From Network to Class?

Towards a More Complex Conception of Connection and Sociability

This paper looks at reasons why older notions of sociality such as culture, community or group have been replaced by the concept of networks, and asks what the analytical gains of this development might be. Building upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted with foreign African businessmen and women employed in Johannesburg's tertiary sector, the author argues that the network approach is too narrow a way for conceiving the linkages and connections between individuals.

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