Interpersonal Ties - History

History

One of the earliest writers to describe the nature of the ties between people was German scientist and philosopher, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In his classic 1809 novella, Elective Affinities, Goethe discussed the "marriage tie." The analogy shows how strong marriage unions are similar in character to particles of quicksilver, which find unity through the process of chemical affinity.

In 1954, the Russian mathematical psychologist Anatol Rapoport commented on the "well-known fact that the likely contacts of two individuals who are closely acquainted tend to be more overlapping than those of two arbitrarily selected individuals." This argument became one of the cornerstones of social network theory.

In 1973, stimulated by the work of Rapoport and Harvard theorist Harrison White, the American sociologist Mark Granovetter published The Strength of Weak Ties. This paper is now recognized as one of the most influential sociology papers ever written.

To obtain data for his doctoral thesis, Granovetter interviewed dozens of people to find out how social networks are used to land new jobs. Granovetter found that most jobs were found through "weak" acquaintances. This pattern reminded Granovetter of his freshman chemistry lesson that demonstrated how "weak" hydrogen bonds hold huge water molecules together, which are themselves held together by "strong" covalent bonds.

In Granovetter's view, a similar combination of strong and weak bonds holds the members of society together. This model became the basis of his first manuscript on the importance of weak social ties in human life. He submitted his paper to the American Sociological Review in 1969, but it was rejected. Nevertheless, in 1972, Granovetter submitted a shortened version to the American Journal of Sociology, and it was finally published in May 1973. According to Current Contents, by 1986, the Weak Ties paper had become a citation classic, being one of the most cited papers in sociology.

In a related line of research in 1969, anthropologist Bruce Kapferer, published "Norms and the Manipulation of Relationships in a Work Context" after doing field work in Africa. In the document, he postulated the existence of multiplex ties, characterized by multiple contexts in a relationship. In telecommunications, a multiplexer is a device that allows a transmission medium to carry a number of separate signals. In social relations, by extrapolation, "multiplexity" is the overlap of roles, exchanges, or affiliations in a social relationship.