The social network perspective : Understanding the structure of cooperation

Abstract

The social network perspective refers to a tradition in social science which focuses on the joint activities of, and continual exchanges between, participants in a social system.This perspective is characterized by an interest in the recurrent relationship patterns that connect the actors that make up a system's social structure.(See Wellman 1988 andFreeman 2004 for detailed explanations of the origins of this perspective.)What we now consider the social network approach is a combination of ideas drawn from the structuralist network tradition (Berkowitz 1982; Wellman 13-Cropper-c11 OUP209-Cropper-et-al (Typeset by Spi, Delhi) 290 of 312 December 7, 2007 13:51 290 theoretical perspectives and Berkowitz 1988) and more recent thinking, particularly the embeddedness (Granovetter 1985) and social capital perspectives (Burt 2005).Probably the single most important concept in a social network approach is the relationship among actors, be they individuals or in groups such as whole organizations or parts of organizations.Rather than examining actors in isolation, the social network perspective sees actors as embedded within networks of interconnected relationships that provide opportunities for, as well as constraints on, behaviour.The focus is on the interaction between actors rather than on the attributes of particular actors, their size for example.Thus the social network perspective represents a move 'away from individualist, essentialist and atomistic explanations toward more relational, contextual and systematic understanding' (Borgatti and Foster 2003: 991).A considerable number of ideas, concepts, and research questions which we will introduce below have unfolded from this essential notion.We look briefly at some of them.(For more comprehensive overviews, see Borgatti and Foster 2003;Brass