8 - The Structure of Social Space

Summary

Abstract: The distribution of actors in social space governs the probability of interpersonal attachments which, in turn, governs the distribution of interpersonal influence. To describe the structure of social space, I develop the concept of ridge structure, which is an object in social space comprised of sequentially overlapping and densely occupied regions of social space. Because the probability of an interpersonal attachment increases with the proximity of actors in social space, a ridge structure is associated with sequentially intersecting cohesive subsets of actors. In this chapter, I support the concept of ridge structure with both theoretical and empirical results.

In this chapter I will describe the network of interpersonal attachments in each faculty of science. The macro-structure of attachments allows flows of interpersonal influence to penetrate into more or less distant regions of a social space and to accumulate so that certain actors come to have a substantial effect on system outcomes. I will argue that bridges typically do not provide the most important foundations of such reachability and impact. To describe the more typical foundations of reachability and interpersonal influence in complexly differentiated social spaces, I develop the concept of ridge structure. A ridge structure is an object in social space (i.e., a type of social manifold) consisting of sequentially overlapping and densely occupied regions of social space. Because the probability of an interpersonal attachment increases with the proximity of actors in social space, ridge structures produce sequentially intersecting cohesive subsets of actors.