Someone To Talk To: How Networks Matter In Practice

Synopsis

When people are facing difficulties, they often feel the need for a confidant. How do they decide on whom to rely? In Someone To Talk To, Mario Luis Small follows a group of graduate students as they cope with stress, overwork, self-doubt, failure, relationships, children, health care, and poverty. He unravels how they decide whom to turn to for support. And he then confirms his findings based on representative national data on adult Americans. Small shows that rather than consistently relying on their "strong ties," Americans often take pains to avoid close friends and family, as these relationships are both complex and fraught with expectations. In contrast, they often confide in "weak ties," as the need for understanding or empathy trumps their fear of misplaced trust. In fact, people may find themselves confiding in acquaintances and even strangers unexpectedly, without having reflected on the consequences. Amid a growing wave of big data and large-scale network analysis, Small returns to the basic questions of whom we connect with, how, and why, upending decades of conventional wisdom on how we should think about and analyze social networks.

Copyright:

2017

Book Details

Book Quality:

Excellent

Book Size:

290 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780190090432

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

Date of Addition:

01/19/21

Copyrighted By:

Oxford University Press

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Social Studies, Law, Legal Issues and Ethics, Communication

Submitted By:

Daproim Africa

Proofread By:

Daproim Africa

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.