Network analysis

Network analysis is the study of social relations among a set of actors. It is a field of study -- a set of phenomena or data which we seek to understand.

In the process of working in this field, network researchers have developed a set of distinctive theoretical perspectives as well. Some of the hallmarks of these perspectives are:

• focus on relationships between actors rather than attributes of actors
• sense of interdependence: a molecular rather atomistic view
• structure affects substantive outcomes
• emergent effects

Network theory is sympathetic with systems theory and complexity theory.

Social networks is also characterized by a distinctive methodology encompassing techniques for collecting data, statistical analysis, visual representation, etc.

Social Relations

Social relations can be thought of as dyadic attributes. Whereas mainstream social science is concerned with monadic attributes (e.g., income, age, sex, etc.), network analysis is concerned with attributes of pairs of individuals, of which binary relations are the main kind. Some examples of dyadic attributes:

• Kinship: brother of, father of
• Social Roles: boss of, teacher of, friend of
• Affective: likes, respects, hates
• Cognitive: knows, views as similar
• Actions: talks to, has lunch with, attacks
• Flows: number of cars moving between
• Distance: number of miles between
• Co-occurrence: is in the same club as, has the same color hair as
• Mathematical: is two links removed from

Topics

1. Substantive effects of social network variables

• Attributes of ego network --> access to resources, mental/physical health
• Network closeness --> influence, diffusion
• Similarity of position --> similarity of risks, opportunities, outcomes

2. Substantive determinants of social network variables

• Personality --> centrality?
• Similarity --> friendship ties? (Homophily)
• Reduction of cognitive dissonance --> transitivity?
• Strategic "networking"

3. Network determinants of network variables

• Relationship between density and centrality

- See the journal French Metablog with today different posts - Jean-Philippe Pastor

Serial absence between texts according to Sartre

It is a matter of fact that the new technologies have actualized, accelerated and ramified the whole scriptual economy and all its relations of force, its programmings, regulations, calculations.

What is at stake with the internet, for example, is what has always been at stake, the complexities of "writing" of "social relations." And as with all systems of writing before it, this one is unable to enforce a regime of meanings; yet it has achieved the capacity to circulate texts confaster and farther than ever.

The acceleration and expansion of the system does not, however, "unify" it; instead, inversely, it makes possible a greater distanciation, what Sartre called the "serial absence" of each point to all the others, or what in Derrida becomes the radical and volatile indeterminacy of context.

To think the internet as a "post card," for example, means to acknowledge that transmission is the only law of production, that culture itself is sent through circuits, and that all this may demand a shift in our textual ontology, toward a conception of the textual system as an illimitable matrix crossing at various speeds thru all cultural, political, and social dimensions.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts -

PHONEREADER Library - - Jean-Philippe Pastor