Social Structure in the Making: Conceptual Concretization in the Emergence of Social Network Analysis

• In Event: 20420 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 4: Investigating Cultural Ideas

Abstract

How do abstract concepts about the social world emerge and concretize? This article draws on studies of materiality and scientific representation to offer a sociological approach to this question, using the visualization of social structure as a revelatory case, and the emergence of social network analysis during the Interwar period as an empirical illustration. To attend to the transformation of abstract ideas about society into concrete empirical phenomena, this article suggests the sociology of knowledge must attend to three knowledge-making practices of conceptual concretization: the formalization, materialization, and enunciation of ideas.

Author

• Vincent Yung, Northwestern University