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Mathematical sociology is the usage of mathematics to construct social theories. Generally in sociology, the connection between mathematics and sociology is confined to problems of data analysis; employing statistical models. Many sociological theories are strong in intuitive content, but weak from a formal point of view. In mathematical sociology, the preferred style is encapsulated in the phrase "constructing a mathematical model." This means making specified assumptions about some mathematical objects and providing an empirical interpretation for the ideas. It also means deducing properties of the model and comparing these with relevant empirical data.
Some influential early work
Starting in the late 1940s, Anatol Rapoport and others developed a probabilistic approach to the characterization of large social networks in which the nodes are persons and the links are acquaintanceship. Formulas were derived that connected local parameters such as closure of contacts – if a is linked to both b and c, then there is a greater than chance probability that b and c are linked to each other – to the global network property of connectivity (Rapoport 1957). Acquaintanceship is a positive tie, but what about negative ties such as animosity among persons? Graph theory – the mathematical study of abstract representations of networks of points and lines – can be extended to include two types of links and thereby to create models that represent both positive and negative sentiment relations. This effort led to an important and non-obvious Structure Theorem (Cartwright and Harary 1956) that says that if a network of interrelated positive and negative ties is balanced -- illustrated by the psychological consistency of "my friend's enemy is my enemy" -- then it consists of two subnetworks such that each has positive ties among its nodes and negative ties between nodes in distinct subnetworks. The imagery here is of a social system that splits into two cliques. (There is a special case where one of the two subnetworks is empty, which might occur in very small networks.) In these two developments we have mathematical models bearing upon the analysis of structure. Other early influential developments in mathematical sociology pertained to process. For instance, Herbert Simon(1952) produced a mathematical formalization of a published theory of social groups by constructing a model consisting of a deterministic system of differential equations. A formal study of the system led to theorems about the dynamics and the implied equilibrium states of any group.
A few further developments
The model constructed by Simon raises a question: how can one connect such theoretical models to the data of sociology, which often take the form of surveys in which the results are expressed in the form of proportions of people believing or doing something. This suggests deriving the equations from assumptions about the chances of an individual changing state in a small interval of time, a procedure well known in the mathematics of stochastic processes. James S. Coleman embodied this idea in his book Introduction to Mathematical Sociology (1964) that showed how stochastic processes in social networks could be analyzed in such a way as to enable testing of the constructed model by comparison with the relevant data. In addition, Coleman employed mathematical ideas drawn from economics – such as general equilibrium theory – to argue that general social theory should begin with a concept of purposive action and, for analytical reasons, approximate such action by the use of rational choice models (Coleman, 1990). This argument provided impetus for the emergence of a good deal of effort to link rational choice thinking to more traditional sociological concerns involving social structures. Meanwhile, structural analysis of the type indicated earlier received a further extension to social networks based on institutionalized social relations, notably those of kinship. The linkage of mathematics and sociology here involved abstract algebra, in particular, group theory (White, 1963). In turn, this led to a focus on a data-analytical version of homomorphic reduction of a complex social network (which along with many other techniques is presented in Wasserman and Faust 1994). Some programs of research in sociology employ experimental methods to study social interaction processes. Joseph Berger and his colleagues initiated such a program in which the central idea is the use of the theoretical concept "expectation state" to construct theoretical models to explain interpersonal processes, e.g., those linking external status in society to differential influence in local group decision-making. Much of this theoretical work is linked to mathematical model building (Berger 2000). The generations of mathematical sociologists that followed Rapoport, Simon, Harary, Coleman, White and Berger, among others, drew upon their work in a variety of ways. For instance, Thomas Fararo and John Skvoretz constructed a mathematical approach called "E-state structuralism" that synthesized components of the social network paradigm with core components of expectation-states theory (1986).
Texts and journals
Mathematical sociology textbooks cover a variety of models, usually explaining the required mathematical background before discussing important work in the literature (Fararo 1973, Leik and Meeker 1975). The Journal of Mathematical Sociology (started in 1971) has been open to papers covering a broad spectrum of topics employing a variety of types of mathematics, especially through frequent special issues. In addition, and this is important as an indicator of the penetration of mathematical model building into sociological research, the major comprehensive journals in sociology, especially The American Journal of Sociology and The American Sociological Review, regularly publish articles featuring mathematical formulations.
Cited books and articles
Berger, Joseph. 2000. "Theory and Formalization: Some Reflections on Experience." Sociological Theory 18(3):482-489.
Berger, Joseph, Bernard P. Cohen, J. Laurie Snell, and Morris Zelditch, Jr. 1962. Types of Formalization in Small Group Research. Houghton-Mifflin.
Cartwright, Dorwin and Frank Harary. 1956. "Structural Balance: A Generalization of Heider's Theory." Psychological Review 63:277-293.
Coleman, James S. 1964. An Introduction to Mathematical Sociology. Free Press.
_____. 1990. Foundations of Social Theory. Harvard University Press.
Edling, Christofer R. 2002. "Mathematics in Sociology," Annual Review of Sociology.
Fararo, Thomas J. 1973. Mathematical Sociology. Wiley. Reprinted by Krieger, 1978.
_____. 1984. Editor. Mathematical Ideas and Sociological Theory. Gordon and Breach.
_____ and John Skvoretz. 1986. "E-state Structuralism: A Theoretical Method." American Sociological Review 51:591-602.
Lave, Charles and James March. 1975. An Introduction to Models in the Social Sciences. Harper and Row.
Leik, Robert K. and Barbara F. Meeker. 1975. Mathematical Sociology. Prentice-Hall.
Rapoport, Anatol. 1957. "Contributions to the Theory of Random and Biased Nets." Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 19: 257-277.
Simon, Herbert A. 1952. "A Formal Theory of Interaction in Social Groups." American Sociological Review 17:202-212.
Wasserman, Stanley and Katherine Faust. 1994. Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge University Press.
White, Harrison C. 1963. An Anatomy of Kinship. Prentice-Hall.
See also
- Computational sociology
- Harrison White
- Duncan Watts
- James S. Coleman
- James D. Montgomery
- Thomas Fararo
- Social network
External links
- Mathematical Sociology Section Home Page
- A more indepth explanation of Mathematical Sociology by Phil Bonacich
"Mathematical sociology"