Ties & Bonds

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13 Barry Wellman Ties & Bonds Ties & Bonds is a regular column written by Barry W ellman. The contents of this column are solely determined by Barry W ellman and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or concerns of IN SN A . Contact Barry at [email protected]. BBS Married: Nancy Howell , _The Search for an Abortionist_, _Demography of the Dobe !Kung_, and Andre Gunder Frank , 40 pp. dependency theory pub. list too long to summarize (both Soc, U Toronto), 27 Nov 95, after a courtship of 38 years and an announced engagement of 20 hours. Barry & Bev Wellman were the witnesses, so it's an official network wedding ..... S. Leigh Star has moved from Soc to Library/ Info. Science at U Illinois .... Karen Cook is now the James Duke Prof, Soc, Duke U.... Rob Kling moving from Cal-Irvine to head a shop at U Indiana - Info Sci, sum- mer/ 96.... Mark Mizruchi now Assoc. Ed. of Administrative Sci Q.... Leah Lievrouw has moved from U Alabama to Library & Info Sci, UCLA.... J.D. Eveland now at Calif. Schl of Prof'l Psychology .... Larissa Lomnitz (UNAM, Mexico) is at Soc, U Chicago till 6/ 96.... Jeanine Anderson now an Anthro prof at Pontifical Catholic U of Peru, Lima. Aldo Panfichi , formerly of New Schl, is a Soc prof at Pontifical Catholic U of Peru .... (for more on Lima, see my article below).... Kate Browne (Anthro, Colorado St U) off to fieldwork in Martinique 5/ 96 (nice venue if you can get it) .... Charles Tilly moving uptown from New School to Soc, Columbia U, Summer 1996. He's spending Feb-June/ 96 at Soc, Stockholm U, [email protected].... Meanwhile Harrison White (Soc, Columbia) is spending his spring, 1996 sabbatical at LASMAS/ IRESCO-CNRS, 59 rue Pouchet, 75849, Paris .... ....INSNA Coordinator Steve Borgatti to remain at Carroll Graduate School of Management, Boston College (where he's now on sabbatical from U So Carolina).... Endre Sik (Budapest U) spending 4-5/ 96 at Neth Inst of Advanced Studies, Wasenaar (an idyllic locale).... Among the structural analytic prizes given out in 1995 by sections of the AmSoc Assoc are Carole Heimer , Best Theory paper, "Doing Your Job & Helping Your Friends" (no venue given); Kim Voss , Best First Pol Soc book, The Making of American Exceptionalism; Cowinners of Pol Soc's Contributions to Scholarship awards are Ron Aminzade, Ballots & Barricades (Princeton UP, 1993) & Craig Calhoun, Neither Gods nor Emperors (U Cal Pr, 1994); Vern Bengtson won the Aging section's Distinguished Scholar Award .... Susan Gonzalez Baker , back from Spanish sojourn, is now Asst Prof of Soc, U Texas-Austin: [email protected] .... Bryan Roberts (Soc, U Texas) has recently received a large grant to study entrepreneurship on both sides of the US/ Mexico border - if they study the real entrepreneurs, sounds like a good way to get killed .... Ray-May Hsung (Soc, Tunghai U, Taichung, Taiwan) will spend a year at Soc, U Bielefeld, Ger .... The next Taiwan national social survey will have network questions: Nan Lin & Ray-May Hsung are among those involved ....

Transcript of Ties & Bonds

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Barry Wellman

Ties & Bonds

Ties & Bonds is a regular colum n w rit ten by Barry W ellm an.

The con ten ts of this colum n are solely determ ined by Barry

W ellm an and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or concerns

of IN SN A . Contact Barry at w ellm an @ep as.u toron to .ca .

BBS

Married : Nancy Howell, _The Search foran Abortionist_, _Demography of the Dobe!Kung_, and Andre Gunder Frank, 40 pp.dependency theory pub. list too long tosummarize (both Soc, U Toronto), 27 Nov 95,after a courtship of 38 years and an announcedengagement of 20 hours. Barry & Bev Wellmanwere the witnesses, so it's an official networkwedding..... S. Leigh Star has moved from Socto Library/ Info. Science at U Illinois.... KarenCook is now the James Duke Prof, Soc, DukeU.... Rob Kling moving from Cal-Irvine tohead a shop at U Ind iana - Info Sci, sum-mer/ 96.... Mark Mizruchi now Assoc. Ed . ofAdministrative Sci Q.... Leah Lievrouw hasmoved from U Alabama to Library & Info Sci,UCLA.... J.D. Eveland now at Calif. Schl ofProf'l Psychology.... Larissa Lomnitz (UNAM,Mexico) is at Soc, U Chicago till 6/ 96....Jeanine Anderson now an Anthro prof atPontifical Catholic U of Peru, Lima. AldoPanfichi, formerly of New Schl, is a Soc prof atPontifical Catholic U of Peru.... (for more onLima, see my article below).... Kate Browne(Anthro, Colorado St U) off to fieldwork inMartinique 5/ 96 (nice venue if you can get it).... Charles Tilly moving up tow n from NewSchool to Soc, Columbia U, Summer 1996. He'sspending Feb-June/ 96 at Soc, Stockholm U,[email protected]....

Meanwhile Harrison White (Soc, Columbia) isspending his spring, 1996 sabbatical atLASMAS/ IRESCO-CNRS, 59 rue Pouchet,75849, Paris....

....INSNA Coordinator Steve Borgatti toremain at Carroll Graduate School ofManagement, Boston College (where he's nowon sabbatical from U So Carolina).... Endre Sik(Budapest U) spending 4-5/ 96 at Neth Inst ofAdvanced Stud ies, Wasenaar (an idylliclocale).... Among the structural analytic prizesgiven out in 1995 by sections of the AmSocAssoc are Carole Heimer, Best Theory paper,"Doing Your Job & Helping Your Friends" (novenue given); Kim Voss, Best First Pol Socbook, The Making of American Exceptionalism;Cowinners of Pol Soc's Contributions toScholarship awards are Ron Aminzade, Ballots& Barricades (Princeton UP, 1993) & CraigCalhoun, Neither Gods nor Emperors (U Cal Pr,1994); Vern Bengtson won the Aging section'sDistingu ished Scholar Aw ard .... SusanGonzalez Baker, back from Spanish sojourn, isnow Asst Prof of Soc, U Texas-Austin:[email protected].... Bryan Roberts (Soc,U Texas) has recently received a large grant tostudy entrepreneurship on both sides of theUS/ Mexico border - if they study the realentrepreneurs, sounds like a good way to getkilled .... Ray-May Hsung (Soc, Tunghai U,Taichung, Taiwan) will spend a year at Soc, UBielefeld , Ger.... The next Taiwan nationalsocial survey w ill have network questions:Nan Lin & Ray-May Hsung are among thoseinvolved ....

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....Wally Clement (Soc, Carleton U) & JohnMyles (Soc, Florida St. U) have won the CdnSoc & Anthro Assoc's 1995 Harold Innis prizefor their book, Relations of Ruling: Class &Gender in Postindustrial Societies.... FormerConnections Assoc. Ed. Scot Wortley has com-pleted his doctorate at Soc, U Toronto and isstaying close to home to become Asst Prof,Crim. Ctr, U Toronto. Thesis title: "SocialNetworks, Social Support and SubstanceAbuse" [We censored the subtitle: "Behind theScenes at the Sunbelt"].... Caroline Haythorn-thwaite (our student at Info Sci, U Toronto) tobecome Asst Prof, Info Sci, U Illinois, 8/ 96....N ancy Nazer (Soc, Toronto) has won aprestigious 3-year SSHRCC Fellowship....Hanna Lehtimaki Rantavuo has had herlicentate (mini-doctorate) thesis accepted bythe Bus Schl, Tampere U, Finland . Based inToronto, she stud ied the networks ofAmerican and Canadian units of a Finnishmultinational (not the NHL!)....

....Ron Rice (Comm Sci, Rutgers) visitingUtah on sabbatical through July, 1996. Hisaddress is 2689 Chadwick St., Salt Lake City;tel: 801-485-7734; email remains the same....Risto Alapuro (Helsinki U) w ill be at UMinnesota, 8-12/ 96.... Kathryn D india be-comes pres of the Int'l Netw ork for PersonalRelationships, 7/ 96, replacing Steve Duckwho steps down after founding/ heading thisnetwork for many years.... Margaret Somers(U Michigan) recently won a political soci-ology section award for "Law, community &political culture in the transition to demo-cracy," ASR 58, 10/ 93. It explores regionald ifferences in 18th century England linkingcommunity netw orks to contrasts in ruralproduction, family patterns and authorityrelations.... Lynn Smith-Lovin (Soc, U Ari-zona) is co-ed iting Social Psychology Quarterly(with Linda Molm).... David Schneider(Anthro, U Chicago) d ied 30 Oct 95 at hisSanta Cruz retirement home.

OOPS: In the last issue I mistakenlyreported that Mark Granovetter had moved to

the Stanford Business Schl. Mark writes that heis 100% with the Stanford Soc. Dept. Guess I'mgetting my weak ties confused with mystructural holes....

CLYD E MITCHELL IS D EAD

I regret that J. Clyde Mitchell, one of thefounders of our field , d ied 15 Nov 1995. In myview, Clyde d id more than any other person toput network analysis on the map through hisown w ork and leadership, and he kept wor-king seriously in the field throughout his life.

In my last column, I told about how Clydehad not been well at our 7/ 95 Londonconference but had bounced back a few dayslater to spend a happy weekend with Bev andme at Stratford and his Oxford home. Hechortled w hen he showed us his old homemovies from Rhodesia, w here he and his kidsput on a farce he had scripted .

Clyde was busy at work the rest of thesummer writing a review for the adult edu-cation course on the theatre he was taking ofChekhov's "Uncle Vanya" which we had seenat Stratford . Amusingly enough, given hisprodigious sustained output, Clyde hadwriter's block on this, and he and I spent lateJuly emailing about how to trick himself pastit.

Clyde had been reported "dying" since thetime over a decade ago when I edited /published Connections. In fact, it had become amild office joke that Clyde was threateningdeath again in order to queue jump and havehis stuff published in the very next issue. Untilthis time, Clyde always got better and went onto write interesting stuff, have good con-versations, and participate actively in someconferences. I w as especially impressed by theway he kept crunching data and avoid ingreverting to Oxford retired punditry. Clydewas a demon e-mailer, and w as always ge-nerous w ith advice and support to all comers.

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Unfortunately, Clyde had a stroke in Septand he never really rallied . Although theofficial cause of death was heart attack/ stroke,he just plain ran down. But I will treasure thetimes we had since Clyde graciously enter-tained unknown me at Nuffield , Oxfordduring my English sabbatical year, 1974-1975.Why, he even took me to High Table!

I've recently heard from his wife JeanMitchell, who misses Clyde very m uch. Shereports that Nuffield College, Oxford recentlyheld a memorial meeting for Clyde. She'sdonated his journals [includ ing Connections] toNuffield and his African papers to RhodesHouse, an ironic thing as Clyde once was mostunwelcome in colonial Rhodesia. Jean wouldbe delighted to keep in touch with his friendsand admirers. H er email address is [email protected]. Her postal address remains: 25Staunton Road , Headington, Oxford , UK OX37TJ.

D OIN G CHARLESTON

I don't know about you, but I had a greattime at the Charleston Sunbelt conference,2/ 96. Maybe it was that the Sunbelt finallylived up to its name; maybe it w as thegraciousness of the city (if you managed not tonotice the absence of racial integration); maybeit was Bonnie Erickson's lovely keynote;certainly it was Katie Faust, John Skvoretz &USC students' calm, thorough organization;certainly it was the general high quality of thepapers (best ever, I thought, although morenormal science than breakthroughs). It w asalso nice seeing generational turnover. Havingsinglehandedly founded INSNA (and Con-nections) exactly 20 years ago (and I evenowned it as a small business, because therewere less start-up hassles that way), I wasthrilled to see what a stable institution it hasbecome.

Here's an appraisal of the meeting thatmay not have come out the w ay the w riter in-tended . It's from a note to Bonnie Erickson,

who gave the keynote address: "Dear Bonnie,... Your thoughtful and provocative d iscussionof the structure of ignorance set the tone for avery enjoyable meeting."

Best story I heard in Charleston: WhenBev & I visited Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (theoldest Jewish congregation in the U.S.), welearned that the Charleston police chief's nameis Reuven Greenberg. A Jewish police chief israre enough (outside of Israel), bu t Reuven isbig and black, the product of a mixed marriagea few generations ago. We were told he has aPh.D. in criminology. Seems like a cool guy.Whenever the white racist Ku Klux Klanwants a police permit to march in Charleston,he gives it to them, but insists that themarchers be surrounded by the biggest,blackest police officers available in fulluniform. Kind of a neat way of making a pointpeacefully.

The congregation itself is interesting. Eventhough I think of the South (sans Tom Watson)as socially-conservative, it was the 1st Ameri-can Jewish group to join the "Reform"movement in the early 1800s. A sign on therabbi's driveway reads, "Thou Shalt Not ParkHere." And one Biblical saying on the wallreeks of kinship support: "How Good andHow Pleasant That Brothers Dwell Together"[Psalms 133:1].

SAVE THE SUN BELT !!!

Those of you who read the SocNet emailnetwork may have read a piece, 4/ 96, by anEnglish network analyst suggesting we get ridof the "Sunbelt" name in our annual con-ference. The thought was others d idn't take usseriously enough with such a name. Next,they'll want to eliminate our noon-3PMnetworking/ suntanning trad ition! Indeed , ifyou believe in self-fulfilling prophesies, thismay also be an attempt to inflict Englishweather on us. Indeed , I just d iscovered thatmy UK-based Word Perfect spell checkerdoesn't even know about suntanning.

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I d isagree, most vigorously, and judgingby the comments online, I am not the only one.I've never felt this as a problem. To thecontrary, it is a d istinguishing mark of ourloosely-knit network and as such stands outfavourably in the minds of the folks I speakwith. Moreover, it expresses a very niceapproach to our work: taking it seriously butwith a sense of self-aware fun.

When the organizers took the "Sunbelt" outof the London conference, I grieved about theirlack of humour (if any place needs sun, it'sLondon), but I let it pass as an OTO aberration.But to make a habit of a Sunbelt-less con-ference. No way! I might even start a counter-conference, and you could be sure Sunbeltwould be in the title.

APPLIED SOCIAL SCIEN CE

1. Didya know that SubcommandanteMarcos, the leader of the Zapitista rebellion,has been identified (by the Mexican president)as Rafael Sebastian Gullien, a Mexico Citysociologist born in Tampico? [Miami Herald, 5Nov 95].

2. The follow ing news story was writtensome months before Ted Kaczynski wascharged with being the Unabomber. I still findit interesting:

"The publication of the manifesto in theUnabom case has led police to move awayfrom the notion that the bomber stud ied mathor computer science, saying his writing re-sembles someone... with intellectual roots inthe less-exact world of the social sciences, likesociology or anthropology. Some experts saidthe manuscript contained little original think-ing. They evaluate the writings of the self-described anarchist against what he says is acorrupt & dehumanized technology society asa passable if dated graduate-level d iscourse bysomeone versed in scholarly forms ofargument.... He uses social science termi-nology with a sure hand ,' said David Linberg,

prof. at U Wisconsin who is president of theHistory of Science society.

"But others argue that the bomber’sscholarly credentials are uncertain, that hisideas could have been picked up hangingaround coffee houses & libraries at any 1 ofdozens of universities. Still others find itimprobable that a serious scholar wouldaddress the d islocating influences of industrialsociety w ithout referring to the works of giantsin the field like Herbert Marcuse, EmileDurkheim or Max Weber. [BW: Braverman?]....

"If there is any agreement it is that the ideasin the ms. reach back to the late 1960s & early1970s when the interplay between technology,politics & social behavior was a fashionablecampus topic. But the country's colleges havemove on to other issues as reflected , severalprofessors said , in the tepid reaction to theUnabom suspect's manifesto on the cam-puses....

"[To find the Unabomber], FBI agents haveapplied computer techniques developed formarket research on a precedent-breaking scaleto cross-check vast lists of people living inNorthern California, where they believe thebomber lives, with lists of people who live inother areas where the bomber supposed lyonce resided , like the Chicago area." [BW:What caught Ted is that his brother figured itout and reported him.]

[David Johnston, "Serial Bomber is CalledMore of a Criminal than a Terrorist with aPolitical Mission," NY Times 6 Nov 95]

3. There is NO TRUTH to the rumour thatd isgruntled network analysts set the recentbomb in the London Docklands very near theFawlty Towers H otel where we unSunbeltconferenced last summer. And I'm sure it's nottotally their fault that when I wrote to thehotel's management to complain about shoddyservice, their apologetic reply letter neverreached me. <end Private Eye mode>

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AN N ALS OF SCIEN CE

Granovetter and Bohr: Here's JeremyBernstein explaining Niels Bohr's original(1913) quantum theory: "The electrons in theorbits farthest away from the nucleus -- the so-called valence electrons -- are the ones that areresponsible for chemical bond ing. Forexample, the valence electrons can be sharedby the various component parts of themolecule, something that is called covalentbonding.... The inner electrons do not par-ticipate in chemical bonding." [New YorkReview of Books, 16 Nov 95, p . 49]. Theintegrative strength of cross-cutting weak ties,eh?

Networks are not Born, They're Selected:Accord ing to Gerald Edelman's Theory ofNeuronal Group Selection "we should notthink of brain d evelopment, especially inmatters such as perceptual categorization andmemory, as a matter of the brain learning fromthe environment. Rather the brain is geneti-cally equipped from birth w ith an over-abundance of neuronal groups and the braindevelops a mechanism w hich is likeDarwinian natural selection: some neuronalgroups d ie out, others survive and arestrengthened . In some parts of the brain, asmany as 70% of the neurons d ie before thebrain reaches maturity. The unit which getsselected is not the ind ividual neuron, butneuronal groups of hundreds to millions ofcells. The basic point is that the brain is not aninstructional mechanism, but a selectionalmechanism; that is the brain does not developby alterations in a fixed set of neurons, but byselection processes that eliminate some neu-ronal groups and strengthen others." [JohnSearle's summary in New York Review of Books,16 Nov 95, p . 54. Edelman's own book is TheRemembered Past: A Biological Theory of Cons-ciousness; NY: Basic Books.]

A Chip Off the Old Block: Greg Heil, theoriginal blockmodelling programmer, has re-resurfaced , working with Rtime [http:/ /

www.rtimeinc.com/ ], a spinoff of BBN deve-loping realtime interactivity with active objectsranging up to the millions. "Essentially thesolution w e need to supply is propinquity. Theinternet is a gigantic crossbar, and efficienttimely transmissions of updates requires chan-neling of communication. "Simnet" usespropinquity based on the 3D spatial organi-zation of war games. Strikes me we could offera number of "topologies," let people "chat"using d ifferent modalities (audio, video, paint,text, VRML, etc.) from a virtual location. Onecould easily w ander and each modality couldpossibly be hooked to d iffering topologies."Greg's em ail: gh eil@scn .org; w ebsite:www.scn.org/ tl/ anvil

SHORT SCHTICKS

Annals of Humanit ies: I'll bet most of youdidn't know that the following structuralistsare on the Editorial Board of Poetics: Journal ofEmpirical Research on Literature, the Media andthe Arts: Diana Crane, Teun van Dijk, WendyGriswold, Harrison White. Paul DiMaggio(Soc, Princeton) is the Associate Editor.

Temporarily Disconnected: Networkersknow that the sociology & gerontology folks atthe Free U of Amsterdam are a hotbed ofnetwork analysis. Some key players: MarjoleinBroese van Groneau, Fleur Thomese, KeesKnipscheer, Karen Klein Ikkink. They're allmoving on Jan 1, 1996 from their charmingPrins Hendrikslaan digs in central A'dam tothe university's suburban campus. Unfor-tunately, they may be out of e-mail contactuntil April, 1996.

Tilly Gets What He Deserves: Charles Tilly(Soc, New Schl but soon Soc, Columbia) haswon the 1995 European Amalfi Prize for hisbook, European Revolutions, 1492-1992 (Oxford:Blackwell). The citation says, Tilly "analysesthe revolutions of the last 5 centuries, inclu-d ing that of 1989, to understand both theformation of European states and the charac-teristics of revolutionary phenomena. The

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theoretical framework is characterized byoutstanding clarity, accessibility and ele-gance."

The Small World of Netw ork Analyst s:Those of you on SocNet were asked toparticipate, 3/ 96, in Aaron Dantow itz's andmy attempt to redo Stan Milgram's "smallworld" study on the Internet. We picked as atarget, my cousin Lloyd Levine, a public affairsM.A. student at Cal-State, Sacramento. I regretto report that only one chain, started by BillRichards (Communic, Simon Fraser U)reached Lloyd, despite the fact that bothstarting points and target were universityaffiliated . We may try again, in a slightlyd ifferent way. Scan your e-mails. As AbhayBhatnager said , "Soon anyone w ho's not on theWeb will qualify for a government subsidy forthe home-pageless." (e-mailed to me by afriend , 13 March 96).

Help an Indian Colleague: A doctoralstudent in Ind ia studying (in Kerala): "WivesLeft Behind , Wives of Migrants with SpecialInterest on their Support Networks." Shewould very much appreciate being sent copiesof articles related to wives' netw orks in thetemporary absence of their husbands. [AsIndian libraries are generally thinly stocked , itwould be much more useful if you sent her thearticles themselves, rather than just areference, and she probably would findcollateral articles useful too.] The address isMrs. T.T. Sara Neena, Research Scholar, Deptof Sociology , Bh a r a th a ir Un iversity ,Coimbatore 641046, Ind ia. This is a depart-ment which has had a lively group for anumber of years interested in social networkanalysis.

Help a New York Colleague: CharlesKadushin writes that he & Wayne Baker arestarting a new study of a large organization,but "he's concerned about the countlessunreplicated minor variations in networkquestions used in organization research. SoCharles w ould appreciate it if folks would

send him items used in their stud ies. "Better touse someone else's widely used "dumbquestion" than your own new "brilliant" ques-tions which have no norms and which you arenot sure w ill work anyway." We will circulateour final list and probably publish a note inConnections." Charles' address is: PhD Programin Sociology, Graduate Center, City U of NY,33 W 42 St, New York NY 10036-8099. E-mail:[email protected]

Tape Unw ound: Staring at me are threetapes from my first East York and (even older)Pittsburgh projects. The U Toronto tape libraryis no more, and I could either retrieve them orhave them d umped. It seems like onlyyesterday (1965 actually) when I used "SamStouffer's own counter-sorter" in the basementof Harvard Soc Rel's Emerson Hall. I woundup using my IBM keypunch cards for pre-post-it notes to students. Now a tape created on"Phil Stone's own tape drive" has had its lastspin. Oh well, I still have a bank of 5.25"floppy d isks.

"Travel to Trust !" I've been meditating alot recently about what face-to-face contactbuys you over e-mail contact. Why travel toCharleston when we can cyberchat? My usualresponse is cumbersome, saying that thegreater bandwidth of face-to-face contactprovides a better basis for relationships, althothey could be w ell-sustained in the interim byemail. Now Charles Grantham, a CSCW con-sultant, has shared with me a succinct for-mulation: "Travel to trust."

Sucking Up to the Graduate SchoolExperience: The Addiction is a recent movie byAbel Ferrera that tells the story of KathleenConklin (Lili Taylor), a philo. doctoral studentwho becomes a vampire, "alternately ter-rifying, sharply intelligent & highly sensual"."In a scene which show s Ferrera at his mostoutrageously excessive, Kathleen receives herdoctorate & invites everyone who's helped herget that far back to her apartment for a littlecelebration . The bloodbath which ensues is a

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truly horrifying scene -- both darkly funny(especially for anyone who's been in graduateschool & knows that particular feeling youhave for everyone around you) & disgusting atthe same time." Laura Roebuck's review,Festival Magazine (Toronto), 1/ 96: 2.

Post -Doc: Want to collaborate with BibbLatané on "Dynamic Social Impact: TheCreation of Culture by Communication"? It'san attempt to link ind ividual-level theories ofsocial influence to group and societal phe-nomena. Bibb is at Psych, Florida Atlantic U,Boca Raton FL 33431; email address is [email protected]

An INSNA Opportunity? "Studmuffins ofScience" is a new calendar, featuring 12 malescientists in hunky poses. ("Dr. March" isecologist Rob Kremer, looking quite Fabio-esque in Scientific American, 1/ 96:21.) Havingkept my eyes open around the Sunbelt, I knowthat INSNA can d o better. Who could resistLin caressing his windsurfer, Alaina with hersurfboard , or Stanley stroking his mustache?And as networkers, we'd never stand alonebut form Simmelian groupings. It could be thebeginning of a new wave of visual positionalanalysis.

An ISNA Opportunity : If you accidentallyleave the first "N" ou t of INSNA, you 're amember of ISNA, the Intersex Society of NorthAmerica (aka hermaphrodites). You can learnmore about ISNA on the Web: http:/ /w w w .isna.org [Source: Toronto Globe & Mail,17 Feb 96].

A "Minor" Universit y Opportunity : It'smore than platitudes to note that a lot of so-called minor (or nth-tier) universities are aw-fully good in some or many things, and so aresome/ many of the faculty/ students who arethere. Indeed, to label a place a "major" or"minor" university is to make a probabilitystatement about quality, and one with sub-stantial lag between perception and reality.(See recent sociology rankings for exem-

plification.) It was intriguing to note that mostof the participants in the 4/ 96 SIGCPR/SIGMIS conf. were info. scientists from minoruniversities. All of w hich got me to thinking:Most of the papers at this conference wereabout computer supported cooperative workand telework, research areas that hard lyexisted a decade ago. It is probable that newly-emerging fields provide especially good careeropportunities for smart people/ ambitiousdepartments at minor universities. The so-called major universities are so heavily inves-ted in existing fields that they can't give hotnew fields their due. On the other hand ,there's nothing so lame as a departmentdevoted to last decade's passing fad . Wonderwhat postmodernists w ill be doing a decadefrom now?

Aw areness as the Product of Compet ingNeural Netw orks: "At any instant there is nodivid ing line between sensory data that peopleare conscious of and those that are uncon-scious. In fact, we are not conscious ofanything at precisely the time we imagine.What we experience, Dennett maintains, isgenerated a little after the fact, as the result ofa competition among multiple patterns ofmental activity propagating within the brain.Awareness comprises the small fraction ofthose mental events w hose influence willpersist and so alter beliefs about what justhappened ." Tim Beardsley's profile of DavidDennett (Philo, Tufts), Scientific American,2/ 96: 34-35.

Speaking of neural networks, SPSS nowhas "Neural Connection," a neural networkadd-on for abou t $500 (accord ing to PCMagazine, 26 March 96, p. 51).

JOURN AL STUFF

Networker (and my coauthor) Charles(Chuck) Wetherell (H ist, U California-Riverside) has taken over as ed . of HistoricalMethods. "I'm always looking out for good

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historically minded social network analyticstuff." Contact him at: [email protected]

Kathleen Carley (Social & Decision Sci,Carnegie Mellon U) is the founding co-ed itor(with William Wallace, Rensselaer Inst ofTech) of Computational and MathematicalOrganization Theory which aims to "extendthe trad itional mat. approach to formal organi-zational theory by includ ing computer simu-lation, logic" and A.I. An interd isciplinary &international quarterly, it'll also have d idactictutorial papers. Email address is [email protected]. Subs, US$100/ yr: Kluwer,101 Philip Drive, Norwell MA 02061-1677.

CON FEREN CE STUFF

The Social Science History Assoc met in NewOrleans, 10-13 Oct 96. (Guess they couldn't getMard i Gras, unlike Scot & Jill.) Peter Bearman(Soc, U No Carolina) organized a Networkssession [[email protected]]. Tel: 919-962-7200; Fax: 919-962-7568.

(Reading that area code reminds me oftelephone company lore. When area codeswere first set up , they all had "1" or "0" as themiddle d igit, while the first and last d igit wererank-ordered from most populous metro area-- New York City [212] -- to the then-smallest --the Chapel H ill area [919]. The reason, as thoseover a certain age will recall, was to minimizethe number of clicks the telephone DIALwould have to make in calling the number. Bigcities, with more calls to them, would tie upthe lines least with low-click numbers.)

Preliminary word has it that the Sunbelt(hallowed be thy name) Social Network Conf.will meet, in 2000, in Vancouver. Info: BillRichards, Communic Dept, Simon Fraser U,Burnaby BC, Canada.

Wales' Centre for Social Policy R&D ishaving its annual conference, 13 June 96,

"Families & the State: Caring over the LifeCourse," with sessions on family support,coping. Info: Barbro Das Gupta, CSPRD, BrynAfon, U of Wales, Bangor LL57 2DG. tel:02148-382230.

The Nags Head Conf. has a track on"Groups, Networks & Organizations, & is heldlate Spring at the H ighland Beach Holiday Innin FL. Contact Bibb Latané or Deborah Rich-ardson for details, Nags Head Conf. Ctr, 4521S Ocean Blvd , #6, H ighland Beach FL 33487;tel: 407-278-4151. Costs $295 for 5 nights & allmeals.

THE RULES OF THE GAME IN LIMA

This is a memoir of two weeks along theInca Trail in Chile and Peru, March 17-30, 1996

1. Travelling around Lima is a networkgame. Essentially it's a form of marketsignalling, except that instead of profit thereward here is successfully advancing yourvehicle across the intersection. As the roadsare extremely crowded , this is a game thatmust be played continuously. To make matterseven more interesting, this is a game played ona field of potholes.

At an intersection, no driver knows eachother, but no driver can safely advances unlessall others cooperate. Yet each driver wants toget across first. Under these circumstances,success results from a mixture of competitionand cooperation.

There are many vehicles and intersectionsin Lima, a city of 8 million, but only few trafficlights. Each intersection is a contested zone.(For Harvard types, it's like a more intensiveand extensive version of Central Square,Cambridge.)

So how do vehicles get across? Certainrules operate: Cars on bigger roads have

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priority over those on smaller; bigger vehiclesdominate smaller (buses and trucks do verywell); older cars over newer (duct tape hold ingfenders together is a special advantage). S/ hewho honks first also gets many games-personship points. As in Boston, eye contact iscovert. To look at others is to acknowledgeyour awareness of them, and hence theirpotential right to pass through the intersectionahead of you.

These are multiple, contrad ictory rules andnot everybody knows them. (Like Toronto,Lima is a city of in-migrants, except that mostare from the Andean highlands and mountainswhere the llama traffic is more sedate.)Nevertheless, at each intersection, about onceper minute, each d river must calculate his/ herodds on all of these rules, and -- just asimportantly -- do the calculations for all otherdrivers. It's a speeded-up Meadian scene:taking the role of the others is necessary topred ict how each of the others will behave attheir common intersection. (For once, HarrisonWhite oversimplified : After Lima, I'm con-vinced that the proper subject of his bookshould have been Multiple Identity and Control.)

Despite all this surface noise and all thisapparent danger, the system works. In fourdays and forty exciting taxi rides, I and mynetwork compadres (Bev Wellman, VicenteEspinoza, Katie Faust, Larissa Adler Lomnitz)saw only one minor fender-bending accident.

The intersection game is made especiallyexciting by the complementary taxi/ bus gamein Peru. There's been an extreme marketizationof the Lima transport industry. (Read HermanDeSoto's The Other Path for a contrast with theold days of heavily bureaucratic regulated andinefficient bus transport.) Want to drive a taxiin Lima? Spend five soles (US$2.00) for a largepink plastic suction sign that says "Taxi"(surely one of the m ost international of allwords). When your boss doesn't need the car,put five liters of gas in (everyone runs on near-empty), stick the sign on your windshield , and

you're instantly in the taxi business. Allperfectly legal: no special license or exam isrequired for you or your car. All fares arenegotiable, and most drivers expect extra frompresumably well-heeled foreign passengers.Cars vary from Brazilian-made VW bugs -- themode -- to moonlighting limos: our biggestcoup was to get a "taxi ride" to the airport in anAssistant Deputy Minister's Peugeot 605spotless semi-limo: his chauffeur was makinga few extra bucks as a free-lance taxi driverbetween official duties.

There's room for upward mobility. A fewthousand dollars buys you a used car, so youcan be a full-time (taxi) driver, $8,000 gets youa used mini-bus or "collectivo". Decide whichroute you want to travel, scribble it on a sign,figure out what you want to charge, and hirea loud-voiced friend to shout your itineraryout the door w hen you stop in traffic. Voilà,you 're a bus company! If you prosper, there isnothing to stop you from buying bigger busesas long as the market will bear it.

The result is a marvellously available andflexible public transportation system. Thenumber of buses and taxis and their routes aretotally market-driven. If there isn't enoughbusiness on one route, the bus operator justscribbles a new sign and follows the crowd.We went into the farthest barrios of newAndean migrants, where the homes weremade only of straw mats on poles, and we sawmany buses and taxis bringing workers,shoppers, etc. to downtown Lima for about 30cents per day.

It's not surprising that we noticed thatLima seemed to have the highest percentagewe've ever seen of small shops devoted tovehicle repairs. Reported ly, there's even amarket where one can go to repurchase partsthat have been stolen from your vehicle. (Thisreminds me of Jackie Mason's politically incor-rect joke that he goes to Puerto Rico every year-- to visit his hubcaps.)

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In both Peru and Chile the US dollar is awidely-used alternative currency becausethere are no foreign exchange controls. Big-ticket items such as houses and cars areroutinely quoted in dollars (although localinflation is low now ). In both countries, the USTreasury was running TV ads telling Chileansand Peruvians not to w orry about the new-look $100 bill: the old one would still be legaltender. The foreign use of dollars is probablya major export item for the US.

My one fearful fantasy never materialized .I reasoned that with no controls on who coulddrive a taxi, this would be a fertile field forfree-lance kidnappers. Look for a richforeigner, pick him/ her up, and drive towhere your confederates were lurking.Fortunately, this game never was played , butit d id help me to appreciate some benefits ofregulation.

2. Why were we doing such a detailedstudy of Lima traffic? Katie, Vicente, Larissa,Bev and I were attend ing "red-lat" (its informalname), the founding conference of LatinAmerican social network analysts. ("Red" is"network" in Spanish, or "castillano" as folkssay in Peru and Chile.) The conference wasorganized by anthropologist Jeanine Anderson(who's come to several Sunbelt network con-ferences) and sociologist Aldo Panfichi, bothof the Social Sciences Dept, Pontifical CatholicUniversity of Peru. (Reported ly the Pope takeshis leadership responsibilities seriously, beinginvolved in the d iscussions about who shouldhead the university.)

There was a crowd of about 170 scholars atthe conference (in fact registration had to becapped at that number), mostly Peruvianscurious about social network analysis, butinclud ing sociologist Vicente Espinoza fromChile (trained in Toronto, I proudly add),Larissa Lomnitz from Mexico, an extremelybright, self-trained young Colombian (JuanPablo Zuluaga), and a Uruguayan interested indecentralization (Ana Laura Rivoir). CO N -

N ECTIO N S co-ed itor Katie Faust (US) ran an all-day introductory methodological workshopthat 50 people flocked to attend , despite theextra cost. I gave the keynote address (Ithought of it as my papal blessing) about theprivatization of community and talked aboutpersonal networks, Bev Wellman (Canada)spoke about how different kinds of networkschannel people to medical or alternative healthcare, Vicente linked barrio relationships, socialmobilization and collective identity, w hileLarissa compared Chilean horizontal andMexican vertical political networks. (Larissa isa citizen of Chile who has lived / worked inMexico for many years). The conference alsohad a special session honoring Larissa for herpath-breaking stud ies of networks of mar-ginals, middle-class and politicians: EveryLatin American social science undergraduatehas read her book about the myth of mar-ginality in Mexico City slums.

Interesting Peruvian papers includedJeanine Anderson on barrio communitydevelopment, Aldo Panfichi using networkdata to question stereotypes that contrastsupposed untrustworthy, apolitical, coastal"crillios" with supposedly trustworthy, soli-dary, politicized Andeans (p rimarily Ind ian),Oscar Jiminez tracing the transmission ofAIDS through male youth gangs and theirrespectable and not-so-respectable girl friends.Although many of the other papers were at theearly metaphorical stage of social networkanalysis, there was the promise that the inter-esting questions raised would soon mesh withmore detailed ways of gathering evidence andmore systematic ways of analyzing it. Mostattendees were from Peruvian universities andNGOs, interested in d iscovering what thisthing called "social network analysis" wasabout. I was reminded of how much Europeannetwork analysis has developed in the decadesince I gave the keynote address to an earlyFrench conference organized by AlexisFerrand and LASMAS associates. But I alsohoped we were not just the latest Americanfad .

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I came back with organizational thoughtsfor future conferences. It's great to have largeintroductory sessions, as the Peruvians d id , toacquaint neophytes with network thinking. It'salso necessary to have something to get peoplestarted on analyzing networks, such as KatieFaust's day-long methodological workshop.But there was also a strong need for anotherkind of session: seminars limited to profes-sionals who would critique each other's sub-stantive work and suggest research improve-ments based on network analytic lore. Therewere about 10 colleagues at the Limaconference who were ripe for this kind ofd iscussion.

All sessions started 30 minutes to an hourlate. Most people, familiar w ith local practices,d idn't even bother to show up until then. Wewere told this w as the Peruvian way (and alsothe Chilean way, as my lecture started 30minutes late there too). We never figured outhow the university's class schedule worked .What do people do when they have twoclasses back to back?

3. "Have Gun, Will Stand" is surely the anti-Palad in motto of another major Lima industry:private security -- the obvious site for BonnieErickson's next project. On every middle-classblock, there are at least three uniformed rent-a-cops wearing pistols, flak jackets and baseballcaps (embroidered with the name of thesecurity company they w ork for). Poor menoften have two basic choices when they leavethe army: crime or rentacop. I w as glad somany chose the latter career path even thoughthis u ltimately meant that w e consumers werepaying them not to become criminals. Onereason for avoid ing the wrong side of the lawmay be that the General in charge of theNational Prison Institu te reports that 75% ofthe nation's 22,210 prisoners have notcompleted their trial, with some being held inprison for four or five years withoutsentencing (Reuters news service, as reportedin the Toronto Globe and Mail, April 25, 1996).Indeed except for one urchin proto-pickpocket

(foiled of course by Tilley pants), we werenever hassled by criminals. Even the localsupermarket, Blockbuster video and sub shophad one to five rentacops outside their doors --although a sub shop in Lima is a trendy,upper-class thing. We knew we were stayingin a very classy hotel because the security guysin it wore blazers and hid their guns inconcealed shoulder holsters.

In the 1980s there were real terrorist andcriminal attack problems. Armed securityproliferated outside commercial establish-ments and in middle-class neighborhoods; andhouses and institu tions have got walls, gatesand window grills. Security has stayed at ahigh level, even though the threat hasd iminished . We met one elderly midwest-American couple in Peru for their son'swedding to a Peruvian school teacher. Becausehe managed an important mine, he arrangedfor his parents to be met at the p lane by aconvoy of three armor-plated cars (rememberPatriot Games?), and for his parents to beaccompanied by a bodyguard even whilesight-seeing at the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu.

We'd read about crime threats before wearrived and were apprehensive. Yet we neversaw an incident, despite our sociologicalinvestigation of some of the more interestingneighborhoods. I suspect that the guards areless needed now , but they help people to feelsecure and they soak up unemployment.Having a guard is probably a status symbol fora store or residential block -- no sub shop orneighborhood should be without one or elsepeople won't shop or live there -- just like poorbarrios only feel that they've arrived whenthey get their own community developmentworker. (When I was a kid in New York City,the only certifiably successful teenage gangswere those with their own "j.d . workers".)

4. Bev and my Lima experience was theculmination of our two and one-half w eek tripto Chile and Peru. We spent four days in Chilewith Vicente Espinoza, includ ing a lecture at

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his SUR (Santiago) research institu tion: myprivatization of community lecture again.Unlike Third World , widely-inegalitarianLima, Santiago Chile is modern, stylish andwith few visible signs of poverty. Itshandsome ambience reminded me of asouthern European city. Even so, weencountered machismo in an unexpectedplace. Coffee shops, like the Cafe Haiti, are formen only, who stand at long bars downingquick cups. Starbucks is better. Bev was theonly woman customer we saw in such a place,although she wasn't hassled . The coffeeservers are all pretty, buxom young womenclad in clinging lycra and short skirts, smilingbroad ly all the time. The situation w as as if thePlayboy Club had bought Starbucks.

5. We visited the barrios w here Vicentehad done his thesis research. (There's anEnglish-language paper forthcoming in myNetworks in the Global Village book and aSpanish revision and translation of his Torontothesis coming out as a Chilean book this year.)In a decade, mud/ straw shacks that hadsprung up in an "alegal" (to use DetelinaRadoeva's nice term) occupation had beentransformed into well-painted cement block,glass-windowed houses with electricity, TVand proper roofs. Many had wood sid ing andtrim, and the telephone company was byputting in lines. Blockbuster had opened avideo store a few kilometers away.

6. Rural in-migration is currently muchgreater in Lima than in Santiago, and w e wereable to trace its development as JeanineAnderson drove us from central Lima throughthe informal occupation area of Villa Salvador,housing many thousands of people. Thebarrios of Villa Salvador closer to central Limaare heavily developed , with multi-storied ,well-built homes, factories and stores, alongwith all modern services. Further out, the pav-ing ends, and the structures are mud-brick.(Nevertheless, much store-sold Peruvian furni-ture is made in mud-brick workshops.) At theoutskirts, new "homes" are springing up in the

desert. They're made of straw mats and oftendon't have electricity or water. The occasionalhome is also a variety store, and some entre-preneurs are selling cement blocks and cor-rugated roofs to would-be renovators. (AceHardware has also opened several Limastores.) Everywhere, the taxis, collectivos andbuses cruise to take residents to other parts ofLima.

We saw one of their destinations whenJose ("Pepe") Tavares, a U Mass. trainedpolitical economist took us to Gamarra, thevery dense heart of Lima's textile industry. (It'swhere some of your t-shirts, etc. come from.)The place was filled with small businesses,selling everything from buttons and thread tohigh style. It reminded me of the New YorkCity garment center where my parents' andtheir relatives had sought their fortunes (butmade only a living). We visited one shopselling low -end jogging clothes (you 'llprobably see them at Wal-Mart for $5-$10, andanother rooftop place which was silk-screening the fronts of shirts. At the time, theywere doing tw o jobs: printing highly-styledcrosses on blue cassocks and Shell Oil logos ongas jockeys' shirts. All but the senior workerswere women; one had her young son along.The working conditions compared favorablyw ith the southern Chinese factory we visiteda few years ago (where the rest of your t-shirtscome from). Like China and Taiwan, I saw onerestaurant selling snakes, live and ready-to-kill, cook and eat.

7. Truly the high point of our trip wasflying UP to Cusco and Machu Picchu fromLima: 11,000 feet (3,400 meters) up, in fact.Cusco was the Inca capital and the subsequentheart of the Spanish empire -- transforming thepolitical economy of America and Europe as aresult of its Inca gold hoards and silver mines.Most Spanish churches were bu ilt on thefoundations of Inca temples -- a simultaneousact of desecration and appropriation. (Ourcuriously-named "Hotel Liberador" had oncebeen Pizarro's headquarters house.) With

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11,000 feet comes altitude sickness: headache,nausea, malaise and loss of appetite. Tocompensate for the thin air (less oxygen percubic inch), blood vessels in the brain expand(causing a headache) to d ivert blood to thebrain from other, less critical parts of the body.The rest of the body partially shuts down,causing malaise and loss of appetite. Wequickly gave up our plans to open a westernrestaurant, the Deli Llama, especially w hen welearnt that "llama" is pronounced "yama". (TheLima branch w ould be called the Deli Lima, ofcourse.)

Fortunately, Machu Picchu, the well-preserved ruins of an Inca religious/military/ farming community, is "only" at 7,000feet, so our bodies w ere able to relax. MachuPicchu was great, especially when the day-trippers left at 2 PM. The only people left atthe site were the thirty guests at the HotelRuinas. We wandered among the beautifully-designed build ings, with their precisely-cutstones fitting tightly in mortar-less w alls, andtheir trapezoidal doorways giving goodseismic protection against earthquakes. Fivepleasant llamas are in full-time residence,doing lawn-mowing. (These were the onlyllamas w e ever saw; they're being replaced bycattle and sheep at these low er altitudesalthough they supposedly are still the largeanimal of choice above 12,000 feet/ 4,000meters.)

We walked along the Inca Trail, built outof rock steps and mountain staircases. Weclimbed 1,500 feet halfway up nearby HuaynaPicchu mountain before we were forced backby altitude sickness and a cliffside Incastaircase that was slippery when wet. Wefollow ed in In d ian a Jon es' footstep s(remember the opening of Raiders of the LostArk?) to see the sun rise and flash thorough awindow that on June 21 is precisely alignedwith a sacred altar. (Query of the day: DidIndiana Jones use Lomotil or Imodium?)Several tourists brought crystals which theyput on the altar "to catch the energy". Perhaps

that's why there was so much turbulence onthe flight back to Lima.

8. So went the h igh points of our trip . It'sinteresting how w ith even the short passing oftime, we're forgetting the annoyance of over-night flights, 3 AM wakeups to take the onlyflights/ trains available, and lost luggage.(AeroPeru d idn't handle our lost luggage well,they kept changing their schedule, and weweren't pleased about the peeling duct tapehold ing together parts of the plane's interior.With privatization, they're now owned byAeroMexico. Privatization also means that asmany as five phone companies compete inChile, even for local calls. To push theircampaign, Bell South brought former GeneralNorman Schwarzkopf to Chile to lecture aboutapplying the management of the Gulf War tobusiness leadership .)

Somewhere in transit I developed my newquick coding scheme for identifying nationswho are in the periphery, semi-periphery orcore of the world-system. The impoverishedperiphery has neither toilet seats nor toiletpaper, the semi-periphery has seats but nopaper, and the well-equipped imperialisticcore is fully equipped . Although this codingscheme uses categorical ind icators for networkphenomena, it is easy to use and always on thetraveller's mind . Moreover, it reflects the highlevel of underinvestment in the periphery andthe fact that the semi-periphery seems to havemore funds available for capital investment(seats) than for maintaining what has beenbuilt (paper). Fortunately, we only ventured asfar as the semi-periphery, and as intrepidexplorers, we carried our own supplieseverywhere.

East Asia, of course, is the major exceptionto this coding scheme, with cultural and sani-tary reasons causing affluent countries to haveunderdeveloped seating. Reported ly BillClinton w ill soon lead a trade mission to openup Japan to the aptly-named "AmericanStandard ."

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On a grander scale, Lima has the mostvisible manifestation of the semi-periphery'sunfortunate bias for capital investment ratherthan maintenance. It's an elevated metro-railsystem way out in the suburbs that mostlyconsists of isolated half-built stations andpillars to hold up tracks that never w ere builtand probably never will be.

Charles Tilly is an Honourary Doctor

Chuck Tilly received his Hon Doc fromthe U Toronto, November 23, 1995. Hewas cited for his work in developingmethods for systematically studying therelationship of social change to networks ofcollective political action, and for showinghow such actions are structurallyproduced. I wrote/read the university' scitation (reproduced below), while BonnieErickson led the procession. Fittingly,Bonnie was The Beadle, carrying a largesilver mace to keep order, although she feltthat a black belt would have been moreappropriate.

The Citation

Madam Chancellor, Charles Tilly iscurrently the Director of the Center for Stud iesof Social Change and the University Dis-tinguished Professor at the New School forSocial Research. His work focuses on therelationship of large-scale social change tocollective action. Of course, we must note hisscore of books, hundreds of articles, andthousands of lectures. But it is not theprodigious output that we celebrate. It is hisextraord inary impact on the ways in w hich weinvestigate politics and social change -- acontribution that can help us understand thesocial policies of our time.

Toronto has been an important base forCharles Tilly's work. To be sure, he receivedhis doctorate from Harvard in 1958, and heserved a few warm-up years on the Princeton

and Harvard faculties. But it w as the SociologyDepartment at the University of Toronto thatfirst recognized his genius, jumping him in1965 from an instructorship at Harvard to afull professorship here. This bold step helpedbuild the fledgling d epartment to itsinternational reputation. Tilly quickly becameits heart, establishing sociology as asystematic, empirical science and mentoringits doctoral program. In addition to develop-ing social history, he began the study of urbansocial networks -- an area in which Torontobecame world famous. He also set a standardfor physical fitness. During the hiring visit, thechairman asked Tilly what he wanted to see.He replied , "Take me to your swimming pool!"Even the physical became political: he and hiswife Louise soon became demonstrators atHart House, urging it to accept women.

Unlike some scholars who keep their noseto the computer screen, Charles Tilly has hada profound "multiplier effect." H e has been anextraord inary giver, helping colleagues toformulate questions, locate information, anduse scientifically appropriate means to d is-cover answ ers. All of his students and col-leagues -- Tilly doesn't make status d is-tinctions -- tell of w andering into his officewith vague ideas and leaving an hour laterw ith a coherent intellectual agenda, in pre-cisely numbered points, and a research designto turn the ideal into the achievable.

Although Charles Tilly moved to theUniversity of Michigan in 1969 for an ap-pointment in both history and sociology, he lefta strong legacy here of social scientistscommitted to his systematic, social structuralapproach. Tilly's stay in Toronto laid thegroundwork for his career. By contrast toAmericans who focus on how people feel --their attitudes -- Canadians naturally see prob-lems structurally, as relationships of cooper-ation and contention. Tilly applied such aCanadian analysis to the study of socialmovements. Before his work, people tended tothink that riots, rebellions and strikes were

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products of d isgruntled mobs running amok.Analysts feared that mobs resulted whenpeople had lost their bearings from too muchmodernization and their attitudes had gottenout of hand . This is a comfortable sort ofanalysis for established politicians because itsays that protesters have gone a bit crazy -- beit the Rodney King riots in L.A., the WinnipegGeneral Strike, the overthrow of the IranianShah, or the forthcoming events in Toronto.

Exciting and comforting as this mob-gone-amok approach is, Charles Tilly has shownthat it isn 't true. In comprehensive andsystematic analyses, he demonstrated that it isthe normal workings of politics that fuelsviolent as well as non-violent contentions forpower. It's not people's crazed attitudes buttheir relationships that involve them inpolitical activity, some of w hich escalates intoviolence. In fact, rioters are usually moresettled and have stabler social networks thanthose who do not riot.

This is powerful and unsettling stuffbecause to take it seriously means to stopdismissing rioters as mindless mobs and tostart seeing them as concerned interest groupscontending for power and resources. Policy-makers are reluctant to see this because Tilly'sapproach is truly subversive, treating govern-ment forces as just another set of contenders.To use the language of post-modernism, it de-privileges them. Indeed , Tilly has shown thatgovernments usually maim and kill morepeople than rioters do.

At an age when most scholars havebecome pontificating pundits pretentiouslypropounding puerile pomposities, Charles Til-ly keeps doing research. His The ContentiousFrench recently won the best book of the yearprize from both the American SociologicalAssociation and the Society for the Study ofSocial Problems. This year's hot book is PopularContention in Great Britain, the cumulation ofmore than a decade's work. My favourite is thewonderfully titled Big Structures, Large Pro-

cesses, Huge Comparisons, a font of wisdom fortaking social science seriously.

The w ay in w hich Charles Tilly goes abouthis work is as important as his substantivefind ings. One may wonder what a social his-torian is doing as head of the U.S. NationalScience Foundation's Mathematical SocialSciences Board? It is because Tilly has shownall of us how to do the systematic study of thepast, linking statistical with qualitative infor-mation. Rather than the trad itional historianzeroing in on a few texts, Tilly treats history asif it were survey data. Do you want to reallyknow about political contentions? Then you dowhat Tilly has done: systematically sample,record and analyze newspaper accounts andpolice files as if they were responses to asurvey. This approach leads you away fromthe pitfalls of relying on the memoirs of a fewobservers. Only then will you get a compre-hensive, surefooted account of how thetroubles began, who was allied with whom,w hat their interests were, who hurt whom,and what the outcomes were. In this way,Charles Tilly has interviewed the past.

Gathering and processing such informationtakes industry. For thirty years, Tilly and hisassociates fanned out across Europe, searchingobscure newspaper and police records. Theywere everywhere. Late one June afternoon, mywife and I pulled into an isolated town in theVendée, seeking only a rest stop. The smallcity hall was open. When we walked in for alook around , a thin little man in a dusty whitesmock hurried to intercept us. "Bonjour, noussommes des sociologues canadiens," I said in myfinest Toronto French. He was puzzled for amoment. Then his face lit up and heexclaimed: "Encore des étudiants du ProfesseurTilly!"

H e w as r igh t, of cou rse, for a ll socia l scien tists

h ave been stu d en ts of Professor Tilly .