The Development of Social Network Analysis: A Study in the Sociology of Science

Ideas about social structure and social networks are very old. People have always believed that biological and social links among individuals are important. But it wasn't until the early 1930s that systematic research that explored the patterning of social ties linking individuals emerged. And it emerged, not once, but several times in several different social science fields and in several places. This book reviews these developments and explores the social processes that wove all these "schools" of network analysis together into a single coherent approach.

Linton C. Freeman, is a Research Professor in the Department of Sociology and in the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. He began working in social network analysis in 1958 when he directed a structural study of community decision-making in Syracuse, New York. In 1978 he founded the journal, Social Networks.