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Structural cohesion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Structural cohesion is the sociological and graph theory conception [1][2] and measurement of cohesion for maximal social group or graphical boundaries where related elements cannot be disconnected except by removal of a certain minimal number of other nodes. The solution to the boundary problem for structural cohesion is found by the vertex-cut version of Menger's theorem. The boundaries of structural endogamy are a special case of structural cohesion. It is also useful to know that k-cohesive graphs (or k-components) are always a subgraph of a k-core, although a k-core is not always k-cohesive. A k-core is simply a subgraph in which all nodes have at least k neighbors but it need not even be connected.
Some illustrative examples are presented in the gallery below:
 The 6-node ring in the graph has connectivity-2 or a level 2 of structural cohesion because the removal of two nodes is needed to disconnect it. |
 The 6-node component (1-connected) has an embedded 2-component, nodes 1-5 |
 A 6-node clique is a 5-component, structural cohesion 5 |
- ^ Moody, James; White, Douglas (2003). "Structural Cohesion and Embeddedness: A Hierarchical Concept of Social Groups." (PDF). American Sociological Review 68 (1): 1-25. Retrieved on 2006-08-19.
- ^ White, Douglas; Frank Harary (2001). "The Cohesiveness of Blocks in Social Networks: Node Connectivity and Conditional Density." (book). Sociological Methodology 2001 31 (1): 305-359. Retrieved on 2006-08-19.