***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org *****

Socnet, Happy New Year!

My two cents on SNA, heterogeneity and ANT (I'm just reading Bruno's last
book these days.. :-)

Emanuela, concerning heterogeneity, the right place to look for it in SNA
is on 2-mode (or in general n-mode) networks. Among the methods used in
such studies, one encounters: Galois lattices (and other discrete data
analyses) (cf., Freeman, D. White, Schweizer, Mohr, Duquenne, Roth,
Pattison, Robins, Mische et al.), correspondence analysis (Faust,
Skvoretz, Roberts et al.), affiliation networks and blockmodeling
(Breiger, Borgatti, Everett and many others), generalized blockmodeling
(Doreian, Batagelj, Ferligoj) etc.

ANT is quite different than SNA in many respects. (Have people in this
list ever heard about ANT?) It's funny but Bruno Latour believes quite
the opposite to what Barry Wellman considers about SNA (and more or less I
agree with Barry - but I was wondering, Barry, is this the Toronto-Paris
anti-link? :-) Latour stresses that ANT is a method or a tool and it
is different from a network in the same way that drawing with a pencil is
not the same thing as drawing the shape of a pencil.. In any case, until
now, I haven't seen any analytical or formal work in ANT and this is
normal because of its interpretive priorities. But even in this respect,
it's hard to compare, say, Harrison White and Eric Leifer with
Bruno Latour and John Law. Sometimes, reading the most provocative
manifestos of the field, I have the feeling that ANT deliberately confuses
contextualism with relationism and constructivist anti-essentialism with
structural anti-individualism. But I'm not sure, I might have
misunderstood their arguments.

Regards,

--Moses Boudourides

  Department of Mathematics
  University of Patras
  265 00 Rio-Patras
  Greece

  Tel.: +30-2610-996318
  Fax: +30-2610-996318, +30-2610-992965

  http://www.math.upatras.gr/~mboudour


On Thu, 5 Jan 2006, E.Todeva wrote:

> ***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org *****
>
> Yes, I agree with you that 'network science' is more appropriate for what we are aiming at, and that 'actors' can incorporate a broad range of 'social/cultural/technological' artefacts such as organisations and web pages.
>
>
>
> I am not sure though how SNA deals with heterogeneity, and what are the appropriate methods/ methodologies.
>
>
>
> Emanuela Todeva
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Stanley Wasserman [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thu 05/01/2006 20:11
> To: Todeva E Dr (SoM)
> Subject: Re: SNA is not a method
>
>
>
> just because it is called "social" does not mean it only deals with
> people.
> social network analysis deals with interrelations among social
> actors, which can be
> nations, organizations, webpages, and so on.
> to me, it all should be referred to as "network science".
>
>
> On Jan 5, 2006, at 2:15 PM, E.Todeva wrote:
>
> > ***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org *****
> >
> > Dear Barry,
> >
> >
> >
> > Knowing the legacy of your contributions I understand why you would
> > like to defend this position. But maybe we need to re-think this.
> >
> >
> >
> > What about calling 'Network Analysis' a paradigm that incorporates:
> >
> > 'social network analysis' with
> >
> > 'business network analysis',
> >
> > 'actor-network theory', and other methods / approaches /
> > methodologies for network analysis.
> >
> >
> >
> > Can we go beyond interconnected human beings, to interconnected
> > organisations and business units, and even heterogeneous systems of
> > interconnected people, organisations, institutions, assets/
> > resources, technological/cultural artefacts... My social capital is
> > not only my social contacts, and I hardly could capitalise on all
> > potential social contacts that I have through SOCNET (for example).
> >
> >
> >
> > Emanuela Todeva
> >
> > University of Surrey, UK
> >
> > ________________________________
> >
> > From: Social Networks Discussion Forum on behalf of Barry Wellman
> > Sent: Thu 05/01/2006 18:15
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: SNA is not a method
> >
> >
> >
> > ***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org *****
> >
> > 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."
> >
> > To see it as only a method is to miss the whole point of SNA.
> >
> > Barry, INSNA founder
> > _____________________________________________________________________
> >
> > Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director
> > wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
> >
> > Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto
> > 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162
> > To network is to live; to live is to network
> > _____________________________________________________________________
> >
> > _____________________________________________________________________
> > SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social
> > network researchers (http://www.insna.org). To unsubscribe, send
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> >
> >
> >
> > _____________________________________________________________________
> > SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social
> > network researchers (http://www.insna.org). To unsubscribe, send
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>
>
>
>
> _____________________________________________________________________
> SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social
> network researchers (http://www.insna.org). To unsubscribe, send
> an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line
> UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message.
>

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