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Theorizing social networks: the

relational sociology of and around
Harrison White
a
Jan A. Fuhse
a
Institute of Social Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin,
Berlin, Germany
Published online: 23 Jan 2015.
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around Harrison White, International Review of Sociology: Revue Internationale de Sociologie, 25:1,
15-44, DOI: 10.1080/03906701.2014.997968
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International Review of SociologyRevue Internationale de Sociologie, 2015
Vol. 25, No. 1, 1544, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2014.997968
Theorizing social networks: the relational sociology of and

around Harrison White
Jan A. Fuhse*
Institute of Social Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

(Received January 2014; accepted November 2014)
This paper offers an overview of relational sociology as developed by and around

Harrison White. Relational sociology provides a substantial account of social
networks, conceptualizing them as real social structures interwoven with meaning.

Forms of meaning connected to network configurations (as part of their domains)
include stories, identities, social categories (including role categories), and institutions.
Recent advances lead to a network perspective on culture, and to an emphasis on
communicative events in networks. In contrast to other strands of relational sociology,
the approach aims at a close connection between empirical research and theoretical
reflection. Theoretical concepts and arguments are geared at empirical applicability in
network research, rather than mainly providing a theoretical description of the social
world. Finally, the authors own version of relational sociology is sketched: social
networks are seen as dynamic constructions of relational expectations. These emerge
and develop over the course of communication (in the sense of Niklas Luhmann), in
turn effectively channeling communicative sequence.
Keywords: relational sociology; social network; communication; meaning; social
relations
1. Introduction
What are social networks? Interdisciplinary network research teaches us to think of
networks in graph theoretical terms: as patterns of links between nodes. Social networks
are then patterns of relations between actors. This way of thinking of social networks is
not only intuitively plausible and widely recognized. It has also proven tremendously
useful in empirical research: social networks affect individual success and failure, but also
the development of large-scale social phenomena (like social movements, markets,
academic fields, or political regimes). This structuralist research strategy reduces social
phenomena to the pattern of relations, with systematic disregard for everything else
cultural imprints, individual motivations, and institutional frameworks.
Around 1990, a group of authors around Harrison White started arguing for a revised
stance: social networks are fruitfully studied in conjunction with culture, rather than in
abstraction from it (White 1992, Emirbayer and Goodwin 1994, Pachucki and Breiger
2010). This group includes many of Whites colleagues and students like Peter Bearman,
Ronald Breiger, Paul DiMaggio, Mustafa Emirbayer, David Gibson, Roger Gould, John
Levi Martin, Ann Mische, John Padgett, and Charles Tilly. Emirbayer famously published
*Email: jan.fuhse@hu-berlin.de
2015 University of Rome La Sapienza
16 J.A. Fuhse
the Manifesto for a Relational Sociology in 1997, with much of the work around White
as central reference point. Mische labels this creative group of scholars (The New York
School of) Relational Sociology (2011) to distinguish it from other approaches that
similarly focus on social relations: Georg Simmels formal sociology, Norbert Eliass
configurational sociology, British social anthropology, the structuralism of traditional
network research, and Bruno Latour and Michel Callons Actor-Network Theory.
What does it mean to conceptualize and to study social networks in conjunction with
culture? First, social networks serve as the habitat of cultural forms. Symbolic forms and
styles diffuse in social networks, and they meet and combine at network intersections to
form new styles and creativity. Secondly, social networks are imprinted with culture.
Social categories and cultural models for relationships make for a particular ordering of
network structure, rather than merely resulting from it. These two points constitute the
interplay of culture and network structure: cultural forms are as much formed by
networks as they shape them. Thirdly, however, networks themselves are not devoid of
cultural meaning. Relationships build on cultural models like friendship or kinship. And
the identities of the actors involved are constructed in dynamic processes of attribution
and negotiation within the network. Thus structure and culture can only be distinguished
analytically, rather than forming independent layers of the social.
In this article, I offer a rough sketch of this relational sociological perspective. I start out
with the developments preceding relational sociology: the concepts of catnets and structural
equivalence, and the blockmodel analysis method (Section 2). The third section presents the
basic arguments of relational sociology. A brief presentation of the network of relational
sociological authors follows (Section 4). The next section highlights two areas of extension:
the analysis of culture as a network, and the role of communicative events in social
networks. Afterwards, I briefly discuss the epistemological stance (Section 6). I argue that
(this version of) relational sociology is less concerned with developing a coherent theory in
accordance with philosophical principles (like human agency) than with informing and
integrating empirical social research at the culture-networks nexus. The next section
provides an overview of my own, slightly revised, version of this approach. In particular, I
view social networks as patterns of relational expectations emerging and modifying in the
course of communicative events, and in turn governing the sequence of communication.
The last section formulates four challenges to relational sociology and summarizes how the
approach laid out here relates to other versions of relational sociology.
All of this amounts to a rather lengthy article. In principle, the various sections are
relatively independent of each other. So feel free to skip any of them. You probably want
to read Section 3 (and maybe 4) if you do not already know the approach. I find the
questions discussed in Section 6 to be important, even if I can only provide sketchy
answers. And of course I would like you to have a look at Section 7.
2. Precursors: catnets, structural equivalence and blockmodeling

Harrison White laid out a first account of social structure in an undergraduate course at
Harvard University in the mid-1960s. A written memo from that course circulated widely
among a young cohort of sociologists and network researchers and can be regarded as a
founding document of Whites structuralism from the 1960s to the 1980s (White [1965]
2008a). Here White introduced the concept of catnet cat from category, and net
from network. The idea was that networks are patterned by categories: network
formations are mapped in linguistic presentations, lumping similar actors in a category,
International Review of SociologyRevue Internationale de Sociologie 17
and distinguishing them from other, dissimilar actors. In turn, these categories shape
networks by fostering ties within a category, and thinning cross-category ties out.
Categories make for dense networks (catnets) structurally and symbolically separated
from other catnets. Catnets can evolve either from a network population characterized
by densely connected sub-cliques, or from a pre-existing category symbolically ordering
the actors in a network (White [1965] 2008a, 8 ff.).1
White thus argues for the interplay of categories and networks already in the 1960s.
These categories are organized in a set of categories, since categories are always defined
in relation to other categories. Culture here emerges as a system of categories that
describe network structures. Networks are similarly organized in types of relations
([1965] 2008a, 2). These again are described and demarcated culturally: Friendship is not
only different from love or patronage; it needs to be known and described as different.
The memo thus sketches in a few pages a sophisticated and far-reaching (and sometimes
hard-to-grasp) account of the social, with systems of categories mapping and ordering
systems of relations. The text finishes with a hint that large-scale social structures from
community and institutional systems to nation and polity can be modeled, perhaps even
explained in their properties, as network and category systems linked to each other.
In the 1970s, White and his graduate students at Harvard developed two important
innovations: the concept of structural equivalence and the method of blockmodel analysis
(Lorrain and White 1971, White et al. 1976). Nodes in a network are classified as
structurally equivalent (in a wider sense, sometimes called regular equivalence) when
they are connected in similar ways to other classes of structurally equivalent nodes. This
idea follows up on the basic idea of catnets: the relations in a network are ordered by
categories that make for observable structural equivalence. However, structurally
equivalent nodes do not have to be connected to each other (as in the earlier formulation
of catnets): clients are similar in their connections to patrons without being densely
interconnected. Therefore, the classes of structural equivalence are not internally cohesive
subgroups. Rather, they are interpreted as positions in the network connected to each
other by role relations. Observed networks are therefore seen as resulting from systematic
patterning by role categories.
Blockmodel analysis is the method developed by White and his students to identify
structurally equivalent actors in a network. It works inductively without prior assumptions
about the role pattern underlying the network. Blockmodels importantly feature the
simultaneous analysis of various types of tie in a network. For example, scientists could
be connected by friendship, cooperation, competition, awareness, and esteem.
Blockmodel analysis assumes that these various types of relations are governed by the same
pattern of role relations, and that it is possible to detect a common order in these layers of
ties among the same actors in a network. This approach has led to a host of fruitful empirical
work, including Breigers (1976) study of networks among bio-scientists, Anheier and
Gerhardss analysis of the literary field in Cologne (1991), and Padgett and Ansells
network account of the rise of the Medici in Renaissance Florence (1993). Blockmodeling
has greatly pushed both network research and its standing in the social sciences, leading
John Scott to call it the Harvard Breakthrough in the history of social network research
(2000, p. 33 ff.). Instead of looking for differences in the structural location of individual
nodes in a network, blockmodeling detects overall patterns in networks.
In hindsight, we can say that culture and meaning matter in two ways here: First,
different types of ties have to be distinguishable, differentiating friendship from
cooperation and esteem in the above example. Second, the actual pattern of relations is
18 J.A. Fuhse
assumed to be shaped by role categories. Both aspects are clearly formulated in the 1965
memo. However, the study of culture and meaning was shunned in favor of a purely
structural analysis. The knowledge or communication of role categories is inferred from
the pattern of relations. And the difference between frames like friendship and
cooperation has to be taken for granted. White et al. (1976) formulate:
The cultural and social-psychological meanings of actual ties are largely bypassed []. We
focus instead on interpreting the patterns among types of ties found in blockmodels. (White
et al. 1976, p. 734)
3. Networks and their cultural domains

Blockmodeling clearly evidences a structuralist stance, even if it leads to (and, to a certain
extent, already implies) a theoretical view of social networks that integrates culture and
meaning, rather than disregarding them (Brint 1992). The network pattern of relations,
however elaborately analyzed, is only one layer of the complex reality of social
structures. And when you try to slice this one layer, other aspects of social structure keep
resurfacing. How do we distinguish between different types of tie? What is a tie? And
why should networks display specific patterns? All of these questions inevitably lead to
meaning to the meaning inherent in network relations and network patterns.
Harrison White turned to these questions in his 1992 book Identity and Control.2
According to Ann Mische, White had been preoccupied with the lack of theoretical
understanding of ties as the basic measurement unit in sociological network research
(2011, p. 82). By that time, a lot of people were measuring and calculating network
patterns; very few wondered what they were actually observing. At the same time, the
social sciences as a whole were turning toward culture, with important impulses from
Pierre Bourdieus work on the importance of cultural forms in social structures, from
sociolinguistics with its emphasis on identity and narrative, and with a turn toward
institutions in economics and sociology.3
White picked up these various threads and combined them in his very own theory of
social structures. As in the theories of Parsons and Luhmann, White views all interaction
as driven by uncertainty (1992, p. 3 ff.). Due to this uncertainty, identities attempt to
establish footing and to gain control in social contexts. These control attempts leave a
trace in social space in the form of stories. Stories are told about identities, thus defining
both the identities and their relations to each other. Since story-telling is itself a social
activity, stories remain subject to competing control projects.
Overall, Whites social world is characterized more by chaos and turbulence than by
the neat and stable patterns he rejected in Parsonss theorizing. White illustrates this basic
idea with the scene of a playground (1992, p. 6 ff.): children play together or against each
other, they form teams, or block other kids access to equipment. Over time, past alliances
and competitions may or may not repeat. Both ties between the kids and their identities
emerge from this process. The individual quests for control and footing can lead to more
institutionalized social constellations that White terms disciplines: markets, parliaments,
committees, and the like. Or, if such institutionalization fails, they can result in networks.
Social networks are informal and temporary patterns of order that emerge from
uncertainty and control attempts. According to White, they are composed of stories that
link identities (1992, p. 65 ff.). Stories and identities constitute the phenomenological
reality of a network as opposed to the measurement construct (White 1992, p. 65; see
also Fine and Kleinman 1983, p. 102). So when researchers measure and analyze network
matrices of 1s (ties) and 0s (non-ties), they are reducing a much more complicated social
reality, and this reality consists of the traces of meaning of previous interaction
encapsulated in stories that relate identities. The notion of phenomenology should not
confuse here: Unlike Husserl and Schtz, White is not interested in subjective meaning,
but in meanings that circulate in communication (White et al. 2007, p. 544): in stories
that are told, and in identities attributed in these stories.
White calls the symbolic forms connected to networks a domain (1995a, p. 708 f.,
Mische and White 1998, p. 702 ff.). Domains comprise stories, symbols, idioms, etc.
These fluctuate in interaction and differ from one network context to the next. The
network consists of regularities in interaction mapped in ties between nodes; the domain
of symbolic forms comes out of this interaction and makes for its regularity. Both are
fused in a netdom and only analytically distinguishable. In this way, structure is always
intertwined with culture, just as culture is rooted in structure.
All of this remains rather abstract. Let us briefly look at several forms of meaning,
and how they are connected to networks:

(1) Harrison White introduces styles as an important cultural feature of network
formations (1993a, 2008b, p. 112 ff.). Styles are first of all artifacts of observation: an
outside observer recognizes nodes in a network to be similar in their behavior and
classifies them as displaying a common style. Such similarities, however, are the result of
mutual observation and imitation in the network. For example, painters connected to each
other may pick up each others techniques or choice of subjects. The result is a
recognizable style such as impressionist or cubist (White 1993b, p. 63 ff.). More often
than not, such labels for a style are made up after the fact and emerge from outside
observation, e.g. by critics. According to White, new styles develop with the creative
combination of cultural forms at the intersection of previously separate network
formations (1993a, p. 77 ff.).
As in catnets, this first variant of style develops in densely knit networks where actors
influence each other in direct relationships. The second variant of style relates to
structural equivalence: Actors occupying similar positions in a network exhibit a common
style because of the similarity of their relationship profiles. Identities are constructed
through their various entanglements in ties (actually: the switching between them; see
section 5). Therefore every identity develops its own style due to its specific location in a
network. In a way, every person is her own style, recognizable as similarity of behavior in
different situations (White 2008b, p. 126 ff.). However, we can observe similarities of
such personal styles that correlate with network positions. Ann Misches dissertation
(supervised by White and Charles Tilly) provides an important empirical example: leaders
in the Brazilian youth movement display particular communicative styles with combina-
tions of exploratory dialogue, discursive positioning, reflective problem solving, and
tactical maneuver (2008). These leadership styles correlate with their network position
within or between different strands of the movement. Leaders not directly connected to
each other display similar styles due to their structurally equivalent positions.
(2) It should be clear by now that Harrison White does not regard individual identities
as essential building-blocks of the social. Rather, they are the result of interactive
processes of control attempts and attribution in story-telling. And individual identities
correlate with network position. Identities form projection points of network processes.
All events are attributed to acting identities in everyday story-telling, as Charles Tilly
argues (Tilly 2002, p. 8 f., 26 f.). Inner motives are seen as the driving forces of
20 J.A. Fuhse
individual behavior and this attribution of motives leads to the construction of identities
as relatively stable projection points of social processes. For example, a painter seen as
the genius inventor of new ways of seeing or as the skillful composer of harmonious
depictions is expected to perform similarly in every painting and the price of a mediocre
painting by a famous artist is much higher than that of a great piece of an unknown
painter.
Relational sociology demonstrates the importance of individual identity construction
in a number of empirical studies. John Padgett and Christopher Ansell (1993) account for
Cosimo di Medicis rise to power in Renaissance Florence with his projection of
multivocal, enigmatic identity. Without strategic planning, Cosimo found himself at the
intersection of economic ties to the upwardly mobile new men and marriage ties to old
patrician families. This advantageous position was flanked and maintained by an identity
projection that allowed everybody to view him as favorable to their own interests.
Randall Collins (1998) argues similarly in his study of networks in the history of
philosophy: the identities of minor and major philosophers are at least partly a result of
their network position. As in Whites theory of the emergence of new styles, writers at the
intersection of philosophical schools are able to combine different repertoires and to
invent new ideas. Whether they will be remembered depends as much on this creative
combination as on the subsequent rearrangement of ties in the networks of philosophy.
(3) Social categories that divide nodes in a network according to some criterion of
similarity and difference were already central to Whites early work on catnets and
structural equivalence. With the new focus of relational sociology, categories have to be
seen as part of the cultural domain connected to networks. Charles Tilly connects this
argument to Webers concept of social closure of status groups: social categories are
symbolic constructions that allow groups to hoard opportunities and to bar outsiders
from access to resources (Tilly 1998, pp. 6 f., 62 ff., 75 ff.). This only happens if social
categories effectively structure interaction both within and across the category. In-group
ties are fostered, and connections between in- and out-group are severed. The result is a
network pattern with relatively densely connected groups separated from each other by
symbolic boundaries as well as structural divides, as in the early catnet concept.
How do categories achieve this ordering of network ties? According to Tilly, the
social category constitutes a lens that depicts in-group interaction as filled with solidarity
and cross-group interaction as competitive. As in Robert Mertons (1948) account, the
category becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: it generates the solidarity and the rivalry of
groups that it suggests. For this to happen, the category needs to be entangled with stories
about the nature and the difference of the groups involved (Tilly 1998, p. 63 f.). These
stories interpret past events through the categorical lens and ensure that members of
different groups are treated differently in the future.
Tammy Ann Smith analyzes the boundary construction between Istrians of Croatian
and Italian descent with this framework (2007). She finds that categorical stories connect
past events in specific ways. The nature of this connection makes for the sharp division or
the reconciliation between the groups. Unsurprisingly, categorical stories change and
become more conciliatory in social contexts with a lot of interaction between the groups
in this instance in exile in New York City, where the two ethnic groups frequently meet in
restaurants and churches. Roger Goulds study of the 1870 insurrection of the Paris
Commune can be read in a similar light (1995). Gould demonstrates that the insurrection
was less driven by class solidarity than by local cross-class networks in the Parisian
suburbs. While personal ties remained by and large confined to members of the same
craft in the old Parisian city center, the new neighborhoods made for more cross-class
contact. Here, and not in the class- and profession-based networks of the center,
participation in the revolutionary National Guards was highest. The salience of the class
category versus the Paris-based local collective identity depended on the pattern of
personal ties.
Styles, identities, and categories are three concepts for symbolic forms emerging in
and structuring social networks. As such, all of them form part of the domain of the
network. We find that Harrison Whites general framework allows for linking many
aspects of meaning with networks both on the conceptual plane and in empirical work.
4. The network of relational sociology

I have already pointed to some areas of application of relational sociology: the sociology
of art (Anheier and Gerhards 1991, White 1993b, Giuffre 1999), social movements
(Gould 1995, Tilly 1995, Mische 2008), historical sociology (Bearman 1993, Padgett and
Ansell 1993, Gould 1995, McLean 1998, Ikegami 2005), the sociology of science
(Breiger 1976, Collins 1998, Fuchs 2001a), and ethnicity and inequality (Erickson 1996,
Tilly 1998, Lizardo 2006, Smith 2007, Fuhse 2012). Another important field is the
sociology of organizations and markets (DiMaggio 1986, White 2002). I cannot discuss
the merits and limits of relational sociology in these fields in detail here. Instead I sketch
one example of application in the sociology of science: the network of relational
sociology and the forms of meaning intertwined with it.
Relational sociology posits that forms of meaning have to be seen in their network
context. Relational sociology itself is such a form of meaning: a sociological perspective
with particular assumptions, concepts, and methods. While Harrison Whites work
triggered the development of relational sociology, it did so within a network of network
researchers connected to him. And Whites theory would not make for much without its
application in empirical research by the authors around him.
I have reconstructed the network of 18 core authors in relational sociology from
acknowledgments in 48 publications between 1988 and 2005 (Figure 1) (Fuhse 2008,
p. 39 f.). To me, these acknowledgments indicate intellectual cooperation and influence.
I assume such cooperation and influence as always mutual when I read your text that
may influence me as much as my feedback may influence you.
What we see is a densely connected network of authors. The core features White, his
long-time friend Charles Tilly, his former students at Harvard, Ronald Breiger and Peter
Bearman, along with Paul DiMaggio (who was also influenced by White at Harvard, but
not directly supervised by him) and DiMaggios student John Mohr. Ann Mische and
Mustafa Emirbayer are also in the core. Mische as a student of White and Tilly at
Columbia University, and Emirbayer as a colleague of Tilly at the New School for Social
Research were both in the orbit of relational sociology in the 1990s. The periphery
around this core is formed by former students and colleagues John Padgett (a 1980s
Harvard colleague of White), Eric Leifer (another White student at Harvard), Roger
Gould (a student of Bearman and Padgett), Paul McLean (a Padgett student at Chicago),
David Gibson (student of White and Bearman at Columbia), and Karen Barkey (a Tilly
student). There are also authors gravitating to the approach from the outside: Andrew
Abbott, Randall Collins, Eiko Ikegami, and John Levi Martin. These can only partly be
considered as adherents of relational sociology. Andrew Abbott and Randall Collins, in
particular, are certainly influenced by relational sociology. But they retain their very own
22 J.A. Fuhse
Figure 1. Network of acknowledgments among relational sociology authors.
intellectual position at the intersection with other academic networks. Omitted for various
technical reasons are Stephan Fuchs (who is less directly connected to the network) and a
younger generation of scholars including Christopher Ansell, Daniel McFarland, Henning
Hillmann, Omar Lizardo, King-To Yeung, Sophie Mtzel, Delia Baldassari, Tammy
Smith, Emily Erickson, Frdric Godart, Neha Gondal, and myself (partly because this
reconstruction ends in 2005). Also we might want to include more authors from the
outside like Mario Diani and Wouter de Nooy. Where exactly the boundary is drawn is to
some degree arbitrary. The network does not have a clear-cut boundary, but is variously
connected to other strands of research.
What we see here is a densely-knit network centered on a small number of intellectual
centers: first Harvard, later Columbia University, the New School for Social Research,
and Rutgers University (all of these in the New York area), with branches at Princeton,
Chicago, Arizona, and just now at the University of Notre Dame. We can call this an
invisible college (Crane 1972, Griffith and Mullins 1972, Collins 1998, p. 71 ff.).
Invisible colleges of tight academic cooperation (and competition) have driven
intellectual and scientific development for a long time, with the London-based Royal
Society or the Vienna Circle as prominent examples. According to Nicholas Mullins
(1973), local or regional concentration is important for new intellectual movements to
emerge. Highly focused on the New York area in the early 1990s, relational sociology
now appears to be in the establishment and diffusion phase, with a number of intellectual
centers and relational sociological arguments widely adopted in sociology and network
research.
According to relational sociology, network structure is always intertwined with
cultural forms. In this instance, the network is first of all connected to the perspective of
relational sociology with particular concepts, theoretical arguments, and research
methods. This perspective emerged in the network, and it holds it together by pulling
people in (like John Levi Martin), pushing others out who do not share the perspective.
We can compare this perspective of relational sociology to the artistic styles developed by
impressionists or cubists. As in White general theory, this style developed by combining
strands of research that had been separate: network research on the one side, and various
cultural approaches on the other.
Of course the network is not homogeneous with regard to the cultural forms. Some
(especially in the core) subscribe more to the relational perspective. Others (like Collins,
Abbott, and Martin, also Padgett) adopt it to a more limited extent and combine relational
arguments with other strands of thought. Here they act as cultural bridges (Pachucki and
Breiger 2010), making for the intellectual vitality of relational sociology. While the core
marks and maintains the identity of the network, its periphery picks up irritations from the
outside (Fuchs 2001a, p. 281 ff.).
This difference between core and periphery is one aspect of the role structure in the
network. Another aspect is Harrison Whites role as the intellectual leader of the
movement (Griffith and Mullins 1972, p. 961). While White certainly played the most
important role in the development of relational sociology, this status of its leader makes
for even more attribution of creativity and innovation. In academic discourse, an

argument becomes more important and more persuasive when it is linked to an
intellectual leader rather than to a minor figure. (Just like the great painting of a lesser
artist is less important and less expensive than a mediocre Picasso.) White is not only the
structural center of the network. He also acts as the focal projection point in the
construction of academic meaning.
This construction of Whites identity as the intellectual leader is part of the
relationship stories in the network. As mentioned, many of the ties are former
professorstudent relations, with White, Tilly, DiMaggio, Bearman, and Padgett acting
as supervisors of younger scholars graduate studies. These histories result in a particular
role structure and in the construction of the identities of the various authors in the
network they form part of the domain or the meaning structure linking the nodes in
the network (Fuhse 2009). In this way, many stories about the identities and the
relationships between them are told and make for the socio-cultural reality of the network
of relational sociology.
5. Extensions: culture and communicative events

Having sketched the basic arguments of relational sociology and its socio-cultural
structure, I now turn to two areas of extension. First, I briefly discuss the recent turn to
studying culture itself as a network. The second part of this section deals with the
conception and analysis of communicative events in networks. Both of these areas were
not integral to the basic framework of relational sociology in the early 1990s. But they
were increasingly incorporated, so that they now constitute important threads of the
research strand.
Networks of culture
Traditionally, the study of culture is conducted with interpretive, hermeneutic methods.
Forms of meaning are understood empathically (Max Webers Verstehen) and should
not be subjected to the detached scientific perspective that comes with quantitative
measurement and analysis. The recent turn of relational sociology pursues a contrasting
or complementary strategy. Cultural forms are seen as linked in a network. Therefore
24 J.A. Fuhse
culture can be represented and studied with the formal methods of social network
analysis.
Recall that blockmodel analysis is an attempt not to locate individuals in a network,
but to reveal underlying systematic patterns. Blocks of roles are reconstructed from the
relational matrix of individuals, and their relations to each other are analyzed. Roles are
thought of as linked in a network (Boorman and White 1976). On the theoretical plane,
then, forms of meaning are related to each other even if only patterns of social relations
are analyzed. The basic idea stems from the comparative analysis of kinship systems (in
the tradition of Claude Lvi-Strauss), with role categories like mother, uncle, and niece
related to each other. This can be linked to a Saussurian account of language (and
meaning): terms are linked to each other in a linguistic structure. The meaning of a
symbol (be it a gesture, a word, a concept, or a category) can then be grasped structurally
from its relations to other symbols.
White picks up on this in his treatment of language (1992, p. 133 ff.). Social
processes in networks are organized linguistically, and so are network connections. As he
argued in the Notes on the Constituents of Social Structure (White [1965] 2008a, see
above), different types of tie and structurally equivalent positions have to be meaningfully
distinguished with different cultural terms. In the 2000s, White turns even more to the
theme of language and meaning. But he does not develop a coherent account of its role in
social life.
Already around 1990, two Harvard students made first steps toward a network
perspective on culture. Paul DiMaggio coined the conception of institutions as rules in
organizational fields that govern the relations between actors in the field. The institutional
(or cultural) order can then be studied indirectly by way of a blockmodel analysis of the
network ties in the field (1986). DiMaggios version of neo-institutionalism combines not
only Bourdieus important impulses on the role of cultural forms in social structure with
institutionalist thinking, but also Whites relational sociology.
Kathleen Carley (a direct White student) turned to network representations of culture
with quantitative analysis of co-occurrences of words in texts. For example, she analyzes
how robots were portrayed in Science Fiction texts over three time periods (1994, p. 299
ff.). Robots change in their semantic linkage to various features and types of activities,
marking an overall shift in their evaluation. Carley later developed sophisticated software
tools for such network analysis of textual data with her own students at Carnegie-Mellon
(Diesner and Carley 2004). Out of these efforts, a rich new research strand has emerged
analyzing and comparing large bodies of text with regard to their linguistic structure.
However, this strand is by now mostly separate from relational sociology. In the
following, I focus on network accounts of culture directly related to our approach.
As a young professor at Yale University, DiMaggio supervised the work of John
Mohr. Mohr picked up on DiMaggios neo-institutionalism, but also on Whites thinking
on networks and role categories. Instead of reconstructing categories and institutions from
patterns of social relations, Mohr conducts an analysis of connections between categories
in organizational practices. From charity directories of New York City around 1900,
Mohr studies how different charity organizations treated different types of needy people,
like Soldiers, Mothers, and Tramps (1994, Mohr and Duquenne 1997). The various
categories of needy people were linked to each other if receiving the same kinds of
support from similar charity organizations. Apart from technical details, this procedure is
not that different from the co-occurrence analyses of words in texts by Carley and her
associates. Mohr then analyzes the network of categories in a blockmodel, in a sense
identifying systematic roles of bundles of categories (1994). He thereby classifies

seemingly very different categories as similar in the moral order, such as immigrants,
seamen, and soldiers, and identifies their moral-evaluative relations to other categories. In
a second article, John Mohr and Vincent Duquenne trace the changing moral order by
linking categories and charity practices in Galois lattice representations (1997). This
technique does not analyze data quantitatively, but presents it visually. Mohrs and
Duquennes representations allow for interpretation and comparison of the meaning
structure studied (Mohr 1998).
A number of studies follow this general lead: King-To Yeung (2005) shows that the
relationship frame love carries very different meaning in different types of urban
communes. Like Mohr and Duquenne, Yeung uses Galois lattices in order to compare the
culture of communes. John Levi Martin (2000) analyzes the interrelation of animal types
and occupations in a popular childrens book by way of statistical clustering. Similar to
Mohrs work, the aim is to reconstruct the moral ordering of occupations through their
totemic linkage to animals. Research by Peter Bearman and Katherine Stovel (2000)
and by Tammy Smith (2007) analyzes the referential ordering of stories as networks. In
stories, events are linked to each other as causes and results, with events often having
multiple antecedents and consequences. In this way, events are linked in network with the
narrative establishing causal linkages. While Smith analyzes the narratives around the
social boundary between collectives, Bearman and Stovel analyze an account of
individual identity.
How are these studies connected to relational sociology? Categories (Mohr, Martin),
relationship frames (Yeung), and stories about individual or collective identities (Bearman
and Stovel, Smith) are forms of meaning putting actors in relation to each other. In
Whites term, they all feature in the domain of cultural forms (or the meaning
structure; Fuhse 2009) linked to social networks. This network research of culture is
partly driven by the need to arrive at a better understanding of the cultural side of social
networks. At least in one case, it was possible to answer a structural riddle by pointing to
systematic differences in meaning structures (Yeung 2005).
Stephan Fuchs now turns this twist one notch further. For him, social and cultural
networks follow the same basic principles (2001a). Anything can become a node in a
network the network decides for itself about the entry and the status of a particular
node. His theory is mainly geared at academic and scientific schools of thought. These
are networks of concepts that observe their environment according to their own criteria
for relevance. Such networks feature a core defining its identity, and a periphery with
links to other networks. It is easy to see how this applies to both conceptual networks and
social networks as long as they display a certain degree of closure (termed involution by
Fuchs). However, the precise nature of conceptual ties and their similarities and
differences to social relationships remain a little vague. In Whites account, social ties
respond to the general chaos and uncertainty between identities. Do cultural linkages
similarly emerge out of a need for clarity? And how exactly do cultural relations arise and
change? Here relational sociology is still in need of conceptual answers flanking the
fruitful empirical research on cultural networks.
Communicative events
The second movement in a way digs deeper into the very nature of social networks. The
cultural turn has already questioned the purely structural nature of networks. But even
26 J.A. Fuhse
when interwoven with meaning, ties and their patterns are still thought of as stable
entities and structures. Recent work in relational sociology goes beyond this static model
and traces the development and change of social relations in the sequence of
communicative events. Most radically, Charles Tilly (2005) argues for: interpersonal
transactions as the basic stuff of social processes. [] interpersonal transactions
compound into identities, create and transform social boundaries, and accumulate into
durable ties (p. 6 f.). Relations, networks, and the cultural forms connected have to be
traced in the process of transactions. In the same vein, Ann Mische (2003) writes in a
conceptual article: we should not see networks as sites for or conduits of cultural forms,
but rather look at how both of these are generated in social practices, that is, by the
dynamics of communicative interaction (p. 262). Tillys and Misches programmatic
statements sound straightforward and convincing. But relational sociology has not arrived
at a coherent and agreed-upon model of social processes.
The first move in this direction comes from another White student at Harvard: Eric
Leifer (1988) argues for the gradual emergence of a relational order in the process of
interaction. Interaction needs to assign roles to the participants in order to overcome the
inherent uncertainty. However, it is better not to assume a particular role too soon
before the participant knows whether a particular role constellation will be accepted by
other participants. Leifer uses an anecdotal account to bolster these claims qualitatively
(Leifer 1992, p. 289 ff.). And he studies chess-playing at tournaments to show that
exploratory action, rather than action fixated by long-term strategies, fares better in
interaction (1991).
Leifers empirical examples point to the difficulty of observing the formation of social
relationships. Daniel McFarland, a former student of John Padgett, and his co-authors set
up an experimental speed dating event to study tie formation (McFarland et al. 2013).
They analyze which vocal and visual cues are associated with the perceived result of a
clicking between the participants, and find slightly different mechanisms for men and
for women. However elaborate this research design, we rely on the participants
impressions of their encounter to measure success or failure. To date, actual tie formation
in a natural setting has not been studied from the perspective of relational sociology, and
data are hard to come by.
Alternatively, we can measure networks with standard questionnaires, and observe
their impact on communicative events. This is done in McFarlands (2001) work on
disruptive behavior in school classes. Disruptions are shown to come primarily from
popular children. Less popular children are discouraged from challenging the teachers
authority by their peers. David Gibson, a former White student at Columbia, goes even
further by examining specifically relational aspects of communicative events. He analyzes
turn-taking behavior in manager meetings, looking at who picks up after whom, and who
is addressed (2005). Gibson demonstrates that formal authority channels communicative
events effectively by making particular turn-taking sequences more likely than others.
Friendship among the managers, in contrast, opens up communicative possibilities,
allowing for a lot more variation.
In both of these instances, the separately measured social networks act as independent
factors influencing the communicative events taking place. McFarlands and Gibsons
studies offer indirect, but not direct, evidence for the core idea: that social ties and
networks exist only insofar as they govern the course of communication, and they change
over sequences of events. For this, we would have to look at the actual communication
process marking the relations and the identities in the network.
In his study of gang violence in Chicago, Andrew Papachristos (2009) argues that the
gangs identities and the relations between them are constructed in homicides. A gang
whose members kill a member of another gang is seen as powerful in the network and
able to dominate territory. The series of homicides is path-dependent: any homicide is a
reaction to previous homicides, be it as a direct revenge, or as a confirmation of status
difference. Similarly, Wouter de Nooy and Jan Kleinnijenhuis (2013) interpret political
attacks and support statements in an electoral campaign as reactions to previous attacks
and support. Both studies focus on highly visible events in macro-networks. A detailed
look at the gradual development and change in social relationships is still a desideratum.
On the conceptual side, things do not look better. While attentive to the role of micro-
events, Harrison White switches between different terms for social processes. In the 1992
edition of Identity and Control, White only writes of the control attempts of identities.
This sounds almost action theoretical. But his concept of action is more about change in
social structures, than about individuals bringing about this change. In and around the
2008 edition, White occasionally terms social micro-events interaction without a clear
conceptualization and without reference to the interactionist tradition. In 1995, White

introduced the notion of switchings (1995b, Godart and White 2010). Switching entails
the move of an identity from one network context to another or the changing of domains
in conversation. According to White, such switching brings turbulence into netdoms and
is therefore able to spark new socio-cultural constellations. Think of a new style emerging
at the intersection of different netdoms.
But what about change within networks and about reproduction of networks (and of
differences and separation between networks)? In a discussion of Niklas Luhmanns
theory, White and his co-authors (2007) write about communication as accounting for
the reproduction and stability of socio-cultural structures. However, these various
writings do not add up to an overall account of communicative events and their role in
networks. Whites concept of switching contributes to our understanding of network
processes. But the different conceptualizations and arguments meander around the
problem rather than solve it. We have to look elsewhere.
Charles Tillys formulations are more precise, referring to transactions making for
the emergence of social structures (see above, also Emirbayer 1997, p. 287). The concept
of transaction is distinctly interpersonal and brackets mental states and processes. But it
remains unclear how exactly social structures develop in transactions, other than the
relatively vague reference to story-telling. Ann Misches (2003) article switches between
the terms of communication, interaction, and practices. But she clarifies that commun-
ication involves a jointly constructed definition of the situation, that meanings are
inherently multivocal, unstable, and ambiguous, and that one of the tasks of discourse is
the construction of social relations (2003, p. 264). Like Gibson, she points to
conversation analysis as a suitable method for analyzing this process.
I build on these points to argue that social relations are themselves definitions of the
situations that are tentatively established and continuously renegotiated. This process is
best captured with Luhmanns concept of communication as a distinctively interpersonal
processing of meaning in the sequence of communicative events (see section 7).
Alternatively, we could pick up on Randall Collinss (2004) theory of interaction ritual
chains. Collins conceptualizes social relationships as building up in a process of mutual
entrainment flanked by the creation of emotional energy in the actors involved. This
theory draws on Erving Goffmans work and follows the interactionist tradition in
combining communicative and mental processes in the concept of interaction. Whatever
28 J.A. Fuhse
conceptualization we prefer, relational sociology has taken a turn not only to culture, but
also to communicative events as responsible for bringing about (tentatively and
provisionally) networks as socio-cultural structures.
6. Epistemology
In the following, I briefly discuss the epistemological stance of relational sociology. What
are the aims of relational sociology? And what are the underlying assumptions about the
nature of knowledge in the social sciences? It will not be possible to deal with these
important questions in detail here, especially since relational sociology has not spelled out
its epistemological stance yet. But relational sociology is subject to recurring attacks from
a critical realist perspective (e.g. Smith 2010, p. 220 ff.). Hopefully, a few basic points
suffice to stake the grounds of disagreement, and to point out the differences to other
perspectives.
How is relational sociology different from standard social network analysis? Stephen
Borgatti and Virginie Lopez-Kidwell (2011) distinguish between two ways of network
theorizing: theories of networks focus on tie formation, treating networks as the
dependent variable; and network theory deals with effects of networks, treating them as
an independent variable. While both of these perspectives are inherent in relational
sociology, the core ambition is different. Relational sociology aims at a refinement of
network research in the social sciences by asking: what are social networks really? White
looks for the phenomenological reality behind the measurement construct of networks,
and finds it in the mesh of stories relating identities. The second extension discussed
above goes even further and disaggregates social ties into communicative events. The
very building-blocks of network research are put into question. Networks do not consist
just of 1s and 0s in a matrix (or of lines between vertices), but of a complex social reality
of communicative processes establishing, reproducing, and modifying social relationships
as dynamic social constructions.
It is easy to claim that we have to dig further into the social fabric, and to ask for an
incorporation of culture, of networks, of agency, of resources, or of large-scale societal
structures (like the state) into social science models and empirical research. Predictably, a
young academic can make her name by writing an article: Bringing the Something-or-
other back in (Abbott 2001a, p. 16). It is much harder to demonstrate the actual
usefulness of this incorporation in our models and our research.
Relational sociology fares quite well in this regard. While Identity and Control can be
read as another attempt at grand theorizing, it is connected to empirical research in many
ways. White aims at a theoretical integration of many empirical studies. More
importantly, he (and his colleagues and students) informed and conducted impressive
research. Just look at the empirical research by Bearman, Breiger, Gibson, Gould,
Hillmann, Leifer, Lizardo, Martin, McFarland, McLean, Mische, Mohr, Padgett, Smith,
and Yeung published in the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological
Review, Social Forces, Social Networks, Poetics, etc. This connection between theoretical
argument and empirical research is particularly strong in relational sociology. Theoretical
arguments should resonate with empirical research (both in its methods and its results)
and this is relational sociologys primary criterion for truth.
Whites theory is better at triggering innovative research than at internal coherence
and consistency. This might have to do with his background in physics, mathematics, and
formal modeling. Whites work since 1990s is geared at combining algebra and
linguistics in the modeling of social structures, and that explains its idiosyncratic concepts
and perspective. In contrast to other theorists (including Collins), White does not build on
established sociological theories, and he shuns everyday vocabulary. The conceptualiza-
tions of identities, netdoms, switchings, disciplines, and control regimes may sound
weird. They are deliberately removed from everyday language coming from physics,
White does not expect social science vocabulary to match lay understandings.
Other relational sociologists deploy less specialized vocabulary. But overall, relational
sociology does not believe that everyday language is conducive to sound social scientific
explanations. For instance, it argues that network constellations cause things, and that
identities and their behavior result from their relational entanglement in stories. Mistrust
in language lies in the tradition of the early Wittgenstein (Janik and Toulmin 1996) and of
Karl Poppers ([1935] 2002) critical rationalism.4 According to Popper, theories and
scientific sentences in general can never arrive at true representations of the real world.
Instead, theories are internally coherent (logical) systems based on generally unprovable
assumptions that yield non-trivial expectations about empirical phenomena. I find this to
be a useful yardstick to measure relational sociology. As argued above, relational

sociologys connection to empirical research is quite good. There is room for
improvement with regard to coherence and consistency.
Much criticism is now directed against relational sociologys view of human actors
(Emirbayer and Goodwin 1994, Smith 2010, p. 220 ff.). Mustafa Emirbayer and Jeff
Goodwin (1994) argue that network research should take culture into account because
human actors possess agency, and therefore we have to pay attention to subjective
meaning in network accounts. This line of reasoning is picked up later by Emirbayer and
Mische (1998). The general argument goes back to the mostly British debate (around
Giddens and Archer) about agency as the human capacity to act differently than
determined by social forces, and to earlier arguments that sociology holds an over-
socialized view of actors. Stephan Fuchs counters:
That persons have free wills explains nothing by itself. If they do something, the fact that
they chose to do so but could have done something different adds little or nothing to our
understanding of their actions. [] Free will and agency are moral concessions, not social
facts. (Fuchs 2001b, p. 27)
The way I understand it, the issue here is not whether human beings can act in agentic
ways that are underdetermined by social forces. The question is rather whether stressing
human agency adds anything to social science models. Typical quantitative models
capture only relatively modest shares of variation in behavior (R-square values). But can
we explain more by pointing at agency, which is by definition not predictable from
social-contextual factors? We are not discussing the nature of social reality here, but the
relation between this reality and our models. Following critical rationalism, such models
simplify matters considerably in order to yield theoretical expectations that apply across a
number of very different cases and instances. The criticisms directed at relational
sociology claim that we should not oversimplify matters; in particular we should not
leave human agency out. Similarly, relational sociology faults structuralist network
analysis for ignoring culture. But the incorporation of culture has led to a wider
applicability and, in a few instances, to more refined models. Culture is not just about
individual differences in meaning, but about systematic differences for example between
categories or between social contexts and these systematic differences have been shown
30 J.A. Fuhse
to make a difference in networks (Bearman and Parigi 2004, Yeung 2005). The called-for
incorporation of agency, in contrast, still has to demonstrate its advantages in empirical
research.
These arguments are based on the conception of sociology following Emile Durkheim
([1895] 1982): the aim of sociology is to explain social facts from social facts. Social
facts designate regularities (not individual differences) such as suicide rates and belief
systems, or, in the case of social networks, their composition and structure. This
formulation is tied to a principle in the philosophy of science called Occams razor:
Franciscan scholastic William of Ockham argued in his writings that we should keep our
scientific models as simple as possible. In particular we should not include more entities
than necessary in a model. Occams razor is an integral component of the general
philosophy of science, including in the work of Wittgenstein and Popper. Relational
sociologys critic Christian Smith argues against Occams razor from the perspective of
critical realism:
the principle of parsimony [Occams razor; J.F.] must be balanced by the principle of
sufficient complexity. That means we ought to be willing to theorize with enough
complexity to capture the important features of the real world that we are trying to
understand. (Smith 2010, p. 12)
Again the problem is the relation between model and reality. According to critical
realism, there is not only a real world out there we can also know and capture its
important features. These fundamentally include human beings, in particular in the
social sciences. Critical rationalists and relational sociologists would not argue against the
assumption of a real world out there. We do argue against the idea that our models
somehow capture or match the real world. Scientific models are always constructions.
Their truth is only decided in the network of a scientific community by reference to
empirical results. Thus the basic foundations of our models on social systems, on
individual actors (and their decisions or consciousness), or on transactions and relations
(Tilly 2008, p. 26 ff.) cannot qualify as true or not-true. Following Popper, we are here on
the level of basic assumptions (axioms) that can only prove more or less fruitful in
empirical research.
There are other arguments (voiced by Smith, by Emirbayer and Goodwin, by Martin
(2011), and others), and I cannot deal with them adequately here. One argument claims
that it is morally imperative to adopt a humanist perspective that takes individuals and
their subjective meaning and dispositions serious. And we should not claim to be
categorically smarter than the subjects of our study by disregarding their first-person
perspectives. Another argument asks us to deploy everyday language in order not to
remove our accounts from lay understanding and criticisms. Both of these arguments are
difficult to deal with since they do evoke extra-scientific criteria that do not concern the
quality of our models in the sense of critical rationalism.
As for the moral stance, I would claim it possible to stick to your moral beliefs even
when acknowledging that scientific knowledge is relative, and even when individuals do
not feature as the basic building-blocks of our perspective. As for the language argument,
there is something to be said about accounts that are comprehensible to a wider public.
But if we do not see existing language as a carrier of truth we might look for new
vocabulary. And if we establish new concepts within our own discourse, they have the
tendency to diffuse into the wider public. Just think of the terms identity, gender, life-
world, social capital, or network and networking. However, linguistic structures

favor subject-centered accounts, and academic authors (including me) have a hard time at
dispensing acting individuals in their writing.
We have gotten accustomed to attributing actions and their consequences to
individuals (and their internal dispositions) over the last 300 years, developing an
action-theoretical vocabulary (Taylor 1989, Luhmann 1990, p. 107 ff.). This turn to the
individual corresponds with an increasingly complex social structure. We are now
enmeshed in a number of only partly overlapping socio-cultural contexts. This makes it
hard to see why somebody behaved in a certain way. Therefore we attribute the reasons to
an internal drive for action that is basically unforeseeable individual agency. This kind
of attribution fundamentally establishes accountability and responsibility; we can punish
somebody for crime, because the reason for the crime lies in the individual (and only
indirectly, if at all, in her social situation) (Feinberg 1965). Would it not be prudent to ask
what is happening through this communicative practice of attribution, rather than accept it
as an accurate description of reality?

From the perspective of relational sociology, the attribution of processes to
individuals makes for the construction of their identities in the form of story-telling
(Tilly 2002, pp. 8 f., 26 f.). This allows seeing actors as conforming to group standards
or deviating from them, as acting according to their position or not. Think of the
apparently simple observation: Harry arrived late for his date with Sue. This
formulation holds Harry responsible for his late arrival, and we can imagine how the
building-up of a relationship between Harry and Sue will be hindered. Harry will have
to explain that his car broke down, or that there was a family problem. But would he
not have come in time (in spite of whatever problems) if he really cared about Sue?
The agentic formulation Harry arrived late locates the reasons for observable
processes in peoples minds (or at least: in their responsibility); and this leads to
expectations about their future behavior. The phenomenological reality of the network
of identities results from such story-telling. Another consequence is that the network
can reward or punish particular behavior. Thus the participation of actors in networks is
conditioned.
Is this a realist or a constructivist perspective? Stephan Fuchs (2001a) argues for
constructivism and anti-essentialism. Social networks are clearly constructed in
relational sociology: identities and relations are not essential building-blocks, but realized
in communicative story-telling. More explicitly than other authors, Fuchs formulates
knowledge itself as a construction and only true within the scientific network producing
it. Charles Tilly (2008), in contrast, advocates relational realism or, better, transactional
realism, because relations are seen as concatenations of transactions (p. 7 f.). Even if
subject to social construction, transactions and relations are real in the sense of being
part of a social reality that can be observed by sociologists. And scientific knowledge is
not only relative because we can and have to test it against the observable reality out
there. In my view, these two positions are not contradicting each other. Of course
scientific knowledge is relative and itself as much a social construction as the social
reality it aims to grasp. Nevertheless, we have to get as close as possible to the processes
of construction at play. And this means that we deploy rigorous methods that allow for
theoretical expectations to be refuted. In this sense, we can and should adhere to a
combination of realism and constructivism.
32 J.A. Fuhse
7. Amendments: meaning and communication in networks

In this last section, I briefly sketch my particular version of relational sociology. I start
from the theoretical and empirical work around Harrison White, adding a few
amendments. These stem primarily from a transatlantic perspective that links Whites
relational sociology with various strands of sociological theory, in particular Niklas
Luhmanns theory of communication.
Meaning structure and communication patterns

Harrison White importantly distinguishes between networks as measurement constructs,
and as social reality. This draws attention to the steps necessary to translate social reality
into network matrices and graphs. In contrast to White, I argue that the reality of a
network has two sides: one is its phenomenological reality or meaning structure
(Fuhse 2009, Fuhse and Gondal 2015). Parts of this meaning structure are the meanings
of identities and relations, and the roles and categories adopted to structure the network.
Following White, we would speak here of the domain of the network (although it
remains unclear what exactly he subsumes under this concept). Some aspects of a
domain, however, would not be part of the meaning structure of a network: the meaning
structure does not include styles or languages, but only the aspects of meaning that
directly relate actors to each other. I find it preferable to distinguish between meaning
and culture. The concept of culture is narrower, referring to forms of meaning (values,
symbols, etc.) that are shared across a population not including meaning that pertains to
actors differently.
The second side of social network reality consists of regularities of communicative
events. For example, a group of authors more often cites each other than others in the
network of their academic specialty. First, we only observe the regularity of interaction
here. We would then ask ourselves whether this regularity is due to a particular
perspective adopted by the group, or whether the authors form a citation cartel or an
invisible college. This second step leads us to the meaning that makes for the observed
communication pattern. Meaning structure and regularities of communication are
intimately linked to each other (Fuhse 2009, p. 52 f.). The meaning structure consists
of the expectations about the behavior of the actors involved in relation to each other.
These expectations develop in the course of communication, and they structure
subsequent communication (see below).
Meaning structure and communication patterns are distinct features of social
networks. As in this example, the two do not correlate perfectly different meaning
structures could lead to the same patterns, and different patterns are compatible with one
particular meaning structure. For example, we can call a relationship friendship whether
we meet each other regularly or quite infrequently, whether we engage primarily in
intimate talk or in common activities. Furthermore, we deploy different methods to tackle
communication and meaning structure. Many non-reactive methods like the counting of
citations, co-membership in organizations, or the frequency of contact via e-mail or phone
only measure communication patterns. Qualitative and quantitative interviews usually ask
for the meaning that respondents attach to their ties. Also, the two aspects of social
networks are affected by different order principles (Fuhse 2009, p. 53 f.): social
categories and relationship frames become part of the meaning structure; structures of
opportunity for contact (membership in organization, proximity of residence) lead to an
increased probability of communication (Feld 1981).
Networks from communication

How exactly are meaning structure and communication patterns related? As argued
above, relational sociology still lacks a convincing and agreed-upon concept for the
micro-events making for the formation, stabilization, and change of social networks. My
basic proposition is to build relational sociology on Niklas Luhmanns ([1984] 1995)
concept of communication (p. 141 ff., 2002, p. 155 ff.). Social networks are then
structures of meaning that develop through the sequence of communicative events.
Niklas Luhmann conceptualizes communication as a self-referential process (like
other research strands such as conversation analysis or discourse analysis). Every
communicative event picks up on what was communicated previously, and it sets the
course for future communication. As in conversation analysis, every micro-event
tentatively establishes a definition of the situation, expectations that subsequent
micro-events have to build on or deal with. These expectations are not primarily located
in the minds of the actor (even if these certainly have to grasp what is communicated and
act accordingly). Rather, Luhmann views them as inscribed in the process of
communication. Meaning is processed both in psychic and in communicative process.

But Luhmann focuses on the meaning established in the sequence of communicative
events. He avoids inferring the subjective dispositions and processes of the actors
involved. This sounds counter-intuitive, but it makes for a better observability of micro-
events: their crucial features are to be found in the what and how of communication,
not in dispositions or mental states behind it. The concept of communication resembles
Tillys and Emirbayers transactions, and it encompasses Whites switchings.
Without going into details, we can use Luhmanns concept to show how commun-
ication develops, stabilizes, and constantly modifies (the meaning structure of) social
networks as relational expectations (Fuhse 2015). The meaning of a communicative event
lies not only in its content (its information). Communicative events are also attributed to
actors (as their utterances), which leads to expectations about their participation in
communication. This attribution can be done in story-telling (as in Tillys account), but it
is more often implicitly inscribed in the course of communication. Social networks now
emerge (and change) when communicative events lead to specifically relational
expectations: A asked B out for dinner not only because he likes to eat, but because he
is interested in B. This interpretation is part of the meaning of the communicative event.
Communication is routinely observed for cues of how actors stand toward each other,
resulting in expectations about the relationships between the actors involved. All of this
does not take place subjectively in a Luhmannian perspective, and it does not start from
actors as autonomous building-blocks. Rather, the actors with their dispositions and their
relationships between them are constructed in the course of communication.
Implications
As in the general stance of relational sociology (see above), this account is not intended
to map actual social processes realistically (that would be impossible). It is only a useful
perspective that allows us to see certain aspects of social processes and structures. This
perspective has a number of implications for the theory and the methods of relational
sociology:
(1) Social relationships can be conceptualized as autonomous systems of self-
referential communication (Fuhse 2002, p. 414 ff., 2013, 2015, Holzer 2006,
p. 102 f.). All communication in a relationship builds on previous communication
34 J.A. Fuhse
in the relationship. The meaning of the relationship is primarily defined in

communication, with mental processes flanking but not determining it (and
impossible to observe). The expectations built up in a relationship serve to
overcome the general uncertainty of communication by defining the range of
behavior appropriate between alter and ego.
(2) Relationships are not constructed from scratch. Rather they draw on available
cultural models for relationships, such as love, friendship, companionship,
or patronage (McLean 1998, Fuhse 2013). These relationship frames entail
specific expectations about the behavior of actors in a relationship, and about
what kinds of actors qualify for these relationships. Communication in the
relationship is free to select, adopt, and modify the relationship frames. In
general, we have to distinguish such relationships from relations that are not
necessarily structured by communication between the actors involved.
(3) If social relationships follow this general dynamic there is a fundamental
difference between social networks of expectations between actors and other
types of networks. For example, the cultural networks discussed in section 5

cannot similarly be seen as expectations developing between symbols or
concepts. Rather they develop structures of meaning that institutionalize over
long courses of communication, and that any particular communication can draw
on, but not modify. Cultural networks are much more inert, and they do not
spring from the need to structure uncertainty. Overall, we can distinguish three
kinds of networks in the social world (Leydesdorff 2007): (a) in communication
networks, communicative events relate back to previous communicative events;
(b) social networks consist of actors connected to each other in relational
expectations (developed in communicative events); (c) cultural networks are
concepts or other symbols linked to each other meaningfully in texts or
languages. These cultural networks develop only slowly over long sequences of
communicative events.
(4) The basic mechanism co-constituting actors and networks consists of the
attribution of communicative events to actors and their internal motivation (often
done in story-telling). In principle, communication can attribute communicative
events to a wide range of projection points. Currently, there are three general
types of entities culturally accepted as actors in the social world: individual
actors, corporate actors (e.g. organizations, administrative units, states), and
collective identities (social movements, gangs, etc.). Communication attributes
events to such entities to the extent that these are seen as coherently acting out of
internal decision processes.
(5) We cannot model networks of actants (including material objects) of Actor-
Network Theory (Latour 2005) analogously to social networks of individual,
corporate, or collective actors. Communicative events are rarely attributed to
objects, and therefore communication does not develop relational expectations
about the behavior of objects toward other actants. For example, a car is expected
to behave in the same way with different drivers.
(6) Distinguishing between communication patterns, the meaning structure of social
networks and cultural models allows for a reconceptualization of roles and
institutions (Fuhse 2012). Institutions stand for widely available cultural models
that communication draws on in order to frame situations and reduce uncertainty.
Particularly relational institutions are models for identities and relationships in a
network. These include the culturally variable rules for forming and identifying
actors (such as social movements) and relationship frames such as love and
friendship, but also categories like gender and ethnic descent, and the
expectations about the relations within and across the category. Such institutions
are routinely adopted to structure the communication and the relations in social
networks. But they do not determine network formation: communication is free to
pick up on a particular category or relationship frame, and to adhere to, modify, or
discard the expectations connected to them.
(7) Roles, in contrast, are the systematic bundles of relationships between positions
that we find in empirically observable networks. They can result from the
adoption of relational institutions. But they can also emerge endogenously in the
network, when communication in the network starts to treat actors differently and
to produce leaders and followers, or structural separation between two (or more)
densely connected group. If such role differentiation is typified, labeled, and
picked up in different network contexts, roles or categories can institutionalize to
widely available cultural models.

(8) Relational sociologys simultaneous regard for network structures and meaning
calls for the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods (Fuhse and
Mtzel 2011). The well-established statistical analyses of ego-centric networks
and formal network analysis have to be complemented with interpretive methods
such as content analysis, participant observation, ethnography, and the like.
The proposed switch to communicative events makes another change in methods
necessary: from methods that construct relationships and meaning as relatively stable to
methods that observe the changing patterns of communication and the dynamic
construction of relational meaning. This is in line with the recent turn toward time and
dynamics in sociology (Abbott 2001b), and it calls for a combination of network research
with methods that tackle the dynamics of communication and meaning construction like
conversation analysis and sociolinguistics. Examples of such research can be found in the
studies by Gibson (2005), McFarland et al. (2013), and Mtzel (2002).
8. Finale: challenges and differences

The time has come for a provisional assessment of the relational sociology developed by
and around Harrison White. I summarize here the basic arguments and the overall stance
of the approach. More importantly, I formulate four fundamental challenges that relational
sociology faces. These appear in the form of questions with various possible answers that
are formulated by different authors. This allows me to demarcate the differences of this
version of relational sociology to other versions, from Pierpaolo Donatis relational theory
of society and Mustafa Emirbayers social theory of networks to Nick Crossleys
alternative theoretical foundation of sociological network research. So here are the four
challenges:
What are social networks?

This is the most basic and general challenge of relational sociology: Harrison Whites
theory starts from this question, and many other relational sociologists similarly
confront it (Collins, Crossley, Emirbayer, Fuchs, Tilly, me). Whites answer is that social
networks are phenomenological realities of stories relating identities to each other. And
36 J.A. Fuhse
these meaningful constructions make for the network patterns observable by researchers.
Following Charles Tilly, standard stories attribute complex events and processes to actors,
thereby constructing their identities and relating them to each other. My own take on
social networks builds up on these contributions. I view social networks as (a) patterns of
communication and (b) bundles of relational expectations about behavior of actors toward
each other. These expectations develop over the course of communication, and they
govern it in turn. These various authors conceptualize networks as structures of meaning.
But we do not locate this meaning of social networks in subjective minds. Rather, social
structures are primarily constructed in the communication taking place between actors.
Other authors give slightly different answers. For Mustafa Emirbayer (Emirbayer and
Goodwin 1994) and Nick Crossley (2011), social networks and relations consist of the
subjective meaning that actors attach to them. Similar arguments can be found in Gary
Alan Fine and Sherryl Kleinmans (1983) symbolic interactionist conceptualization of
networks and in Randall Collinss (2004) account of social relationships developing in
interaction ritual chains. With their roots in pragmatist thinking, all of these approaches
see actors as primarily individual, and have to conceptualize corporate or collective actors
(and the networks between them) as deriving from networks of individuals. In the
perspective adopted here, all actors are constituted in communicative construction.
Networks of collective or corporate actors just as networks of individuals consist of
communicative expectations and regularities in communication and not of individuals
or other actors as unitary building-blocks. In a way, this is similar to Actor-Network
Theory which sees networks as material and meaningful entanglements of actants (Mtzel
2009). However, Actor-Network Theory does not distinguish between social and material
actants, and offers only a vague account of social relationships and networks.
Another difference lies in the epistemological stance: As in Christian Smiths critique,
we find realist-ontological arguments in Emirbayers formulations, mixed with more
analytical concerns. As argued in section 6, the relational sociological tradition around
Harrison White is primarily interested in theoretical arguments conducive to empirical
network research. Smith seems to be more interested in a realist theoretical apparatus.
The approaches of Emirbayer (leaning more to realist theory) and Crossley (more to
analytical concepts) are to be found between these two poles. Actor-Network Theory and
Stephan Fuchss work pursue a different goal: to describe the actual construction of social
structures, but without recourse to individuals and without relating to the structuralist
methods of formal network analysis. In contrast, Pierpaolo Donati (2011) postulates that
social relations and networks constitute a social reality sui generis. A relation includes
subjective feelings and aims as well us cultural norms, but is more than all that: a social
fact emerging from reciprocal actions (2013, p. 42). Donati combines the network
concept with arguments from various systems theories in his almost philosophical
description of society. But he remains somewhat vague about what networks are; and he
does not draw on the tradition of empirical network research.5
We can roughly locate the various relational sociological authors in a two-
dimensional space as depicted in Figure 2. The vertical dimension represents whether
the authors adopt individual realist assumptions and claim that social phenomena have to
be modeled with recourse to individual dispositions and psychic processes, or whether
they see the social world as resulting from construction in supra-individual communica-
tion process. The second dimension ranges from approaches that advance a purely
theoretical description of the social world, to theories mainly geared at providing
analytical tools, in particular for network research. The individual positions of the authors
individualist realism
Hedstrm Smith
Emirbayer
Coleman
Crossley
Collins
analycal Dpelteau pure
tools Mische theory
Dona
White Fuchs
Leydesdor Fuhse Tilly
communicave construcvism
Figure 2. Relational sociologies by ontological and epistemological stance.
on these two dimensions are obviously up for debate, and they can only be assessed by
qualitative judgment. Often enough, the same author adopts different positions in
different writings. With these caveats, I find it useful to stake differences on these two
dimensions.
What are and how can we analyze micro-events in social networks?

The second challenge consists of the modeling of the interplay between social networks
and micro-events both on the theoretical plane and in empirical research. Relational
sociology around Harrison White gradually arrives at a concept of social networks as
structures that arise and change over the course of communicative events, and that govern
these events in turn (section 5). The precise conceptualization of these events, however, is
still an open question. Mustafa Emirbayer, Charles Tilly, and Franois Dpelteau (2008)
refer to transactions as supra-individual processing of meaning. The implications of this
notion remain somewhat vague. Alternatively, authors like Peter Hedstrm deploy Max
Webers concept of social action. But then we are close to individualist approaches one
of the strands opposed to the relational perspective in Emirbayers Manifesto (1997) and
by Charles Tilly (2008, p. 26 ff.). A focus on dyadic rather than individual processes lies
closer to the logic of network research with ties or relations as the basic units of social
structures.
Gary Alan Fine and Sherryl Kleinman, Nick Crossley, and Randall Collins pick up on
symbolic interactionisms core concept of interaction which fuses the communicative
and the psychic processing of meaning. Harrison White alternates between various
concepts of micro-events, but he points out the importance of one specific type of event:
switchings between different netdoms. My own perspective builds on Niklas
Luhmanns concept of communication (connected to Watzlawick, Goffman, and
conversation analysis). In this account, the meaning structure of social networks
develops from the attribution of communicative events to individual actors, resulting in
relational expectations about the behavior of these actors toward each other.
38 J.A. Fuhse
How are culture and networks connected?

Relational sociology around Harrison White focuses on the interweaving of networks and
meaning. Stories and identities form part of the relational meaning constructed and
negotiated in micro-events. The third challenge is to connect this micro-construction of
meaning in networks to the wider repertoire of symbolic forms available and shared in
large-scale social contexts. In this sense, we speak of class cultures, or of national
cultures and Western culture. These notions may be fuzzy, but they designate that a lot
forms of meaning are institutionalized and applied across a large array of micro-networks
of interaction. How does the communication in social networks relate to these wider
horizons of culture?
According to Ann Mische (2003), both networks and cultural forms are generated in
communication (p. 262). King-To Yeung (2005) demonstrates that different group
cultures lead to divergent network constellations culture to a certain extent governs
the formation of social network. In particular, the expectations tied to relationship frames
(like love and friendship) and to social categories (like gender and ethnic descent) make
for a particular ordering of communication in networks. They are institutionalized models
for relationships and networks that are taken up in network processes, without
determining them (section 7). Here Paul DiMaggios notion of institutions is of particular
importance (section 5). Following John Mohr and Stephan Fuchs, we can view culture
itself as a network with meaningful connections between different concepts, symbols, etc.
But as yet we lack a clear model of how cultural forms are institutionalized and deployed
in social networks, and of how micro-processes in social networks interact with the
diffusion in mass media and in large-scale bureaucratic and economic structures. This
interplay needs to be investigated further in order to arrive at a full relational account of
socio-cultural phenomena.
What is the relation between social networks and societal spheres like politics or the
economy?
The above discussion on culture points to the necessity of situating social networks in a
wider macro-context. By now there are a number of important studies on networks in
societal fields like art, politics, science, and the economy. All of these have to take the
respective field for granted and do not really tell us anything about its structure and its
boundaries. The field concept in the tradition of Bourdieu and neo-institutionalism
(DiMaggio 1986, Powell et al. 2005, Bottero and Crossley 2011, Martin 2011, p. 268 ff.,
Fligstein and McAdam 2012) suggests itself for a combination with network research. It
focuses on the relations in the field and on the rules (institutions) governing them,
according importance to both networks and meaning. However, the notion of field by and
large assumes the actors in the field and its boundary as given.
If we want to arrive at a comprehensive model of the social world, we probably have
to turn to systems theory. Niklas Luhmann, Talcott Parsons, and others deal extensively
with these issues. They argue for the meaningful construction of systems like the
economy or politics on the basis of media of exchange like money and power. But they
are not overly concerned with relations of actors within their systems. A combination of
network research with systems theory would have to reconcile very different logics of
argumentation. Systems theories do not show much interest in relations. Network
research only deals with relations so far. Systems theories are examples of grand
theorizing and far removed from empirical evidence. Network research does not find
theory useful unless geared at and connected to empirical evidence.
Pierpaolo Donati (2011) combines networks and systems thinking in his version of
relational sociology, but without the strong connection to network research as around
White. Stephan Fuchs views systems as special cases of networks that draw a symbolic
boundary around themselves and increase their internal connectivity (2001a, p. 272 ff.).
John Padgetts account of large-scale societal structures shows some similarities with
Luhmanns thinking (Padgett and Powell 2012, p. 31 ff.). He focuses on their
reproduction and their dynamics, but once again has to take the boundary separating
different spheres of society for granted. Harrison White introduces the concepts of
disciplines, control regimes, and realms to model meso- and macro-structures that
social networks build on or have to deal with (2008b, pp. 63 ff., 177 ff., 220 ff.). He even
discusses Luhmanns functional subsystems critically but sympathetically (2008b, p. 237
ff., Fontdevila et al. 2011). Unfortunately, these formulations leave the impression of a
conceptual struggle rather than a coherent theoretical account of the interplay between
networks and large-scale structures.
In my view, relational sociology needs a combination of the field and the systems
concepts for the theoretical modeling of spheres of society like politics, the economy, and
science. The process of communication is the starting point, leading to expectations both
with regard to relations among the actors involved (networks) and to expectations about
the content of communication. Here, different spheres of communication emerge
historically with the establishment of generalized media of communication like political
power, money, law, and scientific truth. These media of communication are generalized
in that they apply across relations and situations, coordinating communication even in the
absence of social relationships. For example, money allows for economic exchange to
take place in stores and markets that are in principle accessible for everybody, and no
longer embedded in the feudal structure of personalized obligations. Similarly, political
power is supposed to lie with formal positions (like mayors or members of parliament),
not with individuals. And scientific truth ideally holds true for everybody.
Streams of communicative events will then have to deal with expectations in
social networks and with impersonal expectations and formal positions from various
spheres of society (systems). Their complex intermingling makes for turbulence both
in networks and in systems. This rough sketch calls for an empirical and conceptual
analysis of the interplay of networks and systems in the process of communication,
rather than subsuming networks under systems or vice versa. Open questions include
the juggling of systemic expectations in personal relationships (see, for example,
Zelizer 2005), the role of social networks in presumably impersonal societal systems,
and many more.
Overall, with these challenges, with many loose threads and open ends, but also with
non-trivial theoretical insights, with its strong connection between theorizing and
empirical research and to other strands of research like neo-institutionalism or the
contentious politics approach, and with robust research findings, the relational sociology
around Harrison White constitutes one of the most exciting research strands in
contemporary social sciences. If anything, the debate between different versions of
relational sociology should yield important advances in our network models of the
social world.
40 J.A. Fuhse
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Pierpaolo Donati and John Levi Martin for helpful comments.
Funding
The preparation of this paper was supported by a Heisenberg fellowship of the German Research
Association DFG [FU 714/3-1].
Notes
1. A published version of the catnet concept first appeared in Charles Tillys theoretical treatise on
social movements and revolutions (1978, p. 62 ff.). Tilly argues that social movements mobilize
to the degrees that the underlying networks are densely connected (netness) and share a
category signifying their commonality (catness).
2. In 2008, White published a thoroughly rewritten second edition of Identity and Control,
summarizing the recent developments in his theorizing (2008b).
3. For relational sociology, Paul DiMaggios neo-institutionalism (DiMaggio and Powell 1983) is
of particular importance (see section 5). DiMaggio was one of the first in the United States to
pick up on Bourdieus work, and to link it to social networks.
4. These few sentences on the diverging epistemological stances of Wittgenstein and Popper are
sketchy and biased. I plan on a fuller elaboration of how to combine them, and what this means
for relational sociology elsewhere.
5. I do not see Pierre Bourdieus theory of social structures as an approach of relational sociology
as defined here. He focuses on objective relations determined by the distribution of various
types of capital. Bourdieu even faults network analysis for being overly focused on actual,
observable relationships (Bottero 2009).
Notes on Contributors
PD Dr. Jan A. Fuhse completed his doctorate in sociology at Universitt Stuttgart in 2007 with a
study on Italian migrants in Germany. He did a post-doc at Columbia University (2007 to 2008) and
worked as an assistant professor at the University of Bielefeld. Since 2013, he is a Heisenberg
fellow at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Research interests include theory of social networks,
communication, political sociology.
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Theorizing social networks: the relational sociology of and

Institute of Social Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

This paper offers an overview of relational sociology as developed by and around

networks, conceptualizing them as real social structures interwoven with meaning.

2. Precursors: catnets, structural equivalence and blockmodeling

3. Networks and their cultural domains

and how they are connected to networks:

4. The network of relational sociology

Figure 1. Network of acknowledgments among relational sociology authors.

for even more attribution of creativity and innovation. In academic discourse, an

5. Extensions: culture and communicative events

identifying systematic roles of bundles of categories (1994). He thereby classifies

conceptualization and without reference to the interactionist tradition. In 1995, White

be a useful yardstick to measure relational sociology. As argued above, relational

world, social capital, or network and networking. However, linguistic structures

as an accurate description of reality?

7. Amendments: meaning and communication in networks

Meaning structure and communication patterns

Networks from communication

communication. Meaning is processed both in psychic and in communicative process.

in the relationship. The meaning of the relationship is primarily defined in

types of networks. For example, the cultural networks discussed in section 5

widely available cultural models.

8. Finale: challenges and differences

What are social networks?

Figure 2. Relational sociologies by ontological and epistemological stance.

What are and how can we analyze micro-events in social networks?

How are culture and networks connected?

DiMaggio, Paul, 1986. Structural analysis of organizational fields: a blockmodel approach.

American journal of sociology, 98, 12591319.

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