Ten minutes of commuting reduces social capital by 10%.
-- R.D. Putnam, www.bowlingalone.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Edmund Chattoe" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 3:31 AM
Subject: Probably Naive But ...
> Dear All,
>
> I know there's a literature on differences between urban and rural
> social networks but I'm interested in what social networkers believe
> about spatial effects generally. (I know geographers have some
> theories in this area too.)
>
> Specifically, how much difference does spatial dispersion make to
> network links? This can be looked at in two ways:
>
> 1) Are the social networks of people who live - on average - further
> apart (like those in rural areas) different from those who live
> further together? How so? (A subsidiary question to this, that I
> don't think has been addressed, is: are people in an organisation
> more likely to know each other than, say, people in a city block,
> seeing this purely as a spatial phenomenon.)
>
> 2) What is the spatial distribution for various kinds of network
> links: kin, friends, colleagues. I have seen a piece of work by a
> social pyschology (Latane/) that asked people to list all contacts in
> the last week and their location/type.
>
> Generally, there must be an awful lot of network data files about by
> now. How much meta analysis has been done so one could take an
> "anonymous" network and say "according to these measures, this is
> probably a network from an urban area/rural area/cyberspace/real
> organisation".
>
> ATB,
>
> Edmund
>
> --
> =========================================================================
> Edmund Chattoe: Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, Littlegate
> House, St Ebbes, Oxford, OX1 1PS, tel: 01865-286174, fax: 01865-286171,
> http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk Review Editor, J. Artificial Societies
> and Social Simulation (JASSS) http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS/
> "So act as
> to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in another, always as an
> end, and never as only a means." (Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles)
> =========================================================================
