1992 Reviews

Review of Social Structures: A Network Approach. Edited by Barry Wellman and S. D. Berkowitz. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988

Bearman, Peter Shawn

Structural analysis has been around now for some time, and, as those who work with social networks know, the field is characterized by a lot of methodological sophistication. Unfortunately, the substantive payoffs from the methodological advances have been less visible. As Barry Well- man and S. D. Berkowitz, the editors of Social Structures, note, the new structuralists need to show not only that they can do things technically but also that there is a point in doing them. The goal of this book is to demonstrate that the structuralist approach can yield the necessary sub- stantive payoffs to justify the claims advanced in its favor. In some of the papers here, real progress on this front is evident.