What is social integration? There are at least three different ways of understanding the concept of social integration.

For some, it is an inclusionary goal, implying equal opportunities and rights for all human beings. In this case, becoming more integrated implies improving life chances. To others, however, increasing integration has a negative connotation, conjuring up the image of an unwanted imposition of uniformity. And, to still others, the term does not necessarily imply either a positive or a negative state. It is simply a way of describing the established patterns of human relations in any given society. Some hidden assumptions. When social integration is used in the first sense listed above, as a goal in itself, certain problems often arise. These problems can be summarized as follows: (a) It is intellectually easy and often politically expedient to assume that grave problems of poverty and in justice can be alleviated through including people formerly excluded from certain activities or benefits. Yet in many cases, the existing pattern of development may be economically and ecologically unsustainable, or politically repressive. Therefore it is always necessary to ask inclusion in what and on what terms? (b) Social integration can be sought without giving sufficient attention to the need for cultural diversity._When this occurs, there can be an imposition of uniformity. (c) In all too many cases, international discussion of social development is also phrased in terms of integrating those with nothing into the modern mainstream, as though the groups defined as excluded are surviving in a virtual vacuum. Yet even the most impoverished and apparently disorganized have their own forms of social organization. Ignoring the real world of the disadvantaged is a danger associated with inclusionary rhetoric, and it makes for bad policy. (d) Finally, there is a risk that narrow concentration on the normative goal of social integration will make disintegration undesirable by definition. In some cases, however, the disintegration of existing systems of social relations can be essential before progress toward a more just and equitable society can be made. The demise of slavery provides a case in point.

Working Definition of Social Integration Social Integration can be seen as a dynamic and principled process where all members participate in dialogue to achieve and maintain peaceful social relations. Social integration does not mean coerced assimilation or forced integration. The Social Summit focused on the need to move toward a safe, stable and just society by forming and mending conditions of social disintegration - social fragmentation, exclusion and polarization; and by expanding and strengthening conditions of social integration - including towards peaceful social relations of coexistence, collaboration and cohesion.

social differentiation
Definition: A concept associated with evolutionary theories of history and with structural functionalism. Societies are seen as moving from the simple to the complex via a process of social change based on structural differentiation

Differentiation, Social the division of a social unit or its parts into interrelated elements. Social differentiation refers to the process of differentiation as well as to the results of this process. Non-Marxist sociology has studied primarily the formal aspects of social differentiation. The English philosopher H. Spencer was the first to advance a theory of differentiation at the end of the 19th century, borrowing the term differentiation from biology and proclaiming it a universal law of the evolution of matter from the simple to the complex. According to Spencer, in human society the division of labor is a manifestation of the universal differentiation process. The French sociologist E. Durkheim considered differentiation resulting from the division of labor to be a law of nature and related the differentiation of social functions to the increasing density of population and the intensification of interpersonal and intergroup contacts. The German philosopher and sociologist M. Weber saw differentiation as a result of the process of the rationalization of values, norms, and relationships between people. The contemporary structural-functional school of non-Marxist sociology (for example, the American sociologist T. Parsons) views differentiation as both an actual characteristic of social structure and a process leading to the emergence of various forms of activity, roles, and groups that specialize in fulfilling certain functions indispensable for the preservation of the social system. Structural functionalism, however, leaves unsolved various problems concerning the causes and types of differentiation. In addition to functional there are taxonomic definitions of differentiation, which simply point out differences in roles, status, groups, and organization. V. I. Lenin criticized the abstract treatment of the differentiation process in bourgeois sociology, which does not consider the basic fact of the division of society into antagonistic classes (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 33, p. 10). The founders of Marxism-Leninism analyzed the process of differentiation in society, relating it to the development of productive forces, the division of labor, and the growing complexity of social structure. The most important stages of social differentiation are the division of agricultural labor and animal husbandry, of handicrafts and agriculture, and of production and the family, as well as the emergence of the state. Marxism demands the study of the concrete process of differentiation in society as a wholethe emergence and formation of classes, social strata, and groups and the separation of certain social spheres (for example, production, science)as well as differentiation within these classes and social spheres. Such concrete analysis shows, for example, that differentiation under capitalism is related to the growth of

social inequality, whereas under socialism, society moves toward homogeneity and the overcoming of class distinctions. A social network is a social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called "nodes", which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige. Social network analysis views social relationships in terms of network theory consisting of nodes and ties (also called edges, links, or connections). Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors. The resulting graph-based structures are often very complex. There can be many kinds of ties between the nodes. Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families up to the level of nations, and play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals. In its simplest form, a social network is a map of specified ties, such as friendship, between the nodes being studied. The nodes to which an individual is thus connected are the social contacts of that individual. The network can also be used to measure social capital the value that an individual gets from the social network. These concepts are often displayed in a social network diagram, where nodes are the points and ties are the lines.

Contents
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1 Social network analysis 2 History of social network analysis 3 Research 4 Metrics (measures) in social network analysis 5 Network analytic software 6 Visualization of networks 7 Patents 8 See also 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External links

Social network analysis

An example of a social network diagram. The node with the highest betweenness centrality is marked in yellow.

Social network analysis (related to network theory) has emerged as a key technique in modern sociology. It has also gained a significant following in anthropology, biology, communication studies, economics, geography, information science, organizational studies, social psychology, and sociolinguistics, and has become a popular topic of speculation and study. People have used the idea of "social network" loosely for over a century to connote complex sets of relationships between members of social systems at all scales, from interpersonal to international. In 1954, J. A. Barnes started using the term systematically to denote patterns of ties, encompassing concepts traditionally used by the public and those used by social scientists: bounded groups (e.g., tribes, families) and social categories (e.g., gender, ethnicity). Scholars such as S.D. Berkowitz, Stephen Borgatti, Ronald Burt, Kathleen Carley, Martin Everett, Katherine Faust, Linton Freeman, Mark Granovetter, David Knoke, David Krackhardt, Peter Marsden, Nicholas Mullins, Anatol Rapoport, Stanley Wasserman, Barry Wellman, Douglas R. White, and Harrison White expanded the use of systematic social network analysis.[1] Social network analysis has now moved from being a suggestive metaphor to an analytic approach to a paradigm, with its own theoretical statements, methods, social network analysis software, and researchers. Analysts reason from whole to part; from structure to relation to individual; from behavior to attitude. They typically either study whole networks (also known as complete networks), all of the ties containing specified relations in a defined population, or personal networks (also known as egocentric networks), the ties that specified people have, such as their "personal communities".[2] In the latter case, the ties are said to go from egos, who are the focal actors who are being analyzed, to their alters. The distinction between whole/complete networks and personal/egocentric networks has depended largely on how analysts were able to gather data. That is, for groups such as companies, schools, or membership societies, the analyst was expected to have complete information about who was in the network, all participants being both potential egos and alters. Personal/egocentric studies were typically conducted when identities of egos were known, but not their alters. These studies rely on the egos to provide information about the identities of alters and there is no expectation that the various egos or sets of alters will be tied to each other. A snowball network refers to the idea that the alters identified in an egocentric survey then become egos themselves and are able in turn to nominate additional alters. While there are severe logistic limits to conducting snowball network studies, a method for examining hybrid networks has recently been developed in which egos in complete networks can nominate alters otherwise not listed who are then available for all subsequent egos to see.[3] The hybrid network may be valuable for examining whole/complete networks that are expected to include important players beyond those who are formally identified. For example, employees of a company often work with non-company consultants who may be part of a network that cannot fully be defined prior to data collection. Several analytic tendencies distinguish social network analysis:[4]
There is no assumption that groups are the building blocks of society: the approach is open to studying less-bounded social systems, from nonlocal communities to links among websites.

Rather than treating individuals (persons, organizations, states) as discrete units of analysis, it focuses on how the structure of ties affects individuals and their relationships. In contrast to analyses that assume that socialization into norms determines behavior, network analysis looks to see the extent to which the structure and composition of ties affect norms.

The shape of a social network helps determine a network's usefulness to its individuals. Smaller, tighter networks can be less useful to their members than networks with lots of loose connections (weak ties) to individuals outside the main network. More open networks, with many weak ties and social connections, are more likely to introduce new ideas and opportunities to their members than closed networks with many redundant ties. In other words, a group of friends who only do things with each other already share the same knowledge and opportunities. A group of individuals with connections to other social worlds is likely to have access to a wider range of information. It is better for individual success to have connections to a variety of networks rather than many connections within a single network. Similarly, individuals can exercise influence or act as brokers within their social networks by bridging two networks that are not directly linked (called filling structural holes).[5] The power of social network analysis stems from its difference from traditional social scientific studies, which assume that it is the attributes of individual actorswhether they are friendly or unfriendly, smart or dumb, etc.that matter. Social network analysis produces an alternate view, where the attributes of individuals are less important than their relationships and ties with other actors within the network. This approach has turned out to be useful for explaining many realworld phenomena, but leaves less room for individual agency, the ability for individuals to influence their success, because so much of it rests within the structure of their network. Social networks have also been used to examine how organizations interact with each other, characterizing the many informal connections that link executives together, as well as associations and connections between individual employees at different organizations. For example, power within organizations often comes more from the degree to which an individual within a network is at the center of many relationships than actual job title. Social networks also play a key role in hiring, in business success, and in job performance. Networks provide ways for companies to gather information, deter competition, and collude in setting prices or policies.[6]

History of social network analysis

A summary of the progress of social networks and social network analysis has been written by Linton Freeman.[7] Precursors of social networks in the late 1800s include mile Durkheim and Ferdinand Tnnies. Tnnies argued that social groups can exist as personal and direct social ties that either link individuals who share values and belief (gemeinschaft) or impersonal, formal, and instrumental social links (gesellschaft). Durkheim gave a non-individualistic explanation of social facts arguing that social phenomena arise when interacting individuals constitute a reality that can no longer be accounted for in terms of the properties of individual actors. He distinguished between a traditional society "mechanical solidarity" which prevails if individual differences are

minimized, and the modern society "organic solidarity" that develops out of cooperation between differentiated individuals with independent roles. Georg Simmel, writing at the turn of the twentieth century, was the first scholar to think directly in social network terms. His essays pointed to the nature of network size on interaction and to the likelihood of interaction in ramified, loosely-knit networks rather than groups (Simmel, 1908/1971). After a hiatus in the first decades of the twentieth century, three main traditions in social networks appeared. In the 1930s, J.L. Moreno pioneered the systematic recording and analysis of social interaction in small groups, especially classrooms and work groups (sociometry), while a Harvard group led by W. Lloyd Warner and Elton Mayo explored interpersonal relations at work. In 1940, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown's presidential address to British anthropologists urged the systematic study of networks.[8] However, it took about 15 years before this call was followed-up systematically. Social network analysis developed with the kinship studies of Elizabeth Bott in England in the 1950s and the 1950s1960s urbanization studies of the University of Manchester group of anthropologists (centered around Max Gluckman and later J. Clyde Mitchell) investigating community networks in southern Africa, India and the United Kingdom. Concomitantly, British anthropologist S.F. Nadel codified a theory of social structure that was influential in later network analysis.[9] In the 1960s-1970s, a growing number of scholars worked to combine the different tracks and traditions. One group was centered around Harrison White and his students at the Harvard University Department of Social Relations: Ivan Chase, Bonnie Erickson, Harriet Friedmann, Mark Granovetter, Nancy Howell, Joel Levine, Nicholas Mullins, John Padgett, Michael Schwartz and Barry Wellman. Also independently active in the Harvard Social Relations department at the time were Charles Tilly, who focused on networks in political and community sociology and social movements, and Stanley Milgram, who developed the "six degrees of separation" thesis.[10] Mark Granovetter and Barry Wellman are among the former students of White who have elaborated and popularized social network analysis.[11] Significant independent work was also done by scholars elsewhere: University of California Irvine social scientists interested in mathematical applications, centered around Linton Freeman, including John Boyd, Susan Freeman, Kathryn Faust, A. Kimball Romney and Douglas White; quantitative analysts at the University of Chicago, including Joseph Galaskiewicz, Wendy Griswold, Edward Laumann, Peter Marsden, Martina Morris, and John Padgett; and communication scholars at Michigan State University, including Nan Lin and Everett Rogers. A substantively-oriented University of Toronto sociology group developed in the 1970s, centered on former students of Harrison White: S.D. Berkowitz, Harriet Friedmann, Nancy Leslie Howard, Nancy Howell, Lorne Tepperman and Barry Wellman, and also including noted modeler and game theorist Anatol Rapoport.In terms of theory, it critiqued methodological individualism and group-based analyses, arguing that seeing the world as social networks offered more analytic leverage.[12]

Research