The Plurality of Social Relations. κ-Partite Representations of Interdependent Social Forms

Abstract

In this paper, we propose that κ-partite graphs constitute a useful base from which to explore complex interpenetrations of different classes of social entities (e.g., persons, groups, organisations and settings). In doing so, we analyse and extend bipartite (Breiger, 1974) and tripartite (Fararo and Doreian, 1984) representations of the interdependence of persons, groups and organisations. We show how concept lattices (e.g., Ganter and Wille, 1992; Wille, 1996) may be used to represent important features of the interpenetration of these multiple types of social entities and we describe some useful properties of several such representations. We then develop several classes of random κ-partit..