Longitudinal Social Network Studies and Predictive Social Cohesion Theory

The present proposal links researchers from different countries working on projects concerned with developing a new scientific theory of social cohesion using novel means of representation and analysis of large-scale network structures. The goal is a rigorous scientific theory of dynamic social evolution not in terms of stages but open ended networked social processes. Subprojects and their orientations fall under the following headings: (l) a theory of dynamic evolutionary processes of stabilization and change in modern and traditional social structure including the emergence of institutions and differences in individual participation in institutional activities; (2) study of kinship, marriage, and exchange with emphasis on cooperation, competition, and material flows that affect class formation and wealth distribution; (3) studies of social class; and (4) studies of elites. Many of these studies are historically embedded community and regional studies, including new studies such as those on co-emergence of state and capital markets in Florence (with John Padgett) or networks of elites in Mexico (Jorge Gil). Another purpose of the proposed grant is to further cooperation in the sharing of methods and of theoretical strategies on projects directly related to anthropology, including dimensions commonly absent from purely sociological network studies. This general project is one that seeks to combine cultural and structural approaches, the better to understand aspects of network structure as important intervening variables in the transmission or shift in cultural patterns under diverse economic and historical conditions. The present orientation is derived from social network, anthropological and sociological theory, and seeks to understand the central influence of networked processes on societies, cultural systems and groups, using analytic methods of networks and ethnography. It derives from the PI's long experience in working with cross-cultural and comparative network data. Network studies build their theoretical findings on network representations of social interaction and accurate ways of representing various aspects of social structure. This includes new ways of representing kin and marriage systems, computer visualization techniques, and devising more rigorous ways to represent relations than possible using more traditional genealogical charts. These allow us to explore simultaneously personal networks versus the wider multiplicity of an extended view of networks of networks. We build on methods developed for P-graph analysis (see p.13), which capture central elements in the structure and changing patterns in linkages between families in large-scale communities. Use of new concepts in graph theory for the study of cohesion (bicomponents, p.5) provides exact models for …