Network Analysis and Social Dynamics

? Network analysis, an area of mathematical sociology and anthropology crucial to the linking of theory and observation, developed dramatically in recent decades. These developments make possible a theoretical synthesis of social network theory in relation to understanding social dynamics. The past 35 years, initially spurred by anthropologist Clyde Mitchell and sociologist Harrison White, saw a massive development of concepts and tools for network analysis and burgeoning applications to everwider sets of problems in the social sciences. The trajectories of social network analysis in the two disciplines were very different, however. In anthropology, where it was introduced in the 1960s as a collateral tool to institutional and cultural analysis, the network paradigm did not become a central contributor to theory, as in sociology.1 Still, even in sociology, the development of methodology (Wasserman and Faust 1994) has far outstripped that of an integrated theory of networks that situate...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2004
• Where: CAS
• Authors: Douglas White
• Keywords: CAS 2004, Network Analysis, Social Networks, Theory