Culture in networks

294 Pages·2017·1.199 MB·English

by  McLean, Paul Douglas

Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
1 Culture and Social Networks: A Conceptual Framework
Some Caveats
Note
PART I Fundamental Concepts
2 The Nuts and Bolts of Networks, through a Cultural Lens
The Most Basic Network Concepts: Nodes/Actors and
Edges/Ties
Ego-Networks
The Dyad
The Crucial Notion of Homophily
The Critical Importance of Triads
From Triads to Larger Network Structures
Conclusion
Note
3 Basic Culture Concepts, with a Networks Inflection
Important Elements of Culture for the Sociology of
Networks
Important Approaches to Culture for the Sociology of
Networks
Why Cultural Sociology Needs Networks
Conclusion
Note
PART II Linkages of Networks with Culture
4 Culture through Networks: Diffusion, Contagion, Virality,
Memes
2
How Social Networks Affect Diffusion
Networks, Culture, and Diffusion with Respect to Social
Movements
Global Social Movements and Diffusion in the Internet
Age
Diffusion Elsewhere: Religion, Economy, Health, Fashion
One New Direction: The Diffusion of Memes
Conclusion
Note
5 Culture from Networks: The Network Genesis of Culture
Roles and Identities from Positions: The Structuralist
Approach
Networks as Sites of Norm Enforcement and Taste
Convergence
Networks as Incubators of Culture: Conceptual
Foundations
Networks as Germinators of Culture: Empirical
Applications
Conclusion
Note
6 Networks from Culture: How Norms and Tastes Shape
Networks
Tastes and their Manifestation in Network Structure
Cultural Skill in Discourse
Norms and Schemas
Conclusion
Note
7 Networks of Culture: Culture as Relational Structures
One-mode versus Two-mode Analysis
Empirical Applications
Topic Modeling
Two-Mode Networks
Conclusion
3
Note
8 Networks as Culture, or Networks and Culture Fused
Historical Cases of “Network Cultures”
Network Cultures in Organizations
Contemporary Global Social Movements and the Public
Sphere
Characterizing the “Network Society”
Networked Individualism on the Internet
Blogs and Games: The Future of Network/Culture
Intersections?
Conclusion
Note
References
Index
End User License Agreement
4
Cultural Sociology series
Culture and Cognition: Patterns in the Social Construction of
Reality, Wayne H. Brekhus
Protest: A Cultural Introduction to Social Movements, James M.
Jasper Culture in Networks, Paul McLean
The Culture of Markets, Frederick F. Wherry
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Culture in Networks
Paul McLean
polity
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Copyright © Paul McLean 2017
The right of Paul McLean to be identified as Author of this Work has been
asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2017 by Polity Press
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
350 Main Street
Malden, MA 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of
criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8719-3
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data
Names: McLean, Paul Douglas, 1962– author.
Title: Culture in networks / Paul McLean.
Description: Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016012611| ISBN 9780745687162 (hardback: alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780745687179 (paperback: alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Social networks. | Culture. | Culture diffusion.
Classification: LCC HM741 .M3895 2016 | DDC 302.3--dc23 LC record available
at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016012611
The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs for external
websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to
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make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will
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For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
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Acknowledgments
I would first like to thank Jonathan Skerrett of Polity who guided
me along the process to completion of this project with gentle yet
enthusiastic support – even when I periodically blew up at him via
email with my frustrations. I would also like to acknowledge the
input of two anonymous reviewers for Polity – one of whom
strongly encouraged me to believe that what I was doing was
worthwhile, the other of whom pushed me hard to try to make this a
more coherent and useful book.
Many scholars have helped me to think about networks and culture
in interesting ways over the years. Rather than identify them by
name, I hope their influence will be evident repeatedly in the pages
of this book. However, I would like to single out my teacher and
collaborator, John Padgett, for encouraging me onto this path of
exploring the cultural aspects of social networks many years ago.
I appreciate the assistance of May Nguyen, Haniyyah Hopkins and
Susan Jaw, who at different times provided me with a great deal of
help in organizing the bibliography for this book. Leigh Mueller did
a great job of copy-editing the manuscript.
Much of this book was written in a faculty study at the Alexander
Library at Rutgers University, where I could utilize the library’s
terrific collection of materials. Although I developed no strong
personal relationship with the staff of the library during my evening
and weekend sojourns there, I am very grateful for the use of that
space, and simply for the existence of such a welcoming place in
which to work. I am a huge fan of the open-stacks, public university
library, of which Alex is a great example.
I would like to thank all of my colleagues and friends in the
Sociology department at Rutgers University for providing me with a
hospitable academic home for the last sixteen-plus years. In
particular, I thank Debby Carr, Chip Clarke, Jeanie Danner, Judy
Gerson, Lisa Iorillo, Joanna Kempner, Laurie Krivo, Diane Molnar,
Julie Phillips, Pat Roos, Zakia Salime, Hana Shepherd, Randy
Smith, Kristen Springer, Dianne Yarnell, and Eviatar Zerubavel for
times spent talking in each other’s offices or otherwise hanging out.
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I also greatly appreciate the intellectual stimulation I received,
especially with respect to the conjoined topics of networks and
culture, from two former colleagues: John Levi Martin, now at the
University of Chicago, and Ann Mische, now at the University of
Notre Dame. I miss them both. I very much appreciate the network
ties I have formed with Marya Doerfel, Keith Hampton, and Matt
Weber in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers
over the last several years. And I would also like to give a shout-out
to Professor Brad Evans in Rutgers’ excellent English department,
for our stimulating discussions about novels, networks, and the
digital humanities, and simply for his friendship.
I owe my biggest debt to many students – both graduate students
and undergraduates – who, in various ways, have stimulated my
interest in the diverse intersections of social networks and culture,
and led me to think of those intersections more coherently. In
particular, I have in mind Jeff Dowd, Gina Giacobbe, Neha Gondal,
Anne Kavalerchik, Preeti Khanolkar, Eric Kushins, Vanina
Leschziner, Yusheng Lin, Janet Lorenzen, Derek Ludovici, Sourabh
Singh, Kathy Smith, Eunkyung Song, Charles Tong, and King-to
Yeung. I would like to thank Neha in particular for the especially
formative role she has played in developing my understanding of,
and my approach to, networks and culture, through our
collaborative research.
On a more personal note, I’d like to thank Susan Liebell for being
the best co-parent anyone could hope for. I thank my two younger
children, Adam and Julia Liebell-McLean, who turned me into the
father of twins – a network position I never anticipated occupying –
in 1999, and who have lent so much meaning to my life ever since.
Finally, I thank my older son, Eli Liebell-McLean, for the ways he
too has enriched my life. And I dedicate this little book to him,
cognizant that he has a deeper but also more intuitive grasp of the
ways culture and networks go together than I am ever likely to have.
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1
Culture and Social Networks: A
Conceptual Framework
This book provides an extended treatment of the various ways in
which we can imagine social networks to intersect with culture. The
term social network refers to a set of entities – actors,
organizations, or locations, for example – and the ties that exist
among them. Social network analysis refers to a set of concepts and
procedures by means of which social network properties may be
analyzed. The term culture is one of the most complex terms in the
social sciences to define, but we can understand it broadly to refer
to the knowledge, beliefs, expectations, values, practices, and
material objects by means of which we craft meaningful experiences
for ourselves and with each other. It might help a bit to think of
networks as hardware (circuitry) and culture as software (rules and
routines for action), although that analogy is deceptively clear. The
circuitry is largely inert without rules or recipes specifying how the
parts go together, how information is to be created, and how
communication flow will be controlled. On the other hand, the
products that may be potentially created via the software are
activated only via concrete pathways and connections existing in
network form. Again, the analogy is simplistic, but it has the merit
of reinforcing the idea that social networks and culture go together
synthetically, even necessarily. What varies is only the extent to
which either network structure or cultural recipes are emphasized
in order to answer specific research questions.
The amount of scholarly attention devoted to the two topics of
networks and culture, taken separately, has grown tremendously in
recent years. The International Network for Social Network Analysis
(INSNA) hosts an annual conference of ever-growing proportions,
and it is home to a highly active listserv for the discussion of all
kinds of networks-related questions. Meanwhile, the Culture section
of the American Sociological Association has grown into one of the
very largest since the late 1990s.
More substantively speaking, on the networks side, although the
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