Deconstructing and reconstructing social networks

Jan Fuhse

pp. 457-479

in: François Dépelteau (ed), The Palgrave handbook of relational sociology, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstrakt

Relational sociology regards social relationships and networks as core features of the social world. It theoretically reflects on their nature and on their connections to other social features, including inequality, culture, institutions, and fields of society. Building on a processual ontology, I argue that all of these emerge, reproduce, and change in the sequence of communicative events. As a type of social structure, social relationships and networks are composed of relational expectations about how particular actors are supposed to behave towards specific others. They map observable regularities in communication, and make for them. Within this theoretical framework, a number of forms of meaning are examined with regard to their interplay with network constellations: communication draws on culturally available models ("relationship frames") to construct the expectations in relationships. Social categories make for the ordering of ties in a network, but also depend on networks as patterned accordingly. And social networks are imprinted with relational institutions making for the pattering of social ties by structurally equivalent roles. Actors in social relationships and networks can be individuals, but also collectives or corporates.