Abstract

By the twenty-first century, the “network” emerged as one of the most prominent ontologies for the social. The network simultaneously serves a potent metaphor for relationships among individuals, a platform for enacting these relations, and a set of analytic Tools for analyzing these interactions. Despite its current omnipresence, the Social network has its roots in the discipline of Psychology, which shapes the assumptions about individuals and their relations deployed by network analysts. This chapter briefly traces the History of social network analysis in Psychology and closely related social sciences. It introduces a few core Concepts from SNA as well as the major measures of Centrality used. Finally, an Analysis of the institutional affiliations of the earliest presidents of American Psychological Association illustrates how SNA can illuminate the dynamics of Science as a social Practice.