Changes in contexts and networks

At present the study of interaction in communities is on the agenda for its broad impacts, as people join and separate from groups, migrate or displace from neighborhood, community and countries. We belong to many groups with contradictory objectives.

The task that how social meanings are constructed is a difficult one. The growth and changes of the community and other political task oriented groups have been highlighted to further investigate changes in network structure, patterns of social interaction in contexts, and social relationships as well as the nature of cooperation and competiton and problems of idealogy and membership.

Human behaviour affects social structure in terms of relational, involving networks of ties between individuals and groups, and in terms of the contexts that include these relations such as public institutions. Networks structors are found to have effects of changes in contexts in meaningful ways. The variation of social networks and human interactions are numerous inducing changes in contexts. Their measurement and the way social networks affects local contexts are yet to be investigated and explored. However, how local contexts change human behaviour were studied and classified as in forms of social ties and interactions, norms and trust, institutional resources and activity patterns (Sampson et al, 2002).

Different ways were identified that relate local contexts to patterns of social interactions including nature of social cohesion; social capitals including the impact of social capital at the neighborhood or community level which needs to be well researched; and the concept of collective capacity to produce desired effects, meaning the linkage of mutual trust and the willingness to intervene for the common good within a given neighborhood.

This is operationalized as a combination of two scales – one measuring neighborhood residents’ willingness to intervene in a number of instances (social control), the other meansuring resident’s perceptions of the closeness, trust worthiness of neighbors (social cohesion).

The interest in how sweeping economic and social changes affect social relationships proved that in western settings education, and high social and economic structures increase the size and range of personal networks, diminishing their local quality. There were linkages to broader country culture such as media, cars, TV, etc., where less network cohesion is seen. Empirical examination of network data across different types of social ties and different cities is needed to explore variability of network structures. The conclusion take us to highlight that changes in contexts and networks feedback upon each other in an ongoing manner.




References:
- Sampson, Robert et al, (2002) Assessing "Neighborhood Effects": Social Process and New Directions in Research, Annual Review of Sociology
- Felman, Tine Rossing, and Susan Assaf, (1999), Social Capital:Conceptual Frameworks and Empirical Evidence, an Annotated Bibliography, Washinton DC, World Bank
-Smith, K., Operationalizing Weber's Concept of Class Situation; Buckinghamshire Chiltans Univ College, ken.smith@bcuc.ac.uk
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-Goldthorp and Marshal, (1992), Essay, Social mobility and class structure in Modern Britain, Oxford, Clarendon Press
-Atkins, P., 2003, Galileo's finger: The ten great ideas of science, Oxford Univ Press
- Julie Diamond, Status & Power in Verbal interaction, 1996