Archives of Connection:"Whole Network" Analysis and Social History: Whole Network Analysis and Social History

Social network analysis is a burgeoning field of sociology, but it has only recently been adopted by social historians. This article provides an overview of the promise of social network analysis for social history, as well as a critical discussion of what the method does and does not provide. It focuses especially on the problem of "whole network" analysis and sketches questions that social network analysis can help answer in the past. The author then offers a reflection on his own experience using the method and shows what it provided in the study of a French-Indian community in the colonial Mississippi Valley.