THE PEOPLE WE KNOW: SOCIAL NETWORK DIVERSITY AMONG URBAN MALAYSIANS

Social networks are an important source for individual social actors to access critical resources (e.g., information and support) and can be variably associated with tolerance, social harmony and nation building, also under conditions of rapid urbanisation. The purpose of this paper is to provide much-needed factual and quantitative details regarding the social networks of urban Malaysians. The approach includes self-report questionnaire data obtained in the first half of 2014 from a representative sample of 808 respondents, aged 31 to 55, living in five major cities/towns across the Klang Valley, Malaysia. Findings show that urban Malaysians function within social networks that are racially, culturally and socioeconomically heterogeneous, interacting with all major groups in Malaysian society, including neighbours. For the vast majority, however, the observed degree of network diversity is medium to low. The analysis