Mark Granovetter
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Mark Granovetter is a Mathematical sociologist who gave some of the most influential theories in modern sociology, since the 1970s. He is most known for his insightful theory of the spread of information in a community known as The strength of weak ties, (1973).
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Insights in Mathematical Sociology
The strength of weak ties
Granovetter is known by his classic theory in Mathematical sociology "The strength of weak ties" in which he argues that weak ties, e.g. the connections between colleagues, acquaintances etc., are more important for personal advancement, such as getting good jobs, than the strong ties of family and friendship.
Embeddedness in Economic sociology
He is also identified with the concept of embeddedness. This is the idea that economic relations between individuals or firms are embedded in actual social networks and do not exist in an abstract idealized market.
other related ideas
He considered, among other things, a model of how fads are created. Consider a hypothetical mob assuming that each person's decision whether to riot or not is dependent on what everyone else is doing. Instigators will begin rioting even if no one else is, while others need to see a critical number of trouble makers before they riot, too. This threshold is assumed to be distributed to some probability distribution. The fascinating thing in, that the outcomes may diverge largely although the initial condition of threshold may only differ slightly.
Selected works
- Granovetter, Mark;(1973)"The strength of weak ties"; The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 78, No. 6., May 1973, pp 1360-1380
See also: