SOC 3332 Study Guide - Winter 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Social Network, Social Capital, Algorithm
12 Oct 2018
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SOC 3332
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
1/12/18
1
(1) What is a Network?
Features of a Network
• Network: A set of relationships between nodes.
• They are everywhere.
• All complex network systems can be understood to have the same basic principles
and characteristics because they all behave in the same way regardless of what
they are comprised of and/or how they arose.
Social Network Theory and Social Capital
• Network analysis is about making social bonds visible.
o Visualization of something that is otherwise not easy to see.
o E.g. Facebook ‘likes’.
• It focuses on the consequences of networks.
o Bordieu believed that the reproduction of social class must have a social
practice/habit aspect to it.
• Social capital is a resource.
o For Putnam, increasingly, we are not establishing social networks that are
generating social capital.
▪ There has been a secular decline in the levels of social capital due
to decline in social get-togethers.
▪ Criticism: This argument is too circular. By the nature of
technologies, we are increasingly individualized, but the case could
be that people do not have resources outside of the online realm.
o E.g. Politicians generate a network of support in order to get elected
and/or re-elected.
• It is very exclusionary.
o Pessimistic view of social capital as an exclusionary device to enable
people with money by product of how they dress and act.
o People perform their everyday lives.
• Critique: In the end, it is suggested that people do not have very much agency to
get away from the class that they are born into.
o It ultimately says that things happen to people rather than them having the
ability to intervene.
• Cultural capital helps reproduce class distinctions.
o People are cultivated and groomed, whether they realize it or not.
• Economic capital is a structural force in the economy.
Feedback Loop
• As with network theory, we will see that a feedback loop is at the heart of
network processes (p.13).
• Interested in what generates community or aspects of society and what is
generated by them.
• Chicken and egg problem.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
1/12/18
2
The Principle of Propinquity
• Conditions whereby all things being equal, nodes are more likely to be connected
with one another if they are spatially or geographically near to one another.
o E.g. Countries that share the same borders are more likely to exchange
commodities with each other and to enter relationships through trade.
▪ A tie is produced that will govern this dynamic.
• Co-location: This puts people within range of one another.
o Being in the same place at that same time as another person allows for
greater possibility for a connection to be established.
• Co-presence: This is a social relationship that is within the framework of a social
institution or structure.
o Individuals who share a location but at different times can also share a tie.
The Principle of Homophily
• ‘If two people have characteristics that match a proportion greater than expected
in the population from which they are drawn or the network of which are a part,
then they are likely to be connected.’
o Nodes are more likely to be connected with one another if they possess
similar characteristics.
• The most elementary elements of a society are not the individuals or groups
which it is comprised of, but are they interactions that occur between them.
o Relations are external to their terms.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Social network theory and social capital: network analysis is about making social bonds visible, visualization of something that is otherwise not easy to see, e. g. By the nature of technologies, we are increasingly individualized, but the case could be that people do not have resources outside of the online realm: e. g. Politicians generate a network of support in order to get elected and/or re-elected. Feedback loop: as with network theory, we will see that a feedback loop is at the heart of network processes (p. 13). Interested in what generates community or aspects of society and what is generated by them: chicken and egg problem. The principle of propinquity: conditions whereby all things being equal, nodes are more likely to be connected with one another if they are spatially or geographically near to one another, e. g. 1/19/18 (3) dyads and triads: more visible others will typically lead to more connections between the nodes.
