Social Network Analysis: Recent Achievements and Current Controversies

Network analysis has grown rapidly over the past two decades, but criticisms of the approach have increased as well This article focuses on several accomplishments and unresolved problems of the network approach In the first section. I illustrate the value of the network model in several substantive areas. focusing on studies of centrahty and power, network subgroups, and interorganizational relations I then discuss three issues over which the approach has provoked controversy the relation between network analysis and rational choice theory; the role of norms and culture, and the question of human agency I conclude with some examples of how network theorists are addressing these problemsPeer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68023/2/10.1177_000169939403700403.pd

A Taste of Army Life

Food and military identity were inextricably linked in the British Army: rations were a thrice daily indicator of the men's separation from their civilian selves. The soldiers were what they ate, but they were also where and how they ate; the grubby rapacity of the barrack dining hall, the absence of civilizing cutlery and the unfamiliar food delineated their new role as clearly as any uniform. Institutional feeding facilitated the erasure of self, an unhelpful attribute in the military world. Men's accounts indicate the conflict between their appetites and what they all too often regarded as oppression in a dietary form. © The Social History Society 2012