(1979). Social Networks and Psychology. Connections, 2 - INSNA

- 78 -of behavior, but must analyze, according to Weberian methods, the ways in which this cumulation of socialactions occurs, and its consequences in social structure . Indirectly, Weber's intellectual descendantsinclude those who build their conceptions of social structure on the distributions of individual characteristicsamong populations . Consequently, it is crucial to examine the limitations of his logic of analysis .This is not an argument against the use of probabilistic reasoning or aggregative or distributionalstrategies . Instead, it is an attempt to clarify what such approaches are actually measuring and analyzing .Any regularly occurring event can be measured, and probabilities assigned to its occurrence under specifiedconditions . Similarly, any attribute shared by a population in different degrees, such as income, can bedescribed in terms of its distribution in that population . Having done this in a particular study, the nextquestion is why do these distributions occur? The answer is usually sought in the measured distributionsof other variables, and causation if formulated in the language of independent and dependent variables . Thus,income and education vary together ; depending on the framework of the analyst, education leads to higherpaying jobs, or high income increases access to education, or both . This model assumes one of two things :either the distribution of one variable will change with a change in the distribution of the other, thuschanging the social structure ; or, more compellingly, there exists an unexamined social structure whichsomehow rewards people differentially (as measured in income distribution), and we can predict where anygiven individual will fall on this distribution if we know certain facts about him or her, such as yearsof education .Distributions, then, measure selected consequences of structural dynamics as these consequences differentiallyaffect individuals . As such, they are useful indicators of questions to be asked in analyzingsocial structure directly, but are neither descriptions nor analyses of the structure itself . Thus, theanswer to the question posed in the title of this paper is that distributions are not really structures,but are reflections of social structure .The distinction between the measurement of the differential individual consequences of social structureand the analysis of structure itself, can be clarified by returning to the earlier example of mobility studies .Assuming that at any given moment there is a fixed number of jobs, each of which has attached to it a fixedset of rewards, and that only one person can fill a job at a time, there are two fundamentally differentquestions which can inform research into occupational mobility . The first, or distributional approach askswhat characteristics of individuals best predict individual mobility between occupational categories .(Blau and Duncan, 1967) . That is, it assumes a social structure which is reflected in a given set ofoccupational roles, which can themselves be categorized in terms of their individual characteristics, suchas type of activity (e .g ., white collar) and reward . It can thus determine the probability of any givencareer line in the aggregate, by discovering what proportion of the population in category 1 moves tocategory 2 (similarly with inter-generational mobility) . It can further determine the distributions ofcharacteristics of individuals, such as education and father's occupation, as well as the combinations ofthese, which predict the occurrence of a given career line .The second, or structural, approach examines the actual career lines existing in a concrete structureof jobs . While the aggregation of jobs represented by occupational categories allows for the measurementof the amount of mobility in a population, and for the identification, in general, of the kinds of peoplewho are mobile, it points to the need for an analysis of the actual organization of jobs, the patterns inwhich job openings occur, and the mechanisms of recruitment into them . Assuming that at least some of thepeople recruited into a given job thereby leave another, thus creating another opening into which yetanother individual is recruited, and so on, in a continuous but finite process, it becomes possible toanalyze the actual structural dynamics which underlie the aggregative measurements of the first approach,as White (1970) so elegantly demonstrates . Similarly, Howard (1974) compares the two strategies in hisanalysis of the incorporation of rural migrants into the occupational structure of an Indian city . Hefinds that networks of kinship, friendship, and neighbourhood are more powerful predictors of successfuljob search than are individual characteristics usually associated with "modernity" . Change in both casescan be examined directly as patterns over time of openings and recruitment within structures of positions .As I have attempted to demonstrate in this paper, Weber constructed a methodology for social analysisbased on probabilities and distributions . While he did not confront the limitations of this approachdirectly, as I am seeking to do here, neither did he allow his analysis of social organization to sufferthese limitations . He proceeded as far as he could with his methods, and then went beyond them to analyzesocial structure directly . He in fact, in his best work, used his aggregative and distributional findingsto direct him to important structural concerns .Weber's direct descents, especially in the field of formal organization, have inherited some of thebest products of his substantive analysis . The formal structure of bureaucracy is one of the best examplesof objectively defined and observable patterns of relationships . The value of the legacy, however, increaseswith an understanding of its source and limitations . Its source, as I have argued, lies in a modest departurefrom Weber's self-imposed methodological requirements, in the sense that it is consistent with, butnot derived from legal-rational social action . Its limitations, therefore, consist not in the problems ofaggregative or distributional logic, as do the limitations of his analysis of stratification, but in thestatic nature of the formal structure, a problem Weber inadequately addressed through the concept of