1st Edition

Explorations in Structural Analysis Dual and Multiple Networks of Social Interaction

By Ronald Breiger Copyright 2015
    210 Pages
    by Routledge

    206 Pages
    by Routledge

    At a time when most of the innovative techniques in empirical sociology concern themselves with networks of relations among variables (such as indices of occupational prestige, education and income), the central theme of this volume is that there is much substantive insight and analytical leverage to be gained from a conceptualization of social structure directly, as regularities in the patterning of relations among concrete entities. The view adopted here is that variate distributions measure selected consequences of structural pattern (of the actual connections among individuals or organizations) and, as such, they are useful indicators of questions to be asked in analyzing social structures directly, but they are neither descriptions nor analyses of the structure itself.

    1. Introduction  2. The Duality of Persons and Groups  3. Career Attributes and Network Structure: A Blockmodel Study of a Biomedical Specialty  4. Toward an Operational Theory of Community Elite Structures