Encyclopedia of Graphs

This network represents frequent visits between 60 familites living in a rural area in Latin America. Each arc represents a visit relation, where the values are of the set:
1 - ordinary visit
2 - visit among kin
3 - visit among ritual kin
A simmilar network is the San Juan Sur network which is a network of a simmilar study of a different rural area in Latin America.

Background:

In 1948, American sociologists executed a large field study in the Turrialba region, which is a rural area in Costa Rica (Latin America). They were interested in the impact of formal and informal social systems on social change. Among other things, they investigated visiting relations between families living in haciendas (farms) in a neighborhood called Attiro. The network of visiting ties is a simple directed graph: each arc represents "frequent visits" from one family to another. The exact number of visits was not recorded. Line values classify the visiting relation as ordinary (value one), visits among kin (value two), and visits among ritual kin, i.e., between god-parent and god-child.

The investigators proposed an ethnographic classification of the families into six family-friendship groupings on substantive criteria. In rural areas where there is little opportunity to move up and down the social ladder social groups are usually based on family relations.

Network image:

History:

• Original author: Charles Price Loomis (1905-1995).
• Data collected and translated into Pajek data files by W. de Nooy, in 2003.

References:

• Charles P. Loomis, Julio O. Morales, Roy A. Clifford & Olen E. Leonard, Turrialba. Social Systems and the Introduction of Change (Glencoe (Ill.): The Free Press, 1953): p. 43.
• W. de Nooy, A. Mrvar, & V. Batagelj, Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), Chapter 3.

More information:

• http://vlado.fmf.uni-lj.si/pub/networks/data/esna/visits.htm
• http://vlado.fmf.uni-lj.si/pub/networks/book/esna2.htm