Support and Non-Support: A Network Analytic Approach

Using a network analytic approach to study social support has helped us to go beyond treating communities only as densely-knit solidarities. We have became increasingly aware of the variety of community ties and networks in terms of their composition, structure and content. Data from our East York study shows that ties are markedly differentiated in terms of the kinds of supportive resources they provide (including many non-supportive ties), the breadth of support, reciprocity, structural embeddedness and voluntarism. We discuss implications of this differentiation for the political economy of communities