History of social network analysis

A summary of the progress of social networks and social network analysis has been written by Linton Freeman.^[6]

Precursors of social networks in the late 1800s include Émile Durkheim and Ferdinand Tönnies. Tönnies argued that social groups can exist as personal and direct social ties that either link individuals who share values and belief (gemeinschaft) or impersonal, formal, and instrumental social links (gesellschaft). Durkheim gave a non-individualistic explanation of social facts arguing that social phenomena arise when interacting individuals constitute a reality that can no longer be accounted for in terms of the properties of individual actors. He distinguished between a traditional society – "mechanical solidarity" – which prevails if individual differences are minimized, and the modern society – "organic solidarity" – that develops out of cooperation between differentiated individuals with independent roles.

Georg Simmel, writing at the turn of the twentieth century, was the first scholar to think directly in social network terms. His essays pointed to the nature of network size on interaction and to the likelihood of interaction in ramified, loosely-knit networks rather than groups (Simmel, 1908/1971).

After a hiatus in the first decades of the twentieth century, three main traditions in social networks appeared. In the 1930s, J.L. Morenopioneered the systematic recording and analysis of social interaction in small groups, especially classrooms and work groups (sociometry), while a Harvard group led by W. Lloyd Warner and Elton Mayo explored interpersonal relations at work. In 1940, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown's presidential address to British anthropologists urged the systematic study of networks.^[7] However, it took about 15 years before this call was followed-up systematically.

Social network analysis developed with the kinship studies of Elizabeth Bott in England in the 1950s and the 1950s-1960s urbanization studies of the University of Manchester group of anthropologists (centered around Max Gluckman and later J. Clyde Mitchell) investigating community networks in southern Africa, India and the United Kingdom. Concomitantly, British anthropologist S.F. Nadel codified a theory of social structure that was influential in later network analysis.^[8]

In the 1960s-1970s, a growing number of scholars worked to combine the different tracks and traditions. One large group was centered aroundHarrison White and his students at Harvard University: Ivan Chase, Bonnie Erickson, Harriet Friedmann, Mark Granovetter, Nancy Howell, Joel Levine, Nicholas Mullins, John Padgett, Michael Schwartz and Barry Wellman. Also important in this early group were Charles Tilly, who focused on networks in political sociology and social movements, and Stanley Milgram, who developed the "six degrees of separation" thesis.^[9]White's group thought of themselves as rebelling against the reigning structural-functionalist orthodoxy of then-dominant Harvard sociologistTalcott Parsons, leading them to devalue concerns with symbols, values, norms and culture. They also were opposed to the methodological individualism espoused by another Harvard sociologist, George Homans, which was endemic among the dominant survey researchers andpositivists of the time. Mark Granovetter and Barry Wellman are among the former students of White who have elaborated and popularized social network analysis.^[10]

White's was not the only group. Significant independent work was done by scholars elsewhere: University of California Irvine social scientists interested in mathematical applications, centered around Linton Freeman, including John Boyd, Susan Freeman, Kathryn Faust, A. Kimball Romney and Douglas White); quantitative analysts at the University of Chicago, including Joseph Galaskiewicz, Wendy Griswold, Edward Laumann, Peter Marsden, Martina Morris, and John Padgett; and communication scholars at Michigan State University, including Nan Lin andEverett Rogers. A substantively-oriented University of Toronto sociology group developed in the 1970s, centered on former students of Harrison White: S.D. Berkowitz, Harriet Friedmann, Nancy Leslie Howard, Nancy Howell, Lorne Tepperman and Barry Wellman, and also including noted modeler and game theorist Anatol Rapoport.^[11]