Are all film stars linked to Kevin Bacon? Why do the stock markets rise and fall sharply on the strength of a vague rumour? How does gossip spread so quickly? Are we all related through six degrees of separation? There is a growing awareness of the complex networks that pervade modern society. We see them in the rapid growth of the internet, the ease of global communication, the swift spread of news and information, and in the way epidemics and financial crises develop with startling speed and intensity. This introductory book on the new science of networks takes an interdisciplinary approach, using economics, sociology, computing, information science and applied mathematics to address fundamental questions about the links that connect us, and the ways that our decisions can have consequences for others.

When people are facing difficulties, they often feel the need for a confidant-a person to vent to or a sympathetic ear with whom to talk things through. How do they decide on whom to rely? In theory, the answer seems obvious: if the matter is personal, they will turn to a spouse, a family member, or someone close. In practice, what people actually do often belies these expectations. In Someone To Talk To, Mario Luis Small follows a group of graduate students as they cope with stress, overwork, self-doubt, failure, relationships, children, health care, and poverty. He unravels how they decide whom to turn to for support. And he then confirms his findings based on representative national data on adult Americans. Small shows that rather than consistently relying on their "strong ties," Americans often take pains to avoid close friends and family, as these relationships are both complex and fraught with expectations. In contrast, they often confide in "weak ties," as the need for understanding or empathy trumps their fear of misplaced trust. In fact, people may find themselves confiding in acquaintances and even strangers unexpectedly, without having reflected on the consequences. Someone To Talk To reveals the often counter-intuitive nature of social support, helping us understand when people will keep depression secret from their close ones, why people may avoid reporting sexual assault, how people may decide whom to come out to, and why even competitors can be among a person's best confidants. Amid a growing wave of big data and large-scale network analysis, Small returns to the basic questions of whom we connect with, how, and why, upending decades of conventional wisdom on how we should think about and analyze social networks.

Combines classic and cutting-edge scholarship on personal social networks. A must-have resource for both newcomers and seasoned experts.

Improve student outcomes with a new approach to relationships and networks Relationships matter. Who You Know explores this simple idea to give teachers and school administrators a fresh perspective on how to break the pattern of inequality in American classrooms. It reveals how schools can invest in the power of relationships to increase social mobility for their students. Discussions about inequality often focus on achievement gaps. But opportunity is about more than just test scores. Opportunity gaps are a function of not just what students know, but who they know. This book explores the central role that relationships play in young people’s lives, and provides guidance for a path forward. Schools can: Integrate student support models that increase access to caring adults in students’ lives Invest in learning models that strengthen teacher-student relationships Deploy emerging technologies that expand students’ networks to experts and mentors from around world Exploring the latest tools, data, and real-world examples, this book provides evidence-based guidance for educators looking to level the playing field and expert analysis on how policymakers and entrepreneurs can help. Networks need no longer be limited by geography or circumstance. By making room for relationships, K-12 schools can transform themselves into hubs of next-generation learning and connecting. Who You Know explains how.

Kinship, religion, and economy were not "natural" to humans, nor to species of apes that had to survive on the African savanna. Society from its very beginnings involved an uneasy necessity that often stood in conflict with humans' ape ancestry; these tensions only grew along with later, more complex-eventually colossal-sociocultural systems. The ape in us was not extinguished, nor obviated, by culture; indeed, our ancestry continues to place pressures on individuals and their sociocultural creations. Not just an exercise in history, this pathbreaking book dispels many myths about the beginning of society to gain new understandings of the many pressures on societies today.

Comprehensive and engaging, this textbook introduces students not only to foundational sociological work, but also to insights from contemporary sociological theory and research. This combined approach ensures that students become familiar with the core of sociology: key concepts, theories, perspectives, methods, and findings. Students will acquire the ability to think like a sociologist, investigate and understand complex social phenomena. This text presents a complete sociological toolkit, guiding students in the art of asking good sociological questions, devising a sophisticated theory and developing methodologies to observe social phenomena. The chapters of this book build cumulatively to equip students with the tools to quickly understand any new sociological topic or contemporary social problem. The textbook also applies the sociological toolkit to selected key sociological issues, showing how specific sociological topics can be easily investigated and understood using this approach. Taking a global and comparative perspective, the book covers a rich diversity of sociological topics and social problems, such as crime, immigration, race and ethnicity, media, education, family, organizations, gender, poverty, modernization and religion. The book presents a range of helpful pedagogical features throughout, such as: Chapter overview and learning goals summaries at the start of every chapter; Thinking like a sociologist boxes, encouraging students to reflect critically on learning points; Principle boxes, summarizing key sociological principles; Theory schema boxes, presenting sociological theories in a clear, understandable manner; Stylized facts highlighting key empirical findings and patterns; Key concepts and summary sections at the end of every chapter; and Companion website providing additional material for every chapter for both instructors and students, including PowerPoint lecture notes, discussion questions and answers, multiple-choice questions, further reading and a full glossary of terms. This clear and accessible text is essential reading for students taking introductory courses in sociology. It will also be useful for undergraduate and graduate courses in other social science disciplines, such as psychology, economics, human geography, demography, communication studies, education sciences, political science and criminology.

Once viewed as a “brain drain,” migrants are increasingly viewed as a resource for promoting economic development back in their home countries. In Investing in the Homeland, Benjamin Graham finds that diasporans—migrants and their descendants—play a critical role in linking foreign firms to social networks in developing countries, allowing firms to flourish even in challenging political environments most foreign investors shun. Graham’s analysis draws on new data from face-to-face interviews with the managers of over 450 foreign firms operating in two developing countries: Georgia and the Philippines. Diaspora-owned and diaspora-managed firms are better connected than other foreign firms and they use social ties to resolve disputes and influence government policy. At the same time, Graham shows that diaspora-affiliated firms are no more socially responsible than their purely foreign peers—at root, they are profit-seeking enterprises, not development NGOs. Graham identifies implications for policymakers seeking to capture the development potential of diaspora investment and for managers of multinational firms who want to harness diasporans as a source of sustained competitive advantage.

As China emerges as an international economic and military power, the world waits to see how the nation will assert itself globally. Yet, as M. Taylor Fravel shows in Strong Borders, Secure Nation, concerns that China might be prone to violent conflict over territory are overstated. The first comprehensive study of China's territorial disputes, Strong Borders, Secure Nation contends that China over the past sixty years has been more likely to compromise in these conflicts with its Asian neighbors and less likely to use force than many scholars or analysts might expect. By developing theories of cooperation and escalation in territorial disputes, Fravel explains China's willingness to either compromise or use force. When faced with internal threats to regime security, especially ethnic rebellion, China has been willing to offer concessions in exchange for assistance that strengthens the state's control over its territory and people. By contrast, China has used force to halt or reverse decline in its bargaining power in disputes with its militarily most powerful neighbors or in disputes where it has controlled none of the land being contested. Drawing on a rich array of previously unexamined Chinese language sources, Strong Borders, Secure Nation offers a compelling account of China's foreign policy on one of the most volatile issues in international relations.

This illuminating monograph introduces a status-equilibrating, social capital explanation for the persistent gender stratification in the field of information technology. The authors analyze why the workforce has become increasingly male-dominated over time by looking at how pre-employment conditions provide different experiences and opportunities for women and men. Employing a large-scale, longitudinal data set, this book forays further into the field than other contemporary studies, where all too often the debate focuses on broad and potentially too-far-reaching differences between men and women that are difficult to prove, making for spirited conversation but little else. The authors collect, analyze and present data on social interactions, sex-role attitudes and behavior, leadership, demographics, program retention, job placement, and career attitudes for five cohorts of undergraduate students spanning their last two years in a management information science program and through the job search process. By testing novel theory against their data, the authors demonstrate how structural factors interact with individual characteristics to determine not only who enters the field, but also how they enter it and whether they are likely to stay. These and other analyses ultimately lead to concrete suggestions for addressing gender stratification in the IT industry.

Since Durkheim’s influential work a century ago, sociological theory has been among the most integrative and useful tools for social scientists across many disciplines. Sociological theory has nevertheless, due to its usefulness, expanded so very broadly that some wonder whether the concept of "general theory," or even the attempt to link middle-range theories, is still of any use. This book, a collection of top theorists reflecting on the present and future of the craft, addresses this most important question. Taking their lead from Jonathan Turner’s important recent work, and drawing on their own broad experience, Seth Abrutyn and Kevin McCaffree have organized the chapters in this book from the general, integrative and review-focused bookend chapters to more specific chapters on innovations in theory construction at the micro, meso and macro levels. Moreover, the book’s microsociological content on interpersonal violence, solidarity, identity and emotion coheres with chapters in mesosociological dynamics on class, education and networks, which in turn integrate with the chapters on inequality, justice, morality and cultural evolution found in the section on macrosociology. The distinguished contributors share a distinct commitment to the development, innovation and relevance of general sociological theory. This volume is an invaluable sourcebook for advanced students and social science faculty interested in understanding how sociological theory’s past and present are informing its future.