Jubilee Prosperity

Similarly, in exchange theory, our assumptions about what the natives know about the nature of their networks is critical to our theorizing.

We love the Kula Ring [Melanesian New Guninea trading ceremony] because, according to Malinowski (1922), the total shape of the network, not to mention its consequences for social solidarity, were matters which ‘not even the most intelligent native understood.

The most intellectually charming aspect of network analysis is we are able to make visible that which, without our ‘macroscope’ is invisible to natives.

We are able to get up in our helicopter and see the traffic patterns in which the natives are stuck.

What is more, in my research, I have never found a case in which the natives’ views of their structure are entirely accurate. And this goes also for our most intelligent natives, whom we call intellectuals.

In my study of the American intellectual elite (Kadushin 1974), we asked respondents to characterize intellectual circles. None of them had an even close to accurate picture.

I know our network picture was accurate not only because it worked and made good sense at the time; it was acknowledged as correct and obvious once the natives had seen it; even though I could not realize it at the time, it also predicted the intellectual circle pattern ten years later.

In the upper right hand corner of our computer drawn sociogram (direction entirely accidental and arbitrary) the circle which eventually became known as the Neo-Conservatives was clearly shown. [30]

Maybe this is what attracted Rupert Murdoch to this social networking technology: He realized he could keep track of his favorite movement–the neoCons.

Social structure becomes actually visible in an anthill; the movements and contacts one sees are not random but patterned.

We should also be able to see structure in the life of an American community if we had a sufficiently remote vantage point, a point from which persons would appear to be small moving dots….

We should see that these dots do not randomly approach one another, that some are usually together, some meet often, some never….

If one could get far enough away from it, human life would become pure pattern. [31]

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 5:41 am and is filed under Market Psychology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.