| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | |||||
| 3 | 4 |
5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
| 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |
| 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| 31 |
Editor Login
Convener in chief:
David Lazer
(Methodology, Networked Governance)
Editors:
Stanley Wasserman
(Current Trends, Methodology, Social Networks)
Allan Friedman
(Simulations)
Nathan Eagle
(Technology, Social Computing, Powerlaws, Current Trends)
Ben Waber
(Technology, Social Computing) Thomas Langenberg
(Technology, Social Computing, Social Networks, Current Trends)
Ines Mergel
(Knowledge Sharing, Social Computing, Social Software, Current Trends)
Brian Rubineau
(Social Dynamics, Societal Networks, Simulations)
Maria Binz-Scharf
(Qualitative Methodology, Knowledge Sharing, eGovernment)
Jeff Boase
(Technology, Societal networks)
Alexander Schellong
(Admin, eGovernment, Citizen Relationship Management)
Categories
Archives
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
Recent Entries
- Save the data! the Dataverse Network initiative
- Computing Culture: National Communication Logs
- Paper on voluntary engagement now downloadable from this site
- Published: Voluntary engagement in knowledge sharing
- Facebook vs MySpace
Recent Comments
- Re: Family ties as bridging ties
By: hypotheek
Date: May 20, 2008 4:32 PM
Notification
« Networks in Political Science (NIPS) program | Main | The contagiousness of smoking? »
19 May 2008
Family ties as bridging ties
I have been a low volume blogger over the last several months due to a full load of teaching obligations, but will crank it up a bit over the next month.
I always learn something when I teach my networks class. One of the early exercises that I have students do is a personal network self evaluation (adapted from Baker’s book on social capital). The students’ networks tend to be highly educated, very international, ages 25-30. Essentially, the networks of students tend to look a lot like themselves. What is notable (I base this on the last 3 years of doing this exercise) is where the networks look most different from the students, which is, more often than not, in ties to family members. Family ties are somewhat less likely to be highly educated, and when they are, it is often in a different domain than that of the other people in the students’ network, and, unsurprisingly, they are often (literally) of a different generation.
I think this reflects a broader truth about our ties to family and friends. We are born into our families, but we choose our friends. That flexibility of friendship tends to bring with it homogeneity. If we differ too much from our friends, we get new friends. If we differ too much from our family, we just don’t bring up sex/religion/politics during the holidays.
The notable corollary to this is that while social network scholars often think of family ties as the ultimate in bonding/strong ties, they, in fact, may offer bridges to groups/perspectives/skills that may not exist in our friendship networks.
Posted by David Lazer at May 19, 2008 8:44 PM
-
.
- Business (3) .
- Citizen Relationship Management (16) .
- Commentary (6) .
- Complexity (2) .
- Current Trends (43) .
- eGovernment (20) .
- Events/Announcements (63) .
- Innovation (13) .
- Internet (15) .
- Knowledge Sharing (18) .
- Methodology (30) .
- Networked Governance (18) .
- Networks in political science (2) .
- PNG Working Paper Series (6) .
- Powerlaws (4) .
- Reviews (2) .
- Simulations (1) .
- Small group networks (3) .
- Small Worlds (2) .
- SN in the news (68) .
- Social Capital (3) .
- Social Computing (10) .
- Social Finance (1) .
- Social Networking Platforms (10) .
- Social Psychology (2) .
- Social Software (24) .
- Societal Networks (35) .
- Technology (29)
Comments
Hello David, like your idea about ties. Think you are right about this. We do search for homogeneity in ties with our closest friends, but i do think that we form our original ties from examples out of our family, they are our beginning point.
Regards,
Aislin, Erasmus University
Posted by: hypotheek at May 20, 2008 4:32 PM