Mapping civil society with social network analysis: Methodological possibilities and limitations

Abstract

This paper explores the possibility of using social network analysis and visualization as a tool for qualitative research in human geography. The approach uses formal network analysis in concert with ethnographic research methods. Specifically, we take a performative approach to network analysis that sees network visualization as a process that produces space for research. Using networks of civil society organizations as our example, this paper highlights the debates over what social network analysis allows and omits, focusing in particular on issues related to flows, power, boundary demarcation and abstraction. From a methodological perspective, much can be lost when the conceptual and theoretical arguments about networks are applied to the material and embodied practices that constitute network relations. Nevertheless, the formal analysis of such networks can provide a representation of relationships at a moment in time that can help to both express those relationships and to open new questions that can be explored using other methods. Just as abstraction is used in an iterative process to move between empirical evidence and conceptual and theoretical arguments, the representation of networks can be part of a methodological approach that moves between the representation of relationships and the ways that various agents express, experience, and remake those relationships. Using the example of research on NGOs and civil society organizations promoting citizenship for young people in divided societies, we explore the utility – and limitations – of working in the liminal space of formal network analysis and more ethnographic approaches.