This collection brings together the principal sources in the development of the techniques of social network analysis, from early metaphorical statements in Simmel and Radcliffe-Brown through the more systematic explorations in sociology and social anthropology, to contemporary formalizations. A new introduction explores the history of Social Networks and highlights the arguments of those who treat social network analysis as a loose, qualitative approach as well as those who see its potential in technical, mathematical uses. The thematically organized coverage includes: * Part I: Conceptualizing Social Networks * Part II: Topics and Developments in Graph Theory * Part III: Further Mathematical Models for Networks * Part IV: Applications: Family and Community * Part V: Applications: Corporate Power and Economic Structures * Part VI: Applications: Political, Protest, and Policy Networks * Part VII: Applications: Knowledge, Reputation, and Diffusion
In Communities and Networks, Katherine Giuffre takes the science of social network analysis and applies it to key issues of living in communities, especially in urban areas, exploring questions such as: How do communities shape our lives and identities? How do they foster either conformity or innovation? What holds communities together and what happens when they fragment or fall apart? How is community life changing in response to technological advances? Refreshingly accessible and built on fascinating case examples, this unique book provides not only the theoretical grounding necessary to understand how and why the burgeoning area of social network analysis can be useful in studying communities, but also clear technical explanations of the tools of network analysis and how to gather and analyze real-world network data. Network analysis allows us to see community life in a new perspective, with sometimes surprising results and insights, and this book enables readers to gain a deeper understanding of social life and the relationships that build (and break) communities. This engaging text will be an exciting new resource for upper-level undergraduate and beginning graduate students in a wide range of courses including social network analysis, community studies, urban studies, organizational studies, and quantitative methods.
Addresses issues of current social and theoretical concern such as urban ethnic conflict, multiculturalism and immigration.How do people make sense of their lives amid the social and cultural diversity of cities? The essays in this volume argue that a powerful and related set of methodologies - including comparative research, the ethnography of situations such as dances and parades, and social network analysis - can further our understanding of the intertwined processes of ethnicity and community, class and gender. Written by leading researchers from a number of disciplines, these essays demonstrate a sensitivity to places and contexts ranging from Los Angeles to Queensland. Students of anthropology, geography and urban studies will find this book an invaluable guide to the intricacies of urban social life in the late 20th century.
The book contains 17 chapters with material from 13 African countries, from Egypt to Swaziland and from Senegal to Kenya. Most of the authors are young African academics. The focus of the volume is the multitude of voluntary associations that has emerged in African cities in recent years. In many cases, they are a response to mounting poverty, failing infrastructure and services, and more generally, weak or abdicating urban governments. Some associations are new, in other cases, existing organizations are taking on new tasks. Associations may be neighbourhood-based, others may be city-wide and based on professional groupings or a shared ideology or religion. Still others have an ethnic base. Some of these organizations are engaged in both day-to-day matters of urban management and more long-term urban development. Urban associations challenge the monopoly of local and central government institutions.
Social Networks: A Developing Paradigm contains studies of the nature and impact of social structure on behavior. It draws together readings from a variety of social science areas that share the basic premise that structure in social relationships can be fruitfully operationalized in terms of networks. It attempts to bring together classic works that opened new research areas and works that contain important statements of perspective, method, or empirical findings. The book is organized into four parts. Part I focuses on the cognitive organization of social relations and the effects of local social structure on individuals. In Part II the authors consider networks of ties in large social agglomerations, and treat a variety of different types of social relationships. The emphasis here is on empirical studies. Specific extant social networks are investigated to test a variety of structural hypotheses. Part III contains studies that address issues more common among social anthropologists than sociologists or social psychologists. The chapters in Part IV, while occasionally containing applications, are primarily methodological. These discuss mathematical and statistical ideas for modeling and analyzing social networks.
Social network analysis, a method for analyzing relationships between social entities, has expanded over the last decade as new research has been done in this area. How can these new developments be applied effectively in the behavioral and social sciences disciplines? In Advances in Social Network Analysis, a team of leading methodologists in network analysis addresses this issue. They explore such topics as ways to specify the network contents to be studied, how to select the method for representing network structures, how social network analysis has been used to study interorganizational relations via the resource dependence model, how to use a contact matrix for studying the spread of disease in epidemiology, and how cohesion and structural equivalence network theories relate to studying social influence. It also offers statistical models for social support networks. Advances in Social Network Analysis is useful for researchers involved in general research methods and qualitative methods, and who are interested in psychology and sociology.
Tavistock Press was established as a co-operative venture between the Tavistock Institute and Routledge & Kegan Paul (RKP) in the 1950s to produce a series of major contributions across the social sciences. This volume is part of a 2001 reissue of a selection of those important works which have since gone out of print, or are difficult to locate. Published by Routledge, 112 volumes in total are being brought together under the name The International Behavioural and Social Sciences Library: Classics from the Tavistock Press. Reproduced here in facsimile, this volume was originally published in 1957 and is available individually. The collection is also available in a number of themed mini-sets of between 5 and 13 volumes, or as a complete collection.
The ego-net approach to social network analysis, which takes discrete individual actors and their contacts as its starting point, is one of the most widely used approaches in the field. This is the first textbook to take readers through each stage of ego-net research, from conception, through research design and data gathering to analysis. It starts with the basics, assuming no prior knowledge of social network analysis, but then moves on to introduce cutting edge innovations, covering both new statistical approaches to ego-net analysis and also the most recent thinking on mixing methods (quantitative and qualitative) to achieve depth and rigour. It is an absolute must for anybody wishing to explore the importance of networks.