Building farmers? capacities for networking (Part II): Strengthening agricultural supply chains in Bolivia using network analysis.

Abstract

This paper (Part II) presents work to develop a network diagnosis tool for stakeholders involved in agricultural supply chains in Bolivia. It is complemented by a further paper (Part I) by Boru Douthwaite and colleagues in the same issue of this journal which presents a case study of work conducted by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). The prototype methods used in both Parts I and II are based on social network analysis (SNA) methodology. SNA is a rapidly developing methodology that is gaining increasing popularity as an analytical and visualization tool with a wide range of applications across a number of disciplines such as health care, psychology and business organization. The focus of SNA is the nature of the relationships that exist between different actors in order to better understand how an actor’s position in a network influences their access to resources such as goods, capital and information. In both cases, the method development and testing place as part of an action research process in which ‘the researcher enters a real-world situation and aims both to improve it and to acquire knowledge’ (Checkland and Holwell 1998, p.9). Four hypotheses were tested as part of this research: