social networks, perhaps using Bonacich’s power measure as a basis for determining actors’ power.

  This study analyzed witches and wizards and their social network of friendship ties in Hogwarts as one would do any Muggle social network with basic properties and characteristics. The study examined friendship ties during Harry’s first four years at Hogwarts, and compared them to friendship ties after Dumbledore’s Army, which was formed in Harry’s fifth year. The primary objective of this study was to highlight the similarities that exist between witches and wizards friendship networks and recent sociological studies on Muggle population on the same subject. Contrary to the belief of some within each world, wizards and Muggles are not so different after all. Adolescence is a difficult time and, magic or Muggle, friendship is definitely “something worth fighting for.” (HP5)

  Figure 1a. Friendship Ties Before Dumbledore’s Army

  Figure 1b. Friendship Ties After Dumbledore’s Army

  References

  Berndt, Thomas J. 1982. “The Features and Effects of Friendship in Early Adolescence.” Child Development 53:1447-60.

  Berndt, Thomas J. and Keunho Keefe. 1995. “Friends’ Influence on Adolescents’ Adjustment to School.” Child Development 66: 1312-29.

  Cairns, Robert B., Man-Chi Leung, Lisa Buchanan, and Beverly D. Cairns. 1995. “Friendships and Social Networks in Childhood and Adolescence: Fluidity, Reliability, and Interrelations.” Child Development 66: 1330-45.

  Crosnoe, Robert. 2000. “Friendships in Childhood and Adolescence: The Life Course and New Directions.” Social Psychology Quarterly 63: 377-91.

  De Nooy, Wouter. 2001. “Stories and Social Structure: A structural Perspective on Literature in Society.” The Psychology and Sociology of Literature: 359-75.

  Griswold, Wendy. 1993. “Recent Moves in the Sociology of Literature.” Annual Review of Sociology 19: 455-67.

  McPherson, Miller, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and James M. Cook. 2001. “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks.” Annual Review of Sociology 27: 415-44.

  Rowling, J. K. 2000. Scholastic.com Interview

  Shrum, Wesley and Neil H. Cheek, Jr. 1987. “Social Structure During the School Years: Onset of the Degrouping Process.” American Sociological Review 52: 218-23.

  Shrum, Wesley, Neil H. Cheek, Jr., and Saundra MacD. Hunter. 1988. “Friendship in School: Gender and Racial Homophily.” Sociology of Education 61: 227-39.

  “I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory,

  and even stopper death – if you aren’t as big of a

  bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach”

  Pedagogy of the Half-blood Prince

  Jelena Marić and Jenn Sims

  Albus Dumbledore once said that “it matters not what one is born but what one grows to be” (GOF 708). Yet sociology, particularly the sub-field of social psychology, reminds us that far from being solely based on personal choices, many larger factors, over which we have little control, have a profound impact on what we grow to become and even what we are able to become. As explained by Karl Marx (1851: 329):

  Men [sic] make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves but under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past.

  A branch of social psychology called Social Structure and Personality studies the influence that social structures have on the individual and the impact that individuals have on the broader social order. This chapter will examine the teaching pedagogy of Hogwarts professor Severus Snape as a case study to demonstrate how society shapes a person’s personality and traits and how an individual, in turn, can also affect the social structure. Structure is not fate, however. As will be explained below, in his family Severus learned that a woman is an object – not person to be respected – to abuse. Instead, he dedicated his life to a woman that he never had: A little red-haired girl named Lily, who he loved until the very end.

  Life and Lies of Severus Snape

  “Cruel, sarcastic, and disliked by everybody except the students from his own house (Slytherin), Snape taught Potions.... He was a thin man with sallow skin, a hooked nose, and greasy, shoulder-length black hair” (COS 77-78).

  Severus Tobias Snape was the only child of Tobias Snape, a Muggle, and Eileen Prince, a witch. Severus’ parents were poor and this was reflected his appearance and dress. As a “sallow, small, stringy” boy “his black hair was overlong and his clothes were so mismatched that it looked deliberate: too short jeans, a shabby, overlarge coat that might have belonged to a grown man, an odd smock like shirt” (DH 663). Furthermore, his parents had an abusive relationship. Tobias would yell at a cowering Eileen right in front of their son (OOTP 592). From an early age Severus dreamed about Hogwarts as a shelter from his impoverished and violent home life.

  When he was nine or ten years old he met his best friend, Lily Evans. Severus was aware of his magical powers, but to Lily, a Muggle-born witch, it was all very strange and new. It was Severus who told her everything about the wizarding world and Hogwarts. While Petunia, Lily’s older sister, looked down on Severus, judging him based on his poor appearance and residence (DH 665), Lily was always kind to him.

  From a young age, Snape had an affinity for the Dark Arts. It was remembered that: “Snape knew more curses when he arrived at school than half the kids in the seventh year” (GOF 531). He was sorted in Slytherin House and according to Sirius Black became “part of a gang of Slytherins who nearly all turned out to be Death Eaters” (ibid). Even before he was a fully trained wizard he was not only a gifted potion maker, but he was also able to make his own spells (e.g., Sectumsempra). Isolated in his youth, Severus Snape thought that he had finally found a place where he belonged at Hogwarts and friends in the Death Eaters.

  Severus was befriended by Lucius Malfoy and other powerful Slytherins; nevertheless, within his own grade he was abused by two golden boys from Gr
yffindor – James Potter and Sirius Black. They named him “Snivellus” and took every chance they got to make school a living hell for him. They were making fun of him because he was unattractive, because he was poor, because he had old robes, because he studied hard. They hated everything about Severus, especially the fact that he was Lily’s friend.

  By the time Snape graduated from Hogwarts, Lord Voldemort had risen to power. Voldemort was obsessed with pureblood ideology, and he started to kill Muggles and Muggle-borns. In the beginning, Snape was one of the most passionate of Voldemort’s supporters. Having lived his entire life as lower economic class and lower social class, among Voldemort’s inner circle Snape was respected and, for the first time in his life, held high status. While he must have enjoyed the experience of being atop the social hierarchy for once, everything started to change after he heard the famous prophecy of Sybil Trelawney:

  The one with the power to vanquish the – Dark Lord approaches… born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies… and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives… (OOTP 841)

  At first, Severus didn’t realized what he had heard. He ran to his Master and told him about prophecy. Voldemort interpreted the prophecy to mean that the new born son of Lily and James Potter was “The Chosen One” and decided to kill them. Having loved Lily “for nearly all his life” (DH 740), Severus asked Voldemort to spare her life; but when he realized that she might be killed anyway, he turned against Dark Lord and became Dumbledore’s spy.