Abstract
We inquire into the importance of local neighbourhood communities as a source of collective action. We analyse the importance of meeting places, local networks, identification with the neighbourhood and the presence of a local community, as possible preconditions for collective action. Local collective action was quite frequent in the past (Tilly 1997). In this contribution, we inquire into the question to which degree collective action still can be found in Dutch neighbourhoods, and what conditions on the level of neighbourhoods as well as individuals explain differences in these actions.
Please address all
correspondence to Beate Völker: mailto:B.G.M.Volker@fss.uu.nl
Juno Blaauw – University of Amsterdam
Robert
J. Mokken & Jean Tillie & Meindert Fennema – University of Amsterdam
This paper
studies the conceptualization of the
idea of an ethnic good civic community within the context of Fennema and
Tillie’s (1999; 2000) ethnic civic community perspective. This perspective
enables us to formulate normative concepts fitting that idea. We introduce then
two clearly operationalised concepts of good civic community —
well-connectedness and an egalitarian degree distribution — which together
define what makes a good civic community in terms of the required network between organisations. A new evaluative
network
criterion
is presented, followed with the result of an application in a study of the
Turkish civic community in Amsterdam between 1994 and 2000.
Please address all correspondence to
Juno Blaauw: junoblaauw@fastmail.net
Ethnic boundaries in students’ networks in
Flanders and the Netherlands
Chris Baerveldt – Utrecht University
Bonne Zijlstra – University of Amsterdam
Muriel De Wolf – Ghent University
Ronan Van Rossem – Ghent University
Marijtje Van Duijn – University of Groningen
Ethnic
boundaries were tested in students’ networks in 34 Flamish and 19 Dutch high
schools. Each network consisted of a school cohort in an intermediate level of
education (track). While students from the native majority predominantly had
friendships within their own ethnic category, minority students often had more
inter-ethnic than intra-ethnic friendships. However, a multilevel p2 model for
analyzing the networks showed that this was caused mainly by the quantitative
dominance of native students in the networks. Native students were much less
inclined to choose for inter-ethnic friendships than minority students. We
found ethnic boundaries to be stronger in the Dutch networks than in the
Belgian networks. Although this may be partly due to methodological reasons, it
is still surprising that the boundaries in the Belgian networks were not
stronger. The Dutch data stem from the pre-9/11 days when the Netherlands were
still known for its tolerant climate; while the Belgian data stem from 2005
when one out of every five Flamish voted for an ethnocentric party.
Please
address all correspondence to Chris Baerveldt: c.baerveldt@fss.uu.nl
Peter Groenewegen – Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
The study
of scientific communication has elucidated structural aspects of specialist
communities. Outside science studies,
in knowledge management for example, the concept community has been used to
delineate groups of actors that share views and action frames. Social network
approaches have been used to analyze the interaction within communities. Research
results from two PhD projects using social network analysis will be presented.
The first project studied open source software
development and marketing. Through
snowballing and interviewing a list of central actors was drawn. The network of
heterogeneous actors was derived from a network survey. This study suggests
that collective action is important for legitimacy.
The second project was based on mining the web
presence of semantic web researchers; in this project both cognitive and social
network elements were used to derive networks. Social network analysis suggests
lessons from both studies about the communication functions in communities.
Bringing these approaches together it can be asked how social network analysis
can be developed as a key aspect of to understand expert communities.
Please
address all correspondence to Peter Groenewegen: p.groewegen@fsw.vu.nl