network flow model social network analysis definition

We refer to a network as multiplex when several types of ties connect nodes. Padgett and Ansell (1993) explored multiplex networks of elite families to explain the rise of the Medici to power and the Florentine Renaissance state-building process. I suspect the primary issue is the narrow-minded majority of history scholars clinging to tradition and disdaining “new” methods (network analysis has been around since the 1930s, as we have seen). I am not entirely sure why this is–I find the arguments in “ Historical Social Network Analysis” (Wetherell 1998) incomplete. Another early historical network study–but much less well-known work–, “Relations into Rhetorics: Local Elite Social Structure in Norfolk, England, 1540-1640” (Bearman 1993), was published in the same year by a sociologist. Interestingly, the authors are not historians (instead political scientists) and published the paper in the American Journal of Sociology. The first seminal work using network analysis in a historical context was “ Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici” (Padgett and Ansell 1993). Now, let us move on to some applications and yet new concepts!

Then, we introduced several concepts: random networks, weak ties, two-mode networks, centrality measures, the focus theory, network visualization, and structural holes. In the first part of this blog post, we discussed the first studies in graph theory and social network analysis.

Network flow model social network analysis definition