Networks Past: A 1939 Bloomington Neighborhood

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Abstract
One difficulty with couching questions about community in network terms is the dearth of historical data on networks. This research begins to fill the gap by analyzing data collected in 1939 from residents of a square block in Bloomington, Indiana. Relatively weak relationships were more common than close friendships; residents knew about two-thirds of their neighbors by name, and had about 13 friends on the block; the densities of friendship networks in this neighborhood are similar to those reported in recent studies of unbounded networks. These findings cast some doubt on the presumption that past neighborhood networks were significantly more sociable than contemporary networks.

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