|
If you are seeing this message, you may be experiencing temporary network problems. Please wait a few minutes and refresh the page. If the problem persists, you may wish to report it to your local Network Manager.
It is also possible that your web browser is not configured or not able to display style sheets. In this case, although the visual presentation will be degraded, the site should continue to be functional. We recommend using the latest version of Microsoft or Mozilla web browser to help minimise these problems.
Wiley InterScience | ||||||||||||||||||
  Global NetworksVolume 4 Issue 2, Pages 109 - 130 Published Online: 23 Mar 2004 © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd & Global Networks Partnership
Abstract | References | Full Text: PDF (Size: 144K) | Related Articles | Citation Tracking  Small Worlds and the New 'Social Physics' Copyright 2004 Blackwell Publishing Ltd & Global Networks Partnership ABSTRACTIn this article I explore the increasing overlaps between 'sociology' and 'physics' through analysing recent contributions to the social network literature concerned with exploring and explaining the so-called 'small world' phenomenon. I show that this new social network literature, while very provocative, is insufficiently sociological and insufficiently complex. With regard to the former it is demonstrated that a key issue is that of meetingness and hence of travel in order to effect meetingness. Networks have, in other words, to be performed, and they have to come together from time to time, especially to talk. I further show that the small worlds literature is insufficiently complex. Social networks often involve combinations of mobilities and highly structured material immobilities. I conclude the article with an analysis of how a new 'social physics' based around the notion of 'network' might be established in an era in which time and space seem increasingly warped, bent and twisted into strikingly new topologies. | 
|
| ||||||||||||||||
