According to Tzanakis (2013: 7),“Putnam (1993a; 2000 and 2006) is mainly critiqued for his treatment o f trust as an aggregate indicator o f Social Capital and for the ways this is linked to associational participation, economic growth and democratic ethos at regional or national levels. This treatment exhibits fundamental, conceptual and methodological loopholes. From the researcher’s point o f view, trust is not a core indicator o f Social Capital but understanding.
This is because o f the fact that human behaviour is unpredictable. A person does a favour to his neighbour thinking that in future, that person will help him when there is a need. The person who is expected to return that favour when it is needed, might not want to give any assistance.
Therefore, understanding is the foundation o f Social Capital followed by trust.
Furthermore, Putnam can be criticised for being silent on conflicts between civil society and the state among people in the community. He only focused on the integrative functions of voluntary associations. According to Siisiainen (2000: 7), “Putnam only mentions in passing, that civil society is the seedbed o f social conflicts. Thus, he did not consider conflicts that exist in the social structure.”
2.8: Social Network Analysis (SNA) and its historical development in the academia
methodology” (Wasserman and Frost, 1994: 10). In other words, it is an interdisciplinary endeavour that had evolved out o f diverse strands ranging from social to behavioural sciences.
The sociological development o f social network analysis can be traced back to the writings of Comte (1798/1857), Tonnies (1855/1936) and Durkheim (1893/1964), Spencer, Horton and Cooley 1909/1962) who attempted to make use o f the idea in different but complementary ways. “Comte 1822 was the first scholar who proposed a way o f looking at society in terms of its interconnections among social actors” (Freeman 2004: 7).
Furthermore, “Tonnies 1855/1936) used the word gemeinschaft to characterise the traditional social form that involved personal and direct social ties that linked individuals who have shared values and beliefs” (Freeman 2004: 11). Durkheim (1893/1964) also followed when he said that (mechanic solidarity (solidaritemechanique) linked similar individuals with repressive regulations and he distinguished it from the modern society where the division o f labour led individuals to form cooperative links based on organic solidarity (solidariteorganique). In the same tenor, Spencer (1897) and Charles Horton Cooley (1909/1962), “both described small scale societies in which individuals were linked by intimate primary relations and they both contrasted those in modern, large scale societies where individuals are often linked by impersonal secondary relations” (Freeman 2004: 14).
Early sociologists attempted to examine different ties that link individuals in different structures o f the society or groups and they all shared a structural perspective. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century social thinkers such as Simmel (1908/1971) also talked about social networks using the structural perspective. Thus, (ibid: 23) postulated that “society exists where a number o f individuals enter into interaction” . He went on to say that “collection o f human beings does not become a society because each o f them has an objectively determined or subjectively impelling life-content. It becomes a society only when the vitality o f these contents attains a form o f reciprocal influence, only when one individual has an effect, immediate or mediates upon another, is mere spatial aggregation or temporal succession transformed into society. If, therefore, there is to be a science whose subject matter is society and nothing else, it must exclusively investigate these interactions, these kinds and forms of association” (ibid:
24-25). In these statements, Simmel had clearly expressed main properties that are embedded in the modern social network analysis. Thus, Simmel’s ideas contain most o f the “theoretical concepts that had influenced the development o f social network analysis and these are; social
group, reciprocity, exchange, social position, mutuality, balance, conformity, social cohesion, subgroup, social role” (Wasserman and Frost 1994: 14).
After the writings o f Simmel, there are three main traditions that later on influenced the rise of the current social network analysis. In other words, in the 1930-1940, there were sociometrists as well as researches on interpersonal relations. In this era, there was M areno who pioneered the systematic recording and analysis o f social interaction in small groups (sociometry) and the Harvard group that was led by W arner and Mayo which investigated interpersonal relations at work. Radcliffe -B row n (1940) also urged the systematic study o f networks. From this period, the concept o f social networks became silent for almost a decade.
In 1950-1960 anthropologists such as Gluckman and Mitchell used the concept when they investigated community networks in Southern Africa, United Kingdom and India. Mitchell often distinguished networks o f interpersonal relations from structures o f institutional relations.
Mitchell had departed from N adel’s (1957) aspirations for the general framework o f Structural Sociology rooted in social network analysis and “this proved fateful for development o f social network analysis in Britain, which largely failed to attract adherents from outside the area of community studies” (Scott, 2013: 34).
Moreover, in the 1960-1970s White and his students theorised more on networks. His colleagues, as well, began to produce torrents o f papers that have firmly established social network analysis. This period involved the works o f Ivan Chase, Bonnie Erickson, Harriet Friedmann, M ark Granovetter, Nancy Howell, Joel Levine, Nicholas Mullins, John Padgett, Michael Schwartz, Barry W ellman and Tilly, who focused on networks in political and community sociology and social movements, and Stanley Milgram, who developed the "six degrees o f separation" thesis, among others. Among these, Mark Granovetter and Barry W ellman are W hite’s former students who have elaborated and popularized social network analysis.
In addition, apart from the above-mentioned researchers, many independent researchers were also doing independent research on social networks. It was only in the 1970s, during a period Freeman describes as “the Renaissance at Harvard” that social network analysis finally became a generalized paradigm for research. The man most responsible for this turn o f events was Harrison White. It should, however, be noted that in the 1970s, social network analysis was not
yet fully fledged until in the period 1980 and 1990; the period which he labelled Getting Organised, when an integrated community o f researchers from different disciplines was formed.