How To Model Social Space
How To Model Social Space
How To Model Social Space
In the social sciences, the space where human activities are deployed has
been defined as territory. Currently, there are few places in the earth that
have not been occupied by human beings. Perhaps the remote artic and
antarctic zones of our planet don’t know our steps. In the strict sense,
human history is a long process by which mankind has appropriated the
natural resources for staying alive. Simultaneously, this has been a
technical and social process, tools and forms of social organization are
two sides of the same coin1.
In this analysis, “territory” underlines the social dimension of human
action. In modern French geography, the social dimension stresses the
institutional modes by which modern nations have arranged relations
with the space. Furthermore, they have arranged how the relationships
between citizens are ruled. “Territory means in the first sense a
“geographic space qualified as a legal concept” (George, 1994, apud.
Gouësset), that is a political space where the State authority rules”
(Gouësset, 1994, p. 79). In the second sense, the territory is not only a
question of control over a delimited space – be the State our other
powerful groups, but also that term refers to part of a territory by an
identity and representation process – individual or collective – that
1Milton Santos, Brazilian Geographer, defines the space as follows: ”The space is formed
by an inseparable, conjoined, but also contradictory setting of object and practical
systems, that can’t be understood as isolated, but as a unique framework where the
history is also present. In the beginning was a wild nature, formed by natural objects
that a long of history were substituted by manufactured objects, technical objects,
mechanical and, after, cybernetical, making as result that the artificial nature tends to
function as a machine”.
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However, how can each of these levels of the social space be represented
in a scientific manner? In a schematic way, each dimension can be
represented with different tools of formal thought. The following table
depicts the matches between spatial dimensions and some formal tools:
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Symbolic logic
Mind maps – Probabilistic text
Phenomenological space analysis – Discourse, text and
computational hermeneutics
Graph Theory
Interactional space Social Network Analysis
Geographical space
Despite the fact that geography has been an ambiguous scientific
discipline, with a variable institutional address, among natural sciences,
social sciences and formal sciences, Hagget (1973) has distinguished four
basic conceptions of the former with a specific idea on what space is:
1. In the more broader sense, geography is a science about space
differentiation. The big issue is regional construction as a rational
description about variables conditions of the surface of the earth
(Hartshorne, 1959, apud Hagget 1973).
Phenomenological space
This dimension of space has been studied by a specific and philosophical
method called Phenomenology. Edmund Husserl, also a professional
mathematician, was concerned with the crisis of positivistic knowledge
at the beginning of the twentieth century. In his famous work, Crisis of
European Knowledge (1936), Husserl highlighted that the occidental
tradition had lost its original path traced back to ancient Greece. The
overspecialized modern science had lost the original sense of universal
logos. Scientific knowledge, and its eidetic reconstruction of world, had
lost the fundamental sense of what any formal knowledge had for human
beings. Lebenswelt (living world) is our original experience in the world.
We all construct knowledge looking for sense in the thinking process and
in the results of it. Just before the second European war, Husserl had
foreseen the catastrophic results of science put in the service of self
destruction.
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2 A patient used glasses that blocked the retinal inversion. The effect was a messy
world of sensations, a disconnect order of images and tactile experience. Stratton
(1896, 1897)
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Interactional space
Among social sciences, sociology waited until the first half of twentieth
century to be able to model social interactions. In the thirties, Jacob
Moreno, a Hungarian psychiatrist, proposed the sociogram as a useful
tool to represent, in a graphical form, a setting of social interactions. But
this step couldn’t have been possible without the theory of graphs, a
specific branch of mathematics powered by another Hungarian, the
mathematician Dénes König who published in 1936 the first synthesis in
this field, Theorie der endlischen und unendlischen Graphen (Theory of
finite and infinite graphs). For the first time, the theory of graphs was
axiomatized and standardized in clear terminology.
The theory of graphs was originally an answer to Eulerian and
Hamiltonian circuits. This kind of puzzle had been considered as a
unworthy of study by mathematicians. But the classic problem stated by
Leohnard Euler in 1736, known as Seven Bridges of Könisberg, opened a
new door for mathematical inquiry. Briefly, the problem was this: how to
cross the seven bridges of Könisgberg without crossing any of them twice?
In terms of the graph the question is: “When can we trace a path in a
graph that traverses each edge once and once only, and when can we
arrange for such a path to return to its starting point?” (W.T. Tutte, p.2).
Intuitively, there is no solution in geometrical common sense. This is not
an issue about distances, it is an issue about topological properties, that
is, about formal properties of homeomorphic space. In this kind of space
two figures can be transformed one into the other without cutting or
gluing.
We can depict the problem and solution in a visual form for a better
understanding:
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The modern graph analysis concluded that the path required can be
constructed if and only if the graph is connected and has at most two odd
vertices. If there are two odd vertices, then the path can go from one of
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The digital age has increased this apparent paradox. The online
relationships stress the small world condition of social relationships as
results of structural properties of flows in a world-wide-web. Why the
world is a handkerchief in the point of view of social interaction?
Figure 4 Bernoulli graph
The figure 6A represents a system where the agents are controlling one
to others. Specifically, the graph represents lateral control relationships,
that is, when someone is perceived with trust and authority for
controlling the problematic behavior of a third agent. In that
organizational setting, there are two big components split by an almost
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wide zone. Only a few relationships bridge the two main components.
But, when the strong ties are plotted with differentiated width and black
color as in figure 6B, in this case the frequency with which the levers are
chosen for controlling the problematic targeted behavior, it is clear that
weak ties are bridges between components. In that organizational setting,
there is a cleavage between two factions with internal cohesion for
controlling deviant behavior, but at the same time there are brokers and
bridges that maintain a global cohesion of this system. That bridges are
lines of trust between groups and the brokers are leaders with authority
in both sides of system.
scale for transiting from one node to other. In a formal sense this carry
out as result a power law or exponential inverted distribution of nodal
degree.
Figure 7 Brazil – Transmission electricity system (2015)
Social network analysis has developed new tools and insights for
understanding the emergency of power in organizational settings. The
Collegial Phenomenon (Lazega, 2006), Brokerage and Closure (Burt,
2005), are good examples of how to model social processes in organized
environments. A collegial organization is a polyarchic system where there
are division of powers or a precarious status. Any agent controls all
possible resources for taking control. So, a constant process of
negotiation is on the road. Studying interorganizational relationships, the
brokerage has been revealed as key mechanism for profiting social
capital. Burt (1999) has proposed the C algorithm for measuring the
global constraint of a network on each one of agents. In other words, the
constrain is the sum of direct and indirect pressure received by a node in
a network. The formal notation is the following:
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Ci cij
j
Final remarks
Until here, I have underlined some differences between the interactional
and geographical space. I’d like stress that Euclidean geometric space is
not equal to topological space. For example, if I took the information
about transmission electricity system of Brazilian Southeast (500 KW),
between Itaipú and the main four cities, it can be reduced and
transformed onto topological information as in figure 12.
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The three graphs say the same thing in different ways. Now, I have an
abstraction, the original information in the map was reduced in a form
that can transformed in a topological way. This is possible as result of
isomorphic condition of topological space. Without cut or glue, I can
transform a ship form onto a line or upstairs form. But the best advantage
of the theory of graph is the homeomorphic condition between two graphs
that makes possible a comparative work.
Here I arrive to my main conclusion: there isn’t a biunivocal
correspondence between a locational map and a graph of interactions.
So, to represent social facts in a map, such as criminal rates in some
points of a city, is a superficial way that can’t explain the organized
condition of deviant behavior. If policy makers in security, for example,
are seduced by this kind of analysis, they risk putting a buck under the
leak in the roof.
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Bibliography
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