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>
> Dear Sergio Romero (and others),
>
> Your homework assignment is to write 100 times:
>
> "Social Network Analysis is not 'a method' but a paradigm.
> A way of looking at the social world and analyzing it."

The motivating idea here seems to be that there are theory-free methods 
out there and that network analysis is not one of them. In truth, most 
methods are caught up in theories and therefore paradigms (where a 
paradigm is mainly a theory or set of theories which specify appropriate 
methods). This is certainly true for ethnography (where the implicit 
theory is one of situated action tied to the immediate context), 
comparative-historical sociology (theory: historical outcomes arise due 
to the intersection of discrete conditions), and computer simulations 
(theory: macro outcomes arise from the interaction of a large number of 
actors obeying simple rules). The problem, perhaps, is that we think of 
conventional multivariate analysis as being a kind of generic method 
that can be wielded to test any theory whatsoever. But while it's used 
that way in practice, it too contains an implicit theory of causation, 
namely that it's incremental and additive and that most effects are 
linear and uni-directional and aren't hopelessly obscured by 
multicollinearity.

That said, I don't want to provoke Barry, so:

Social Network Analysis is not 'a method' but a paradigm.
A way of looking at the social world and analyzing it.
Social Network Analysis is not 'a method' but a paradigm.
A way of looking at the social world and analyzing it.
Social Network Analysis is not 'a method' but a paradigm.
A way of looking at the social world and analyzing it.
Social Network Analysis is not 'a method' but a paradigm.
A way of looking at the social world and analyzing it.


David Gibson

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