11
Social Networks: Towards Structure or Process?* DAN R. ARONSON McGill University En discutant des r6seaux sociaux, on a confondu deux traditions tout h fait distinctes de la pensde anthropologique contemporaine. L’une de ces traditions est B la recherche de nouveaux concepts pour analyser la structure sociale; l’autre tradition s’int6resse aux mod5les processuels. Cette derniike position pennet, A notre point de vue, une recherche beaucoup plus fructueuse des champs de comportements qui ont &chap@ B la thdorie structuraliste. Toute- fois, avant d‘6tablir plus siirement la valeur de cette voie d‘analyse on devra l’dlaborer et ddfmir ses objectifs plus clairement. Des illustrations provenant #etudes sur le terrain chez les Yoruba ajoute foi B l’idde que les r6seaux eux- m6mes peuvent &tred6crits et cornpards sans tenir compte de leurs positions dam le processus social. Two quite distinct traditions in recent anthropological thinking have been con- founded in the discussion of social networks. One of these seeks new concepts for the analysis of social structure: the other is oriented toward processual models. This second view promises more fruitful inquiry into areas of be- haviour that have eluded structural theory, but it must be further developed with clearer goals before its value can be ascertained. Illustrations from field- work among the Yoruba provide caveats to the notion that networks them- selves can be described or compared independently of their contexts in social process. I This paper seeks to clarify some of the major obscurities recognizable in the anthropological description and comparison of social networks that has been done since John Barnes’ original article some sixteen years ago (Barnes, 1954). I will show that network analysis has come from two now confounded traditions within anthropology, and that the separation of these two bases has deep implications for our use of the tool. I shall as well exemplify, from my own fieldwork in Western Nigeria in 1966-67,’ some of the refinements that we need to make in our concepts as we experiment further with network analysis. My own field data were collected without an explicit use of the notion of social networks, but the step back from * Revised version of a paper read at the Plenary Session, entitled “Urban Social Net- works: International Comparisons,” of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Central States Anthropological Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin on 1 May 1969. 1 Field research in Nigeria was supported by the Foreign Area Fellowship Program and the Committee on African Studies of the University of Chicago, to both of which I am grateful. In addition, my colleagues Peter Gutkmd and Philip Salzman helped to stimulate some of the ideas in this paper. 258 Rev. canad. Soc. & AnthJCanad. Rev. SOC. & Anth. 7(4) 1970

Social Networks: Towards Structure or Process?

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: Social Networks: Towards Structure or Process?

Social Networks: Towards Structure or Process?*

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

En discutant des r6seaux sociaux, on a confondu deux traditions tout h fait distinctes de la pensde anthropologique contemporaine. L’une de ces traditions est B la recherche de nouveaux concepts pour analyser la structure sociale; l’autre tradition s’int6resse aux mod5les processuels. Cette derniike position pennet, A notre point de vue, une recherche beaucoup plus fructueuse des champs de comportements qui ont &chap@ B la thdorie structuraliste. Toute- fois, avant d‘6tablir plus siirement la valeur de cette voie d‘analyse on devra l’dlaborer et ddfmir ses objectifs plus clairement. Des illustrations provenant #etudes sur le terrain chez les Yoruba ajoute foi B l’idde que les r6seaux eux- m6mes peuvent &tre d6crits et cornpards sans tenir compte de leurs positions dam le processus social.

Two quite distinct traditions in recent anthropological thinking have been con- founded in the discussion of social networks. One of these seeks new concepts for the analysis of social structure: the other is oriented toward processual models. This second view promises more fruitful inquiry into areas of be- haviour that have eluded structural theory, but it must be further developed with clearer goals before its value can be ascertained. Illustrations from field- work among the Yoruba provide caveats to the notion that networks them- selves can be described or compared independently of their contexts in social process.

I

This paper seeks to clarify some of the major obscurities recognizable in the anthropological description and comparison of social networks that has been done since John Barnes’ original article some sixteen years ago (Barnes, 1954). I will show that network analysis has come from two now confounded traditions within anthropology, and that the separation of these two bases has deep implications for our use of the tool. I shall as well exemplify, from my own fieldwork in Western Nigeria in 1966-67,’ some of the refinements that we need to make in our concepts as we experiment further with network analysis. My own field data were collected without an explicit use of the notion of social networks, but the step back from

* Revised version of a paper read at the Plenary Session, entitled “Urban Social Net- works: International Comparisons,” of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Central States Anthropological Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin on 1 May 1969.

1 Field research in Nigeria was supported by the Foreign Area Fellowship Program and the Committee on African Studies of the University of Chicago, to both of which I am grateful. In addition, my colleagues Peter Gutkmd and Philip Salzman helped to stimulate some of the ideas in this paper. 258

Rev. canad. Soc. & AnthJCanad. Rev. SOC. & Anth. 7(4) 1970

Page 2: Social Networks: Towards Structure or Process?

sociometric problems of selection and notation that I am forced to take results in the perspective presented here.

The necessity which mothered the invention of notions of social net- works is customarily given as the fluid, fragile, and unintegrated nature of interpersonal relationships in complex and/or urban societies. Anthropo- logists had grown used to the study of what were, or at least seemed to be, stable and enduring traditional communities with clear internal differentia- tion of corporate groups, social classes and other bounded categories. The most strikingly “new” aspect of complex societies, as we turned to them, was the importance of social relations which took place outside of bounded groups and institutions. Thus Barnes wrote his article in order to consider “that part of the total network [of social relations in RadclifFe-Brown’s broad sense] that is left behind when we remove the groupings and chains of interaction which belong strictly to the territorial and industrial sys- tems,” under which latter aspects he subsumes much of the formal social and economic structure of the parish of Bremnes (1954:43). Similarly, Epstein, extending the use of network description to new urban areas, is constrained to do so because Ndola lacks “any single large-scale organi- zation that would provide a common framework of behaviour for a sub- stantial proportion of the inhabitants” (1961:31). And Gutkind (1969: 392) calls for network analysis on the grounds that it will allow us to chart, in Southall’s words, “the type and the channels of interaction between persons, and the extent of regularities which give a minimum of order and coherence to social l i e in communities which have no clear structure of discrete groups” (1961 :25).

It is noteworthy that all these formulations postulate that through the analysis of networks we will be able to understand what is at least tem- porarily stable or order-giving in otherwise fluid situations. Southall says that there “may sometimes be more stability in the pattern of small group relations during periods of rapid change” (1961 :25; italics added) , and Adrian Mayer (1966) sees the “quasi-group” as the relatively enduring and therefore critical unit for analysis and comparison. Epstein speaks, extremely, of the “random character of much of [Chanda’s] urban social life,” within which networks illustrate one principle of regularity (1961 : 5 5 ) . This quest for structure in the midst of flux is remarkable, because it leads directly mq from the very aspects or urban and complex societies that most of us agree are those which call for understanding, namely rapid change, competition, conflict, and conflict resolution.2 Instead it leads back

2 I do not of course want here to conjure up the classical but incorrect vision of urban society as being characterized by severe institutional disorganization, an* mie, and internal psychological codict. I simply mean to indicate that many of us agree that tools for the analysis of group d i c t , of competitive strategic pro- cesses, of “discontinuous” change and the like have been extremely elusive in the study of complex societies. Their discovery and use is therefore a central chal- lenge. In this light network analysts as well as others would be well-advised to seek them in addition to, or even rather than, tools for the analysis of urban structure. 259

Page 3: Social Networks: Towards Structure or Process?

down a new road to equilibrium analysis, and ultimately, in fact, to social structure built with new tools. When Epstein puts network relations into a section on “The Social Structure of the Town” (1967:280), we have, it seems to me, come full circle.

For it was ploz to tease out new, idorma1 structures that network analy- sis was developed. Like most discussions of origins, that which attributes network concepts simply to the demands of the study of complex societies is me only to a small degree. Rather, from the outset there was a second justification for network analysis which was not made as explicit as the first, but which has pervaded the use and elaboration of the concepts.

This second theme is the widespread turning-away from structural de- scription to the analysis of individual actors and their choice-making, or to what someone has called the “optative” elements in social process. Van Velsen correctly points out the desire among postSecond World War anthropologists to understand how individuals operate the norms they have, and how they manipulate the choices available to them (1967:139). Situational analysis, ego-centred kinship and political studies, and network analysis are all reflections of this strand of our recent intellectual history. Gutkind defines the special quality of complexity of so-called complex societies in the way in which urban life is increasingly the “outcome of the way individuals, as individuals, manipulate a variety of situations and social relations” (1969 :392). But as Van Velsen ably demonstrates, this orientation to actors and purposive actions may be equally important in rural or “tribal” societies (1964; 1967:140). Thus Evans-Pritchard’s architectonically classical work on Nuer politics has come to disconcert those who wished to know how individuals manipulate matrilateral ties to reduce or resolve conflict (Gluckman, 1955520) ; but Colson, in another “tribal” study, demonstrated the importance of cross-cutting ties and of personal manipulation in Plateau Tonga politics (1953). In the work of those who have used and elaborated network analysis the

optative element is nearly always noted. Barnes conceived of the network as an image of those ties of friendship and acquaintance which each indi- vidual in Bremnes “largely builds up for himself” (1954:43), and which he “uses” for mutual aid, entertainment, and for finding work (1954:48). Epstein gives us an extended account of his Zambian research assistant’s weekend activities and contacts, and shows insightfully how Chanda uses chance meetings and deliberate visits for a variety of explicit and implied purposes (1961). David Boswell, in an unpublished paper, employs net- works “as a means of analysing observations of those who have been called in to assist in the solution of personal and familial crises, and how the non-institutionalized deal with marital disputes, childbiih, death, the organ- ization of mamage, shortage of cash, housing or employment and the problems of sickness and old age in town” (n.d.:14). Finally Gutkind distinguishes kin-based and association-based networks saying that each 260

Page 4: Social Networks: Towards Structure or Process?

“model” is designed (presumably by individual actors) to meet his de- mands and needs in “different conditions” ( 1969:400).

I cite these references at some length because I think that the recogni- tion of the distinct logical and intellectual historical status of the “opta- tive” orientation helps to order and clarify many of the dimensions of network analysis which have been explored so far. I would suggest that in each of the following instances, the fist member of the pait of terms flows from the social structural tradition, the second from the optative tradition: Barnes’ “networks” versus “sets” ( 1954:43), Bott’s “relationships” versus “networks” ( 1957 : 98-99), Epstein’s “extended” versus “effective” net- works (1961 :57), Srinavas and Beteille’s “concrete” networks versus effective relations (1964: 167), Jay’s “networks” versus “field” or “activity field” (1 964: 138), and Mayer’s “social networks” versus “action-sets”

If the si@cance of the distinction I draw is granted, then the terms I have reviewed are not dichotomized single concepts or variables at all, but wholly differently based analytical constructs. Our research task, it follows, is to explore the relations between the members of each pair, or, at the most general level, between social structure and individual choice-making. The tools of description being developed by network analysts, and in part explored earlier by sociometrists,8 may or may not help in operationalizing each of the concepts. The task of relating the concepts to one another, however, is a job of abstraction which cannot be done by network descrip- tion or analysis alone,

I am led by my consideration of the literature on networks, therefore, back to wider questions of how we handle optation and social structure in social anthropology. Concepts for the latter (social structure) are well de- veloped. For the problem of choice-making, the work of Fredrik Barth and his students is for me the most apropos.

For analysing the vividly optative nature of the entrepreneurial process in economics and politics (1963), Barth employs a number of concepts that will enable us to see the possible uses of network analysis in the more difEuse light to which I have subjected it. In discussing the entrepreneur’s niche, assets, and restrictions (which

abstractly summarize his position in a real resource arena or environment), Barth notes that assets include (among others like money) “Social claims which he may employ ..., experience in bureaucratic procedure ... [and] leadership in a household composed of several adult men” (1964:9-10).

3 It is interesting to note that the only references to sociometry in the anthropolo- gical tradition of network analysis are in the original and in one of most recent articles (Barnes, 1954:43; Mayer, 1966:120). Meanwhile, for example, a leading sociometrist summariziig his field in the new Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, says that “the analytic utility of sociograms appears to be small (although) their descriptive utility ... has remained” (Borgatta, 196855). We need to build net- works to sociomet&s, I think, as we continue to try to develop notational schemes within our own corporate group.

(1966~98-102).

26 1

Page 5: Social Networks: Towards Structure or Process?

In terms of social structural networks that would represent all this knowl- edge and experience, I would suggest that every actor has contacts or “linkages” with, information about, and potential claims upon a vast, probably undiagrammable, array of neighbours, bureaucrats, kinsmen, friends, sub- and superordinates and/or others in the population around him, though from culture to culture or from rural area to city the propor- tions of each may vary. Every other actor around him has contacts, direct or indirect, to many (but, of course, not all) of the same people.

This last point is very important, because it implies the futility of de- scribing total (or extended, unbounded, etc.) networks for the study of the most pressing problems we face, especialIy those of conflict. For even if we could know all the contacts or “linkages” in a situation, we would still need to discover why only some and not all are rendered useful to any single actor. It is unfortunate in this respect that Mayer, in his network analysis of a Dewas election (1966), @ves us only one candidate’s “link- ages.” For it is safe to guess that the other candidates were linked to many of the same individuals and groups, if by different forms of linkage (i.e., one man’s priest may be another man’s cousin). What we want to know is how each candidate manipulates his contacts to draw supporters or waverers away from the others and mobilize them for himself. From the other direction we want to know how a voter decides among the various personal pressures brought to bear upon him.

To phrase these classic political questions in network terminology, we want to know how effective networks or activity-sets (of the optative terms I think the latter is the best, for reasons which will soon be apparent) are selected from extended networks, that is, how “assets” or “resources” or “social capital” are converted to use in particular situations. What are the relative values of assets he has, and what restrictions are placed on their conversion? Why, more specifically, are some ties more potent than others? What does that extra “tone’7 which is added to a Zambian’s relationship by the discovery that another man is in his network by reason of distant and idiomatic kinship as well as by political awiation mean when the linkage is used for some activity (Epstein, 1961:48)? Activity-sets in this sense are clearly the result or embodiment of purposive strategies and choice- making (in allocating time, cultivating linkages, cementing alliances, pro- ferring deference, and so on) which are the key assumptions in Barth’s optative theory of society (1963 :7).

We want to know not only how activity-sets are selected from the totality of an individual’s social relationships which may uninterestingly be called networks, but also to what end. From different values and needs, clearly the same activity-set may be used for very different purposes by similar actors. A description of an activity-set or a comparison of some series of them without a consideration of their purpose must, therefore, be nearly meaningless.

I have tried to show from the literature that even ostensibly ethno- 262

Page 6: Social Networks: Towards Structure or Process?

graphic studies of networks (notably Epstein’s [1961]) are full of references to purpose. Let me show more explicitly, from my own field data on the Yoruba, the necessity of concerning ourselves with the problems I have raised.

11

The Ijebu are one of the major subgroups, and in precolonial times politi- cally autonomous units, of Yoruba culture, which by now is familiar in outline to most anthropologists. Factors of waterside location and stable internal politics and foreign relations gave to the old Ijebu Kingdom or city-state an early advantage in centuries of interaction with Europeans and consequent economic growth. Ijebu in this century have capitalized upon that headstart to become one of several groups in Nigeria who, like the Ibos, have been characterized as pushful, acquisitive, dynamic, and successfully modernizing. Their leadership in the modem sectors of Yoruba society, economy and politics has been achieved, logistically, by massive outmigration from their home province to the new cities and towns of Nigeria and beyond. At least 20 per cent of the seven hundred thousand or more people of all ages who were born in Ijebu now live outside, while uncounted others are being born and raised, as Ijebus, away from home. Virtually every Ijebu now has liiks to kin or friends and to housing and job possibilities outside. I therefore characterize contemporary Ijebu so- ciety as being “totally” migrant, that is, totally accepting of the idea and possibility of migration for oneself as well as for others. In fact, as far as nearly every recent primary school leaver is concerned, the rural society is depleted.

Ijebus who migrate rarely cut ties to their home towns. They hope to return or to retire there, but much more actively, they are engaged in a system of mutual obligations and rewards that provide them with psycho- logical, financial, and political support at different stages in their migrant careers. In return they give similar support at other periods. Thus a migrant may get capital for his first sewing machine or his university edu- cation from his relatives at home, which he is usually happy to return later in the form of sponsorship of new migrants or the support of aged rela- tives or town development projects. The degree of interaction between those who remain in the home town and those who migrate is high enough to evoke an image (oversimplified, of course) of a single ongoing social system which has merely extended its geographical boundaries. Ijebu say that “the city is our farm” to demonstrate that although the site of econo- mic exploitation has changed, their hearts are still in their homes and villages. This thought does not, however, imply any less resourcefulness, participation, enthusiasm, or success in adapting to urban life than in being capable farmers, for Yoruba farmers also have their hearts at home in a dense, traditionally urban, settlement (Goddard, 1965). 263

Page 7: Social Networks: Towards Structure or Process?

If I were to try to map the extended network of social relations of any of the Ijebu migrants for whom I have fullest data, I would need several issues of this journal. I would have to present descriptions of those people he knows and has run into over some reasonable period of time in his present place of residence and at home (together with aII the lateral link- ages between members of his network), and also of those at home and in present and former towns of residence with whom his relations are either dormant or not yet established but known to him to be potentially usable if he has need or desire of them. Obviously I think it senseless to do this sort of “network analysis” in a vague sense even if I could do SO.*

Ijebu culture, however, is not only totally migrant, but also totally “optative” in orientation. That is, it sets goals and urges its bearers to choose repeatedly among ways and means of achieving them. A Yoruba proverb suggests that the three most prized values in life are money, chil- dren, and a very special sort of prosperity, well-being, and health called alafia. Ijebu history has given its present representatives a wide range of opportunities to seek those goods. However, dflerent individuals of course have different assets to draw upon for achieving them. As a first example, let us examine a situation in which similar networks are activated in two dfierent cases for similar ends, but in which factors outside the networks help account for very dflerent events in a political process.

The returned migrant who occupied the royal palace of one small Ijebu town5 had only tenuous claims to the chieftaincy. He had not been born in the town; his membership in a family with claims to eligibility for the office was questionable; further, the chieftaincy itself, revived in 1936 after being unfilled for several decades (if it had in fact ever existed), and given status as a kingship only in 1946, was of fragile legitimacy. The present incumbent had been a successful civil servant in Lagos and sought the title when the previous king died in 195 1. There was strong opposition (for a whole host of reasons), and a double job of legitimation was neces- sary - of the right of the family and of the particular individual to rule the town.

A description of the sources of King S‘s support in achieving his goal of recognition would encompass his activities and reveal some of his strategies over fifteen years from 1950 to 1965. Since I was not there for that period, I cannot specify the linkages he attempted to mobilize which failed. His supporters, by the climax of the struggle, might be described as a quasi- group including: members of his independent African church; most of his fictive kin group; fellow migrants in his Lagos town improvement union

4 It may be objected here that regularities would soon appear in such a description which would allow both limitation by diminishing returns, and comparisons by juxtaposition with others. If we are developing new tools for social structural studies, this mode of network analysis may indeed be helpful. It is my point, however, that we are in search of tools for studying process, not structure, and that our experimentation with network analysis must test its utility for that goal.

5 The Awujale, who resides in Ijebu Ode, is the king of all the Ijebu. More than twenty smaller towns in the province, however, have kings of their own. 264

Page 8: Social Networks: Towards Structure or Process?

(which, however, split over the matter); later, many of the leaders and residents of the two heavily Christian quarters of the town; and finally, the Premier of Western Nigeria, who was an old acquaintance in Lagos, but was recruitable because he himself was seeking political support by dis- pensing patronage almost to whomever would take it, In 1965, just before the Premier was assassinated, the Ministry of Chieftaincy M a i r s approved King S’s claim.

This much-abbreviated note clearly shows that the supporters of the new king were in no way a corporate group. I would call them an activity- set rather than an action-set, because the latter term strikes me in the light of this case as temporally rather too specific.

A second returned migrant, a retired policeman in Lagos, had had no trouble in establishing the legitimacy of his claim and that of his family to the kingship of his small town, but he was not a popular man. He had, that is, the assets of the legitimacy of tradition and of legal authority, but sought to add that of personal exceptionality. To do so he developed a strategy which resulted in an activity-set that would parallel in make-up most of the same sorts of ties as that of the first king. It included the Premier, not, however, for the purpose of achieving recognition but for that of acquiring patronage, which the King could then dispense as invest- ments in people at key positions in his set.

The activity-sets of the two kings, in short, “look“ similar, and were selected for a simiiar purpose concerning the legitimacy of their incum- bency in kingly office. Their assets, however, were Werent, with the second king having legitimacy in some forms already. As factors in politi- cal analysis, these “assets” lay outside the activity-set itself. The impor- tance of understanding such extra-network factors may perhaps be most vividly portrayed by noting that in the first of the two towns in t h i s pair, political process in the few months before I arrived included the burning of the gaol and the motor-park toll bootha and the stoning of the king, while in the second the king was merely isolated socially by important seg- ments of his fellow-town~men.~ Other factors such as niche (in a structure or with respect to goals or values) and strategy itself (to the degree it can be known or articulated independently of the activity it calls for) are similarly external to the activity-set seen as a social process. In comparing networks, consequently, we must be as careful to specify the conditions

6 The customary court, interestingly, was not burned, though it stands near the gaol. Though a court bullding is a recent innovation, the activity in it is ancient. It was, rather, the two symbols of most recentlydeveloped authority that were destroyed. Charging a fee for parking at markets and for picking up and discharging inter- urban commuters is a quite new replacement for tolls taken from market sellers and travellers fur the royal treasury in pre-colonial times. Of course nobody but the town authorities themselves wants anything to do with the reimposition of such taxes.

7 During my research in the town one of the important festivals was held. Some of the never-migrant elders (who had been among the firmest opponents) went out of their way to dance in the king’s courtyard. He seemed relieved to be able to come out and reestablish contact by dancing with them. 265

Page 9: Social Networks: Towards Structure or Process?

for the use of potential linkages as in notating their existence or the mere frequencies of their use.

Activity-sets for the same purpose, and as in the first example based on daerent assets, may, of course, be quite differently selected. The notion of functional equivalence is very old in anthropology and needs no elabora- tion here - except as it reminds us that in our attempts to compare net- works we must be careful not to sit on the sharp point of the Golden Bough. For example, migrants from Ijebu engage in a wide variety of projects to uplift their home towns. There are not-so-latent functions of engaging in such activity for the building of political influence and general popularity of the movers and leaders of such activities. Having built schools, dispensaries, and maternity centres (which are then staffed by the government), many voluntary associations have recently been trying to get town halls erected at home. The usual formula for success in such ventures is to raise support among fellow migrants in one’s own place of residence, sometimes in other association branches in other cities, among leading retired migrants, teachers, chiefs, and other leaders at home, and Snally to raise funds from all of them and the townspeople as well. The original entrepreneurs’ activity-set would again be extremely complex and in many cases would also be the result of years of strategic involvement.

In one case that I know of, however, a functionally equivalent set would look radically dif€erent. Here the town was entirely apathetic about the possibility of having a town hall. Except for occasional youth activities, which they were not at all sure they wanted to pay for, they could foresee little use for it. One of the entrepreneurs in this instance, however, worked for the Ministry of Local Government, and his expertise and his social net- work made him aware of a possibility that he chose to exploit. Thus it was that the activity-set for this town hall (and for the raising of its entrepreneur’s prestige) came to include a group of volunteers from the American “Crossroads Africa” programme who erected in a summer the only part of the building, a few feet of the outer walls, that has so far been completed.

m

I have tried in this discussion to shift the emphasis in network analysis away from problems of notation and description toward issues of contest and condition. I have suggested that the most fruitful line of development of the tool will proceed from a clear recognition of the orientation to the optative element in society, and more generally to social process, which has underlain rather than directly stimulated the conceptualization of net- works.

Barth’s formulations of the purposive, choice-making nature of social life, and the dimensions thereof that he specifies, seem to me to use the notion of optation to illuminate some of the major issues of co-operation 266

Page 10: Social Networks: Towards Structure or Process?

and conflict in society. By referring some data on networks from my own fieldwork to his variables, I have been able to understand which qualities of social relations or linkages are and which are not part of the interaction itself. Thus I believe that we may, through sociogrammatic or computer methods,s represent the intensity: frequency and directionality of trans- actions, the bases of selection, and the social distance between ego and those in his activity set. But explanations of why some linkages are used and others are rejected in any strategy, or how the content of past relations bears upon the perceived viability of calling in social obligations, or of value constraints on the choice-making process, are all problems which are crucial, which appear to lie outside the network or activity-set itself, and which therefore demand equal if not greater attention.

I am, in summary, somewhat ambivalent about the potential of network analysis and comparison. It is sometimes argued that we should not appear always to be “tooling up” for important jobs that we thereby never do. I have implied that questions of value, conflict, and constraints upon choice- making are perhaps more important than the details of the activities them- selves. I do think, on the other hand, that within the framework I have placed it network analysis may well help to specify the process of choice- making and the outcomes of particular strategies in particular situations.

REFERENCES

Barnes, 3. A. 1954 “Class and committees in a Norwegian island parish.”

Barth, Fredrik 1963 “Introduction.” In The Role of the Entrepreneur in Social Change in

Borgatta, Edgar F. 1968 “Sociometry.” Volume 15, Pp. 53-57 in The International Encyclopedia

Boswell, D. M. n.d.

Bott, Elizabeth 1957 Family and Social Network. London: Tavistock Publications. Colson, E. 1953 “Social control and vengeance in plateau Tonga Society.”

Epstein, A. L. 1961 ‘The network and urban social organization.”

Human Relations 7: 39-58.

Northern Norway. Bergen: Norwegian Universities Press.

of the Social Sciences.

“Kinship, friendship and the concept of the social network.” Unpublished MS.

Africa 233199-212.

Rhodes-Livinczston Journal 29: 29-62. 1967 “Urbanizatiog and social change in Africa.” Current Anthropology

8 : 275-295. Gluckman, Max 1955 Custom and Conflict in Africa. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 8 See the article by Alvin Wolfe in this issue. 9 By intensity I mean some aspects of the nature of the links. We might arbitrarily,

for example, assign weights to kin bonds, friendship bonds, -residence and so on, and experiment with the models we would create. Epstein’s extra “tone,” therefore, might gain that particular relationship a +1 in our vision. 267

Page 11: Social Networks: Towards Structure or Process?

Goddard, S. 1965 “Town-farm relationships in Yorubaland: a case study from Oyo.”

Gutkind, Peter C. W. 1969 “African urbanism, mobility and the social network.”

Jay, Edward J. 1964 “The concepts of ‘field’ and ‘network’ in anthropological research.”

Mayer, Adrian C. 1966 “The significance of quasi-groups in the study of complex societies.”

Pp. 97-122 in Michael Banton (ed.), The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies. London: Tavistock Publications.

Southall, A. W. 1961 “Introductory summary.” Pp. 1-66 in Aidan Southall (ed.),

Scrinavas, M. N. and Andr6 Beteille 1964 “Networks in Indian social structure.” Man 212: 165-168. Van Velsen, J. 1964 The Politics of Kinship. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 1967 “The extended-case method and situational analysis.”

Africa 35:21-29.

Pp. 389400 in Gerald Breese (ed.), The City in Newly Developing Countries. Englewood (218s: Prentice-Hall.

Man 177~137-139.

Social Change in Modem Africa. London: Oxford University Press.

Pp. 129-149 in A. L. Epstein (ed.), The Craft of Social Anthropology. London: Tavistock Publications.

268