Relationalism and Social Networks (original) (raw)
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Applying Relational Sociology: Relations, Networks, and Society
From networks to fields to figurations to discourses, relational ideas have become common in social science, and a distinct relational sociology has emerged over the past decade and a half. But so far, this paradigm shift has raised as many questions as it answers. Just what are 'relations', precisely? How do we observe and measure them? How does relational thinking change what we already know about society? What new questions does it invite us to ask? This volume and its companion volume Conceptualizing Relational Sociology: Ontological and Theoretical Issues bring together, for the first time, the leading experts and up-and-coming scholars in the field to address fundamental questions about what relational sociology is and how it works.
Formalist and Relationalist Theory in Social Network Analysis
Social network research is widely considered atheoretical. In contrast, in this article I argue that network analysis often mixes two distinct theoretical frameworks, creating a logically inconsistent foundation. Relationalism rejects essentialism and a priori categories and insists upon the intersubjectivity of experience and meaning as well as the importance of the content of interactions and their historical setting. Formalism is based on a structuralist interpretation of the theoretical works of Georg Simmel. Simmel laid out a neo-Kantian program of identifying a priori categories of relational types and patterns that operate independently of cultural content or historical setting. Formalism and relationalism are internally consistent theoretical perspectives, but there are tensions between them. To pave the way for stronger middle-range theoretical development, I disaggregate the two approaches and highlight the contradictions that must be addressed or resolved for the construction of any general and inclusive theory.
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Quantitative social network analysis (QSNA) has become increasingly incorporated into international relations. This incorporation has only been partial, focused primarily on methodology, and separated from its theoretical underpinnings. Consequently, it has variously treated nodes as autonomous, asocial agents; assumed that ties exist from common characteristics or affiliations; and reinvented existing theories while stripping their social context. In this article, I survey the use and abuse of QSNA in international relations scholarship. In doing so, I also assess its potential for reincorporating social relations in both theory and in practice. In theory, QSNA is fully compatible with methodological relationalism, although the need to assume the existence of discrete nodes at some level of analysis makes it a more problematic match for ontological relationalism. In practice, QSNA has often been implemented at odds with relational sensibilities. Networks are being imputed from common characteristics or affiliations (that are assumed to be static and concrete rather than dynamic and contingent) instead of being directly measured; new measures are being created without reference to existing theories or tools; and network characteristics are reduced to units of analysis compatible with methodological individualism, leading to a reduction of a rich, relational analysis to single-variable systemic, simple dyadic, or even monadic analyses. Tools are being applied without regard for the nature of the underlying qualities of the data, leading to shallow analyses that disregard the social nature of the data. Yet some studies are beginning to carefully and slowly adopt the full analytic structure of social network analysis (SNA), including underlying theories.
Conceptualizing Relational Sociology: Ontological and Theoretical Issues
From networks to fields to figurations to discourses, relational ideas have become common in social science, and a distinct relational sociology has emerged over the past decade and a half. But so far, this paradigm shift has raised as many questions as it answers. Just what are 'relations', precisely? How do we observe and measure them? How does relational thinking change what we already know about society? What new questions does it invite us to ask? This volume and its companion volume Applying Relational Sociology: Networks, Relations, and Society bring together, for the first time, the leading experts and up-and-coming scholars in the field to address fundamental questions about what relational sociology is and how it works.
Relational sociology paradigms
Stan Rzeczy [State of Affairs], 2017
This article is an analysis of three original variants of relational sociology. Jan A. Fuhse’s conception, which is part of the tradition of social network research, situates network analyses in the context of connections between culture and symbolic forms and styles. Fuhse’s idea involves a communicative base of relations, and he perceives institutions as spheres of communication that reduce uncertainty and activate roles in the process of communication. François Dépelteau’s approach, which is inspired by Dewey’s pragmatism, recognizes transaction fields as configurations of relations forming interdependency between people. The practices of actors entering transactions within social fields are important, and this makes it possible for an impression of continuity, order, and complexity to be created. Pierpaolo Donati’s relational realism is an attempt to describe the relational dimensions of human actions, while at the same time it is a consistent “relationization” of key social categories, and is also useful in understanding after-modernity. This article emphasizes the fruitfulness of new attempts to demarcate sociological genealogies and to read the classics of relational sociology. The author discusses the creation of new puzzles for sociological theory, the necessity of analysing the ontologies of social life, the phenomena of emergency and agency, and the use of relational theory in regard to categories of the common good and social capital. He encourages multidimensional and multilevel analyses of social reality.
Theorizing social networks: the relational sociology of and around Harrison White
This paper offers an overview of relational sociology as developed by and around Harrison White. Relational sociology provides a substantial account of social networks, conceptualizing them as real social structures interwoven with meaning. Forms of meaning connected to network configurations (as part of their 'domains') include stories, identities, social categories (including role categories), and institutions. Recent advances lead to a network perspective on culture, and to an emphasis on communicative events in networks. In contrast to other strands of relational sociology, the approach aims at a close connection between empirical research and theoretical reflection. Theoretical concepts and arguments are geared at empirical applicability in network research, rather than mainly providing a theoretical description of the social world. Finally, the author's own version of relational sociology is sketched: social networks are seen as dynamic constructions of relational expectations. These emerge and develop over the course of communication (in the sense of Niklas Luhmann), in turn effectively channeling communicative sequence. relations the development of large-scale social phenomena (like social movements, markets, academic fields, or political regimes). This 'structuralist' research strategy reduces social phenomena to the pattern of relations, with systematic disregard for everything elsecultural imprints, individual motivations, and institutional frameworks.
Quality Quantity International Journal of Methodology, 2011
The paper systematizes the role of qualitative methods, statistical analyses, and formal network analysis in sociological network research, and argues for their systematic combination. Formal network analysis mainly aims at a description of network structures as well as at an explanation of the behavior of the network at the systemic level. Formal network analysis can also be used in order to explain individual behavior or the existence of individual connections from network structure. Statistical analyses of ego-centered networks are used to correlate individual attributes with the structure and composition of the individual embeddedness, thus providing a statistical explanation of network effects and determinants. Qualitative methods are important for exploring network structures, and for understanding the meaning connected to them. A historical overview shows that these three strands have long co-existed in sociological network research without engaging in combined research efforts. Combinations of these methods prove useful when considering the various aspects of networks (individual connections, structural patterns, and meaning).
An Outline of Relational Sociology from a Critical, Analytical and Realist Viewpoint
Zhurnal Sotsiologii i Sotsialnoy Antropologii (The Journal of Sociology and Social Anthropology)
In this paper, the author presents his original version of relational sociology (critical realist relational sociology-CRRS), which is also called 'relational theory of society'. It shares with other versions of relational sociology the aim to understand social facts as relationally constituted entities stemming from the dialectic between structures and interactive processes. But it diff ers from the radically constructivist and relativistic versions (here referred to as 'relationist sociologies') as regards the way in which social relations are defi ned, the kind of reality that is attributed to them, how they confi gure social formations, and the ways in which they are generated (emergence) and changed (morphogenesis). Th e paper clarifi es the advantages that this original perspective off ers in explaining a series of social issues. In particular, it can orient social research toward unseen and/or immaterial realities. Empirically, it can show how new social forms are created, changed, or destroyed depending on diff erent processes of valorization or devalorization of social relations. Ultimately, the task of this approach is to point to the possibility of envisaging those social relations that can better realize the humanity of social agents and give them the opportunity to achieve a good life.
In this paper I present and summarize the theoretical proposals of four leading scholars of the so-called 'relational sociology'. First of all I try to contextualize its emergence and developments in the increasingly globalized scientific system. From this particular (and international) point of view, relational sociology seems to develop through a peculiar scientific path opened and charted by well-identified actors and competitors, their invisible colleges, their global connections, cleavages, and coalitions. Whatever the structuring of this field, it accomplishes the criticism of classical individualistic and collectivistic sociological theories, a task strongly facilitated by the development of new methods and techniques of empirical research, and by the increasingly powerful computing capabilities. After this brief historical reconstruction, and following very strictly the contributions of the four scholars, I try to synthetize their theoretical designs, focusing the analysis on two scientific issues of great significance for the future of relational sociology: the specific ontology of 'social relations' and the methodologies used to observe it adequately. Finally, I wonder if we are facing a new sociological paradigm, already well structured and internationally established, or rather a 'relational turn' that probably will develop into a new 'sociological field' internally very differentiated and articulated.
The paper systematizes the role of qualitative methods, statistical analyses, and formal network analysis in sociological network research, and argues for their systematic combination. Formal network analysis mainly aims at a description of network structures as well as at an explanation of the behavior of the network at the systemic level. Formal network analysis can also be used in order to explain individual behavior or the existence of individual connections from network structure. Statistical analyses of ego-centered networks are used to correlate individual attributes with the structure and composition of the individual embeddedness, thus providing a statistical explanation of network effects and determinants. Qualitative methods are important for exploring network structures, and for understanding the meaning connected to them. A historical overview shows that these three strands have long co-existed in sociological network research without engaging in combined research efforts. Combinations of these methods prove useful when considering the various aspects of networks (individual connections, structural patterns, and meaning).