Social capital as a theory-generating concept is best conceived in the social network perspective (Lin, 2001b)

“Social capital [Page 218]is defined by its function. It is not a single entity, but a variety of different entities having two characteristics in common: They all consist of some aspect of social structure, and they facilitate certain actions of the individuals who are within the structure” (Coleman, 1990, p. 302).

this classical theory of capital consists of two distinct elements: value that is generated and pocketed by the capitalists and investment on the part of capitalists with expected returns in the marketplace. Therefore, capital is a surplus value and represents an investment in expected returns (Lin, 2001a).

The advantages of representing network data in this fashion will become clear, but for now, keep in mind that a matrix is simply an array of data.

Therefore, in conducting social network analysis, it is crucial to do no harm to the participants by (1) emphasizing the voluntary nature of the data collection; (2) disclosing how the data will be used; and (3) disguising the data to maintain confidentiality (Daly, 2010). As the field is relatively new and often misunderstood by members of institutional review boards, further ethical concerns will surface and need to be addressed.

These structural relations—unlike “fixed” attributes such as gender, race, and age that do not vary in different contexts—exist only at a specific time–place and either disappear or recede when actors are elsewhere.

When a firm intentionally locks up a supplier to an exclusive contract, competitor firms are excluded from accessing that supplier, leaving them vulnerable in the marketplace.

A hundred years before Moreno, the social philosopher Comte hoped to found a new field of “social physics.” Fifty years after Comte, the French sociologist Durkheim had argued that human societies were like biological systems in that they were made up of interrelated components.

Adolescents often tend to turn to others and either mimic behavior or “act out” in ways to seek approval from select audiences. To best fully capture a description of the student's behavior, you should examine student-to-student relations. These relations might include membership in the same extracurricular groups, the frequency with which they communicate outside of school, joint course-taking patterns, friendship nominations, and others. To fully understand and model the phenomenon of student behavior, you need the relational data inherent to the social network perspective.

Relation