Marks 2018, Social Network Research in Africa

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African Affairs, 1–17

doi: 10.1093/afraf/ady067

© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved

RESEARCH NOTE SOCIAL NETWORK RESEARCH IN AFRICA ZOE MARKS* AND PATRYCJA STYS

ABSTRACT Social network approaches (SNA) have much to offer for the study of African politics. This research note explores the tensions and benefits of using social networks as metaphor or as method, and highlights the types of questions network research can address. We discuss sources of network data, key features of the graphical perspective and basic vocabulary, and the difference between analyzing individual networks and full systems. Three SNA concepts—centrality, brokerage, and multilevel networks— indicate theoretic spaces for qualitative and quantitative synergies. The note also raises practical considerations and ethical challenges for conducting network research in fieldwork settings, drawing on a collaborative project in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. In conclusion, we encourage layering disciplines and mixing methods to more fully understand how networks shape social life in Africa.

SOCIAL NETWORK RESEARCH SEEMS TO BE in a state of perpetual renaissance. From the late 1950s when anthropologists began vigorously documenting urban social structures alongside kinship diagrams,1 to contemporary analyses of how people sell mobile phone top-up south of the Sahara,2 its ability to link structure and agency feels perennially *Zoe Marks (zoe_marks@hks.harvard.edu) is a Lecturer of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University. The author gratefully acknowledges valuable feedback on earlier drafts of the manuscript and related research from the editors and two anonymous reviewers; generous colleagues Cassy Dorff, Anders Themnér, and Erica Chenoweth; project collaborators Paul Nugent and Christine Bell; and Congo experts whose roles and responsibilities are detailed on the project Technical Brief (available from the lead author), but whom for security precautions are not named herein. This research was funded by the ESRCDFID Poverty and Conflict project (Poverty Alleviation Research Grant es/m009130/1) and the Political Settlements Research Programme (www.politicalsettlements.org; a consortium of five organizations supported by UK Aid), Department for International Development, for purposes of alleviating of poverty; nothing herein represents the views of the funders. Patrycja Stys is a Research Officer at the Center for Public Authority and International Development at the London School of Economics. 1. Elizabeth Colson, ‘Social control and vengeance in Plateau Tonga society’, Africa 23, 3 (1953), pp. 199–212. 2. Laura Mann and Elie Nzayisenga, ‘Sellers on the street: The human infrastructure of the mobile phone network in Kigali, Rwanda’, Critical African Studies 7, 1 (2015), pp. 26–46.

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