The strength of weak ties

Why the people you barely know are the ones who change your life, and why third places manufacture exactly that kind of tie.

Mark S. Granovetter (1973). American Journal of Sociology 78(6), 1360–1380. Read it.

Primary reading — read it before the lecture that sets it.

Granovetter’s argument is structural. Your close friends know each other and know what you know; the acquaintance you see once a month is your only bridge to a different cluster of information. Hence the finding that started it: people found jobs through contacts they saw occasionally, not through the friends they saw most.

Third places are weak-tie factories. You know the man at the end of the bar well enough to say hello and not well enough to have his number, and that is not a failed friendship — it is the useful thing itself. Week 6 asks you to map your own weak ties and find where each one was made. Most students find that the answer is a place they have stopped going to.