ABSTRACT
A second basis for the increased appeal of network analytic methods derives from anthropology. Authors such as Barnes (1954), Bott (1957), Mitchell (1969), and Boissevain (1974) saw that the concept of network, together with analytic methods based on that concept, constitutes a potentially liberating alternative to the approach of structural-functionalists such as Radcliffe-Brown (1952; see also Forde and Radcliffe-Brown, 1952). In the view of Barnes and others, the merit of studying networks of actual social relations lies in the attention this draws to the frequency with which the idealized structural components stressed by the structural-functionalistssuch as kinship, political, religious, and economic subgroups-are ignored in the daily interactions of people. Network analysis is thus to be seen as a solvent for the boundaries of these observer-defined and overly reified groups in nonliterate societies. The implication, of course, is that such unitary concepts are even less useful in the study of the more fluid social circumstances of economically advanced or urbanized societies (Mitchell, 1969).
