Social Networks

Suppose someone asked you to deliver a letter to a complete stranger on the other side
of the country by using only acquaintances to pass the letter along. You give the letter to
an acquaintance, who can give the letter to one of his or her acquaintances, and so forth.
Research shows that, on average, it would take no more than about six acquaintances to
get the letter to the stranger. This fact suggests that, in a fundamental sociological sense,
we live in a small world: Just a few social ties separate us from everyone else.
Our world is small because we are enmeshed in overlapping sets of social relations, or
social networks. Sociologists define a social network as a bounded set of units (individuals,
organizations, countries, and so on) linked by the exchange of material or emotional
resources, everything from money to friendship (see Box 4.3). The people you know personally
form the boundaries of your “personal network.” However, each of your network
members is linked to other people. This is what connects you to people you have never
met, creating a “small world” that extends far beyond your personal network. Although
any particular individual may know a small number of people, his or her family members,
friends, coworkers, and others know many more people who extend far beyond that
individual’s personal network. So, for example, the authors of this textbook are likely to
be complete strangers to you. Yet your professor may know one of us or at least know
someone who knows one of us. Probably no more than two links separate us from you. Put
differently, although our personal networks are small, they lead quickly to much larger networks.
We live in a small world because our social networks connect us to the larger world.
The study of social networks is not restricted to ties among
individuals (Wasserman and Faust, 1994; Wellman and Berkowitz, 1997 [1988]). The
units of analysis (or “nodes”) in a network can be individuals, groups, organizations,
and even countries. Thus, social network analysts have examined everything from intimate
relationships between lovers to diplomatic relations among nations.
Unlike organizations, most networks lack names and offices. There is a Boy Scouts of
America but no North American Trading Bloc. In a sense, networks lie beneath the more
visible collectivities of social life, but that makes them no less real or important. Some
sociologists claim that we can gain only a partial sense of why certain things happen
in the social world by focusing on highly visible collectivities. From their point of view,
getting the whole story requires probing below the surface and examining the network
level. The study of social networks clarifies a wide range of social phenomena, including
how people find jobs and form communities.
Many people learn about important events, ideas, and opportunities from
their social networks. Friends and acquaintances often introduce you to everything
from an interesting college course or a great restaurant to a satisfying occupation or a
future
spouse. Social networks aren’t the only source of information, but they are highly
significant.
Consider how people find jobs. Do you look in the “Help Wanted” section of your
local newspaper, scan the Internet, or walk around certain areas of town looking for
“Employee Wanted” signs? Although these strategies are common, people often learn
about employment opportunities from other people.
What kind of people? According to sociologist Mark Granovetter (1973), you may
have strong or weak ties to another person. You have strong ties to people who are close to
you, such as family members and friends. You have weak ties to mere acquaintances, such
as people you meet at parties and friends of friends. In his research, Granovetter found
that weak ties are more important than strong ties are in finding a job, which is contrary to
common sense. You might reasonably assume that a mere acquaintance wouldn’t do much
to help you find a job, whereas a close friend or relative would make a lot more effort in that
regard. However, by focusing on the flow of information in personal networks, Granovetter
found something different. Mere acquaintances are more likely to provide useful information
about employment opportunities than friends or family members because people
who are close to you typically share overlapping networks. Therefore, the information they
can provide about job opportunities is often redundant.
In contrast, mere acquaintances are likely to be connected to diverse networks. They
can therefore provide information about many different job openings and make introductions
to many different potential employers. Moreover, because people typically have more
weak ties than strong ties, the sum of weak ties holds more information about job opportunities
than the sum of strong ties. These features of personal networks allowed Granovetter
to conclude that the “strength of weak ties” lies in their diversity and abundance.
We rely on social networks for a lot more than job information. Consider
everyday life in the big city. We often think of big cities as cold and alienating places
where few people know one another. In this view, urban acquaintanceships tend to be
few and functionally specific; we know someone fleetingly as a bank teller or a server
in a restaurant but not as a whole person. Even dating can involve a series of brief encounters.
In contrast, people often think of small towns as friendly, comfortable places
where everyone knows everyone else (and everyone else’s business). Indeed, some of
the founders
of sociology emphasized just this distinction. Notably, German sociologist
Ferdinand Tönnies (1988 [1887]) contrasted community with society. According to
Tönnies,
a community is marked by intimate and emotionally intense social ties, whereas
a society is marked by impersonal relationships held together largely by self-interest. A
big city is a prime example of a society in Tönnies’s judgment.
Tönnies’s view prevailed until network analysts started studying big-city life in
the 1970s. Where Tönnies saw only sparse, functionally specific ties, network analysts
found elaborate social networks, some functionally specific and some not. For example,
Barry Wellman and his colleagues studied personal networks in Toronto (Wellman,
Carrington,
and Hall, 1997 [1988]). They found that each Torontonian had an average
of about 400 social ties, including immediate and extended kin, neighbors, friends, and
coworkers. These ties provided everything from emotional aid (for example, visits after
a personal tragedy) and financial support (small loans) to minor services (fixing a car)
and information of the kind Granovetter studied.
Strong ties that last a long time are typically restricted to immediate family members,
a few close relatives and friends, and a close coworker or two. Beyond that, however,
people rely on a wide array of ties for different purposes at different times. Downtown
residents sitting on their front stoops on a summer evening, sipping soda, and chatting
with neighbors as the kids play stickball or road hockey may be less common than they
were 50 years ago. However, the automobile, public transportation, the telephone, and
the Internet help people stay in close touch with a wide range of contacts for a variety
of purposes (Haythornwaite and Wellman, 2002). Far from living in an impersonal and
alienating world, the lives of today’s city dwellers are network rich.