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SOCIAL_NET
August 5, 2010
KADUSHIN
"Introduction to Social Network Theory"
by Charles Kadushin (2004)
I got interested in Kadushin's paper
for a number of reasons.
His application of network theory to
human relationships looked a lot BRENNER_6
like a method I worked out for
plotting stories when I was a kid.
And the phrase "social network" is
of course a big deal in the web world...
might there be some aspect of Kadushin's
review that would apply to it?
One of Kadsushin's first principles
is "propinquity": you're more likely
to be connected to people physically He points out that economists
near you. tend to use transportation
costs rather than distance,
Geographic proximity would not citing "Krugman and Obstfeld"
seem to be the deciding factor (2000).
in the internet era...
But then, isn't it possible it
matters even on the web? The
"world wide" web could be a source
of connections from anywhere, but
if people tend to "*friend*"
people they talk to in-person,
your "*friend* network" will tend
to mirror your off-line network.
You could define a parameter,
a ratio of face-to-face "facebook"
"*friends*" and ones you've never And there's a third
met before connecting with on-line. class of people,
the ones you met
Some of those connections on-line who you
will be people who have later arranged
connections with people meetings with off-line.
you *have* met off-line
first. (face the faceless
hordes of facebook)
So right there we've got
a possible field of study,
something the marketeers
are no doubt greatly
interested in.
Early on Kadushin emphasises that there are
different kinds of possible connections,
something our "social network" sites have
had trouble grasping.
"Proposition 2 c. Individuals or
He has a number of propositions groups with homophilous relations
about "homophily": e.g. you are likely to share similar
tend to have connections to attitudes." -- Charles Kadushin,
other people who are like you. "Social Network Theory", Feb 17, 2004
(Depending on the kind of
connections under discussion, Networks
and what kind of enitity "you" within
are-- his nodes are allowed to networks.
be businesses or other
collectives). (Are their
networks
This subject, by the way, has a lot within
to do with theories of city formation. humans?)
Different parameters of
network "distance" can Note: sociograms and sociometry--
be defined: terms invented by Jacob L. Moreno
in 1934 (wrote about it in 1953)
Links can be weighted
and summed, so that
multiple first-order
connections count much
more than one multi-hop
connection. Stanley Milgram did some
"small world" studies in 1967.
first order zone = interpersonal environment = graph theory
Kadushin claims that organizations that are
*structurally* similar tend to behave in similar
ways, though there's no direct communication
between them.
(But there's no reference on that one... and
I wonder what he means by "structure" in this
context. Flat vs deep hierarchy?)
There's a suggestion about
individuals defined by their He chatters a lot about
relationships (no monster intersubjectivity and so on.
lives on Decartes' island self). Seems a little fuzzy, but it's
worth remembering that there
can be emergent properties of
a network that are hard to
Perhaps there's an unexamined grasp. What we're really
assumption in the notion of a "node": after here may turn out to be
fuzzy.
The node is a hard, atomic monad
in our network diagrams, but
nodes can be complex entities
with internal structure, and
controversial boundaries.
Systems set-up for
individuals sometimes
end up treating couples
as individuals when they
choose to share an NODAL_SELF
account, etc.
A really tight connection
between individuals might
be better thought of as a
joint node that needs to be
treated as a one entity...
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