Culture and Networks (Sociology)

Introduction

Social networks are a measure of relationships between entities (such as persons, organizations, states, and even concepts), and social network analysis (SNA) is the systematic study of those relations. Much of traditional social network analysis and large parts of contemporary work focuses on studying the structure of relations measured in binary terms as absent or present. While this approach is useful, particularly for discerning structure in large masses of data, it typically proceeds by bracketing the meanings of ties as well as the broader historical, political, and cultural context surrounding the creation and maintenance of those relationships. Starting in the 1990s and burgeoning over the last couple of decades, a new area of scholarship has emerged in the field that takes processes of interpretation and meaning-making seriously. This “cultural turn” in social network analysis has a wide range, including research on the construction of actor identities, relationship between tie-meaning and network structure, association between tastes and network positions, diffusion of cultural materials through networks, emergence of styles through and in interaction, and much more. Another facet of this move toward culture is the explicit or implicit application of social network tools and methodologies to the study of cultural phenomena such as texts, institutions, and narratives. Even though research in this area is flourishing, the literature has not quite coalesced into a distinguishable, institutionalized field. Consequently, there are a variety of ways of cutting into it. One is offered here.

General Overviews

Culture is still relatively new to social network analysis (SNA). Consequently, there are few overview texts. Emirbayer and Goodwin 1994 is an early, rather critical piece on the structural assumptions and focus of SNA highlighting the ways in which actor agency as well as cultural and historical context are missing from the field. Harrison White’s tome Identity and Control, a complex but definitive text in the field, was first published in 1992 (a subsequent edition was released in 2008) (it is discussed in greater detail in Networks and Culture as Co-Constitutional; see White 2008). White focuses on the discursive creation and maintenance of ties rather than assuming their existence. His framework is also useful to think about the cultural context within which networks form and operate, thereby addressing many of the concerns raised by Emirbayer and Goodwin as well as Emirbayer 1997. Pachucki and Breiger 2010 and Mische 2011 provide much more accessible summaries of the state of the field a couple of decades after White’s original work. It would be helpful to read the latter two pieces before reading White, as they provide context and handy summaries of White’s thinking. DiMaggio 2011 is helpful for understanding how SNA might be utilized to study cultural phenomena and processes. Finally, Erikson 2013 distinguishes between what the author calls “formal” and “relational” SNA.

DiMaggio, P. 2011. Cultural networks. In The SAGE handbook of social network analysis. Edited by J. Scott and P. Carrington, 286–310. London: SAGE.
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Using numerous research examples, DiMaggio argues that SNA is a “natural methodological framework” for empirically testing theories of culture. He focuses on three areas in culture: production and distribution of culture, boundary creation and maintenance, and symbolic meanings. This article offers an excellent review of the literature in the field and forcefully illustrates why and how SNA is useful for studying cultural phenomena and processes.
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Emirbayer, M. 1997. Manifesto for a relational sociology. American Journal of Sociology 103.2: 281–317.
DOI: 10.1086/231209Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Although this paper is not primarily engaged with SNA, Emirbayer provides a solidly theoretical rationale for relational sociology. Distancing himself from methodological individualism, he urges a turn to a dynamical transactional relationalism where entities derive their significance from situations rather than essences. This is similar in spirit to White’s emphasis on identities rather than persons.
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Emirbayer, M., and J. Goodwin. 1994. Network analysis, culture, and the problem of agency. American Journal of Sociology 99.6: 1411–1454.
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While appreciating SNA’s emphasis on relations rather than categories (what they describe as the anti-categorical imperative), Emirbayer and Goodwin critique both positional and relational approaches in SNA for overlooking the role of agency and culture in the context of social change. They categorize empirical research into three groups: structurally determinist, instrumentalist, and constructivist, arguing that each approach, though in reducing degrees, falls short of adequately conceptualizing the role of normative commitments, identities, beliefs, etc. on social action.
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Erikson, E. 2013. Formalist and relationalist theory in social network analysis. Sociological Theory 31.3: 219–242.
DOI: 10.1177/0735275113501998Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Emily Erikson draws a productive distinction between the relational and formal branches of social networks analysis. Historically situating the two approaches in Kantian and Pragmatist literatures, she distinguishes between them on the basis of how they deal with content, context, micro-macro links, and agency.
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Mische, A. 2011. Relational sociology, culture, and agency. In The SAGE handbook of social network analysis. Edited by J. Scott and P. Carrington, 80–97. London: SAGE.
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Mische begins by discussing the intellectual emergence of the cultural turn in SNA. She next devises a fourfold typology showcasing the relationship between networks and culture: networks as conduits of culture, networks and culture as shaping each other, networks of cultural forms, and networks as culture. The typology is accompanied by numerous examples of empirical work especially attuned to literatures in social movements and political sociology.
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Pachucki, M. A., and R. L. Breiger. 2010. Cultural holes: Beyond relationality in social networks and culture. Annual Review of Sociology 36:205–224.
DOI: 10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102615Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The authors develop the heuristic of a “cultural hole” to (1) characterize the cultural bridges between areas of scholarship in the field and (2) challenge Ron Burt’s famous concept of “structural hole.” They provide a comprehensive review of historical evolution of the field as well as empirical scholarship organized by substantive themes in research areas.
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White, H. C. 2008. Identity and control: How social formations emerge. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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White’s magnum opus is a highly complex treatment of the narrative construction of social networks (discussed in more detail in Networks and Culture as Co-Constitutional). A must-read for any scholar interested in exploring the intersection of social networks and culture. This later edition of the book makes for an easier read.
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Networks and Culture as Co-Constitutional

Although he traditionally contributed significantly to structural approaches to social network analysis (SNA), Harrison White later led the field in its turn to questions of culture. White’s main departure from his and others’ earlier work is to view relations and meanings as necessarily co-constitutive and inseparable. Thus, rather than seeing social networks and culture as static, his approach infuses dynamism in SNA. In Identity and Control, he argues that all interactional situations entail some level of uncertainty. Ties form (or wither) over some period of time in this process of uncertainty negotiation, leading to the creation of network-domains or netdoms. Ties are expressed as stories, and thus the role of language also acquired center stage in White’s turn to meanings. Switching between netdoms is essential for meaning-making, and Mische and White 1998 focus on “publics” as interstitial social spaces that lie between and ease the transition between netdoms. Corona and Godart 2010 takes it a step further to show how disciplines, rhetorics, styles, and regimes—variably institutionalized forms of meaning—emerge when identities move among netdoms. Godart and White 2010 elaborates on the final link: how meanings aggregate to generate stable sociocultural formations.

Corona, V. P., and F. C. Godart. 2010. Network-domains in combat and fashion organizations. Organization 17.2: 283–304.
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Corona and Godart use the examples of military and fashion to illustrate how concepts developed by White can apply to formal organizational settings. Organizations create rules to discipline identities in their pursuit of control in ambiguous situations and rhetorics to guide meaning-making (e.g., loyalty). Styles are the general sensibilities associated with an organization. The institutionalization of disciplines, rhetorics, and styles culminates in the formation of regimes or “blueprints” for dealing with contentious situations.
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Godart, F. C., and H. C. White. 2010. Switchings under uncertainty: The coming and becoming of meanings. Poetics 38.6: 567–586.
DOI: 10.1016/j.poetic.2010.09.003Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Godart and White expand on some of the concepts developed by White in Identity and Control. They theorize the formation of meanings through switching between netdoms focusing especially on contrast as a generative mechanism. Identities subsequently organize individual meanings into stories. In turn, stable patternings of meanings as stories can be used by identities to relate to other identities in uncertain interactional situations. The authors also theorize how more complex aggregates such as styles, story lines, and plots emerge through interaction.
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Mische, A., and H. White. 1998. Between conversation and situation: Public switching dynamics across network domains. Social Research 65.3: 695–724.
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Whereas netdoms entail long-term interactions and sustained ties, involvement in publics are more ritualistic and entail lower uncertainty and less intensity. Consequently, publics serve the function of conduits as actors move or “switch” between overlapping netdoms. The authors use the imagery of Bayesian updating to distinguish between conversations (free-flowing purposeless talk) and situations (problematic, high-stakes episodes) as two types of switching mechanisms.
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White, H. C. 2008. Identity and control: How social formations emerge. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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In his tome, Harrison White develops his theory. Out of uncertainty, emerge identities or footings that are sources of action. Netdoms are a merger of networks of relations (net) and domains of topics (dom) characteristic of those relations. In addition to identities and netdoms, he also develops in rich detail other concepts including roles, categories, stories, styles, rhetoric, and others.
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The Chicken and Egg Problem of Networks and Culture

In contrast to Harrison White’s co-constitutive approach to social networks and culture, a large body of work assumes the two constructs to be independent and examines the effect of one on the other. A significant portion of research in the area of social networks and culture falls within this area. The relationship between the two constructs depends on whether researchers emphasize social influence or social selection. An important stream of research underscoring the former effect hypothesizes the emergence of identities from relational patterns (Bearman 1993, Gould 1995, Padgett and Ansell 1993, all cited under Networks to Identities). In similar spirit, other research (DiMaggio 1987; Burt 1987; Podolny and Baron 1997; Erickson 1988; Pachucki, et al. 2011, all cited under Meanings from Networks) demonstrates the effect of structural location on meanings, emotions, and habits. Studies on diffusion or spread of ideas, norms, and practices also fit into this category where networks are taken as given and cultural materials (behavior, symbols, or practices) spread through extant connections without altering them. The reverse direction deals with the formation of ties on the basis of cultural categories. A large body of work dedicated to analyzing this relationship comes under the umbrella term of homophily (McPherson, et al. 2001; Ibarra 1992; Joyner and Kao 2000; Goodreau, et al. 2009; Wimmer and Lewis 2010, all cited under Homophily). A similar approach examines how tastes, preferences, and worldviews generate network structure and composition (Lizardo 2006; Vaisey and Lizardo 2010; Lewis, et al. 2012, all cited under Tastes to Networks). Each of these categories of research is elaborated on in the following sections.

Networks to Identities

This approach typically makes use of blockmodel analysis, which locates sets of structurally equivalent positions on the basis of similarity in interaction profiles (see also Methodological Approaches: Blockmodels). Two actors are strictly structurally equivalent if they have exactly the same sets of ties to other actors. The basic principle underlying blockmodeling is that sharing interactional profiles is likely to lead to the development of similar identities, norms, and practices. White, et al. 1976 (cited under Blockmodels) is the classic methodological piece defining structural equivalence and blockmodeling—the associated technique for locating equivalent actors. Wasserman and Faust 1994 summarizes other types of equivalences that are less strict than the original definition. Bearman 1993, Padgett and Ansell 1993, and Gould 1995 are three well-known examples of the applicability of blockmodeling in sociological research.

Bearman, P. S. 1993. Relations into rhetorics: Local elite social structure in Norfolk, England, 1540–1640. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press.
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In this early seminal work, Bearman analyzes kinship and patronage networks in Norfolk between 1540 and 1640. Using blockmodels, he finds that traditional kinship-based social structure of the elite gave way to patronage based on nationalist and religious identities. This meant that previously local conflicts catapulted into the national arena culminating in the English civil war.
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Gould, R. V. 1995. Insurgent identities: Class, community, and protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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Gould uses data on organizational affiliations in the Paris commune in 1871 to show that solidarity in the insurgency effort was strongly grounded in informal neighborhood ties that predated the mobilization. He emphasizes the role of multiplexity—the layering of different types of ties—as important for the formation and maintenance of collective identities in contentious situations.
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Padgett, J. F., and C. K. Ansell. 1993. Robust action and the rise of the Medici, 1400–1434. American Journal of Sociology 98.6: 1259–1319.
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Padgett and Ansell analyze state-building and the rise of Cosimo de Medici in Renaissance Florence. They make a strong case against a typical social class based explanation, exemplifying the anti-categorical imperative in Emirbayer and Goodwin 1994 (cited under General Overviews) Instead, using blockmodels, they emphasize the role of marital, political, and business ties in explaining elite consolidation.
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Wasserman, S., and K. Faust. 1994. Social network analysis: Methods and applications. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511815478Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In chapters 9 and 10 of this classic text in social network analysis methodologies, Wasserman and Faust define structural equivalence as well as other related forms of equivalence. They also provide accessible summaries of measurement, representation, and fitness criteria.
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Meanings from Networks

This literature privileges network position and structure in the networks and culture equation. The primary thesis in these studies is that shared understandings, meanings, attitudes, and worldviews are generated from network structure rather than the reverse. DiMaggio 1987 and Erickson 1988 provide theoretical bases for linking networks to attitudes and tastes. Burt 1987 and Podolny and Baron 1997 show that network structural locations explain identity formation. Pachucki, et al. 2011 uses a large-scale longitudinal study to show that subsequent eating habits were related to prior network structures.

Burt, R. S. 1987. Social contagion and innovation: Cohesion versus structural equivalence. American Journal of Sociology 92.6: 1287–1335.
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Rather than dense interactions leading to convergence of attitudes, Burt locates the onus of similarity on occupying similar structural locations in a network structure. He re-analyzes the tetracycline adoption data originally studied by Coleman, et al. 1957 (cited under Diffusion) to find that, rather than diffusion through cohesive interaction, adoption is better explained by position in the structure of relations.
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DiMaggio, P. 1987. Classification in art. American Sociological Review 52.4: 440–455.
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In this classic piece, DiMaggio charts out various propositions relating cultural consumption, socioeconomic class, and network structure. He also focuses on processes for boundary-creation and maintenance and the production of art genres. This article is a particularly useful resource because it lays out many testable hypotheses. The author of Lizardo 2006 (cited under Tastes to Networks), for example, draws on this piece to make his argument.
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Erickson, B. H. 1988. The relational basis of attitudes. In Social structures: A network approach. Edited by Barry Wellman and S. D. Berkowitz, 99–121. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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A classic piece in which Erickson argues that behavior can be traced to interactions and influence in social networks, not to attributes like race and sex. The latter are simply proxies for social influence that occur because density of interactions is greater within categories. Importantly, she also argues that interpersonal influence varies with network structural location.
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Pachucki, M. A., P. F. Jacques, and N. A. Christakis. 2011. Social network concordance in food choice among spouses, friends, and siblings. American Journal of Public Health 101.11: 2170–2177.
DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2011.300282Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The authors examine convergence of food choices over time among kin and non-kin network members using the Framingham Heart Study. They find strong evidence in favor of social influence—network alters’ eating habits in previous years are highly predictive of ego’s subsequent food habits.
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Podolny, J. M., and J. N. Baron. 1997. Resources and relationships: Social networks and mobility in the workplace. American Sociological Review 62.5: 673–693.
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Podolny and Baron challenge Burt’s famous structural hole concept arguing that, in addition to resources, networks are also bearers of identity and norms. Rather than reaping advantages as the theory of structural holes suggests, boundary spanners may experience tension from conflicting expectations. They use data from a large organization to make their case.
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Diffusion

Beliefs, practices, ideas, and innovations, often spread through social contact. Studies in this section show how social networks are crucial to the spread of cultural materials. Rogers 2010 provides a comprehensive introduction to diffusion research. Strang and Soule 1998 reviews the literature in the fields of organizations and social movements. A now classic study, Coleman, et al. 1957 explains the spread of tetracycline. Others similarly explain the diffusion of happiness (Fowler and Christakis 2008), diagnoses of autism (Liu, et al. 2010), and social movements (Soule 1997), to name just a few via social networks. While much research assumes that behavior spreads through contact with one individual, scholarship also speaks to thresholds of adoption at individual and group levels. Granovetter 1978 discusses variation in individual susceptibility to adoption in terms of proportion of the group that has already adopted or population-level thresholds of adoption. Centola 2010 discusses microlevel threshold models, where likelihood of adoption is contingent upon adoption levels within personal networks rather than the whole population. Gondal 2015 shows how the uneven spread of novel behaviors that have higher thresholds may contribute to maintaining existing inequalities.

Centola, D. 2010. The spread of behavior in an online social network experiment. Science 329.5996: 1194–1197.
DOI: 10.1126/science.1185231Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Centola studies the spread of health behaviors in an online forum. He emphasizes network structure rather than cultural categories. But, unlike previous work, he focuses on reinforcement within personal networks as a key determinant of behavioral adoption and modification. Also distinct from previous work, he uses an experimental framework.
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Coleman, J., E. Katz, and H. Menzel. 1957. The diffusion of an innovation among physicians. Sociometry 20.4: 253–270.
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Collecting data on doctors’ social networks, attributes, and first prescription of “gammanym,” the authors investigate the diffusion of a new drug in four Midwestern American cities in this classic article. They find that popular doctors were more likely to adopt the drug early. Also, adoption diffuses first through professional networks and subsequently through friendship ties.
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Fowler, James H., and Nicholas A. Christakis. 2008. Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study. British Medical Journal 337: a2338.
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Fowler and Christakis use data from the Framingham Heart Study to study the diffusion of happiness in a social network. Using longitudinal models, they find that happiness tends to spread through kin and non-kin networks. Effects are strongest for alters who are geographically close. They also find that people who are connected to other happy people and those who are central in the network are more likely to become happy in the future.
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Gondal, N. 2015. Inequality preservation through uneven diffusion of cultural materials across stratified groups. Social Forces 93.3: 1109–1137.
DOI: 10.1093/sf/sou101Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Gondal shows how inequality can be preserved when novel practices or beliefs diffuse unevenly through stratified groups creating new bases of differentiation. Rather than empirical data, she uses simulations to make her case, useful for generating theoretical insights.
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Granovetter, M. 1978. Threshold models of collective behavior. American Journal of Sociology 83.6: 1420–1443.
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Granovetter develops and discusses formal models related to population-level thresholds of adoption. Risky or “radical” individuals are likely to adopt early on but more conservative actors will wait until most others have adopted before they do so. He provides examples and discusses determinants of thresholds.
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Liu, K. Y., M. King, and P. S. Bearman. 2010. Social influence and the autism epidemic. American Journal of Sociology 115.5: 1387.
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The authors offer an alternate social influence explanation for the rapid rise in the diagnoses of autism in recent decades. Using data from California, they find that children living in close proximity to other children previously diagnosed with the disorder are considerably more likely to also be diagnosed. Their study demonstrates that social awareness of symptoms and treatment contributes to the recent rise of autism.
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Rogers, E. M. 2010. Diffusion of innovations. 4th ed. New York: Simon and Schuster.
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Everett Rogers wrote the definitive book on diffusion, first published in 1962. This book offers a thorough introduction for any scholar interested in working in the area. The book starts with conceptual primers and a history of the field and goes on to cover more complex topics including adopter, innovation, and networks characteristics. While mostly theoretical, Rogers provides numerous empirical examples to support his models.
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Soule, Sarah A. 1997. The student divestment movement in the United States and tactical diffusion: The shantytown protest. Social Forces: 855–882.
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Soule uses an event history framework to demonstrate how a new tactic of protest, the shantytown, diffused among college and university campuses in the United States between 1985 and 1990. She shows that the new strategy of protest was more likely to spread between schools that shared similar levels of endowments, prestige, and institution type.
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Strang, D., and S. A. Soule. 1998. Diffusion in organizations and social movements: From hybrid corn to poison pills. Annual Review of Sociology 24:265–290.
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In addition to formal models, Strang and Soule provide more culturally grounded theories of diffusion emphasizing interpretive work, discursive framing, and social salience as determinants of diffusion. This work is particularly useful for explicitly linking culture to diffusion processes.
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Homophily

Homophily is the psycho-social preference of associating with others who are similar to us. Literature in this area rests on the assumption that cultural categories precede the formation of ties. McPherson, et al. 2001 is a highly influential and widely cited paper on the notion that “birds of a feather flock together.” Others (Ibarra 1992; Joyner and Kao 2000; Goodreau, et al. 2009; Wimmer and Lewis 2010) examine the incidence and implications of homophily in a variety of contexts.

Goodreau, S. M., J. A. Kitts, and M. Morris. 2009. Birds of a feather, or friend of a friend? Using exponential random graph models to investigate adolescent social networks. Demography 46.1: 103–125.
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Using statistical models, Goodreau, Morris, and Kitts disentangle the various mechanisms generating friendship networks in US high schools. They find that adolescents are homophilous on grade and gender. Racial homophily is more characteristic of white and black students but less of Hispanic.
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Ibarra, H. 1992. Homophily and differential returns: Sex differences in network structure and access in an advertising firm. Administrative Science Quarterly 37.3: 422–447.
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Ibarra demonstrates that men and women have different tendencies toward gender-based homophily in organizational contexts. Women’s networks tend to be heterophilous along instrumental ties but homophilous along expressive ties. Men tend to be homophilous along all types of relations. She also shows that greater homophily for women reduces their centrality in the network. Thus, occurrence and consequences of homophily are gendered phenomena.
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Joyner, K., and G. Kao. 2000. School racial composition and adolescent racial homophily. Social Science Quarterly 81.3: 810–825.
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Joyner and Kao analyze racial homophily in the context of US middle and high schools. Using data from 134 schools, they find that preference for associating with race-similar others starts as early as adolescence. They also find that the probability of having an interracial friend falls drastically as the school racial composition becomes more homogenous.
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McPherson, M., L. Smith-Lovin, and J. M. Cook. 2001. Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks. Annual Review of Sociology 27.1: 415–444.
DOI: 10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.415Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In this seminal piece, McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook review the concept of homophily—the idea that similarity leads to the formation of relationships among human beings. In a sense, the notion of homophily is the antithesis to blockmodeling that emphasizes the emergence of categories from relations. The authors discuss different types of homophily, such as race, gender, and social class; bases for homophily, such as attributes, geography, and values; as well as its consequences, such as homogeneity, stratification, and access to resources.
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Wimmer, A., and K. Lewis. 2010. Beyond and below racial homophily: Erg models of a friendship network documented on Facebook. American Journal of Sociology 116.2: 583–642.
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Using data from college students on Facebook, Wimmer and Lewis problematize racial homophily—the preference for associating with race-similar others—as the singular generator of racial homogeneity of US social networks. Using complex models, they disentangle multiple structural (e.g., reciprocity and triadic closure) and behavioral (e.g., tastes for music and books) mechanisms generating such homogeneity.
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Tastes to Networks

This approach emphasizes the role of tastes and preferences in the construction and maintenance of social networks. Lizardo 2006 examines GSS personal network data to analyze the effect of highbrow and lowbrow tastes on network structure and composition. Vaisey and Lizardo 2010 makes similar arguments focusing on moral evaluations as a measure of culture. Lewis, et al. 2012 draws on data from Facebook to show that network homogeneity is more likely to be an outcome of shared tastes in popular culture than the diffusion of tastes among friends.

Lewis, K., M. Gonzalez, and J. Kaufman. 2012. Social selection and peer influence in an online social network. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109.1: 68–72.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1109739109Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Also focused on disentangling selection and influence effects, Lewis, Gonzales, and Kaufman use data from Facebook to analyze friendship formation. They find that popular culture tastes are least likely to yield social selection. Yet, in support of Lizardo and Lizardo and Vaisey, the authors also find selection to be a more powerful predictor of networks than influence.
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Lizardo, O. 2006. How cultural tastes shape personal networks. American Sociological Review 71.5: 778–807.
DOI: 10.1177/000312240607100504Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Drawing heavily on Bourdieu, Lizardo departs from previous work to show that cultural tastes have an independent effect on network structure and composition rather than the reverse direction. Highbrow cultural tastes help foster strong ties and maintain exclusivity; popular culture, in contrast, helps link distant parts of the social structure.
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Vaisey, S., and O. Lizardo. 2010. Can cultural worldviews influence network composition? Social Forces 88.4: 1595–1618.
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Vaisey and Lizardo draw on Vaisey’s dual process model of culture to distinguish between social selection (we select alters on the basis of tastes and worldviews) and social influence (our ties shape our tastes and worldviews). Conceptualizing culture as durable, largely unconscious schemas of perception, they show that “moral worldview” is a strong predictor of personal network composition.
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Forms: Macro and Micro

Another charge against social network analysis (SNA) was that it bracketed or deemed irrelevant meaning in reference to actors, groups of actors, as well as relations involved in interaction. The scholarship covered in this section addresses this issue. It is distinctive in its study of relational meaning by emphasizing structural form rather than the “goal of revealing a deep and nuanced web of phenomenological meaning” (Mohr and Duquenne 1997, p. 322). There are two fundamental approaches used by network analysts to link relational meaning with form. A Saussurian approach at the macro level examines relations in connection with each other to gauge meaning. Blockmodeling and Galois lattices are frequently used methodological techniques in this approach (Mohr and Duquenne 1997, Mische and Pattison 2000, Yeung 2005). An alternative Simmelian approach links relational meaning to variations in the micro-configurational structures (such as triads and stars) formed by relationships (Bearman and Stovel 2000; Bearman, et al. 2004; Gibson 2005; Gondal and McLean 2013). The techniques here range from counts or descriptive statistics to complex statistical models that link the local configurations to macrolevel network structure.

Bearman, P. S., J. Moody, and K. Stovel. 2004. Chains of affection: The structure of adolescent romantic and sexual networks. American Journal of Sociology 110.1: 44–91.
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The authors examine a network of sexual ties among high schoolers. While not explicitly emphasizing meaning or culture, they find that the structure of the sexual network arises through homophily (e.g., grade, IQ, and socioeconomic status). More significantly, they find that an absence of four-cycles, not dating your ex’s current’s ex-partner associated with a Durkheimian unstated “yuck factor,” goes a long way in explaining the structure of the network.
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Bearman, P. S., and K. Stovel. 2000. Becoming a Nazi: A model for narrative networks. Poetics 27.2: 69–90.
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The authors conceptualize a novel technique to represent narratives (such as life stories) as networks, which they use to understand identity formation by measuring narrative structural features. They analyze autobiographies written by early-adherent Nazis in 1934 by measuring the frequency of various microconfigurations like chains and stars and their embeddedness in larger macrostructures.
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Gibson, D. R. 2005. Taking turns and talking ties: Networks and conversational interaction. American Journal of Sociology 110.6: 1561–1597.
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Gibson analyses conversational structure against the backdrop of a network of friendship and co-working ties in an organizational context. While he also emphasizes the autonomous structure of conversations, with reference to the current context, conversational content and shifts between speaker and listener can be conceptualized as a type of relational content layering over existing relationships (similar to Gondal and McLean 2013).
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Gondal, N., and P. D. McLean. 2013. Linking tie-meaning with network structure: Variable connotations of personal lending in a multiple-network ecology. Poetics 41.2: 122–150.
DOI: 10.1016/j.poetic.2012.12.002Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Gondal and McLean explicitly link micro network structures to relational meaning. Using the context of lending money in Renaissance Florence, they argue that the same tie may have multiple different meanings, and this diversity leaves imprints in the way relations concatenate into network structure. They also show that variability in meaning may arise from the other types of relations new relations layer over.
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Mische, A., and P. Pattison. 2000. Composing a civic arena: Publics, projects, and social settings. Poetics 27.2: 163–194.
DOI: 10.1016/S0304-422X(99)00024-8Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Mische and Pattison analyze a contentious political arena composed of diverse actors in the context of the 1992 Brazillian impeachment movement. They expand the technique of Galois Lattices to simultaneously examine the involvement of organizations, events, and projects. Their analysis reveals how the relations between organization as well as roles and discursive strategies of organizations changed over the course of the movement.
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Mohr, J. W., and V. Duquenne. 1997. The duality of culture and practice: Poverty relief in New York City, 1888–1917. Theory and Society 26.2: 305–356.
DOI: 10.1023/A:1006896022092Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The authors of this paper also use Galois lattices to examine the relationship between charity practices (e.g., giving advice or food) and symbolic constructions of deserving recipients (destitute, homeless) in the field of social relief in 19th-century New York City. In doing so, they shed light on the institutional logic of welfare and demonstrate how the meaning of recipient categories and charity “relations” or practices were co-constituted but variable over time.
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Yeung, K. T. 2005. What does love mean? Exploring network culture in two network settings. Social Forces 84.1: 391–420.
DOI: 10.1353/sof.2005.0132Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Yeung conceptualizes relational meaning as a duality between qualities of relationships (e.g., loving, hateful, jealous) and characteristics of personalities (sexy, supportive, decisive) using Galois lattices. Unlike previous work using survey data that typically focuses on network structure, he uses such data to examine relational meaning.
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Duality

Research in this area conceptualizes culture in terms of the structure of connections between distinct types of entities. As in Forms: Macro and Micro emphasis is on the relationality of meaning. This approach explicitly or implicitly draws on Breiger 1974 (see Two-Mode Networks) on the duality of persons and groups. Formally, it typically measures clusters of co-occurrence of cultural materials. Mohr 1994 shows how categories of poverty acquired meaning through the efforts of relief organizations. Hill and Carley 1999 simultaneously analyzes co-citations and text overlaps to analyze conceptual convergence. Martin 2000 draws a link between children’s literature and class-based socialization; Godart and Mears 2010 discusses a duality between fashion houses and models that contributes to preserving distinction; and Ghaziani and Baldassarri 2011 locates themes of coherence that both unite and distinguish concerns of LGBT activists. Finally, in the recent turn to “large data,” Mohr, et al. 2013 uses “topic modeling” to code text from national security documents to locate organizing political rhetoric between 1990 and 2010 in the United States. This technique (see Topic Models) locates clusters of words or themes that go together in a corpus.

Ghaziani, A., and D. Baldassarri. 2011. Cultural anchors and the organization of differences: A multi-method analysis of LGBT marches on Washington. American Sociological Review 76.2: 179–206.
DOI: 10.1177/0003122411401252Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The authors create a two-mode matrix of newspaper articles and collective-identity themes related to four LGBT marches in Washington. They analyze how the co-occurrence of themes within articles varies within and across marches. Adjudicating between cohering and differentiating aspects of culture, they find that a few themes were central across time and anchored the movement. At the same time, other themes fluctuated in importance.
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Godart, F. C., and A. Mears. 2010. Size zero high-end ethnic: Cultural production and the reproduction of culture in fashion modeling. Poetics 38.1: 21–46.
DOI: 10.1016/j.poetic.2009.10.002Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Godart and Mears use a mix of ethnographic work and social network analysis (SNA) to examine how fashion houses select models for fashion shows. They construct a network composed of models shared between fashion houses from the 2007–2008 Fashion Week. They find that elite fashion houses use popular models to distinguish themselves from lower-status houses.
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Hill, V., and K. M. Carley. 1999. An approach to identifying consensus in a subfield: The case of organizational culture. Poetics 27.1: 1–30.
DOI: 10.1016/S0304-422X(99)00004-2Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Unlike Mohr, Hill and Carley use the concept of duality only implicitly. In addition to a citation network, they also code keywords appearing in literature in the area of organization culture creating a co-occurrence network of concepts. This simultaneous analysis reveals that contemporary authors who cite each other are also likely to share concepts, but in early years authors citing each other were competing for novelty.
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Martin, J. L. 2000. What do animals do all day?: The division of labor, class bodies, and totemic thinking in the popular imagination. Poetics 27.2: 195–231.
DOI: 10.1016/S0304-422X(99)00025-XSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Martin analyzes jobs held by animal characters in the book What Do People Do All Day? to explain that children are socialized into class hierarchies through literature. He proposes a strict duality between jobs and animal species so that the meaning of a species can be inferred from its job and vice versa.
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Mohr, J. W. 1994. Soldiers, mothers, tramps and others: Discourse roles in the 1907 New York City Charity Directory. Poetics 22.4: 327–357.
DOI: 10.1016/0304-422X(94)90013-2Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In this classic article, Mohr derives classes of relief recipients on the basis of the type of aid received by them from charity organizations in early 20th-century New York City. The meaning of categories derives from the type of aid they receive and, dually, the meaning of aid can be inferred from the types of persons toward whom it is directed. He calls it the moral order.
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Mohr, J. W., R. Wagner-Pacifici, R. L. Breiger, and P. Bogdanov. 2013. Graphing the grammar of motives in National Security Strategies: Cultural interpretation, automated text analysis and the drama of global politics. Poetics 41.6: 670–700.
DOI: 10.1016/j.poetic.2013.08.003Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Similar in spirit to Hill and Carley 1999, Mohr, et al. locate themes in US national security documents. But, they use sophisticated computing technologies to discover the “deep meanings” in political rhetoric. This article was part of a special issue dedicated to Topic Modeling in the journal Poetics.
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Culture in Interaction

This section covers scholarship that does not treat networks and culture as independent entities. Rather, it focuses on the interactional process by which ties and hence social networks are constructed. The distinctiveness of this approach is that it views the communication in interaction that contributes to creating networks as a thoroughly cultural process. Consequently, the cultural, political, and historical context within which interaction occurs is foregrounded and analyzed in an in depth way. Methodologically, research in this area typically relies on ethnographic or archival techniques. McLean 2007 hand-codes thousands of letters written in Renaissance Florence to show how actors creatively used tried and tested means to activate old ties or construct new ones to achieve ends. Mische 2008 analyzes the overlapping and crisscrossing networks of youth activists involved in the impeachment of Brazilian president Fernando Collor de Melo. Fuhse 2009 offers a compelling theoretical rationale for why subjective, interpersonal, and cultural meanings are crucial to social network analysis (SNA).

Fuhse, J. A. 2009. The meaning structure of social networks. Sociological Theory 27.1: 51–73.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9558.2009.00338.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Fuhse’s paper is an excellent introduction to why culture and meanings are important to the very construction and analysis of social networks. He distinguishes between four levels of analysis: (1) analytical (observed data of 1s and 0s), (2) transactions (the communication that occurs in interactions), (3) expectations (individual and interpersonal motivations for transactions), and (4) order principles (that facilitate or constrain expectations and transactions).
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McLean, P. D. 2007. The art of the network: Strategic interaction and patronage in renaissance Florence. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1215/9780822390367Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
McLean draws on archival data to analyze political and social patronage in Renaissance Florence. He finds that actors “key” (à la Goffman) aspects of relationships such as friendship and honor not only to curry favor but also to build relations and to signal a sense of self. Thus, rather than assuming patronage flows along existing networks, he emphasizes the discursive construction of network ties through strategic and culturally appropriate means.
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Mische, A. 2008. Partisan publics: Communication and contention across Brazilian youth activist networks. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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Mische analyzes a contentious political field composed of youth activists, their overlapping memberships in organizations, and representations at public events. Overlapping memberships in diverse organizations mean multiple identities that activists suppress or highlight in public (à la Goffman). Such strategies are used to minimize differences to foster new ties. Her work is especially important for understanding forms/styles of political communication in social movements.
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Methodological Approaches

Culture—shared meanings, aesthetics, practices, and beliefs—are typically studied by means of rich content analysis and/or ethnographic work. But, because social network analysis (SNA) emphasizes the structure of relationships, methodologies used in the field to study culture are more diverse. Besides techniques typically used to study network structure, the study of meanings and culture in SNA especially relies on some techniques more than others.

Two-Mode Networks

Two-mode social network analysis is the study of ties between two types of entities, such as students and the classes they take or corporate boards and their memberships. Two-mode networks are an important tool in cultural social network analysis because the methodology assumes and relies on a duality between the two sets of entities constituting the network. Breiger 1974 conceptualizes two-mode networks. Borgatti and Halgin 2011 and Latapy, et al. 2008 offer useful summaries of techniques applicable to two-mode networks. Two-mode network analysis has been used in a variety of studies that appear elsewhere in this article, especially research described in the section Duality.

Borgatti, S., and D. Halgin. 2011. Analyzing affiliation networks. In The SAGE handbook of social network analysis. Edited by P. Carrington and J. Scott, 417–433. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
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Borgatti and Halgin summarize instruments that can be used for the analysis of two-mode or affiliation data.
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Breiger, R. L. 1974. The duality of persons and groups. Social Forces 53.2: 181–190.
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In this seminal paper, Breiger links Simmel’s classic work on the groups of web affiliations to propose a duality between persons and the groups they belong to. In addition to theorizing two-mode duality, Breiger also discusses methodological and mathematical procedures. The concepts devised in this paper have been used to study two-mode networks using a variety of techniques.
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Latapy, M., C. Magnien, and N. Del Vecchio. 2008. Basic notions for the analysis of large two-mode networks. Social Networks 30.1: 31–48.
DOI: 10.1016/j.socnet.2007.04.006Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The authors provide extensions to two-mode networks of measures typically used for the analysis of one-mode networks. They discuss their applicability illustratively through examples.
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Cognitive Social Structures

Network analysts researching cognition as a cultural process may be interested in a participant’s view of the rest of the network. Krackhardt devised a technique he called “cognitive social structures” to measure each person’s perception of the complete network (Krackhardt 1987).

Krackhardt, D. 1987. Cognitive social structures. Social Networks 9.2: 109–134.
DOI: 10.1016/0378-8733(87)90009-8Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Krackhardt outlines his approach to cognitive social structures. In place of the typical single network, his technique calls for collecting data on N networks each of N × N size. Each of the networks represents one participant’s view of the rest of the network. This technique allows researchers the opportunity to test hypotheses relating perceived network positions and structures to empirical outcomes and vice versa.
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Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM)

Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM) is a relatively novel set of techniques for the statistical modeling of social networks. Their basic premise is to link local network structures such as triads and reciprocal ties to macro structural outcomes such as core-periphery or small world. Thus, they are very helpful in linking microlevel phenomena to macrolevel outcomes. These techniques are different from most other statistical techniques used for SNA because they explicitly account for and take interdependence of ties into account. Robins, et al. 2005 offers a theoretical basis for linking micro and macrolevel network structure. Early models relied on Markov assumptions that often provided poor fits to the data. Other papers extend the original Markov models to more complex dependence assumptions (Snijders, et al. 2006), directed networks (Robins, et al. 2009), two-mode networks (Wang, et al. 2009), and, most recently, multilevel networks (Wang, et al. 2013). Lusher, et al. 2012 provides an excellent summary of the methodology and applications of ERGM.

Lusher, D., J. Koskinen, and G. Robins. 2012. Exponential random graph models for social networks: Theory, methods, and applications. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511894701Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A must-read book for those interested in learning the theory and techniques of ERGM.
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Robins, G., P. Pattison, and J. Woolcock. 2005. Small and other worlds: Global network structures from local processes. American Journal of Sociology 110.4: 894–936.
DOI: 10.1086/427322Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An early theoretical introduction to the assumptions of ERGM based in linking macrolevel network observation to microlevel processes. The authors provide various examples of network structures, including small-world and caveman.
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Robins, G., P. Pattison, and P. Wang. 2009. Closure, connectivity and degree distributions: Exponential random graph (p*) models for directed social networks. Social Networks 31.2: 105–117.
DOI: 10.1016/j.socnet.2008.10.006Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Robins and colleagues extend the original ERGM model for non-directed ties to directed networks.
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Snijders, T. A., P. E. Pattison, G. L. Robins, and M. S. Handcock. 2006. New specifications for exponential random graph models. Sociological Methodology 36.1: 99–153.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9531.2006.00176.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Snijders and colleagues extend the simpler Markov model assumptions to accommodate more complex structures, including alternating stars, triads, and two-paths. These dependence assumptions typically offer far superior fits to social network data.
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Wang, P., G. Robins, P. Pattison, and E. Lazega. 2013. Exponential random graph models for multilevel networks. Social Networks 35.1: 96–115.
DOI: 10.1016/j.socnet.2013.01.004Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The authors devise ERGM models for two-mode networks with internal ties within modes as well as ties across modes, also known as multilevel networks
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Wang, P., K. Sharpe, G. L. Robins, and P. E. Pattison. 2009. Exponential random graph (p∗) models for affiliation networks. Social Networks 31.1: 12–25.
DOI: 10.1016/j.socnet.2008.08.002Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Wang and colleagues create two-mode extensions for ERGM to apply to affiliation or two-mode network data.
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Topic Models

Topic models have only recently started being utilized in sociology. The basic idea is to locate “topics” or themes composed of words that cluster together by virtue of co-occurrence in a corpus of texts. The topics are generated inductively on the basis of probabilistic algorithms. It is important to note that algorithms only provide words that cluster; the output’s “topic” is subsequently a matter of interpretation by the researcher. Mohr and Bogdanov 2013 introduces the methodology in accessible terms. DiMaggio, et al. 2013 applies the technique to analyze state funding for artists. McFarland, et al. 2013 distinguishes between varieties of topic models, assessing their suitability for different types of applications.

DiMaggio, P., M. Nag, and D. Blei. 2013. Exploiting affinities between topic modeling and the sociological perspective on culture: Application to newspaper coverage of US government arts funding. Poetics 41.6: 570–606.
DOI: 10.1016/j.poetic.2013.08.004Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The authors apply topic modeling to analyze the cultural framing of arts funding by the government, using data from 8,000 newspaper articles on the subject.
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McFarland, D. A., D. Ramage, J. Chuang, J. Heer, C. D. Manning, and D. Jurafsky. 2013. Differentiating language usage through topic models. Poetics 41.6: 607–625.
DOI: 10.1016/j.poetic.2013.06.004Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The authors distinguish between supervised and unsupervised topic modeling techniques and their success in finding patterns in dissertation abstracts. This paper serves as a useful how-to guide for anyone new to topic modeling.
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Mohr, J. W., and P. Bogdanov. 2013. Introduction—Topic models: What they are and why they matter. Poetics 41.6: 545–569.
DOI: 10.1016/j.poetic.2013.10.001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article is useful for an introduction to the theory, method, and historical origins of topic modeling. The article also provides clues as to how social scientists may use the technique to study questions related to culture.
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Ethnographic and Archival Work

While much network analysis focuses on locating structural regularities, work that emphasizes the communicative construction of relationships tends to be based on ethnographic approaches. Rather than relying on data constructed from survey responses or from other secondary sources (such as citations or online data), such scholarship relies on in-depth analysis of the construction of ties within the social, political, and historical context. Mische 2008 uses an ethnographic approach to gather network data in youth activist networks in Brazil. McLean 2007 and Erikson 2014 use archival data to construct networks in Renaissance Florence and the 17th-century East India Company, respectively.

Erikson, E. 2014. Between monopoly and free trade: The English East India Company, 1600–1757. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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Erikson also draws on archival data—logs of the East India Company (EIC) ships recording the path of voyages between ports—during the 17th and 18th century. Through these data, Erikson establishes that the success of the company could be traced to the paradoxical right to private trade the EIC afforded its employees. The networks created through private trade by EIC merchants generated information and flexibility contributing to the dominance of the company in the region.
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McLean, P. D. 2007. The art of the network: Strategic interaction and patronage in Renaissance Florence. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1215/9780822390367Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
McLean draws on archival data to analyze political and social patronage in Renaissance Florence. He codes thousands of letters to conduct his analysis. He finds that actors “key” (à la Goffman) aspects of relationships such as friendship and honor not only to curry favor but also to build relations and to signal a sense of self. He emphasizes the discursive construction of network ties through strategic and culturally appropriate means.
Find this resource:

Mische, A. 2008. Partisan publics: Communication and contention across Brazilian youth activist networks. Princeton Univ. Press.
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Mische uses an ethnographic approach to analyze a contentious political field composed of youth activists, their overlapping memberships in organizations, and representations at public events. Overlapping memberships in diverse organizations mean multiple identities that activists suppress or highlight in public (à la Goffman). Such strategies are used to minimize differences to foster new ties. Her work is especially important for understanding forms/styles of political communication in social movements.
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Galois Lattices

Galois lattices draw on set theory and the notion of duality to test how concepts group together or differ from each other. The technique relies on small two-mode network data to reveal a partial ordering that shows how concepts are contained (or not contained) within each other on the basis of their intersection in the dual concept. Freeman and White 1993 explains how Galois lattices can be used to represent structure in two-mode network data. Duquenne 1996 offers a more advanced presentation of lattice structure based on approximations. Mische and Pattison 2000 extends Galois lattices from two-mode to three-mode networks comprising actors, events, and organizations, and Yeung 2005 applies Galois lattices to examine the relationship between qualities and characteristics associated with the emotion of love. (See also, Mohr and Duquenne 1997 in Forms: Macro and Micro.)

Duquenne, V. 1996. On lattice approximations: Syntactic aspects. Social Networks 18.3: 189–199.
DOI: 10.1016/0378-8733(95)00272-3Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This paper is for the advanced student of Galois lattices. The authors suggest criteria to reduce the number of elements in complex representations.
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Freeman, L. C., and D. R. White. 1993. Using Galois lattices to represent network data. Sociological Methodology 23:127–146.
DOI: 10.2307/271008Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This paper is very useful for an introduction to Galois lattices in social network analysis. The authors provide a detailed description of the technique. They illustrate the methodology by applying it to the famous data set on a southern community of women also used by Breiger in his original paper on two-mode networks (see Breiger 1974, cited under Two-Mode Networks).
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Mische, A., and P. Pattison. 2000. Composing a civic arena: Publics, projects, and social settings. Poetics 27.2: 163–194.
DOI: 10.1016/S0304-422X(99)00024-8Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Mische and Pattison analyze a contentious political arena composed of diverse actors in the context of the 1992 Brazilian impeachment movement. They expand the technique of Galois lattices to simultaneously examine the involvement of organizations, events, and projects. Their analysis reveals how the relations between organization as well as roles and discursive strategies of organizations changed over the course of the movement.
Find this resource:

Yeung, K. T. 2005. What does love mean? Exploring network culture in two network settings. Social Forces 84.1: 391–420.
DOI: 10.1353/sof.2005.0132Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Yeung conceptualizes relational meaning as a duality between qualities of relationships (e.g., loving, hateful, jealous) and characteristics of personalities (sexy, supportive, decisive) using Galois lattices. Unlike previous work using survey data that typically focuses network structure, he uses such data to examine relational meaning.
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Blockmodels

Blockmodeling is an early formal technique that continues to be widely used in contemporary work. The methodology is used to locate positions in social networks based on similarity in actors’ profiles of interactions. The outcome is a “reduced network” of roles or positions rather than of individual actors. The technique is useful for locating macrolevel structures such as core-periphery or balanced exchange. White, et al. 1976 introduces the technique in a seminal paper. Examples of application of blockmodeling are available under Networks to Identities.

White, H. C., S. A. Boorman, and R. L. Breiger. 1976. Social structure from multiple networks. I. Blockmodels of roles and positions. American Journal of Sociology 81.4: 730–780.
DOI: 10.1086/226141Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In this classic piece, White, Boorman, and Breiger introduce the concept of structural equivalence as a way to discern roles and role structure through relational data. They introduce algorithms to identify equivalence and apply those techniques to five case studies.
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Big Data

SNA, much like other approaches across the sciences, has recently turned to the analysis of big data. Such data have typically been sourced from online portals such as Twitter and Facebook. Research using this approach usually relies on locating macrolevel patterns such as clustering or fragmentation often in concert with demographic attributes such as race and gender. Lewis, and colleagues (Lewis, et al. 2008) gather large amounts of data from Facebook and describe their data collection methods and characteristics of the data set, and Bail 2014 makes a case for studying culture using big data.

Bail, C. A. 2014. The cultural environment: Measuring culture with big data. Theory and Society 43.3–4: 465–482.
DOI: 10.1007/s11186-014-9216-5Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Bail outlines how big data (specifically focusing on textual data) can be used for addressing questions relevant to cultural sociology such as meaning systems, frames and schemas, and cultural change over time. The article is a useful introduction for cultural sociologists interested in using big data (such as Twitter or newspaper text).
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Lewis, K., J. Kaufman, M. Gonzalez, A. Wimmer, and N. Christakis. 2008. Tastes, ties, and time: A new social network dataset using Facebook.com. Social Networks 30.4: 330–342.
DOI: 10.1016/j.socnet.2008.07.002Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The authors describe the process by which they downloaded and created a social network data set from the Facebook profiles of a cohort of college students at a private college in the Northeast United States. They describe the data set in considerable detail as well as its potential for social scientific enquiry. The data set is publicly available, and instructions for access can be found in the article.
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Personal Networks and Culture

Personal networks (or ego networks) are subjective measures of a person’s network. Unlike other studies on social networks, personal networks typically rely on random samples such as General Social Surveys (GSS) and do not generate the kind of close, bounded structures typical in most studies previously discussed. Instead, personal networks capture close primary ties such as those with family and close friends. Theoretically and methodologically, personal networks are not as wedded to interdependence as complete network studies of bounded groups. This departure has important advantages. First, they can be used to test the effect of large-scale societal changes such as industrialization and urbanization on the structure, composition, and meaning of primary ties. And, second, because they rely on survey data, personal network studies offer more generalizability than complete network studies. The seminal studies Wellman 1979 and Fischer 1982 investigate how urbanization has altered the structure and composition of primary relationships. McPherson, et al. 2006 shows that isolation has risen in the United States in recent decades. Bearman and Parigi 2004 problematizes personal network data used to generate such findings based on the variable perception of primary ties. Scholarship also investigates if the content and composition of close ties varies by demographic factors such as gender and geographical region. Grossetti 2007 and Bastani 2007 test if personal networks in other parts of the world differ from those in North America. Gondal 2012 uses a cross-national dataset to investigate the relationship between sibship-size and the composition and meaning of primary ties.

Bastani, S. 2007. Family comes first: Men’s and women’s personal networks in Tehran. Social Networks 29.3: 357–374.
DOI: 10.1016/j.socnet.2007.01.004Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Bastani compares the structure and composition of Tehrani networks by gender. She finds that family is more prominently featured in Tehrani networks than in North American ones. Yet, like Grossetti, she also finds considerable similarity, suggesting that personal networks around the world are highly similar. She also finds that men and women have similarly structured, largely gender homophilous networks.
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Bearman, P., and P. Parigi. 2004. Cloning headless frogs and other important matters: Conversation topics and network structure. Social Forces 83.2: 535–557.
DOI: 10.1353/sof.2005.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Bearman and Parigi problematize the US GSS instrument for measuring social networks by questioning the content of talk in discussing important matters. They find that a large proportion of those who report “no confidantes” have nothing to talk about. They also question the validity of “important matters” by showing that people consider wildly different issues to be important.
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Fischer, Claude S. 1982. To dwell among friends: Personal networks in town and city. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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Fischer interviewed about a thousand people living in cities and towns in California to investigate if and how urbanization alters the content and structure of close personal relationships. He also considers how other demographic variables such as gender and education affect relational structure. This book is an excellent introduction to the concept of personal networks and how one might conduct a large-scale study of primary ties.
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Gondal, N. 2012. Who “fills in” for siblings and how? A multilevel analysis of personal network composition and its relationship to sibling size. Sociological Forum 27.3: 732–755.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1573-7861.2012.01343.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Gondal examines the relationship between sibship-size and personal network composition in the wake of declining fertility around the world. She finds network composition varies with sibship-size. She also shows that single children tend to evaluate relationships differently. Thus, continuing declines in fertility could produce changes in the institutionalized meanings of close personal ties.
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Grossetti, M. 2007. Are French networks different? Social Networks 29.3: 391–404.
DOI: 10.1016/j.socnet.2007.01.005Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Grossetti seeks to understand if personal networks in France are different from those in the United States. She finds that, despite differences in the geopolitical context, barring some dissimilarity, the structure and composition of personal networks in France are remarkably similar to those in the United States. She concludes that relational structures are likely quite similar across industrialized contexts.
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McPherson, M., L. Smith-Lovin, and M. E. Brashears. 2006. Social isolation in America: Changes in core discussion networks over two decades. American Sociological Review 71.3: 353–375.
DOI: 10.1177/000312240607100301Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In contrast to Wellman’s finding, the authors of this paper find evidence in favor of declining community in the United States over the period 1985 to 2004. They use the “discuss important matters” instrument from the US GSS. As compared to the 1980s, isolation (having no close confidantes) increased. This loss comes from both family and friendship ties but particularly the latter.
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Wellman, B. 1979. The community question: The intimate networks of East Yorkers. American Journal of Sociology 84.5: 1201–1231.
DOI: 10.1086/226906Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In this classic paper, Wellman uses data on personal networks in Toronto to distinguish between three hypotheses relating primary ties to a sense of community in the context of large-scale division of labor and city life—lost, saved, and liberated. He finds neither anomie nor mechanical solidarity. Instead, he finds that supportive ties with family and friends persist but are differentiated by form and function.