Editor’s Preface/ Avant-propos du Redacteur

D A N R. A R O N S O N / McGill University

L’analyse de r6seau en anthropologie est un nouvel outil. Les communications de ce colloque, qui furent lues aux rCunions de la Central States Anthropolo- gical Society examinent sous plusieurs angles son utilitk. On a ClaborC l’ensem- ble des concepts associ6s B l’analyse de r6seau au moment oii on a cherch6 B developper des connaissances valables sur les nouveaux champs critiques qui apparaissent dans les sociCt6s en voie de transformation rapide. Bien qu’elle soit tenue de r6pondre B plusieurs critiques, l’analyse de rCseau peut permettre d‘organiser m6me la description uniforme des relations sociales par rapport B un mod&Ie de conduite qui soit B la fois facilement utilisable et significatif dans les Ctudes transculturelles.

Network analysis in anthropology is a new tool. The papers in this symposium, originally read to the Central States Anthropological Society, explore many dimensions of its utility. Network concepts have developed as insight into new problem areas in rapidly-changing societies has been sought. Although there are many arguments to be met, network analysis holds the promise of organiz- h g even the standard description of social relations in terms of an easily manip- ulable and cross-culturally significant model of behaviour.

Social anthropologists, usually trained in the intensive analysis of small communities, are both intrigued and challenged by the increasing involve- ment of those small units with surrounding political, economic, and social systems. New conceptual frameworks - pluralism, cultural ecology, patron- age and brokerage, and others in at least some of their meanings - are emerging to handle problems in the behaviour of such involvements. New specialties in the discipline, such as the “anthropology of complex socie- ties,” “urban anthropology,” and the ccanthropology of development,” are being tested for cogency and viability. And of course new tools are being forged which may even be turned upon old fields in the pursuit of nomo- logy in social explanation.

Such a new tool is network analysis. The papers which follow present some aspects of the ongoing discussion of the utility of network analysis, and indicate the current state of the art.l Earlier versions of all the papers were presented at a plenary session of the 48th Annual Meetings of the Central States Anthropological Society in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on 1 May 1969. That symposium, entitled “Urban Social Networks: International Comparisons,” was organized by Alvin W. WoEe and supported by the

1 An additional and very helpful set of views has been published (Mitchell, 1969) since most of the papers here were written.

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University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, to both of which agents the grati- tude of the authors of these papers is due.

Wolfe’s invitation asked us to consider, using our own material, whether Mayer’s suggestion might be valid “that once a standardized method of recording networks can be developed, it [the concept of personal network] may well play the role in urban studies (and in studies of some rural com- munities) that the genealogy at present plays in tribal studies” (cited in Mitchell, 196656). The genealogical method has indeed been a hallmark of anthropology, and a tool of its great utility might, presumably, sustain another half century of the life of the discipline! While that optimism is extravagant, it is worthwhile here to point out some of the reasons why such hopes are entertained and some of the dBculties that attend the development of network analysis.

There have been at least three constraints toward the use of network analysis in recent social anthropology. These may be represented as: (a) a concern with types of social behaviour which could not be aggregated in analyses of groups and institutions; (b) greater attention to relationships between individuals and groups in one scale unit of political or economic activity and those in another, such as community/nation or other micro- cosm/macrocosm relations; (c) a movement toward the analysis of choice- making, manipulation, and other elements of social process, and away from (or beyond) structural description.

In the short history of anthropological network analysis all three of these constraints have operated. John Barnes, the first to use the term “network” as an analytical concept (1954), needed it to illustrate social relationships in the Norwegian island parish of Bremnes where he was working, which lay outside the institutions and corporate groups of the industrially- and territorially-based activities of fishing, agriculture, domes- tic life, and political administration. These other relationships were friend- ship and acquaintance patterns which helped to determine social status in Bremnes but which varied from individual to individual. Field workers in Africa found Barnes’ stimulus valuable as they tried to unravel the activi- ties of new urbanites who had migrated (and led the anthropologists) from the neatly deliitable corporate groups of the village community to the highly flexible personal associations of ethnically-mixed, occupationally- diverse, and resourcefulness-demanding towns and industrial centres. For both Barnes and these later workers (e.g., Epstein, 1961), important aspects of the lives of their subjects called for new egocentred constructs and methods.

Second, the emergence of nationalist movements in the Third World, the active community-oriented programmes of late colonialist and of inde- pendent governments, the greater sophistication of peasant, rural, and urban ethnic communities everywhere in dealing with outside agencies, and many similar phenomena presented a new set of problems for com- 222

munity studies. Arenas of interaction were geographically and socially large, information flows complex, and determinants of courses of action dif6cult for a single field worker to locate. Such primitive notions as cul- tural “contact” or “clash,” the ‘impact” of systems on other systems, or “acculturation” did not unlock those interactions, but the imagery of elec- tronics held out some hope. Nodes, intensities, arcs, nexi, and other terms of the current jargon of network analysis followed.

Third, and implied in the first two problem-areas, has been the attention given to choice-making in the processes of social interaction. Once anthro- pologists had implicitly stated the range of choices open to individuals merely by describing institutional structure and function. But growing cities, governmental programmes, power vacua, and other situations elicited social entrepreneurs and social strategy on a grand scale. Even in situations presumably more circumscribed, such as cognatic descent systems, tradi- tional leadership, or pre-colonial commerce, analysts began to have a second look at individual variability and choice-making. Once more, con- cepts of ego-centred networks and particularistic linkages appeared likely to yield fruits of understanding.

From a number of perspectives, in short, anthropologists are attempting to test the utility of describing and analysing some social relations, or social relations in general, in terms of networks and related concepts. How far have we come?

The symposium presented here will allow the reader to make his own evaluation, of course. The editor offers only a few of his own views on some of the points which are intended or implied in the papers. On the short side, we are clearly in the early stages of developing our

thought. This set of papers is the result of one of the first discussions among workers in diverse national and cultural contexts. The problems on the agenda and the language in which they will be discussed are themselves still questions. Chrisman’s paper deliberately emphasizes those concepts he found salient, as earlier workers have stressed their own most pressing concerns. Whitten and I ask where networks will be most helpful, implying sceptically that they need not or cannot provide the pantology that the most optimistic experimenters with the concept sometimes hope. The two of us come to answers that are quite different from one another as well. Wolfe remains optimistic, although some of his readers will be terror- stricken by the amount of labour that must be camed out before the machines can aid in analysis and comparison. Most new processes are uneconomic at h t , however, and Wolfe’s substantial and ground-breaking efforts will undoubtedly become more streamlined as they progress.

In a longer view, network analysis may have much to offer. In its anthropological use, it is clearly “grounded” in ponderable observation of real behaviour, and at least begins by assuming very little about the nature of that behaviour. Epstein simply followed his research assistant around 223

town (1961), and anthropologists in general will continue to be conjident that the data they gather bear the clear impress of the subjects of the re- search rather than of the researcher. Wolfe’s and Whitten’s papers demon- strate two difFerent determinations to keep close to the ground, one by detaching himself from the data-generating process itself and the other by focusing upon and reviewing his own role in that process.

Second, developments in network analysis may provide a common framework for handling specific issues involving not only informal or residual social relationships but formal, institutional behaviour as well. The criticism that “social network” is only a new-fangled term for “social relations” is beside the point to the degree that “social relations” analysts were satisfied to deal only with corporate groups or relatively enduring patterns and did not handle in their frames important behaviour of the type to which Barnes called attention. Social network analysis is not the only way to escape the bias toward stable patterns that structural-func- tional analysis has had, but it is one potentially rewarding way to keep the weight of all social interactions equal. For the purposes of analysing extra- group or extra-community relations, such as the interactions of community interest groups with external bureaucracies, or the relationships between patrilineages through daughters and wives, network descriptions may pro- vide new insights even for old problems. Jacobson’s and my own paper hint at some of the yield to be reaped here.

Further, using network concepts as a particular way to recast andyses of social relations may be of special value in deriving models of behaviour which are at least parallel with “generative,” cctransformational,” or “cyber- netic” models beiig developed in many other fields. More than just the vocabulary of network analysis suggests this. The abstractions from net- work descriptions, for instance those of Chrisman, Wolfe, and myself here, are in terms of categories of information and rules by which behaviour is selected or judged. Whether a “grammar” of, say, urban African social behaviour in network terms can be developed or not, partial attempts to build models from observed behaviour and cognitive structure in terms that can be rigorously tested and compared are a clear direction in which Wolfe and others are headed. There is thus not only a common mode im- plied in network analysis but a direction as well.

Finally, in helping to free anthropologists from the limitations of the single genre of “community studies,” whether done in a rural or an urban village, network analysts are also to be among those who detach us from comfortable but limited generalizations and theories. Jacobson uses net- work concepts to challenge a common understanding that the consequence of frequent geographical mobility is disorganization or instability. Other network analysts wiU help to reveal further flaws in our received thought or to open new areas of inquiry altogether. It is hoped that these papers may guide some thoughts along the way. 224

REFERENCES

Barnes, J. A. 1954 “Class and committees in a Norwegian island parish.” Human Relations

Epstein, A. L. 1961 “The network and urban social organization.” Rhodes-Livingston Journal

Mitchell, J. Clyde 1966 “Theoretical orientations in African urban studies.” Pp. 37-68 in Michael

Banton (ed.), The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies. London: Tavistock Publications.

Mitchell, J. Clyde (ed.) 1969 Social Networks in Urban Situations. Manchester: Manchester Univer-

sity Press.

7: 39-58.

29: 29-62.

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