Spatializing Social Networks: Using Social Network Analysis to Investigate Geographies of Gang Rivalry, Territoriality, and Violence in Los Angeles

Abstract

Social network analysis is an increasingly prominent set of techniques used in a number of social sciences, but the use of the techniques of social network analysis in geography has been challenged because of a perceived lack of geographic nuance or consideration of spatialities of context in social networks. The concept of social position and the associated technique of structural equivalence in social network analysis are explored as a means to integrate two different kinds of embeddedness: relative location in geographic space and structural position in network space. Using spatialized network data, this article compares the geography of rivalry relations that connect territorially based criminal street gangs in a section of Los Angeles with a geography of the location of gang-related violence. The technique of structural equivalence uses the two different spatialities of embeddedness to identify gangs that are similarly embedded in the territorial geography and positioned in the rivalry network, which aids in understanding the overall context of gang violence. The technique demonstrated here has promise beyond this one study of gang crime as it operationalizes spatialities of embeddedness in a way that allows simultaneous systematic evaluation of the way in which social actors' positions in network relationships and spatial settings provide constraints on and possibilities for their behavior.