Friends and social networks

Readings Readings: Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg (Malcolm Gladwell, 1999 The New Yorker) Selections from Stark’s Sociology on Networks Paper assignment due next Monday Posted this evening

Relationships in Context Exposure: 4 partners 10 partners 22 partners 46 partners 1 partner

Some Questions to Consider Relationships What helps form them? What sustains them? How do relationships fit together? Groups What is a group, sociologically? How do groups and individual interact? Community Does it exist? What is it good for?

From Jim Moody Add Health Data

The Structure of your World Consider a setting that you spend time in: How is it organized? How connected is it? What kinds of people are in it? Where are they located? Is it cohesive? Is it hierarchical?

Groups and Attributes Often we think of groups as composed of persons who share some attribute in common I.e., Blacks, Arabs, Christians, punks, old people, Republicans But do attributes always create sociological groups?

Is this a group? Why? Why not?  Why?  Why not?

Social Groups Social groups are distinctive because they are associated with social solidarity (social cohesion) Social solidarity: density and emotional intensity of attachments within a group; the capacity of group members to generate a sort of ‘glue’ that enables them to stick together, to ‘belong,’ to be loyal. Not all collections of persons are social groups. Some are just aggregates