SOC 8412

SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS

THEORY & METHODS

Prof. David Knoke

Fall 2009
 SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS
An interdisciplinary perspective emphasizes structural
relationships as key explanatory concepts & principles:
• Structural properties of social formations are contexts that shape the
perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, and actions of individuals and
collectivities
• Social influence and collective action may be facilitated and/or
constrained by direct and indirect exchanges (transactions) among
social actors possessing differential resources (e.g., information,
money, power, grace)
• Embeddedness (location of actors within actual situational contexts)
must be analyzed as dynamic processes

Contrast these structural-relational approaches to substantialist

explanations premised on “thing-concepts” as basic unit of analysis:
actor essence, self-action, normative conformity, rational choice,
variable-centric, and social identity approaches (Emirbayer 1997)
 Theories & Methods
Network research involves the continual interplay of both
theoretical and methodological tools to investigate a wide
range of substantive questions
THEORY: Analytic concepts, principles, interrelated
propositions that explain empirical observations
► Relational vs substantive perspectives (Emirbayer 1997)
► Social capital theories (Coleman 1990; Lin 2001)
► Structural holes (Burt 1997)
► Organizational field-nets (Kenis & Knoke 2002)

METHODS: Measures, data, computer techniques

to test theoretical propositions
► Matrix algebraic methods (Wasserman & Faust 1994)
► Visualization programs (Freeman 2000)
 Multi-level & Interdisciplinary
Network applications appear in diverse substantive fields
of most social sciences – anthropology, management,
public health, sociology, economics (but political science?)
Studies span micro-, meso-, & macro-levels of analysis:
 personal social & health support systems
 children’s play groups, high school cliques
 neighboring behavior, community participation
 work teams, voluntary associations, social movements
 military combat platoons, terrorist cells
 corporate strategic alliances, board interlocks
 international relations: trade, aid, war & peace
 Growth of Social Networks in Social Sciences
Five-year totals for 14 literature indexes
Keyword search for "social" + "network*"

10,000

Abstracts
8,000

6,000
TOTAL

4,000

Titles
2,000

1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 (Projected)
YEAR
 Network Analysis Origins
Although antecedents lie in 1920s (Freeman
1996), Jacob L. Moreno pioneered social
network analysis for his “psychodrama”
therapy. He used sociomatrices and hand-
drawn sociograms to display children’s likes
and dislikes of classmates as directed
graphs (digraphs).

Visualization has been a key

component of social network
analyses from the beginning,
proliferating into today’s
dazzling computer-based
multidimensional displays
(Freeman 2001)
Moreno’s sociomatrix …
 … displayed as a sociogram

What structure is evident in his arrangement of squares and circles?

Colorado Springs Sexual Contact Network

SOURCE: James Moody.

http://www.soc.sbs.ohio-state.edu/jwm/
The 9-11 Hijacker Network

SOURCE: Valdis Krebs

http://www.orgnet.com/
 OECD Trade Flows 1981-1992

SOURCE: Lothar Krempel http://www.mpi-fg-koeln.mpg.de/~lk/netvis.html

Org-chart shows how authority ties should look…

SOURCE: Brandes, Raab and Wagner (2001)

<http://www.inf.uni-konstanz.de/~brandes/publications/brw-envsd-01.pdf>
… but the digraph of actual advice-seeking …
… can be restructured to reveal the “real” hierarchy!
 Anthropologists
In 1950s, social anthropologists at Manchester University
extended sociometric techniques to studies of families,
kinship, and friendship networks in urban settings of both
advanced and developing societies
► Elizabeth Bott, Max Gluckman, J. Clyde Mitchell, S.F. Nadel
John Barnes credited with applying analytic rigor to
concept of “social network”. He saw “the whole of social
life” as “a set of points some of which are joined by lines”
to form a “total network” of relations. The informal sphere
of interpersonal relations was a “partial network” within
this total network (Barnes 1954:43).
A detailed history of network analysis appears in John Scott.
1991. Social Network Analysis: A Handbook. London: Sage.
<http://www.analytictech.com/mb119/tableof.htm>
 Conflict in an African Factory

SOURCE: Kapferer, Bruce. 1969. “Norms and the Manipulation of Relationships in a Work
Context” in Social Networks in Urban Situations: Analyses of Personal Relationships in Central
African Towns, edited by J. Clyde Mitchell.
 Digraphs of Donald & Abraham

SOURCE: Stephen J. Appold, University of Singapore

http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/socsja/SC2202/Labor/Employee3a.html
 Sociologists
In 1970s, sociologists at Harvard, Chicago, Toronto &
elsewhere applied finite mathematical, graph theoretic,
clustering, and spatial modeling methods to uncover small
group structures and community networks
► Conflict among novice monks in a monastery (White et al 1976)
► Cleavages in urban political networks (Laumann & Pappi 1976)
► Community lost, preserved, or extended? (Wellman 1979)

By 1990s, network analysis had proliferated to business

management, public administration, law, and related fields
► Strategic alliance networks (Gulati 1995)
► Self-managed work teams (Barker 1999)
Strategic alliances in the 1998 core GIS

SOURCE: David Knoke. 2001. Changing

Networks. Boulder, CO: Westview.
 INSNA
Institutionalization achieved with the
1978 founding of the International
Network for Social Network Analysis
and journal Social Networks
<http://www.insna.org>

Sunbelt Social Network Conferences are

held annually in North America or Europe
(2009 San Diego, CA; 2010 Trento, Italy)

EGOS (European Group on Org Studies)

annual colloquium has a Standing Group
on Organizational Network Research
(2009 Barcelona; 2010 Lisbon)
 References
Barker, James R. 1999. The Discipline of Teamwork: Participation and Concertive Control. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Barnes, John. 1954. “Class and Committees in a Norwegian Island Parish.” Human Relations 7:39-58.
Bott, Elizabeth. 1957. Family and Social Network: Roles, Norms, and External Relationships in
Ordinary Urban Families. London: Tavistock.
Freeman, Linton C. 1996. “Some Antecedents of Social Network Analysis.” Connections 19: 39-42.
Freeman, Linton C. 2000. “Visualizing Social Networks.” Journal of Social Structure
<http://zeeb.library.cmu.edu:7850/JoSS/article.html> (July 24, 2002).
Gulati, Ranjay. 1995. “Social Structure and Alliance Formation Patterns: A Longitudinal Analysis.”
Administrative Science Quarterly 40:619-652.
Laumann, Edward O. and Franz Urban Pappi. 1976. Networks of Collective Action: A Perspective on
Community Influence Systems. New York: Academic Press.
Mitchell, J. Clyde. 1969. Social Networks in Urban Situations: Analyses of Personal Relationships in
Central African Towns. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Moreno, J. L. 1934. Who Shall Survive? Washington: Nervous & Mental Disease Publishing Co.
White, Harrison C., Scott A. Boorman and Ronald L. Breiger. 1976. “Social Structure from Multiple
Networks, I: Blockmodels of Roles and Positions.” American Journal of Sociology 81:730-780.
Wellman, Barry. 1979. “The Community Question: The Intimate Networks of East Yorkers.” American
Journal of Sociology 84:1201-1231.