Topic summary
Weak ties
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Interpersonal ties.
The individualistic perspective
Granovetter's 1973 work proved to be crucial in the individualistic approach of the social network theory as seen by the number of references in other papers. His argument asserts that weak ties or "acquaintances", are less likely to be involved within the social network than strong ties (close friends and family). By not going further in the strong ties, but focusing on the weak ties, Granovetter highlights the importance of acquaintances in social networks. He argues, that the only thing that can connect two social networks with strong ties is a weak tie: "… these clumps / [strong ties networks] would not, in fact, be connected to one another at all were it not for the existence of weak ties.