Our first reading was Barry Wellman’s thorough introduction to the evolving history of network communities. Through this piece, Wellman presents and then shatters the Tonnien complaint that community has been destroyed by a modern “mass society,” explaining how the concept of community has been transformed rather, from an idealized pastoral Gemeinschaft to a globalized, non-locale bounded personal network analysis.
Within the first page of the introduction, I took issues with Wellman’s speculative assertion that “people believe that they are the exceptions, and that the masses around them are lonely and isolated.” What is this collective generalization based on? Wellmen hints at a media-produced hyperreality of isolated modern society, and later refutes this notion that community has been lost as “unscholarly, presentist, and parochial.” (8)
Wellman adroitly interweaves the heavy-hitters of classical sociology into his detailing of the opinions on community evolution through social structure and economic changes, but he fails to follow through on further advancements in network community theories and contemporary sociological theories like interaction theory, phenomenology, and symbolic interactionism. How do we manipulate our relationships and networks to help produce an identity we would like to be performed? I also was expecting to see a brief description of social network analysis’ institutional beginnings in academia. Are there now different schools of thought on social networks or major research differences?
I also would have liked for Wellman to briefly discuss how social networks vary in type and operation by different social groups. Could we run descriptive factors like race, income, attendance at religious service, or years of education from the GSS against social network computations and find patterns or predictive correlations? There is no mention of homophily, the induction process into a community, or the economic rationale for participating in communities. Wellman does put social networks in context, delineating the differences in resources access according to society type (35), but is this industrialized world versus rural area set-up not just a revamping of the Gemeinschaft/ Gesellschaft argument he berates in the beginning of the article? Wellman also fails to note the importance of social capital attached to these types of interactions and resource access. Why do some members of well-off societies value the “Buy Local” relationships at say the Clark Park Farmer’s Market, which is characteristic of third-world community exchanges, more so than a more efficient supermarket model?
Throughout the piece, Wellman also notes how globalization has weakened the old-style community’s constraints on space and how new factors of community networks have evolved into specialized, looser, non-location dependent, private, and feminized community ties. Wellman also describes them as frequently changing, but a question of durability and long-lastingness arises. Can networks ever die and is there a predicted process to this? Wellman also asserts that networks are becoming more feminized, but does not provide enough proof of this, other than explaining how our economy has put more of an emphasis on emotion work.
Overall, Wellman’s piece brought up more questions about the nuances of network communities than its introduction explained. Can mass-produced memes like nationalism can authentically link us to others? Can social network analysis be applied on a global scale, to international relationships? I also would have liked for Wellman to present one unified example like networks in an art world to show how contemporary networks function and relationships and their social capital affect the prestige of an artist, the stock of a dealer, and the created value of a piece. Wellman also mentions the shift of community from the public sphere to the private sphere, and I wonder what decay in trust and neighborhood relations precipitated this militarized public space with surveillance and “bum-proof” benches. Wellman quotes Thomas Jefferson comparing the increasing numbers of people in cities’ effect on pure government to that of sores to the health of a body. I thought that this would have been a perfect opportunity for Wellman to make a connection to the “Rule of 150” in communities or other number limitations or formulas in network analysis such as the small-world theory.
Regarding Freeman’s “See You in the Funny Papers,” I initially rolled my eyes to this sort of academic interpretation of pop culture is the evidence lay people use to malign sociology as a lame pseudoscience. But upon further reading, I actually noticed how Freeman was bringing up a lot of the advanced social network concepts such as relationship decay, the GSS’ evaluation of social networks, and “tight-knit” networks. This paper’s goal is to show evidence through comics of the increasing popularity of social network analysis in popular media today, so where is the temporal contrast? Did cartoons in the 1990s or 1980s have a contemptuous or misleading view of social network analysis? Had the same social network concepts presented here, ones that are all present in relationships no matter what era, ever been mentioned in comics prior to this time period Freeman is discussing? I liked his contemporary presentation of the academic theories of social network analysis in relatable cartoon vignettes, but would have liked a comparison to show changes in the popular media’s perception on social network analysis.
In Munge and Contractor’s “Network Concepts, Measures, and the Multitheoretical, Multilevel Analytical Framework,” I appreciated the terms used to categorize concepts like mutual friends that we take for granted in everyday life. I also think that this sort of taxonomical classification helps present social network analysis as a scientific endeavor. Munge and Contractor fill in many of the gaps I had with Wellman’s introduction. They mention migratory versus embedded knowledge, introducing the interesting notion that the type of information transmitted varies according to the communication linkage. The authors continue to explain the measure of social network analysis, which has not been mentioned in the other readings for this week, but fail to elaborate on the possibilities for quantifying the “valued” strength of a tie. (35) Since this is such a nebulous subject, I was interested in reading innovative ways researchers can conceptualize the value strength of a tie, such as what percentage of their savings would they loan to that person or number of reciprocal transfers of resources, or frequency of commensality. Furthermore, out of all of the readings for this week, I was expecting to see some of the mathematical computations and formulas involved in social network analysis to be included in this framework overview. Overall, I enjoyed reading about all of the nuances of network analysis and the classification and evaluation of relationships in terms of density, transitivity, and structural holes, but was yearning for more concrete examples of these concepts, maybe in one ongoing description scenario of a school class. This reading ended a bit abruptly, and I would have liked to continue on to the MTML section.
Questions Section
-With the changes, do individuals have more volition in choosing your networks instead of being constrained by geographic boundaries? Are social networks really more “democratic?” With the loss of physical-based neighborhood networks, are Internet based network communities of less social value, less cohesive, or less authentic? Do our networks have greater social mobility or are as class-constrained as say they may have been pre-World War II?
-Wellman dances around gender issues in networks and the public’s perception on them. Why do we have the collective image of a crazed isolated male more often than a female?
-Freeman’s piece mentions “the decay of relationships over time.” Can we predict this through a mathematical formula of interactions over time or is there a deeper severance of shared goals or devaluation of the social capital in that relationship to begin with?
Comments (1)
Excellent comments and questions.
Your critique of Wellman is impressive and well formulated, but keep in mind that this is an introductory chapter that only briefly glances upon some of the major trends and implications of network research. I believe that Wellman's "speculative assertion" about people believing that they are unique does in fact have much research evidence to support it, though it would indeed have been helpful to point readers in the direction of such research. Beyond various philosophical treatises on this matter, much social science research has pointed to the differences people attribute to their own thought and action when compared with other people. Within the field of communication, consider for example the many studies demonstrating the existence of third-person perceptions - the belief that media have a stronger influence on others than on the self when socially undesirable messages are broadcast, as well as the similarly self-serving first person perception, which claims the opposite with regard to socially desirable messages. I think Wellman's claim can be seen as an extension of this in another field.
You make an interesting point about the lack of historical perspective in Freeman's comics analysis. I think this raises even broader questions about the relation between academia and society and the mutual influence between the two. To date, most research has demonstrated that public policy agendas originating outside academic circles usually influences the academic agenda before the opposite occurs, although this is not always the case. One assumption in this specific case might be that the actual manifestations of social network concepts in comics have become more sophisticated and "accurate" over the years, thus reflecting an influence of the academic agenda over society. Another might be that these same networks were presented earlier, but that given the underdeveloped status of social network research at the time, it was simply less noticed or reflected concepts developed later only implicitly, without academic awareness. Given that social science research generally attempts to explain existing social phenomena, this seems to be logical: patterns of social interaction that have always been present have become the subject of academic research and theoretical development, and - perhaps - some of this development has crept its way back into general, non-academic society.
Monge and Contractor indeed do not go into many pragmatic examples, again mostly since this is an introductory presentation of concepts and measures. Many of the issues you raise will be discussed in greater depth throughout the course.
Posted by Oren Livio | September 13, 2006 9:53 AM
Posted on September 13, 2006 09:53