Spatializing Social Networks: Using Social Network Analysis to Investigate Geographies of Gang Rivalry, Territoriality, and Violence in Los Angeles

摘要

Social network analysis is an increasingly prominent set of techniques used in a number of social sciences, butthe use of the techniques of social network analysis in geography has been challenged because of a perceivedlack of geographic nuance or consideration of spatialities of context in social networks. The concept of socialposition and the associated technique of structural equivalence in social network analysis are explored as a meansto integrate two different kinds of embeddedness: relative location in geographic space and structural positionin network space. Using spatialized network data, this article compares the geography of rivalry relations thatconnect territorially based criminal street gangs in a section of Los Angeles with a geography of the location ofgang-related violence. The technique of structural equivalence uses the two different spatialities of embeddednessto identify gangs that are similarly embedded in the territorial geography and positioned in the rivalry network,which aids in understanding the overall context of gang violence. The technique demonstrated here has promisebeyond this one study of gang crime as it operationalizes spatialities of embeddedness in a way that allowssimultaneous systematic evaluation of the way in which social actors' positions in network relationships andspatial settings provide constraints on and possibilities for their behavior.