Rationale S5: How would you rate the overall relationship between Focus Group and Neighbour Group people in domain X?

  • Friendly
  • Somewhat friendly
  • Neutral
  • Somewhat hostile
  • Hostile

Goal

This question seeks information on the affective relationship betweenFocus and Neighbour Group people.

This question overlaps somewhat with question BA which asks about positive/negative attitudes towards the Neighbour Group. While BA concerns general attitudes regarding the other group in the overall abstract, this question is concerned with the nature of social ties between groups in terms of friendship.

Definitions

  • Friendly: e.g. Solidarity and alliances between groups are reinforced through various activities, people choose to spend time with one another for enjoyment.
  • Hostile: e.g. There is hostility between the groups, but certain activities such as trade or exchange may be pursued because of economical/subsistence needs.

Examples

  • Hostile ~ Neutral: The overall negative attitude towards Romani by Hungarians (which is reciprocated) typically appears to be reflected in relationships between individuals. Pogany (2004) describes numerous relationships between individual Romani and Hungarians, but very few can be described as being “friendly” in the sense of choosing to spend time with one another, or building positive rapport with one another. Pogany’s publication is written with an eye towards depicting the difficult lives of many Romani so tends to present cases of hostile, discriminatory, or indifferent relationships between peoples of the two groups. Pogany, however, cites many other studies and reports from within the EU that all identify the various hardships that Romani experience. Depending the geographic region, and social domain that one focusses on, the relationship between Romani and Hungarians could thus be characterised between “hostile” through to “neutral”.

Theoretical Support

Friendship is of interest because it is one of many ways to characterise strength of ties between individuals of a social network (cf. Shi et al. 2007). Friendship is also a parameter that affects an individual’s susceptibility to social influence. In other words, friends can influence each other (Easley & Kleiberg 2010: 90), and are also often part of a close-knit network. Face-to-face communication keeps together individuals within a close-knit network (also known as “structural cohesion of actors”, Friedkin 1998: 70), and such individuals appear more likely to be influenced by one another (Friedkin 1993) than by individuals who are not friends.

Hostile relationships in a social network are known to have effects on the balance of a network’s structure (e.g. the balance theorem of Harary 1953; Harary & Kabell 1980). Identifying imbalances in a network helps to identify localised clusters within any given network, since networks of individuals appear to seek out structural balance (i.e. networks only consisting of friendships) in order to avoid the stresses caused by having a hostile relationship within the network (Easley & Kleinberg 2010: 120–123). Identifying hostile relationships in a network therefore complements the picture of a network that is also identified on the basis of friendly relationships.

If Focus and Neighbour Group peoples can be characterised as having friendly relationships in one domain, we can take this as as a sign that the social network structure of the contact community within that domain is somewhat dense. On the other hand if the relationships between the two groups are hostile in one domain, we can take this as a sign that the overall social network structure of the contact community in that domain is somewhat loose.

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