Abstract
A certain type of young scholar will breathe a sigh of relief when they read Paul McLean’s excellent overview Culture in Networks and they feel that important sense of having found an intellectual home. This is a book that succinctly summarizes the history and main contours of a subfield that has often been folded into either social network analysis or cultural sociology; but imperfectly so, because it is not really either of these, or perhaps because it is both (sort of). Scholars doing the type of work covered in McLean’s survey of the literature, when asked, “what is your research area?” and trying to articulate something beyond the “networks and culture” refrain, might say something like “I study how people form ties and influence each other, and how categories, schema, beliefs, etc., shape and are shaped by such processes—oh, and sometimes I study the network-like properties of discourse as well,” to which the scholar would risk getting the quite reasonable response, “oh, you mean you study all of sociology?” Well, yes, and no.
Of course, most scholars in this area don’t do all of the things McLean covers; but a surprising number actually do, and, more importantly, McLean helps make clear why these topics are connected for good theoretical and methodological reasons. McLean does a superb job in defining the subfield in a way that embraces its inherent substantive breadth and theoretical depth, tracing its theoretical lineage, areas of inquiry, and methodological approaches, while at the same time showing its cohesive core and unifying questions. What at first may appear an overly squishy research area to the uninitiated, or simply an excuse to not commit to a more substantively anchored research agenda, is shown to be a vibrant “invisible college” of its own with ongoing lines of inquiry building on prior efforts, containing unresolved puzzles ripe for future research trajectories.
McLean begins by separately conceptualizing networks (a relatively straightforward task) and then culture (a necessarily more difficult one), each with an eye to the necessity of the other in understanding a wide array of social phenomena. Thus, from the outset, the book powerfully argues that those seeking “pure” structural or cultural approaches are missing key central organizing dualities of social life. The majority of the book is then devoted to chapters showing a number of ways that culture and networks ideal-typically interrelate.
Although the title contains the somewhat obtuse preposition “in,” the breadth is more than this implies. A large amount of work in this area concerns how networks are “pipes” or “channels” or “hardware” for the incubation, propagation, and spread of culture, which McLean covers as Culture through Networks; but McLean shows how such metaphors are “deceptively clear” and uses several other prepositions to get at the depth and nuance of the structure-culture linkages: Networks from Culture (and vice versa), and Networks of Culture. Including this final topic shows McLean’s truly catholic approach to the topic, by (rightfully in my view) including in the subfield those scholars using formal methods of cultural analysis—that is, network-type approaches to examine texts, institutional discourse, and so forth.
The empirical topics range from relatively straightforward network studies of innovation diffusion to cutting-edge work in computational linguistics, covering numerous substantive areas including social movements, the sociology of science, and digital media. But McLean continually returns to the uniting principle that relations among social entities are the proper basis of understanding society, and network analysis is a formalization of this principle and not an end in itself. In short, Culture in Networks is an unapologetically sociological account of structure and culture. In this regard, the book stands apart from recent efforts attempting to introduce and give overviews of “network science” in ways that tend to reify social structures by discussing their properties alongside those from networks of DNA, transportation systems, and computers; or those that tend to reduce culture to what you can scrape online. McLean is careful to properly situate the study of online social network platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) as an important but recent branch in this line of work that has considerable potential for investigating generic social processes, rather than as atheoretical data science.
If there is a shortcoming to Culture in Networks, it is that it is almost too succinct. I took minor issue with what were undoubtedly some conscious omissions (e.g., cognitive and structural anthropology), and I would have appreciated even greater depth in a few areas, as well as perhaps a longer and stronger conclusion that pointed toward future directions. But this is akin to seeing a great band give an amazing performance that you wished were longer (of course you did!) and missing a song or two on your personal favorites list. Although the strengths of pithy organization far outweigh the problems, I hope its ease-of-use, relative brevity, and wide coverage will not discourage readers from seeing the central theoretical point—namely, the great value in sociologists’ continuing to chart the course between the Scylla and Charybdis of “pure” structural and cultural approaches.
As a cultural object, Culture in Networks is itself a reflection of a growing social cohesion among scholars, and I suspect it will help to further that cohesion. For scholars already enmeshed in the subfield, Culture in Networks will provide a wonderful sourcebook with review-like breadth, both comprehensive and current. The text will be useful for clarifying a number of projects and situating one’s current work. However, I think Culture in Networks will find its widest distribution through various course syllabi, including for those who want to use the text in undergraduate and graduate-level courses on this particular subfield, or as a way to augment courses in networks and culture. Students will appreciate this work for its clarity and purpose, and a few will undoubtedly trace their future research trajectories back to having read it.