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  3. Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences

This series is designed to bring together under a single rubric social scientific research undertaken from a structural perspective. Each volume in the series demonstrates the value of a structural approach in a particular subject area, while the series as a whole brings the achievements of structurally-oriented scholars to the attention of a wider public, and thereby encourages others to approach their theory and research in this very fruitful way.

  • General Editors: Mark Granovetter, Stanford University, California

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47 results in Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences

Page 1 of 3

Economic Networks
  • Theory and Computation
  • Thomas J. Sargent, John Stachurski
  • Published online:
    11 April 2024
    Print publication:
    25 April 2024
  • It has become increasingly clear that economies can fruitfully be viewed as networks, consisting of millions of nodes (households, firms, banks, etc.) connected by business, social, and legal relationships. These relationships shape many outcomes that economists often measure. Over the past few years, research on production networks has flourished, as economists try to understand supply-side dynamics, default cascades, aggregate fluctuations, and many other phenomena. Economic Networks provides a brisk introduction to network analysis that is self-contained, rigorous, and illustrated with many figures, diagrams and listings with computer code. Network methods are put to work analyzing production networks, financial networks, and other related topics (including optimal transport, another highly active research field). Visualizations using recent data bring key ideas to life.

Network Analysis
  • Integrating Social Network Theory, Method, and Application with R
  • Craig M. Rawlings, Jeffrey A. Smith, James Moody, Daniel A. McFarland
  • Published online:
    21 September 2023
    Print publication:
    05 October 2023
  • The size and availability of network information has exploded over the last decade. Social scientists now share the stage of network analysis with computer scientists, physicists, and statisticians. While a number of introductions to network analysis are now available, most focus on theory, methods, or application alone. This book integrates all three. Network Analysis is an introduction to both the why and how of Social Network Analysis (SNA). It presents a broad theoretical overview rooted in social scientific approaches and guides users in how network analysis can answer core theoretical questions. It provides a comprehensive overview of descriptive and analytical approaches, including practical tutorials in R with sample data sets. Using an integrated approach, this book aims to quickly bring novice network researchers up to speed while avoiding common programming and analysis mistakes so that they might gain insight into the fundamental theories, key concepts, and methodological application of SNA.

Personal Networks
  • Classic Readings and New Directions in Egocentric Analysis
  • Edited by Mario L. Small, Brea L. Perry, Bernice Pescosolido, Edward B. Smith
  • Published online:
    01 October 2021
    Print publication:
    16 September 2021
  • Social networks are ubiquitous. The science of networks has shaped how researchers and society understand the spread of disease, the precursors of loneliness, the rise of protest movements, the causes of social inequality, the influence of social media, and much more. Egocentric analysis conceives of each individual, or ego, as embedded in a personal network of alters, a community partially of their creation and nearly unique to them, whose composition and structure have consequences. This volume is dedicated to understanding the history, present, and future of egocentric social network analysis. The text brings together the most important, classic articles foundational to the field with new perspectives to form a comprehensive volume ideal for courses in network analysis. The collection examines where the field of egocentric research has been, what it has uncovered, and where it is headed.

Multimodal Political Networks
  • David Knoke, Mario Diani, James Hollway, Dimitris Christopoulos
  • Published online:
    12 May 2021
    Print publication:
    27 May 2021
  • Research on social networks has become a significant area of investigation in the social sciences, and social network concepts and tools are widely employed across many subfields within the field. This volume introduces political theorists and researchers to new theoretical, methodological, and substantive tools for extending political network research into new realms and revitalizing established domains. The authors synthesize new understandings of multimodal political networks, consisting of two or more types of social entities - voters, politicians, parties, events, organizations, nations - and the complex relations between them. They discuss ways to theorize about multimodal connections, methods for measuring and analyzing multimodal datasets, and how the results can reveal new insights into political structures and action. Several empirical applications demonstrate in great detail how multimodal analysts can detect and visualize political communities consisting of diverse social entities.

Living in Networks
  • The Dynamics of Social Relations
  • Claire Bidart, Alain Degenne, Michel Grossetti
  • Published online:
    27 October 2020
    Print publication:
    22 October 2020
  • How do personal networks emerge from social contexts? How do these evolve during the course of a lifetime? How are relationships established, maintained, connected, disrupted? How does the structure of a network evolve as people face transitions and events? Based on a classic text originally published in France and that has become the standard on the empirical study of social networks there, for the first time, a network analysis perspective is extended from contexts and social circles to relationships and life events through empirical studies. Following in the tradition of personal network studies, this contribution to the field of structural analysis in Sociology offers both a synthesis of knowledge and original results from two immense surveys carried out in France. This volume proposes an original theory grounded in relational dynamics, offering novel perspectives on individual social relations over the course of a lifetime through the context of personal networks, access to social resources, and inequalities.

The Social Structure of Online Communities
  • William Sims Bainbridge
  • Published online:
    06 March 2020
    Print publication:
    16 April 2020
  • With great potential benefit and possible harm, online social media platforms are transforming human society. Based on decades of deep exploration, distinguished scholar William Sims Bainbridge surveys our complex virtual society, harvesting insights about the future of our real world. Many pilot studies demonstrate valuable research methods and explanatory theories. Tracing membership interlocks between Facebook groups can chart the structure of a social movement, like the one devoted to future spaceflight development. Statistical data on the roles played by people in massively multiplayer online games illustrate the Silicon Law: information technology energizes both freedom and control, in a dynamic balance. The significance of open-source software suggests the traditional distinction between professional and amateur may fade, whereas web-based conflicts between religious and political groups imply that chasms are opening in civil society. This analysis of online space and the divergent communities is long overdue.

The Islamic State in Britain
  • Radicalization and Resilience in an Activist Network
  • Michael Kenney
  • Published online:
    01 October 2018
    Print publication:
    18 October 2018
  • Drawing on extensive field research with activists on the streets of London, Michael Kenney provides the first ethnographic study of a European network implicated in terrorist attacks and sending fighters to the Islamic State. For over twenty years, al-Muhajiroun (Arabic for 'the Emigrants') strived to create an Islamic state in Britain through high-risk activism. A number of Emigrants engaged in violence, while others joined the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Kenney explains why young Britons joined the Emigrants, how they radicalized and adapted their activism, and why many of them eventually left. Through an innovative mix of ethnography and network analysis, Kenney explains the structure and processes behind this outlawed network and explores its remarkable resilience. What emerges is a complex, nuanced portrait that demystifies the Emigrants while challenging conventional wisdom on radicalization and countering violent extremism.

Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek
  • Revised and Expanded Edition for Updated Software
  • 3rd edition
  • Wouter De Nooy, Andrej Mrvar, Vladimir Batagelj
  • Published online:
    14 July 2018
    Print publication:
    19 July 2018
  • An extensively revised and expanded third edition of the successful textbook on analysis and visualization of social networks integrating theory, applications, and professional software for performing network analysis (Pajek). The main structural concepts and their applications in social research are introduced with exercises. Pajek software and datasets are available, so readers can learn network analysis through application and case studies. In the end readers will have the knowledge, skills, and tools to apply social network analysis across different disciplines. A fundamental redesign of the menu structure and the capability to analyze much larger networks required a new edition. This edition presents several new operations including community detection, generalized main paths searches, new network indices, advanced visualization approaches, and instructions for installing Pajek under MacOSX. This third edition is up-to-date with Pajek version 5 and it introduces PajekXXL for very large networks and Pajek3XL for huge networks.

Networks and Religion
  • Ties that Bind, Loose, Build-up, and Tear Down
  • Sean F. Everton
  • Published online:
    23 June 2018
    Print publication:
    12 July 2018
  • Social scientists who study religion generally believe that social networks play a central role in religious life. However, most studies draw on measures that are relatively poor proxies for capturing the effects of social networks. This book illustrates how researchers can draw on formal social network analysis methods to explore the interplay of networks and religion. The book's introductory chapters provide overviews of the social scientific study of religion and social network analysis. The remaining chapters explore a variety of topics current in the social scientific study of religion, as well as introducing a variety of social network theories and methods, such as balance theory, ego-network analysis, exponential random graph models, and stochastic actor-oriented models. By embedding social network analysis within a social scientific study of religion framework, Networks and Religion offers an array of approaches for studying the role that social networks play in religious belief and practice.

Egocentric Network Analysis
  • Foundations, Methods, and Models
  • Brea L. Perry, Bernice A. Pescosolido, Stephen P. Borgatti
  • Published online:
    27 February 2018
    Print publication:
    15 March 2018
  • Egocentric network analysis is used widely across the social sciences, especially in anthropology, political science, economics, and sociology, and is increasingly being employed in communications, informatics, and business and marketing studies. Egocentric network analysis requires a unique set of data collection and analysis skills that overlap only minimally with other network methodologies. However, until now there has been no single reference for conceptualizing, collecting, and analyzing egocentric social network data. This comprehensive guide to study design, data collection, and analysis brings together the state of knowledge with the most effective research tools to guide newcomers to this field. It is illustrated with many engaging examples and graphics and assumes no prior knowledge. Covering the entire research process in a logical sequence, from conceptualizing research questions to interpreting findings, this volume provides a solid foundation for researchers at any stage of their career to learn and apply ego network methods.

Iran Auto
  • Building a Global Industry in an Islamic State
  • Darius Mehri
  • Published online:
    13 October 2017
    Print publication:
    26 October 2017
  • Since the revolution of 1979, scholars have portrayed the Islamic State's industrial development capacity in a negative light. Global isolation, incoherent economic planning, and predatory Islamic institutions are often cited as the reasons for lackluster development. In Iran Auto: Building a Global Industry in an Islamic State, Darius Mehri shows how this characterization is misguided. Today, Iran has one of the world's largest automobile industries with national technical capacity. Previous studies ignore the consequences of three decades of Iran's capacity for successful industrialization and changes in global technology transfer that allow countries, even ones isolated from formal global institutions, to build an automobile industry. Mehri shows how industrial nationalists in Iran constructed a network of politically effective relationships to open up space for successful local industrial development, and then tapped into a set of important global linkages to create an industry with high local manufacturing content. This book will open up a new line of inquiry into how countries in the global south can develop a successful national automobile industry without the need to conform to global economic institutions.

Leading from the Periphery and Network Collective Action
  • Navid Hassanpour
  • Published online:
    24 July 2017
    Print publication:
    17 February 2017
  • Political revolutions, economic meltdowns, mass ideological conversions and collective innovation adoptions occur often, but when they do happen, they tend to be the least expected. Based on the paradigm of 'leading from the periphery', this groundbreaking analysis offers an explanation for such spontaneity and apparent lack of leadership in contentious collective action. Contrary to existing theories, the author argues that network effects in collective action originating from marginal leaders can benefit from a total lack of communication. Such network effects persist in isolated islands of contention instead of overarching action cascades, and are shown to escalate in globally dispersed, but locally concentrated networks of contention. This is a trait that can empower marginal leaders and set forth social dynamics distinct from those originating in the limelight. Leading from the Periphery and Network Collective Action provides evidence from two Middle Eastern uprisings, as well as behavioral experiments of collective risk-taking in social networks.

When Solidarity Works
  • Labor-Civic Networks and Welfare States in the Market Reform Era
  • Cheol-Sung Lee
  • Published online:
    03 November 2016
    Print publication:
    18 October 2016
  • Why do some labor movements successfully defend the welfare state even under the pressures of neo-liberal market reform? Why do some unions (and their allied parties and civic associations) succeed in building more universal and comprehensive social policy regimes, while others fail to do so? In this innovative work, Cheol-Sung Lee explores these conundrums through a comparative historical analysis of four countries: Argentina, Brazil, South Korea and Taiwan. He introduces the notion of 'embedded cohesiveness' in order to develop an explanatory model in which labor-civic solidarity and union-political party alliance jointly account for outcomes of welfare state retrenchment as well as welfare state expansion. Lee's exploration of the critical roles of civil society and social movement processes in shaping democratic governance and public policies make this ideal for academic researchers and graduate students in comparative politics, political sociology and network analysis.

Environmental and Nuclear Networks in the Global South
  • How Skills Shape International Cooperation
  • Isabella Alcañiz
  • Published online:
    05 August 2016
    Print publication:
    18 August 2016
  • For decades, expert bureaucrats have been moving regularly across borders, from their home institutions to international organizations, and forging collaborative networks with peers. Analyzing over twenty years of environmental and nuclear technology projects data for 150 countries, this book provides a comprehensive study of international cooperation among elite bureaucrats in developing states. An empirical study that will interest researchers, undergraduate, and graduate students of political and social sciences, this is the first book to explain the causes of transnational cooperation in the Global South and find a link between domestic level of skills and international cooperation. The author methodically illustrates how state experts with high skills can reap the benefits of international technical cooperation. In contrast, bureaucrats with low skills cannot forge stable collaborative ties with foreign peers and gain little from participating in these transgovernmental networks.

Mobilizing Poor Voters
  • Machine Politics, Clientelism, and Social Networks in Argentina
  • Mariela Szwarcberg
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    15 July 2015
  • Democracy has provided opportunities for political representation and accountability, but it has also created incentives for creating and maintaining clientelistic networks. Why has clientelism consolidated with the introduction of democracy? Drawing on network analysis, Mobilizing Poor Voters answers this question by describing and explaining the emergence, maintenance, and disappearance of political, partisan, and social networks in Argentina. Combining qualitative and quantitative data gathered during twenty-four months of field research in eight municipalities in Argentina, Mobilizing Poor Voters shows that when party leaders distribute political promotions to party candidates based only on the number of voters they mobilize, party leaders incentivize the use of clientelistic strategies among candidates competing to mobilize voters in poor neighborhoods. The logic of perverse incentives examined in this book explains why candidates who use clientelism succeed in getting elected and re-elected over time, contributing to the consolidation of political machines at the local level.

Illuminating Dark Networks
  • The Study of Clandestine Groups and Organizations
  • Edited by Luke M. Gerdes
  • Published online:
    05 August 2015
    Print publication:
    23 July 2015
  • Some of the most important international security threats stem from terror groups, criminal enterprises, and other violent non-state actors (VNSAs). Because these groups are often structured as complex, dark networks, analysts have begun to use network science to study them. However, standard network tools were originally developed to examine companies, friendship groups, and other transparent networks. The inherently clandestine nature of dark networks dictates that conventional analytical tools do not always apply. Data on dark networks is incomplete, inaccurate, and often just difficult to find. Moreover, dark networks are often organized to undertake fundamentally different tasks than transparent networks, so resources and information may follow different paths through these two types of organizations. Given the distinctive characteristics of dark networks, unique tools and methods are needed to understand these structures. Illuminating Dark Networks explores the state of the art in methods to study and understand dark networks.

Social Sequence Analysis
  • Methods and Applications
  • Benjamin Cornwell
  • Published online:
    05 July 2015
    Print publication:
    06 August 2015
  • Social sequence analysis includes a diverse and rapidly growing body of methods that social scientists have developed to help study complex ordered social processes, including chains of transitions, trajectories and other ordered phenomena. Social sequence analysis is not limited by content or time scale and can be used in many different fields, including sociology, communication, information science and psychology. Social Sequence Analysis aims to bring together both foundational and recent theoretical and methodological work on social sequences from the last thirty years. A unique reference book for a new generation of social scientists, this book will aid demographers who study life-course trajectories and family histories, sociologists who study career paths or work/family schedules, communication scholars and micro-sociologists who study conversation, interaction structures and small-group dynamics, as well as social epidemiologists.

Mixed Methods Social Networks Research
  • Design and Applications
  • Edited by Silvia Domínguez, Betina Hollstein
  • Published online:
    05 July 2014
    Print publication:
    30 June 2014
  • This edited volume demonstrates the potential of mixed-methods designs for the research of social networks and the utilization of social networks for other research. Mixing methods applies to the combination and integration of qualitative and quantitative methods. In social network research, mixing methods also applies to the combination of structural and actor-oriented approaches. The volume provides readers with methodological concepts to guide mixed-methods network studies with precise research designs and methods to investigate social networks of various sorts. Each chapter describes the research design used and discusses the strengths of the methods for that particular field and for specific outcomes.

In Search of Respect
  • Selling Crack in El Barrio
  • 2nd edition
  • Philippe Bourgois
  • Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    23 December 2002
  • In Search of Respect, Philippe Bourgois's now-classic, ethnographic study of social marginalization in inner-city America, won critical acclaim after it was first published in 1995 and in 1997 was awarded the Margaret Mead Award. For the first time, an anthropologist had managed to gain the trust and long-term friendship of street-level drug dealers in one of the roughest ghetto neighborhoods in the United States - East Harlem. This edition adds a prologue describing the major dynamics in America that have altered life on the streets of East Harlem in the six years since the first edition. Bourgois, in a new epilogue, brings up to date the stories of the people - Primo, Caesar, Luis, Tony, Candy - who readers come to know in this remarkable window onto the world of the inner-city drug trade.

Disrupting Dark Networks
  • Sean F. Everton
  • Published online:
    05 April 2013
    Print publication:
    12 November 2012
  • Disrupting Dark Networks focuses on how social network analysis can be used to craft strategies to track, destabilize and disrupt covert and illegal networks. The book begins with an overview of the key terms and assumptions of social network analysis and various counterinsurgency strategies. The next several chapters introduce readers to algorithms and metrics commonly used by social network analysts. They provide worked examples from four different social network analysis software packages (UCINET, NetDraw, Pajek and ORA) using standard network data sets as well as data from an actual terrorist network that serves as a running example throughout the book. The book concludes by considering the ethics of and various ways that social network analysis can inform counterinsurgency strategizing. By contextualizing these methods in a larger counterinsurgency framework, this book offers scholars and analysts an array of approaches for disrupting dark networks.

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