Showing papers on "Social network published in 1971"

Structural equivalence of individuals in social networks

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to understand the interrelations among relations within concrete social groups. Social structure is sought, not ideal types, although the latter are relevant to interrelations among relations. From a detailed social network, patterns of global relations can be extracted, within which classes of equivalently positioned individuals are delineated. The global patterns are derived algebraically through a ‘functorial’ mapping of the original pattern. Such a mapping (essentially a generalized homomorphism) allows systematically for concatenation of effects through the network. The notion of functorial mapping is of central importance in the ‘theory of categories,’ a branch of modern algebra with numerous applications to algebra, topology, logic. The paper contains analyses of two social networks, exemplifying this approach.

Social Structure and Social Change.

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to explore the way in which the social structure of a system affects the nature of social change, and how, in turn, change affects structure. Our work is synthetic, using examples from such varied fields as the diffusion of innovations, organizational communication, national development programs, and social movements. The minor theme of this article is that social scientific research on these

Spatial dimensions of urban social travel

Abstract: Two basic hypotheses are tested in this paper. First, the frequency of social trips will decline with increasing travel distance between the interacting participants. Secondly, an individual of a given socioeconomic status will be more likely to choose as a social contact someone of similar status, his frequency declining with progressively dissimilar status levels. Although the findings at the census tract level were less clear-cut than expected, they tended to confirm the hypotheses. Conclusions based on detailed neighborhood surveys strongly point up a distance decay in social travel and an interaction of individuals by socioeconomic status. Based on friendship origins, the neighborhood data show both a distance and a social network component. Factor analysis of the social ties matrix suggests the effects of distance bias and residential status on social interaction in the city.

African Businessmen in a Dual Economy

Abstract: IN a society with marked cultural divisions, these divisions tend to intrude into economic life A racial or religious group dominates in one field of economic activity, while it is virtually excluded elsewhere. This is no accident, for the cultural bond can help to secure the social networks which carry business forward. But these cultural divisions also act as formidable barriers to change, cramping and distorting the evolution of new patterns of relationship. Economic innovation may then be stultified less by lack of resources than by lack of a social network, of conventions of mutual trust and understanding, through which to organize its affairs. This is a characteristic problem of a dual economy-meaning here simply any economy where such cultural divisions have become a dominant organizing principle of economic management. In this paper, I want to discuss the dual economy from the standpoint of a local businessman-not the manager, of an international company, nor the influential politician who sits on boards of directors, but the man who has built up his own concern, and is trying to be more than just a petty shopkeeper or a self-employed craftsman. Such a man stands in the middle of the systems of relationship in which the economy is divided. He is ambitious, progressive, yet still partly held by the values and obligations of the small-scale rural community in which he grew up. He has to think out afresh how to handle his suppliers, his bank, his workers and customers, because he is a newcomer to the commercial or industrial activity he undertakes and there are no precedents to guide him. Men of other races may have run similar businesses before, even in the same place, but they worked within the conventions of different cultures. He has to pioneer his own solution to the problems of management which confront him, mediating between the demands of economy institutions at large and the expectations of his own people. For him, the disjointedness of a dual economy presents a set of practical difficulties which he must overcome if his business is to survive. I will try to describe how African businessmen in Kenya characteristically handle this situation. My information comes mostly from

Social Interaction and Urban Space

Abstract: Man, the social animal, has organized his cities for particular social objectives. His urban social communications take place within a spatially and socially restrictive network of interpersonal information contact. Viewed in this sense, cities exist to facilitate the social communications or interactions of their population. At the same time, however, diverse social goals and group frictions create barriers to smooth flows of information among urban dwellers. This paper introduces the theme of urban social interaction, outlines the structure of social ties in cities, and surveys two major urban problems relating explicitly to social interaction in the city. The approach here is to bring geographical concepts and knowledge to bear on problems of social interaction in urban space. It is hoped that greater insight by teachers and students into the social problems of cities is achieved by an improved understanding of the geography of social communications.

Social control and social change

Abstract: "Social Control and Social Change" is a unique and timely attempt to understand and elaborate the process of social control An interdisciplinary study from the Center for Research on Social Behavior at Bowling Green University, this book develops some general theories of social control as it exists in human and nonhuman societies and indicates areas in which important new research can be done The authors present not only theoretical discussions of the various aspects of control processes biological, political, psychological, social, and social-psychological but also include detailed research and indicate practical applications of the newer scientific perspectives of social control"

Ritual Kinship in Eastern Turkey

Abstract: This paper describes the custom of kivrelik, ritual coparenthood, as practiced in Eastern Turkey. It is shown that kivrelik is normally formed between villagers of equal age, wealth, social status and religious and ethnic origins. The relationship puts an end to hostilities existing between families, increases the range of one's social network, works as a social and economic insurance mechanism and, contributes to the maintenance of status-quo within the system by not allowing persons of different socio-economic status from establishing binding relations with each other. Most important of all, however, is that kivrelik is a means to get political support and enables an individual to manipulate the system in order to maximize his interests. These assertions were exemplified with cases. The data were collected during my field-work in a province of Eastern Turkey in the summer of 1969.

Ideology and Social Sciences: A Communicational Approach

Abstract: One of the obvious levels of empirical reality of what we call science corresponds to the PRODUCTS of scientific activity: bodies of linguistic materials consisting, in different proportions, of propositions made up of signs of a natural language and elements of artificial or formal languages. With regard to any system of signs, there is a traditional distribution of areas: (a) SYNTACTICS, the study of the relationships among signs themselves. Syntactics has been characterized as the study of the rides for constructing \"acceptable\" expressions within a given language system, irrespective of their meanings, (b) SEMANTICS, the study of how signs are related to what they stand for, refer to, or 'represent'. Semantics is supposed to state the rules of correspondence between signs and their denotata, (c) PRAGMATICS, the study of the relationships between signs and their human users, i.e., those who send and receive the signs available in particular situations. From this point of view, therefore, the science of sign-phenomena comprises three basic chapters: the analysis of the formal relationships between signs, the analysis of meaning, and the analysis of use. An empirical science considered as a linguistic system and studied without taking into account the associated processes relating signs to the communicators, could be described by the set of its syntactic-semantical construction rules. As, for the time being, the social sciences use

The Sociology of the Social Sciences

Abstract: lack of unity arising out of some theoretical system or a comprehensive and generally accepted conceptual framework. Rather, it is a field which derives its content and impetus from the concrete phenomena studied; phenomena which in most instances are linked to a specific time, culture or set of sociopolitical circumstances. Furthermore, and probably as a result of the lack theoretical unity in the field, among those who have used sociological perspectives and methods to study the social sciences there has been little consciousness that this work is associated with or could be associated with a distinct specialty whether it be labelled the sociology of the social sciences or some other ’sociology of...’. When such an association is made, it is usually put forth with a timidity rarely displayed by sociologists when claiming other areas of social life as the objects of their study. Examples of such wariness are found in the recent works by Friedrichs (22), on the one hand, and Crawford and Biderman (14),

The Social Psychology of the Cell Environment

Abstract: out denying the validity of self-report, and the writer has read at least 50 books about prison life done by inmates in several countries and spanning several hundred years’ time, there is an urgent need for more systematic investigation of the effects of long-term incarceration. In the biological sciences there is a growing body of literature about the pathological effects of crowding upon both laboratory and free-ranging animals, upon the deleterious effects of an impoverished stimulus environment and the individual’s need for varied perceptual experience. If society takes upon itself the task of incarcerating people for long periods of time, it must be aware of the effects of that incarceration. Florence Nightingale had maintained that the first requisite of a hospital was that it made the patients no worse. It seems a minimum criterion of prison effectiveness that an inmate should emerge no worse than when he entered. If we do not know how prison life affects inmates, if we look upon prison as a long tunnel in which a person goes in one end and later emerges out the other, we are likely to compound all the errors of the past and lose the correctional and therapeutic potential of institutional life. During the past year, I served as a member of a federal task force in

Social Science and a New Social Order

Abstract: Singer has argued that the functions of social science research are to describe, explain, and predict.1 Dominant paradigms in disillusionsocial science, since pre-World War Two disillusionment with prescription,2 have presupposed these three functions, and whole disciplines have been guided by them. Theory-building enterprises with the use of sophisticated computer and statistical tools have been developed in the last twenty years at a time when U.S society was making a fundamental commitment to technological, scientific advancement. Particularly the post-Sputnik atmosphere profoundly effected the kinds of problems social scientists consider and the way in which they are studied. Since the dramatic escalation of the Vietnam War in 1965 and increasing racial conflicts in urban areas, students and young faculty have begun to re-evaluate the dominant motifs of scientific inquiry; the relationship of knowledge to U.S. foreign policy, the interaction of knowledge and social control, and the adequacy and/or inadequacy of knowledge as agent and guide to social change.4 Recent conflicts in professional social science journals and emerging minority professional association caucuses have resulted in demands for 'a new social science' that is 'relevant' to post-industrialized societies, to minority groups within such societies, and to movements within third world nations.5

Social Science Paradigms and the Study of Complex Organizations.

Abstract: This paper for educational administrators and researchers, and theorists begins with a discussion of the role of intellectual paradigms in the development of science, and outlines some of the general social science paradigms that have been dominant in organization theory. A classificatioa scheme is constructed, based on Udyl s organizational subsystems and Buckley's basic sociological paradigms, that allows one to compare and contrast dif ferent paradigms. By means of this classification scheme, one can see which areas have been the focus oc organization research up to the present, and which have been neglec4 Issues that demand further research are set forth. References -iven. (Author/VLW)

Some Social Functions of Theory in Teaching.

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to show that theory must have a central place in the preparation of teachers and that this is probably inevitable and essential, in both cases because of contemporary social circumstances. The argument starts from the position that the function of those responsible for preparing teachers is that of socializing students into an occupational role and that, although this process must be undertaken within the present social ethos, the teachers trained now must serve under the unknown, changing and largely unpredictable circumstances of the future. Students either go to a teachers' college at about eighteen years of age in the expectation that they will be enabled to take their places as primary or secondary teachers some two or three years later, or go to a university department or faculty of Education to undertake a year's professional training after completing a first degree. For them, as for the children they will teach, their professional education will be \"a process of cultural assimilation through the reconstruction of personalities previously conditioned by class or race\".' They must learn what Durkheim has called \"a pedagogic culture\".2 To become a member of any such social grouping entails the learning, whether consciously or not, of certain assumptions. Any culture centred on the process of teaching something to others must by its nature be built around such assumptions as models of what society is and should be like, of what a teacher is and should be like, and, lastly, of what children are and should be like.S In some sense all pedagogic models relate to the social climates of their times, or as Durkheim expressed this point in his inaugural lecture as Professor of Education at the Sorbonne in 1902, \"our pedagogical ideal is in every detail the work of society.'\" These models change as the structure