[Sci-all-l] Asprey Lecture Series: Shekhar Pradhan @ C.S. Dept, Friday, May 4th

[Luke Hunsberger]

The Computer Science Department and the Asprey Lecture Series present
a talk by Shekhar Pradhan this coming Friday, May 4th.  The talk is
titled "Computing Social Capital".  Further details and an abstract
are given below.  Check the Computer Science department's web site for
more info:  http://www.cs.vassar.edu 


SPEAKER:    Shekhar Pradhan, Marist College

TITLE:      Computing Social Capital

DATE:       Friday, May 4, 2007

TIME:       3:00 p.m.

LOCATION:   105 OLB, Vassar College


Abstract

The philosopher and social theorist Pierre Bourdieu introduced the
idea of social capital as the advantages that accrue to a community or
to the individuals in that community as a result of the network of
communal relationships they participate in. In this talk we use the
techniques of graph theory and social network analysis (SNA) to
compute the social capital of individuals and communities under some
very restrictive conditions. We show how this work can be used to
compute the threat level to a community (malignant social capital)
from a hostile group. If time permits we will look into techniques for
effective interventions in a community to increase (or decrease)
social capital or threat level and for determining what coalitions to
build so as to most effectively increase an agent's social capital.