University of South Florida Scholar Commons Anthropology Faculty Publications Anthropology 1-2011 Anthropologist View on Social Network Analysis and Data Mining Alvin W. Wolfe University of South Florida, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/ant_facpub Part of the Anthropology Commons Scholar Commons Citation Wolfe, Alvin W., "Anthropologist View on Social Network Analysis and Data Mining" (2011). Anthropology Faculty Publications. 8. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/ant_facpub/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Anthropology at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Anthropology Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SOCNET (2011) 1:3–19 DOI 10.1007/s13278-010-0014-4 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Anthropologist view of social network analysis and data mining Alvin W. Wolfe Received: 14 July 2010 / Accepted: 2 August 2010 / Published online: 6 October 2010 Ó Springer-Verlag 2010 Abstract An anthropologist shares with the ‘‘SNA and systems. He concludes with hope that as improved methods data mining community’’ his own anthropological per- of data mining and network analysis are developed, other spective framed during more than five decades of network anthropologists and social scientists will be able to measure thinking about a broad range of anthropological problems. the evolution of supranational sociocultural systems that For 50 years he has viewed all people, things, and ideas in involve both states and multinational corporations. dynamic relationships. That perspective is a network per- spective and at the same time anthropological, combining ethnographic, historical, holistic, and comparative views. It 1 Introduction is valuable and beneficial to the community of scholars who use network analysis to try to understand what is When editor Reda Alhajj suggested that I prepare an article going on, what went on before, and what the future pros- for this first issue of SNAM journal, I thought first about an pects are. As an anthropologist, his interest is more in the academic history of social network analysis, something like wholes generated by network linkages—systems of I attempted to do for anthropology in the first issue of households, bands, lineages, communities, corporations, Social Networks (‘‘The Rise of Network Thinking in governments—than in the individual persons linked. Even Anthropology,’’ 1978) or as Jeff Johnson did, also for now, when personal network ‘‘communities’’ are getting so anthropology, in Advances in Social Network Analysis in much attention network analysis can clarify the more 1994, or something along the lines that Linton Freeman complex wholes such as multinational corporations and (2004) did for the entire field of network analysis in 2004 supranational systems. Those important entities and the in The Development of Social Network Analysis (2004). problems they represent should not be left to economists Ultimately, I have not done anything like those but rather and politicians. Concepts considered include system evo- have tried to share with the ‘‘SNA and data mining com- lution and increasing complexity; anthropological views of munity’’ my own anthropological perspective framed dur- transactions, relations, modes of transactions, spheres of ing more than six decades of network thinking about a transactions in multicentric economies, complexity across broad range of anthropological problems. the full range of embedded networks—material, biological, Since 1960 I have viewed all people, things, and ideas in and sociocultural. Social network analysis can help to dynamic relationships. That perspective is a network per- define systems at various levels of integration, both within spective and at the same time anthropological, combining communities and in the widest conceivable supranational ethnographic, historical, holistic, and comparative views. It level. Techniques such as regular equivalence and block- is valuable and beneficial to the community of scholars who modeling are useful in sorting the subsystems of complex use network analysis to try to understand what is going on, what went on before, and what the future prospects are. As an anthropologist, I have always been interested more & A. W. Wolfe ( ) in the wholes generated by network linkages—systems of Department of Anthropology, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Avenue, SOC107, Tampa, FL 33620-8100, USA households, bands, lineages, communities, corporations, e-mail: [email protected] governments—than in the individual persons linked. Even 123 4 A. W. Wolfe now, when personal network ‘‘communities’’ are getting so of the vastly changing world by the use of new advances in much attention I continue to try to use network analysis to mathematics and in the technology of electronic data pro- better understand the more complex wholes such as multi- cessing, anthropologists seem to have taken a different national corporations and supranational systems. Those direction that leaves network analysis to others. Just as we important entities and the problems they represent should anthropologists were poised to use network models to not be left to economists and politicians! describe and explain, after the fact, remarkable, dramatic, Believing that everything we observe has a network evolutionary changes such as the agricultural ‘‘revolution’’ structure—or can be better understood using a network per- (from bands to tribes to villages), the political evolution spective—I have found myself using ‘‘network perspective’’ from tribal organization to chiefdoms, the urban ‘‘revolu- or ‘‘network thinking’’ in all that I have surveyed during tion’’ from small settlements loosely organized in ‘‘aceph- 60 years of anthropology applied to all sorts of subjects alous’’ societies to state organization around urban centers. including ethnographic studies of hunters and gatherers in the A crucial aspect of the process of cultural and social Congo, studiesofneocolonialism in Africa, studiesofhousing, evolution has been the development of ever ‘‘higher’’ employment and urban migration in America, applications of levels of integration, what anthropologists tend to call, in anthropology to health and human services generally, and the order of their development, bands, villages, tribes, trying to understand the evolution of complex systems. chiefdoms, and states. ‘‘Network’’ tends to be in the title of whatever I write about. As these formations developed, beginning with aborig- Examples include Applications of network models to drug inal bands, the numbers of people organized and the abuse treatment programs (Wolfe 1980a, b); The Uses of complexity of their organization obviously increased. Network Models in Health and HumanServices (Wolfe 1981); Clearly that has had methodological implications. The Network models of the urban environment (Wolfe 1984); anthropologist studying people in bands could, in a few Network Thinking in Peace and Conflict Studies (Wolfe years, know personally every member of the society. 2004); Network Perspectives on Communities (Wolfe 2007). Obviously that is not the case for larger societies with Both Johnson in 1994 and Linton in 2004 recognized the urban populations. Understanding what is going on at those contribution of early anthropologists to the early origins of levels of integration is crucial to understanding not only the network analysis—its prehistory, as Linton says, and the process of evolution but the maintenance of some kind of metaphorical stage as Johnson dubbed it. Johnson (1994) regularity when the society is operating with a number of reported that prior to 1970 three of the top five scholars subsystems at the lower levels. perceived to be most influential in ‘‘the social network After a 100 years of over generalizing about evolution community’’ were anthropologists. Strikingly, by 1988, many anthropologists have given up trying to explain how according to Hummon and Carley (1993), only one these increasingly complex systems came into being. I anthropologist was in the list of the top ten social network think the use of network models and network analysis can scholars, while sociologists dominated the field. be of great help. Unfortunately, my favorite discipline of anthropology has More than 60 years ago Steward (1951) presented a not moved as rapidly in this direction as I had expected when clear structural and processual model of the relations I ventured the guess in 1978 that although network thinking among these levels of organization: had already shown a dramatic rise since the 1950s, it would ‘‘In the growth continuum of any culture, there is a really soar in the next quarter-century. I thought that would succession of organizational types which are not only be the case largely because much of the weighty burden of increasingly complex but which represent new data collection and data analysis was being lifted from us by emergent forms’’ (1951, p. 379). ever more rapid electronic data processing (Wolfe 1978, p. 61). While some of that burden was lifted, anthropologists ‘‘The concept is fairly similar to that of organiza- in great numbers still did not turn to the mathematics that is tional levels in biology. In culture, simple forms, such required to take advantage of those developments. Further- as those represented by the family or band, do not more, and this was important to me, the growing complexity wholly disappear when a more complex