Mark Granovetter

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Mark S. Granovetter (born October 20, 1943 in Jersey City ) is an American sociologist and economist . He became famous for his studies of weak ties and strong ties in social networks ; for Jens Beckert he is "probably the most prominent representative of network analysis internationally ".

Life

Granovetter studied at Princeton University and Harvard University . He later taught at Northwestern University (Illinois, USA), the State University of New York at Stony Brook and Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, USA). Granovetter currently teaches at Stanford University . He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1981/82 and was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008 and a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2020 . The University of Stockholm (1996) and the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (2006) awarded Granovetter an honorary doctorate.

Work and action

Granovetter's most important contributions to sociology are his thoughts on social networks, which deal on the one hand with the success of "weak" relationships and on the other hand with the "embeddedness" of individual economic behavior in social relationships.

Strong ties and weak ties

In his influential essay "The Strength of Weak Ties" (1973) Granovetter defines the strength of a relationship as a combination of four components: the amount of time two people spend together, the degree of emotional intensity in the relationship, intimacy (mutual trust ) and the type of reciprocal assistance that characterizes the relationship.

Fig. 1: forbidden triad

In the same essay Granovetter puts forward the hypothesis of the forbidden triad . This means that if two people A and B have a strong tie with each other and A also has a strong relationship with person C, then it is very likely that people B and C will also have a relationship with each other. Granovetter considers a triad with the constellation of strong relationships between A and B and A and C, but no relationship ( absent tie ) between B and C, to be highly improbable. He therefore calls it a forbidden triad (Fig. 1). This assumption is based on the property of transitivity that characterizes strong ties . Actors B and C are each similar to A and thus also to each other, which makes a relationship between them probable. Granovetter emphasizes that transitivity is not a general property of social structures, but that it can be interpreted as a function of relationship strength. Networks in which the relationships between the actors consist of strong ties are strongly integrated and closely linked, for example close friendships or a family.

Fig. 2: two networks connected by bridges (green)

The strong ties are faced with relationships that are less intense, such as casual acquaintances ( weak ties ). Weak ties are not (or are less likely to be) transitive. However, they have other important functions in the form of local bridges . A bridge is a weak relationship that represents the only connection between A and B and thus the only way in which information or other resources can be exchanged between A and B and their indirect contacts (Fig. 2).

Granovetter found out in his doctoral thesis (1970), one of the first explicitly network-theoretical studies that dealt with occupational mobility, that it was precisely the weak connections that made the actors in the network successful. The essay "The Strength of Weak Ties" is one of the most cited in sociology with almost 50,000 mentions (as of 2018) and is by far the most cited in network theory contexts. The first version of the article was rejected by the American Sociological Review in 1969 .

Embedding

Granovetter's second influential contribution deals with the embedding ("embeddedness") of individual behavior and thus provided a proposal how macro and micro approaches to explaining human behavior can be combined on a middle level.

He criticizes that in economic theory mostly under-socialized, i.e. abstract theories provide comprehensive explanatory models that always assume rational, efficient behavior of the individual and thus do not do justice to the complex reality. On the other hand, from a purely sociological perspective, he sees the danger that it is limited to the individual differences between people because of their different interests and thus represents an over-socialized actor model in which the individual is viewed as an isolated individual.

Granovetter therefore considers it necessary that a person's connections to their social contexts are included, i.e. their personal environment in which they trust. In this way, cultural and symbolic factors come back into the focus of the sociological network analysis.

Fonts (selection)

as an author

as editor

  • (with Richard Swedberg): The Sociology of Economic Life (paperback), Westview Press, 2nd edition 2001, ISBN 0-8133-9764-2 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jens Beckert: Sociological network analysis. In: Dirk Kaesler (ed.): Current theories of sociology. From Shmuel N. Eisenstadt to postmodernism. Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52822-8 , p. 289 f.
  2. ↑ Mark Granovetter: The Strength of Weak Ties. In: American Journal of Sociology 78 (1973), pp. 1360-1380.
  3. ↑ Mark Granovetter: The Strength of Weak Ties. In: American Journal of Sociology 78 (1973), p. 1361.
  4. ↑ Mark Granovetter: The Strength of Weak Ties. In: American Journal of Sociology 78 (1973), p. 1362.
  5. ↑ Mark Granovetter: The Strength of Weak Ties. In: American Journal of Sociology 78 (1973), p. 1363.
  6. ↑ Mark Granovetter: The Strength of Weak Ties. In: American Journal of Sociology 78 (1973), p. 1377.
  7. ↑ Mark Granovetter: The Strength of Weak Ties. In: American Journal of Sociology 78 (1973), p. 1364.
  8. ↑ Published as Getting A Job. A Study of Contacts and Careers. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1974, ISBN 978-0-674-35416-6 .
  9. ^ Brian Miller: Sociologist receives award in part for one article being cited over 24,000 times. In: LegallySociable.com (academic blog), July 29, 2013. In all articles that appeared in 37 English-language sociological journals between 2008 and 2012, the article is the second most cited with 185 mentions; Neal Caren: The 102 most cited works in sociology, 2008–2012. In: NealCaren.web.unc.edu (academic weblog), June 1, 2012. The article on embedding from 1985 is in 20th place on Google Scholar. Retrieved August 6, 2018 .
  10. Jump up ↑ David Lazer, Ines Mergel, Allan Friedman: Co-Citation of Prominent Social Network Articles in Sociology Journals: The Evolving Canon. In: Connections 29 (2009), pp. 43-64.
  11. ↑ Oleg Komlik: Mark Granovetter did not win (yet) the Nobel Prize. Here is his rejection letter, from 1969. In: Economic Sociology and Political Economy (academic blog), October 13, 2014. See the digitized version of the letter of rejection (PDF) .
  12. ↑ Dorothea Jansen: Introduction to network analysis. Basics, methods, research examples. 3rd, revised edition. Wiesbaden 2006, p. 19 f.
  13. ↑ Dorothea Jansen: Introduction to network analysis. Basics, methods, research examples. 3rd, revised edition. Wiesbaden 2006, pp. 15 and 20.
personal data
SURNAME Granovetter, Mark
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Granovetter, Mark S.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 20, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Jersey City