This book defines the current identity of community studies, provides a critical but reliable introduction to its key concepts, and is an engaging guide to the key social research methods used by community researchers and practitioners.

Concise but clear, it caters for the needs of those interested in community studies by offering cross-referenced, accessible overviews of the key theoretical issues that have the most influence on community studies today.

It incorporates all of the important frames of reference including those which are:

Theoretical; Research focused; Practice and policy oriented; Political; Concerned about the place of community in everyday life

The extensive bibliographies and up-to-date guides to further reading reinforce the aim of the book to provide an invaluable learning resource.

Interdisciplinary in approach and inventive in its range of applications this book will be of value to students studying sociology, social policy, politics and community development.

Social Network Analysis

Social network analysis

Social network analysis is concerned with the chains of relations and ties that lie at a community's core. It is both a specific paradigm of social research and a powerful analytical tool which draws on a range of strategies, or what social network analysts call units of analysis, in order to plot, clarify and understand patterns of human affiliation and social solidarity.

Section Outline: After outlining the central tenets of social network analysis as it relates to community studies, this chapter outlines the different approaches and the main tools used by social network analysts and what these tell us about the ways in which communities are formed and operate. It concludes by discussing the limits of this approach as both a ...

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