SOCIAL THEORY exchange and networks

1. http://bit.ly/soc97 Vaughn Tan SOCIAL THEORYexchange and networks

2. Today • Overview and terminology • The simplest network • Types of ties and their consequences • Stuff going through networks • Individualism and holism • Your Durkheim response papers

3. How have the social sciences used networks as a way of thinking about social phenomena historically and in recent years? What has changed and what has stayed the same? • Is the network analysis described in the articles we read purely descriptive or is it theoretically motivated? How can you tell? • How do networks form?

4. overview

5. History • Comte and social physics • Sociometry (early to mid 20th century) • Urban sociology and anthropology • Quantitative sociology

6. Types of questions • Who does what? • What happens to whom? • How is A related to B? • What is exchanged between A and B?

7. The many guises of networks • Basic assumptions • Structure is important • Location in structure is important (structural position) • Type of structure is important • Focus on studying outcomes in relation to structure, rather than antecedents

8. Networks everywhere • Romantic relationships (Bearman et al, 2004) • Patents (Rivkin & Fleming 2006) • Corporate malfeasance (Zajac 1996) • Collaborations in high technology (Stuart 1998) • Webpages (Page, Brin, & Motwani 1999) • Stories (Bearman & Stovel 2006)

9. Structure is important “Some of us have densely interconnected social ties and all our friends know one another, and some of us inhabit worlds where none of our friends get along. And these differences are not always of our own doing because our network position also depends on the choices that others around us make" (301).

10. Networks as emergent entities • A network has two forms • Ego • Synoptic

16. node vertex edge

20. Structural equivalence • Nodes that have the same type of incoming and outgoing ties are considered equivalent structurally. • Social environments • Roles?

21. Centrality • Shortest path • Gatekeepers, brokering • Structural holes

22. Methodology • What counts as an edge? • What counts as a node?

24. What do networks do? • Information storage • Transfer and exchange • Persistence • Collective action

25. “A social network is a kind of human superorganism, with an anatomy and a physiology—a structure and a function—of its own. From bucket brigades to blogospheres, the human superorganism does what no personcould do alone” (Christakis and Fowler, 289)

26. The simplest network

27. Simmel • The simplest networks give us deep insights into why some positions in networks are so powerful. • Triads are the smallest groups in which network effects become evident. • Ideal types of three-node relationships

28. “The appearance of the third party indicates transition, conciliation, and abandonment of absolute contrast … The triad … results in three kinds of typical group formations. All of them are impossible if there are only two elements; and … if there are more than three, they are either equally impossible or only expand in quantity but do not change their formal type” (Simmel 145)

29. Three ideal types • Mediator (145): An impartial third party • Tertiusgaudens (154): A third party using his impartiality for his own benefit • Division (162): “initially two elements are united or mutually dependent in regard to a third … this third element knows how to put the forced combined against him into action against one another.”

35. Tie types

36. Granovetter • Weak ties are useful and powerful. • For whom? • Why?

37. Granovetter • Weak ties are useful and powerful. • What is a weak tie? • For whom or what is a weak tie useful? • Why?

40. Granovetter • Weak ties are useful and powerful. • What is a weak tie? • For whom or what is a weak tie useful? • Why?

41. Stuff moves about

42. Bearman et al • Where do networks come from? What mechanisms cause edges to form between nodes? • What kinds of outcomes are explained by network structure?

43. “Our goal is to show how local preferences governing partner choice shape the macrostructures in which individuals are embedded and hence affect both the potential for disease diffusion and the determinants of individual risk” (Bearman et al, 45)

44. Bearman et al • What kinds of outcomes are explained by network structure? • Where do networks come from? What mechanisms cause edges to form between nodes?

46. “ A mechanism can be seen as a systematic set of statements that provide a plausible account of how I[nput] and O[utput] are linked to one another” (7). Input  Mechanism  Output

48. Partner preferences? • Partnering norms?

49. INDIVIDUALISM AND HOLISM