Seeking to explore the ways in which multi-dimensional power may be deployed within a spatially defined place needs an interrogation of place-based statecraft. The paper presents some of the forms of capital in play in Ambridge mapped using Social Network Analysis (SNA) It argues that the extant matriarchal structure of Aldridges/Archers can be challenged by Kinship structures emphasising the weak ties, or hinges between the major cliques/clans and that within the knowledge economy Ed's multiple contractual connections make him 'King of Ambridge'

1. THE SMALL WORLDS OF AMBRIDGE
POWER, NETWORKS & ACTANTS
Dr Nicola M. Headlam @networknicola
Academic Archers 2 session on Power
Relations
Saturday 18th February 2017

2. PAPER STRUCTURE
• Small Worlds of Ambridge, Power Networks and
Actants
• Conceptual:
• Layering Dimensions of Place-based power
• Networks & Deep structures
• Empirical: It takes a village
• Current matriarchal structure and cliques
• Emerging contractual and brokerage structure
• Intimate network
• Scenarios: Ambridge 2037
• Research results from exploring consequences of the
dimensions of place based and networked power in
Ambridge
• Casting mind 20 years hence – how might the
network power have shifted?
• Scenario 1: Archers and Aldridges (status quo)
• Scenario 2: recombining the network (brokerage
power)
• Conclusion

3. DIMENSIONS OF POWER

4. PLACE-BASED
STATECRAFT
• Who/whom and where – spatial political
economy
• Frequency of interaction:
territoriality, relationality,
propinquity
• Affect sentiment, kinship, trust
• Scholars posit that tracing who holds power
under plural governance forms require that
attention be paid to the multi-dimensional
factors concerning how people interact.
• Power according to this account may be
wielded as numerous and overlapping forms of
embodied capital following Pierre Bourdieu.
• Symbolic and cultural capital may be as defining as
economic status,
• even erotic capital has been posited as an explanatory
frame for understanding differentiation within social
structure.

5. A MULTIGENERATIONAL VIEW OF
INEQUALITY
• Social scientists talk (with varying degrees of rigor) about different forms of capital:
for example, physical, financial, human, social, and occupational. It is useful to think
about some of these forms of capital in terms of their perishability. That is, once they
exist, how long do they keep? A key potential multigenerational effect works through
great wealth amassed in a single lifetime but passed on from generation to
generation. The accumulation of a stock of physical and financial capital in one
generation takes a family out of the middle-class mode of wealth accumulation and
transmission. For the contemporary middle class, wealth accumulates in gradual
phases of saving within a single lifetime: for buying a house, for paying for college,
and for retirement. Parental wealth at midlife is largely transformed into the human
capital of the next generation—indexed by educational attainment and used in
occupational settings—making possible the next generation’s turn at wealth
accumulation. Human capital and occupational incumbency may keep well for most
of a lifetime, but unless they are transformed into financial capital they tend to perish
thereafter. On the other hand, physical and financial capital can, if substantial
enough, transcend individual lives. Robert D. Mare

6. ANIMATING
POWER – LAYERING TIES
• 1. Kinship
• 2. contractual /
employment relations,
• 3. formal governance roles
• 4. informal governance
roles
• 5. Information sharing
• 6. Problem solving
• 7. intimate and “trust-
based” networks.
• 8. strength of weak ties
Kinship : who you are. Birth/marriage
Others are what you do (not neutrally!)

7. kinship,
contractual and
employment
relations,
formal governance
roles
informal
governance roles
Information sharing
Problem solving
intimate and “trust-
based” networks.
strength of weak
ties
Small worlds
of Ambridge
Fig 1
Dimensions of
Network power
Family ties - birth or marriage
Legal, employment or tenancy
Church warden, parish council, nfu
Panto, SAVE compaign, village
shop
Bridging capital (gossip!)
Skills with people or things,
reliable
Trust
Multiple loose connections not
one strong cliique/clan

8. Family ties - birth or marriage
Legal, employment or tenancy
Church warden, parish council, nfu
Panto, SAVE compaign, village
shop
Bridging capital (gossip!)
Skills with people or things,
reliable
Trust
Multiple loose connections not
one strong cliique/clan
Fig 2: Formal and Informal Power Relations

9. kinship,
contractual and
employment
relations,
formal governance
roles
informal
governance roles
Information sharing
Problem solving
intimate and “trust-
based” networks.
strength of weak
ties
pegg
y
justi
n
pat n
tony
davi
d
neil
lynd
a
ed
kirst
y
jenn
y
carol
alan
fallo
n
jazzer
gill
olive
r
brian
johnn
y
jim
kento
n
joe
Fig 3: who wields these
kinds of power in Ambridge?
Susa
n

10. Nicola headlam
Baltic creative
10/02/2014
SNA FOR NETWORK WEAVERS

11. NETWORKS: IT TAKES A VILLAGE

12. IT TAKES A VILLAGE…
• Following the work of Manuel Castells power and control are configured
through the calibration of networked forms of social life.
• Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies, and the
diffusion of networking logic modifies the operation and outcome in
process of production, experience power and culture (Castells 1996)
• “Wherever human association is examined, we can see what can be
described as thick spots – relatively unchanging clusters or collections of
of individuals who are linked by frequent interaction and often by
sentimental ties (Freeman &Webster 1994)

13. (FAIRLY) HARDCORE SOCIAL &
NETWORK THEORY
• Network Theory (from metaphor to
method)
• Plurality, Governance, Brokerage, interaction
• Actor Network Theory (ANT)
• Non-human Actants & Material Cultures
Subject and Object
• Social Network Analysis (SNA)

14. NETWORK THEORY - ROOTS
• Network thinking roots in
• Georg Simmel and Jacob Moreno
• Who will survive?
• Sociatry
• Dyads and triads
• Stafford Beer and cybernetics
• IT

15. Fig 1: Moreno, 1934

16. NETWORK CONFLATION
• If it feels more and more natural to think of collective phenomena in
relational terms, it is because digital mediation is increasingly turning
them into networks. Our professional sector resembled much more to a
social network, since our colleagues invite us on LinkedIn. Friendship has
literally become a matter of connection, now that it is mediated by
Facebook. And when we look at our library we increasingly expect to see
what other books “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought”. The
more it is mediated by network technologies, the more collective life can
be read through the theory of networks, measured through network
analysis and captured in network data.

17. FAMILY AND SOCIAL NETWORK
• Family and Social Network (1957), Elizabeth Bott argued that conjugal role performance is
related to the density of each spouse's social networks outside the nuclear family. The data
Bott used to develop this hypothesis were drawn from the study of 20 working-class, London
families.
• "When many of the people a person knows interact with one another, that is when the
person's network is close knit, the members of his network tend to reach consensus on
norms and they exert consistent informal pressure on one another to conform to the norms,
to keep in touch with one another, and, if need be, to help one another. If both husband and
wife come to marriage with such close knit networks, and if conditions are such that the
previous pattern of relationships is continued, the marriage will be superimposed on these
pre-existing relationships, and both spouses will continue to be drawn into activities with
people outside their own elementary family (family of procreation). Each will get some
emotional satisfaction from these external relationships and will likely demand
correspondingly less of the spouse. Rigid segregation of roles will be possible because each
spouse can get help from other people."
• — Elizabeth Bott, Family and Social Network. 1971 (2nd ed.). (Originally published, 1957).
New York:Free Press.

18. SMART STRATEGY (!?)
• if family members maintain ties with a network of friends or neighbors
who know one another and interact apart from the family members, the
members of these external social networks can develop norm consensus
and exert pressure on the network's members. When members of close-
knit networks marry and when they continue to be drawn into network
activities after marriage, they can develop a clearly differentiated
conjugal role organization of tasks. The external close-knit networks
provide the spouses with instrumental assistance and emotional support
outside the couple and they, thus, lessen conjugal interdependence and
make for a segregated role organization.

19. NETWORK METAPHOR TO METHOD
• This understanding of the network as a reflexive social form poses
methodological dilemmas in relation to the establishment of an
analytical position from which to consider how this form achieves its
contemporary cultural purchase.
• There is an affinity between SNA and a thoroughgoing structuralism,
where social networks became a means of mapping social structure.
SNA becomes an attempt to emphasize the importance of social
structure in a social science milieu dominated by methodologically
individualistic approaches.

20. SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS (SNA)
• Social Network Analysis (SNA) is a mathematical tool for interrogating
the networks of human and non-human interactions and is used in this
paper to render the invisible networks of power and authority as visible.
• Nodes (people, things, mixture)
• Ties or edges (ways they link)
• Core to network analysis is the analysis of the centrality, peripherality
and cohesion of actants in networks. We can also explore clusters and
cliques.

21. SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS
METHODS

22. SOCIOMETRY METHOD
• The paper develops a series of sociometric approaches to the ways in
which power is wielded in the village of Ambridge arguing that several
layers of power and authority exist at once
• Nodes are defined – the dreaded edges of the network
• Data are generated – snowball techniques – degrees of separation
• These ties are mapped, using Yed graph illustrator
• The kamada-kawai algorithm for optimal spring is applied
• algorithms for centrality are applied

28. BROKERAGE
“significance within networks is given to individuals that act as connectors
within a network, boundary spanners who connect networks,
information brokers and people who are peripheral to the network”
(Granovetter, 1975)
• Multiple looser connections better than a small number of tight,
cohesive connections
• Portfolio careers and the strength of ‘weak ties’

29. Nicola headlam
Baltic creative
10/02/2014
SNA FOR NETWORK WEAVERS

30. SMALL WORLDS OF AMBRIDGE

31. Small Worlds of Ambridge
New research results
1. Kinship networks
2. doing-connections and actants
3. the whole village system

32. Small Worlds of Ambridge
New research results
1. Kinship networks

33. FAMILY TREE - HIERARCHY

35. Map 11. Kinship & the 3 Cliques –
disconnected (living only)
3) Grundies
2) Brookfield Archers
1) Wooley/Aldridge &c.

36. “THE GRUNDIES & THEIR OPPRESSORS”
• Map 12: Grundy clique
• 12 members
• Joe b. (1) eddie (3) ed (4) george (4)
• 4 generations (range/age
structure/class)
• 2 households –
• Both in ambridge grange farm and
will/nic

37. Map 13
Grundies with centrality

38. BROOKFIELD ARCHERS: A MINOR
CLIQUE
• Map 14: the archer clique
• 18 members
• 3 generations
• Gill b. (1) David (8) pip (8)
• 4 households or 3.5 rickyard, lower
loxley, brookfield, shula’s
• Pip, dan/dorothy, fallon/meriel

39. Fig 15 Brookfield Archer Clique

40. WOOLEY/ALDRIDGE/
BRIDGE FARM ARCHERS
• map 16: Biggest clique - 29 members
• 4 generations
• Peggy b. (1) lilian (8) kate (9) henry (8)
• 9 households (class position!)
• James and Leonie conventional
(normative) nuclear family
• Adam? Debbie? Ruari? Alice & Chris?

41. MATRIARCHY AND GENERATIONS
Map 17: Matriarchy Kinship structure (living only)

42. Map 17 Ambridge Kinship Network Structure 2017
Without centrality weighting (inc. dead)
75 people with 196 connections

43. Map 18 kinship network structure 2017
The Small Worlds
Without centrality weighting showing
Brookfield Archer Clique
Home Farm Aldridge Household
Grundy/Carter Clique
Snell Clique
Bridge Farm Archer Clique

44. Map 18 kinship network structure 2017
The Small Worlds
Without centrality weighting showing
Emphasising brokerage
Brookfield Archer Clique
Home Farm Aldridge Household
Grundy/Carter Clique
Snell Clique
Bridge Farm Archer Clique
Past links
Future links?

45. Map 19, Kinship showing linkages
Brokerage with centrality applied
(and including the dead)
“you lot really are all related aren’t you?”

46. • Map 20 – highlight section of linkages
brokerage
• Network theory suggests that in
kinship terms the key nodes to watch
in the extended network are offspring
of;
• Chris and Alice
• James and Leonie
• Their bridging capital, brokerage and
centrality, then create new dynastic
power which has consequences up
and down the generations –
disrupting the settled matriarchal
power structure and potentially
creating novel powerbases;
• Aldridge/Carter (Horribin)
• Bellamy/Snell

47. Map 21: a fanciful future kinship
network…
- Both Jill and peggy die
- alice and chris have 2 children
- Leonie and James have 2 more
- (and return to the village)
- And no-one else reproduces (!
Kinship structure is transformed
-isolating both Brookfield
and Bridge Farm Archers
And creating a whole new dynasty
And network centrality for
Lilian!

48. Map 22 : Even more fanciful
Building on Map 21
- Both Jill and Peggy die
- Alice and Chris have 2 children
- Leonie and James have 2 more
- (and return to the village)
- And no-one else reproduces (!)
Kinship structure is transformed
-isolating both Brookfield and Bridge
Farm Archers
- creating a whole new dynasty
And network centrality for
Lilian!
At present the only way to keep
The Brookfield Archers as central involves
Kate’s daughters (!)
Watch very carefully if pheobe shows
Any more than a possing interest in
Freddie…

49. KINSHIP CONCLUSION
• The 2017 Matriarchal structure will not
outlive Jill and Peggy
• Watch out for Alice/Chris or any
movement that brings Leonie/James
back to the village as the interconnected
Granny power of the mother and
mother-in-laws could transform the
structure of kinship in Ambridge
• Brookfield archers and their reproductive
strategy is key – they are late to the party
but so far are not showing great skills in
this regard
•

50. Small Worlds of Ambridge
New research results
1. Kinship networks
2. doing-connections and actants
3. the whole village system

51. Map 23 – heuristic device for farm as network

52. UNFOLDING THE SOCIAL: QUASI -ACTANTS, VIRTUAL THEORY, AND THE
NEW EMPIRICISM OF BRUNO LATOUR
AUTHORS
TROELS MAGELUND KRARUP ,
ANDERS BLOK
• All the well-known structures of society are suddenly no-where to be
found; instead, we now find concrete relations of humans and non-
humans acting together. Over here is the man-computer-spreadsheet-
office hybrid that we used to call ‘bureaucratic rationalism’; over there is
the vibrating man-virus-laboratory relation that we used to call ‘scientific
fact’, and so on. Sociology of associations entails a change of focus from
‘society’ (of humans) to ‘collectives’ (of humans and non-humans). And,
symmetrically, its method changes as well: from theoretically
interpreting human actions to obstinately ‘following the actor’ by
tracking and mapping its multiple associations.

53. • Map 24 actants and doing–
power not being power
• Nodes are a mixture of human
and no-human actants
• 95 nodes with 305
connections
• Similarities and differences in
clique formation structure
based on
• contract, employment,
membership of some formal
and informal governance
bodies

54. Map 25
Segment of actants and doing-power
Bridge Farm clique
Interesting that by virtue of connections
both within and beyond the farm rob has most centrality
High incidence here of interlinked business / brand powe

55. Map 26
Segment of actants and doing-power
Home Farm/BL/The Esate
Interesting that by virtue of connections
both within and beyond the farm jenny has equal centrali
to Brian – though arguably in lower status enterprises
Eg informal governance campaigning &c.
Interconnections with the shoot, will g and the stables, sh
Etc.

56. Map 27
Segment of actants and doing-power
Brookfield
Interesting that very limited connections
Without the hollow-tree tenants…
Not very diversified strategy

57. Map 28
Segment of actants and doing-power
The Bull

58. Map 29
Segment of actants and doing-power
Grange Farm
Grundy modus operandi highly diversified in
Terms of their contractual relationships
As reliant on land-owning class for paid wor
This means that all have multiple connection
Whilst this signals low-status or rentier relat
In strictly netwotk terms it offers the potent
for high innovation through differentiation
The strength of weak ties suggest that mult
connections offer competitive advantages in
Knowledge economy
As long as Ed keeps on getting certified,
Commensurable, verifiable and transferable
skills

59. Map 30
Doing with degree
of Centrality and
hierarchy applied

60. Fig 31: Ed Grundy - King of Ambridge??

61. KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY
ASSETS
• Innovation across networks
• Our contemporary knowledge economy
privileges multiple connections and the
possibility for the diffusion of knowledge
through the combining of new
knowledges in new context
• Knowledge as capital may displace
ownership of land/property in this
economy
• Ownership will continue to be a material
reality BUT this bridging and brokering
capital is seen as the key competitive
advantage in innovation.
• Will Ed inherit the earth? If Ed can
convert this network centrality, open-
ness and connectedness into capital (and
thus land) his clan/clique will inherit…

62. Small Worlds of Ambridge
New research results
1. Kinship networks
2. doing-connections and actants
3. the whole village system

63. Map 32: the intimate network

64. 2037
SCENARIO 1 : CLAN CONTINUITY
• Wooley/Aldridge/Carter Not only are there the
most of them but they have established a series
of independent households with assets. Aguably
showing Socioemotional Wealth Preservation
(ref)
• Brian has done his best to *ahem* fragment the
Home Farm Aldridge legacy through sub-
optimal strategy in the pants department
• But Adam, Debbie, Alice, Ruari all childless (so
far)
• Inheritance politics at Bridge Farm have been
less intense lately but wiley old Peggy did try to
“pick a winner’ she won’t try that again. Hazel
factor??
• Bridge Farm Archers seem lacking in basic
common sense and emotional intelligence
unable to form stable households/couples WHY?
• Brookfield Archers don’t “roll deep”Because Gill
is 10 years younger than Peggy the 4th
generation of Brookfield Archers are yet to
emerge (God help us!)
• Kenton’s wildcards of Mariel, and Fallon may be
best hope?
• No Archers show any skills in the dating dept.
Pip is disastrous both in terms of securing new
and useful knowledge and judging character. Jill
should be even more exercised about Toby (not
about to capitulate) Questionable role of
Fairbrothers
• Josh and Ben? Freddie and Lily? Dan/Dorothy –
dark horses? Most immediate reproductive
potential…

65. 2037
SCENARIO 2 : GENERATIONAL NETWORK
POWER SHIFT? (HEADLAM HYPOTHESIS)
• Future kinship structure:
• If the hinges of
• James and Leonie
• Alice and Chris
• Have families in Ambridge
• The 2037 Matriarchy could completely
displace existing clans in favour of
• Lillian/Linda
• Susan/Jennifer
• Knowledge economy centrality structure
• Ed, (king of ambridge) his wife Emma,
Fallon and Alice all have exceptional
brokerage skills = they could, then,
monetise these and create prosperity
and prestige for themselves
• This will affect the status and prestige of
• Susan/Neil, Clarrie/Eddie
• Jolene/Kenton and Jenny/Brian
• Not to mention their extant and
potential offspring

66. Nicola headlam
Baltic creative
10/02/2014
SNA FOR NETWORK WEAVERS

67. NETWORK GLOSSARY

69. NETWORK GLOSSARY
• Actant
• Broker/Brokerage
• Boundary spanner
• Centrality
• Cohesion
• Clique.
• Cluster
• Contact zone
• Contract
• Core/periphery
• Degrees of separation
• Dyad (intimate)
• Ego-net
• Genogram

70. NETWORK GLOSSARY
2
• Governance
• Hub and spoke
• Material Cultures
• Interaction
• information sharing
• Intimacy/intimate network
• Kinship
• node
• Non-human
• Network : Theory
• Network weaver
• Peripherality
• Place-based

71. NETWORK GLOSSARY
3
• Plurality
• Power
• Propinquity
• scattered fragments
• sentiment
• Small world
• Social Network Analysis (SNA)
• sociatry
• Sociometry
• Tie
• Triad
• Trust

72. Nicola headlam
Baltic creative
10/02/2014
SNA FOR NETWORK WEAVERS

73. LIST OF FIGURES 1
Small Worlds of Ambridge, Power Networks and Actants 1//
• Fig 1: Dimensions of Network power
• Fig 2: Formal and Informal power, government to governance
• Fig 3 Weighted dimensions of power
• Fig 4: Who wields these kinds of power in Ambridge?
• Fig 5: Socioometric Geometry of a Community (Moreno, 1934)
• Fig 6: Centralised, Decentralised and Distributed Networks
• Fig 7: Knowing and Knitting Stages of Network Devt.
• Fig 8: Scattered Fragments
• Fig 9: Hub and Spoke Model
• Fig 10: Small Worlds
• Fig 11: Core/Periphery Ecosystem
• Fig 12: Kinship & the 3 Cliques
• Fig 13: Grundies clique 3
• Fig 14: Grundies
• Fig 15: Brookfield Archers clique 2
• Fig 16: Brookfield Archers
• Fig 17: Aldridges/Wooleys clique 1
• Fig 18: Ambridge Kinship network structure 2017
• Fig 19: Matriarchy 2017
• Fig 20: highlight section of linkages brokerage

74. LIST OF FIGURES 2
• Map 21: a fanciful future kinship network…
• Map 22 : Even more fanciful (Building on Map 21)
• Map 23: heuristic of farming networks
• Map 24: actants and doing–power not being power
• Map 25: Segment of actants and doing-power (Bridge Farm clique)
• Map 26: Segment of actants and doing-power (Home Farm/BL/The
Estate)
• Map 27 Segment of actants and doing-power (Brookfield)
• Map 28 : Segment of actants and doing-power The Bull
• Map 29: Segment of actants and doing-power Grange Farm
• Map 30: Doing with degree of Centrality and hierarchy applied
• Map 31: Ed Grundy King of Ambridge
• Map 32: Intimate Network