Original scientific paper
Information Age and Homophilia: A Treatise on the Contribution of the Sociology of Networks
Vjeran Katunarić
; Odsjek za sociologiju, Filozofski fakultet, Sveučilište u Zagrebu
Abstract
The article comprehensively discusses Castells's statement that the new globalizing networks “strengthen existing social patterns”. Unlike macro-functionalism (Mark's thesis about the societal integrative effect of the information flow) and network analysis in sociology (Granovetter's thesis on the “strength of the week tics”), Castells stresses disintegrative effects of the information globalization and relativizes the proposition about the “clualistic society”, e.g. the networked and non-networked parts of the world. Informatisation can in that sense be understood also as a means of spreading class homophilia (Blau) of the new business networks, compromising the other social networks. The author critically examines both approaches - information optimism and the quasi-sociological dualism, and maintains that the evolution of the traditional, non-virtual social networks continues, and that the global virtual networks are inconsistent and multipurpose. In conclusion the author examines the possibilities of the development of the virtual and non-virtual social networks apart from the threefold homophilic pattern (class, religious, and ethnic).
Keywords
information age; sociology of networks; homophilia; dualism; alternative networks
Hrčak ID:
154408
URI
Publication date:
30.6.1999.
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