Month: February 2017

My social network seems to change as my social context change. My network list is basically composed of my family and friends in school. According to my E-I index, my data shows people tends share common characteristic with me. There are three zeros in my chart. Respectively, they are context, age group, and communication way. The context influence me the most. In this column 20 percent of the participant is my family and the rest is people I know from school. About 60% of my participants are female while the other 40% is males. From that we can see that people are more likely to make friends with the same gender.

Education also plays a important role in my network, 70% of my participants have high school degree and they are all pursuing for higher education degree like me. Also most of my participant are the same age group as I am therefore, we are in the same generation and share similar background. From that we can also see that people tend to be friends who share similar background and similar education level. One possible reason that might be true is because with similar education level we have more common thoughts about the world and society.

After comparing my data with my group partners I realize that my data and my partners data are pretty similar. The participants that participate in my partners data is just like mine, we all have family and friends in school as the majority of our participants. Therefore, it’s safe to say that our environment is really a limitation for people to make friend. People would likely to make friends with people who share the same context.

From the result of my E-I index, I found out that numbers tend to be negative, which means, their friends distribution are more like my group partner. If context is the most influential factor for people to make friends, age would be the second important standard for people to make friends and set up their net work.

In conclusion, we can conclude that be people at similar age would have similar maturity-level so they can communicate with others that are also the similar age. For example, my friends and I would say that they have more or less problem to communicate with their parents, who are in a different generation and age level.

My educational institutions had and still have a huge impact on my personal networks. Through discussion with my fellow classmates I realized I was not the only member greatly influenced by their previous and current educational institutions. Although educational institutions play the greatest part in our personal network formations, as the group concluded, we also discussed the influence of our family as an institution. The institution of the family has a significant power to affect our norms, values, and cultures as members of this society.

Outside of my close friend groups I have a very close relationship with all of my immediate family members. These close net relationships I share with my family were very much a result of my bringing up. Throughout my childhood I was taught to empower family values, trust, and rely on my family members. This ties into C. Wright Mills sociological imagination concept where history affects our biography. In this case, I was taught to keep a close tie between my family members and I; therefore, I have a great appreciation for our relationship.

When I moved to Canada from Israel at a relatively young age making new relationships was very difficult due to the language barrier. Right after the move, I attended a Jewish elementary school where we studied Hebrew as well as English. This allowed me to connect and relate to other Jewish students with whom I shared most of the same beliefs, norms, and values. Through these similarities between the people surrounding me, making new relationships was natural and a lot easier.

After graduating from elementary school I attended a public high school where I developed other diverse relationships; however, the relationships I made with those who related most to me in elementary school remained my closest networks through out high school. This led me to the conclusion that my personal networks are extremely homophilic.

After high school my personal networks completely changed. I still had the majority amount of personal networks remaining from high school, and a new amount of networks created in university. I chose to maintain my friendships with those who I still shared common aspirations with after high school, and create new networks with others who are similar and relatable to me in university. As most of my group members aside from two students had a significantly larger amount of networks remaining from high school, we concluded that not only did the physical institution affect our networks, but as did the geography and proximity of where we attended high school and then later on attended university also affected our networks.

As all of my personal networks were based in Vancouver, the transition from high school to university didn’t have a drastic effect on my relationships. However, not all networks transferred with me from high school to university. My relationships and networks in university are also very homophilic as I connect with others who are in the same age group, faculty, and socio-economic group as I am.

These relationships validate the fact that I am unconsciously drawn to others who share common interests and aspirations as me.

 

 

Throughout my life journey, I have been able to create and build on new relationships, and by the help of people in my social and personal life, I have been able to construct my identity. When taking a look at my personal network of people I feel that I share a strong connection to, I see my family and friends, and realize the majority of them are attending some kind of post-secondary institution. Indeed, this reveals how I have been surrounded by people who seek knowledge, value higher education, and they want to be successful in the future, so I believe it has created a ripple effect, and taught me to strive for the same. Even more, the ages of my friends are relatively close to mine because I believe that I can relate better to their situations and seek advice from those who are of the same maturity level. If I compare my personal network to my classmates such as Abbey and Danica, they are similar in the way that they have bonds with people of similar age, but they do not have strong connections to coaches or teachers like I do. In fact, I have managed to stay in close contact with my high school basketball coach and grade 11 Biology teacher because they saw potential in me and always supported me as a student athlete. In addition, their guidance and mentoring helped me strive to become a better basketball player and without them, I would not be playing for the University of British Columbia. It seems that all the groups of people who have and continue to influence my life, want to see me accomplish great things and develop as a person in every way.

If someone were to analyze my closest relationships throughout my childhood and adolescence, it would be my family members as they have provided me with financial assistance and more importantly, a loving home. There’s no doubt that without them, my sociable and outgoing personality would not have flourished because I have always been exposed to a caring environment. My network can say a lot about me but I would say the most crucial piece is that I have managed to maintain a lot of relationships in the past to the present. I would say it explains why I have become more of an independent person when I moved out of my home to live by myself at UBC because I know I will always have a support system behind me in case I ever fall or need a hand to reach out to. On the other end, my least strongest ties in my social network would probably be the acquaintances I have encountered through my classes but they have played a fundamental role in helping me feel better connected to the campus as a freshman. Certainly, I know that because of all these people I have made connections to in various ways, they have given me the opportunity to aspire to become a confident and hard working person in order to achieve my goals.

Upon analyzing my personal network, I discovered that school, as an institution, has a great impact on us as individuals. When comparing E-I indexes with my group, we established that context and education were measurements of high homophily. We agreed that most of the people in our networks were those who we met in school and university. For me specifically, most of the people in my network were from high school. Because we spend a significant amount of time in these institutions, we often rely on them as the foundation for our relationships. When comparing gender E-I indexes with my group, I noticed that mine had almost complete homophily. I realized that the reason for this may be due to the fact that I went to an all-girls high school. However, I knew that other girls had friends outside of school who were boys, as where I did not. I reflected upon this and decided that this might be due to my personality. In realizing this, I also discovered that the person who I am today was largely shaped by my high school years. In high school, being constantly surrounded by girls gave me a sense of comfort, familiarity and security. I liked all of my friends and I felt safe. Because of this, I felt like I did not need to expand my social network and look for friends outside of school. This clearly influenced the amount of social interaction I had during my adolescent years. Not only did I not have that much interaction with people outside of school, but I also lacked a significant amount of interaction with the opposite gender. As a result, I became reserved and shy when it came to making new friends. I began to find myself being more comfortable around girls as that was what I was used to for the past five years. When reflecting back at the friends I had in my co-ed elementary school, the gender was more balanced. This justifies that the fact the type of institution has a strong influence on who you become as a person, and who you unconsciously choose to associate yourself with.

Furthermore, I attended a private high school where the norm was that everyone goes to university after graduation. In my network, all of my friends went to a post-secondary institution. In my perspective, I believe that the quality of education affects the mindset of the community which then influences you and your aspirations. Although it was each of our individual choices to attend university, it was actually our society, our networks and our institutions that made the decision for us. For me, it seemed as though university was a given and that attending post-secondary is the instinctive next step in our lives. As seen in my network, all of my friends attended post-secondary so I did not hesitate to make the same decision as well. In addition, preparing for university was all my high school talked about. Based on this observation, I believe that not being able to attend university is not just a personal trouble, but a public issue based on the quality of education an individual receives. If students are not encouraged and motivated by their teachers and peers to attend university, they will not see it as a “norm.” It can also lower their standards, their confidence and affect the goals they wish to pursue in life. Clearly, our education, as well as the people around us, shape the decisions we make and the mentality we have towards our future and our aspirations.

In our social networks, many different factors have a significant influence on who we deem as part of our personal network. Following an analysis of and discussion about who I see as important in my life, I have found that context and institution are especially relevant to my social network. Surprisingly, I have noticed a slight heterophily in my social network in regards to context, education, occupation, and age of those in my social network, and a homophily stemming from the gender and means of communication.

Since I have lived in the Vancouver area my whole life, almost all who are in my social network reside or have resided in areas close to me. However, many friends I hold in my social network are not friends from childhood, but friends I met when I was in high school. I was formerly close to some people who I met in elementary school, but grew apart due to the fact that we attended different high schools. Prior to attending UBC, I attended an all-girls private school on the west side of Vancouver, which explains the strong homophily in my social network in terms of the gender of those in it, since I am mainly friends and am comfortable around other females. It was a very close-knit community, and many of the friends I made there shared the same values I did, such as the importance of getting a post-secondary education. From this knowledge, I found that with the context of knowing many people in my social network from this community, there is a strong correlation between the categories of institution, education level, and occupation. Many of those in my social network who I became acquainted with in high school went on to enrol in universities as full-time students, creating said correlation. Another prominent, common factor in my social network that causes this correlation is privilege. Although many of those in my social network would not define themselves and their families as “rich”, it does require some privilege to be able to attend a private school in one of Vancouver’s most affluent neighbourhoods. The experience I had and the friends I gained while in high school had a great influence on who I am and what my goals are.

Another prominent attribute in my social network is the means of communication I employ to talk to each member. When analyzed in my social network, the attribute of “means of communication” had an E-I Index of -0.3, indication a somewhat strong homophily. I noticed that instead of online methods of communication and offline means of communication, I tend to communicate with those in my social network using a mixture of online and offline methods. In addition, those I deemed to have the strongest relationship with me were the ones more comfortable to talk to me while in person, as opposed to someone I can only have online communication due to them not see very occasionally.

Further discussion in my group assisted in confirming my thoughts. We had significant similarities in our data sets. Each of us had high homophily levels in terms of the genders of those in our social networks, and similar education levels.

Overall, I think my social network says a lot about who I am as a person. It shows that I tend to gravitate towards those who share my same priorities and need for success in life.

Similarly to my peers, my network map clearly depicts two distinct groups. The larger of the two contains high school friends, family, and all other people I know through my experiences prior to coming to Vancouver.   The other is smaller, yet is a much more tightly knit friend group, and consists of those whom I have become closest with since moving here.  Both vary in nature, arguably because of various influencing factors which were relevant at the time which the network was being formed.  The people within our networks are greatly related to the environment as well as the context in which we live.

The part of my network map which corresponds to my network back home in Toronto displays mostly weak ties.  For the majority within this group, I am the connection.  That is to say, many know each other because of me; I am the mutual friend.  Consequentially, weak ties exist between many of my close friends because they have only met a handful of times at my birthday parties or other friend gatherings over the years.  It’s also notable that within this larger group which makes up my network, there are sub-networks.  Strong ties exist between those who went to high school together and between family members, for example.

Interestingly, those who I have met in the University setting here in Vancouver, and stayed close with are all from the GTA (Greater Toronto Area).  In other words, we all come form the same geographic location.  However, although we all met through the same institution, and come from the same geographic area, we all come from various ethnic backgrounds.  I, like the others within this group, consider myself Canadian, however I come from mainly German and Scottish roots.  Within the group are two Filipinos, an Iraqi and a Chinese-mixed Persian.  While this variety in ethnicity hints at a small-scale example of the theory of globalization, the similarities in geographic origin and context points to the homophily principle in an unconventional way.  Especially considering we had all just moved to a new city, where, for the first time, we would be living on our own, it isn’t surprising that the friends we became closest with were all from the same general area (Toronto and surrounding cities).  This sharing of origin – although not necessarily ethnic or socio-economic, as the homophily principle suggests – offers a sense of familiarity in a very unfamiliar context and place.

My main focus has been the qualitative awareness I have gained with respect to my network, through the network map, however the E.I. index offered important insight into my network which I won’t overlook.  After calculating homophily for each attribute, it immediately became clear that the gender value calculated was a very negative value, indicating that in terms of gender, my network is homophilous in nature.  In other words, almost all of those within my closest circle of friends are female.  This is not surprising, as, again, the homophily principle states that we associate ourselves with those who are most similar to us by way of being able to relate more easily to each other.

I’ve seen a large change in my social interactions and social circles since coming to Vancouver for university.  I grew up in a small town where the people I was closest to were not necessarily people who shared my values and aspirations, nor did I share theirs.  The strongest social force keeping us together was the similarity of general attributes such as age, education and the context in which we knew each other.  Since coming to university, I’ve found that my network expanded to people with who I did share many common goals and beliefs.  While gaining these new connections, I simultaneously lost contact with most people from my hometown, aside from my family and a couple friends.  However, after creating and analyzing my network in this activity, I still found that the underlying social structure keeping me close to the majority of my network is a geographic proximity and a similar education/occupation status.  My data seems to support this, as the majority of my network are people who are also in university, particularly UBC, and have similar educational/occupational standings as myself.  Additionally, the data collected about my means of communication with the people closest to me reveals that we communicate primarily offline rather than online, suggesting that these are not long-distance relationships and instead people that I see quite often.

 

The trends in my data also correlate with my group member’s. We all had high homophily ratings in the gender attribution of our data and comparable numbers in our education and context columns, with most of our data corresponding to fairly high homophily ratings as well.  Our group was all girls, and all within a very similar age range.  Therefore, these similarities in data suggest that maybe the importance of gender, education and context are some of the key attributes when it comes to people of our age, gender and social situation choosing people for their networks, respectively.

 

Besides the similarities between myself and my network, I found the connections between everyone in my network was generally very strong.  All the people in my network had strong ties with at least 4 other people, suggesting they’re all quite connected.  There could be several reasons for this, both personal and sociological.  Personal reasons being that I want to have a tightly linked network and therefore I will familiarize my friends and family with each other.  Sociological reasons being more general, but equally relevant.  For example, the interconnectedness I found within my personal network is also clear on a much larger scale, and is the result of globalization.  It’s difficult to compare the interactions of a small group of people with the interactions of nations, but I can see the uniformity most simply explained by World Society Theory: placing importance of institutions and cultural models on the way nations and individuals are shaped and behave.  This seems to hold true for the connections between my network because cultural norms such as the use of social media essentially keeps everyone in my network connected.  Additionally, it’s the institutions which we have access to that brings and keeps us together.  For example, our universities, jobs and hobbies are all a part of our lives and play an intrinsic role in our connections.  Looking at the people in my life right now, I see that I’m surrounded by people I admire, support, and rely on, making it all the more interesting to see the underlying social forces that keep me close to them, even though it feels like we are solely the ones keeping each other connected.

Through the data collected, we can interpret that my network is fairly homophilic. There is a tendency that I affiliate myself with males more than girls. I think this is because of how I was raised as a child. I did not have the opportunity outside of school to meet girls and even then, I chose to befriend more males than females. A major factor to this may be because of the extracurricular activities I did outside of school. Playing sports was how I was brought up, whether it be basketball, rugby or swimming. In all of these activities, I was competing in all male leagues. The only time I had a chance to meet people of the opposite gender outside of school was when I danced competitively from second grade to fifth grade. I was in a hip hop class with three other boys and eleven other girls. Interestingly enough, because I was young and still nervous around girls, there was the tendency to only hang out with the three other boys in my class whenever we had free time. The fact that I took dance lessons and enjoyed it demonstrated social inequality in regards with gender and identity. As a kid growing up, it is generally more common for a girl to dance than it is a boy, therefore we can assume that I was feminized because of the cultural norm that girls danced while guys played sports such as soccer. Another thing that is interesting to point out is that no matter what the context/institution data was, all of their educational background was at least university level with a bachelors degree. With the exception of my little brother, who I assume will also pursue post secondary education. No matter where the other people’s current location or nationality is, they all have at least the same level of education. I believe this says a lot about my social class and status. People who I want to affiliate myself with are usually privileged. In that sense, we all have our basic needs covered so we have the opportunity to learn more and pursue a higher level of education. All of my close friends, whether I met them in elementary school, high school or university itself, are pursuing post secondary education. This is important as social connections are improved and my network can be expanded for future aspirations since I have more resources than someone who chose not to attend to university. Being in a fraternity also helps me pursue my aspirations and expand my network. Most of my friends I have made in university are somehow related to the Greek system. This affiliation is very important to me and my biography because it defines who I am. It also helps me connect and meet with people who have similar interests, hobbies and goals. The data collected shows that I choose to be with people who are similar to me. Even though the way they were raised might be different, I can see my own self in people I choose to be with are in some way, shape or form.

 Activity 1: My Personal Network

During the analysis of my personal network, I established that the contexts/Institutions that had the greatest impact on me was my Family and High school, Pre-school and College. After my parents divorce, I became close to my mother/her family and lost touch with my father/his family completely. However, the surprising conclusion was that my social institutions were equally split into two: ‘Friends’ and ‘Family’. My self-assumption prior to this activity that my ratio between friends and family would, favor the former was proved wrong. The first insight created within my personal network was that I do have a strong sense of family as a social institution within my network, which has shaped my values and mannerisms. Reiterating Charles Cooley: my family does indeed serve as a primary group in my primary socialization.

Referring to social inequality, my nationality/race and social class have demarcated my personal network. Coming from the middle-higher class strata in western India, Bombay: I found the “strange in the normal” when I realized how jarring it was that my personal network was not economically diverse whatsoever. In India, I’m surrounded by the dichotomy of rich and poor. Within my personal network there is a complete hemophilic (-0.1) measure for social status. Moreover, my nationality shaped my network as majority (-0.6) of my network share the same nationality, sociocultural practices as me. With the E-I index of -0.2 for the amount of ‘Students’ under ‘Occupation’ in my network, I gathered that I’m deeply affected by people my own age, whose lives run parallel to mine through education. Since I’m to major in Psychology, the E-I Index measuring who in my personal network are studying or have previously studied Psychology read to be -0.067. This revealed that even my aspirations are influenced by the network I surround myself with!

Within my personal webwork, my mother and childhood best friend have the maximum ties. This structure of interconnectedness depicts: the closer an individual, the more ties to other individuals. My network reveals dense connectivity, but does not create distinct groups. My friends and family have both strong and weak ties with one another. The one evident group created is my friends under “UBC/college” in ‘Context/Institution’ who only have ties within themself. The strong ties wound between between people are not because of them knowing me, but the weak ties created are through my facilitation.

The three people in my closest circle are my two childhood friends and mother. The second tier of closeness encompasses the people who I’ve known from my adolescence and the least close people are people I’ve met relatively recently. Thus demonstrating a connection between the number of years of the relationship and their closeness to me. My biography further clearly indicates that most of my network was introduced to me in my childhood, less in my adolescence and even less in my young adulthood/UBC.

My experiences have limited me in some critical ways. The cloistered and conservative Indian culture, has socially defined my university experience and me. As a first year I haven’t been completely socialized to Canada. This has affected the way I behave as an individual within other social groups. However, I only realized the social mannerisms I inculcated from UBC once I was in back in previous social setting, India. This made me think about Symbolic Interactionism, in which George Mead and Charles Cooley stated that the meanings of things arises from social interaction and as such is constantly in flux. The meaning behind expressing gratitude or a greeting is completely unalike because of the different manner of interaction in each unique society.