What is structure?
Network analysis is the study of structure.
But what do network analysts mean when they use the term “structure”? Berkowitz writes that “[t]he idea that social systems may be structured in various ways is not new.
p In fact, all of the established social sciences have evolved some notion of structure.
but, until recently, no field had taken the idea of a regular, persistent pattern in the behavior of the elementary parts of a social system and used it as a central or focal concept for understanding social life” (1982: 1, emphasis in original). Wasserman and Faust add, “Regularities or patterns in interactions give rise to structures” (1994: 6–7).