Many ``real-world'' networks are clearly defined while most ``social'' networks are to some extent subjective. Indeed, the accuracy of empirically-determined social networks is a question of some concern because individuals may have distinct perceptions of what constitutes a social link. One unambiguous type of connection is sexual contact. Here we analyze data on the sexual behavior of a random sample of individuals, and find that the cumulative distributions of the number of sexual partners during the twelve months prior to the survey decays as a power law with similar exponents $\alpha \approx 2.4$ for females and males. The scale-free nature of the web of human sexual contacts suggests that strategic interventions aimed at preventing the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases may be the most efficient approach.

The Web of Human Sexual Contacts

Pentecostal miracles and healings have often been described and interpreted, but rarely explained in their sociological workings. As former research implies, actual biomedical effects of Pentecostal healings are possible (the so-called placebo effect), but quite limited. In Pentecostal healing services, however, very impressive miracles and healings are routinely produced: paralytics arise from wheelchairs, cancerous ulcers disappear, legs grow, cavities are mysteriously filled, and the deaf suddenly hear. Drawing on a case study and qualitative interviews, this paper offers a sociological, mechanism-based, explanatory scheme for the observed phenomena. It is argued that a number of “social techniques” (e.g., suggestion, rhythm, music), context factors (e.g., audience size and beliefs), and causal mechanisms (e.g., probability, latency, selection, and editing effects) are combined in an ingenious way in order to produce miracles and healings.

/pdf/all-things-are-possible-towards-a-sociological-explanation-4gliueqzzx.pdf

“All Things Are Possible”: Towards a Sociological Explanation of Pentecostal Miracles and Healings

https://open.library.ubc.ca/media/download/pdf/52383/1.0347305/5

Modeling the impact of supra-structural network nodes: The case of anonymous syringe sharing and HIV among people who inject drugs

Sociology has long lived in a stigmatized and pre-paradigmatic state that is highly counterproductive for its status as a scientific discipline. Analytical Sociological Theory (AST) constitutes an attempt to change that situation by clarifying sociological concepts and practices, as well as optimizing and systematizing good explanatory work in social sciences. This essay presents some basic epistemic and methodological principles of AST and discusses their implications for traditional or «pre-analytical» ways of understanding social science. Its main aim is to serve as an introduction to the articles on AST that are compiled in this issue of Papers.

/pdf/introduction-why-we-need-an-analytical-sociological-theory-2q8o853x6n.pdf

Introduction : why We Need an Analytical Sociological Theory

In sociology, Coleman’s diagram (the “Coleman-boat” or “Coleman’s bathtub”) has become the standard way of representing micro-macro links. Coleman’s work on micro-macro links and his diagram have several “predecessors”. Many of these are due to European sociologists and appeared, roughly, in the period 1970–1980, quite some years ahead of Coleman’s contributions. Much of this work, while often seminal, has been hardly noticed outside Europe and is meanwhile largely forgotten. Moreover, it has been typically published in languages like German, Dutch, and French that are not easily accessible to sociologists who tend to focus on scholarly literature in English, if only because of lack of command of other languages. We present a brief overview of some of the relevant work.

Micro-Macro Models in Sociology: Antecedents of Coleman’s Diagram

Dissecting the Social: Coda

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Peter Hedstrom

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Dissecting the Social: Coda