Social Network

The term network was used by Radcliffe Brown when he characterized social structure as being a network of actually existing social relations.Social networks play an important part in the inter linkage of different structures of power.As more and more specialized political agencies develop the political system itself tends to acquire a weight of its own.In the traditional system there were no parties ,legislatures or union councils through which the individual could acquire power independently of his position in the class or caste structure.

Nadel equates it to the system since he says that it is through abstracting from the concrete population and its behaviour  the pattern or network of relationships existing between role playing actors that social structures is aimed at.The analysis of these kinds of linkages  is crucial for Nadel in his building up of social structure on a basis of roles.For it is the interlocking of relationships  through the dichotomization of roles which brings about an expansion of the areas of relationships into networks.Nadel stresses that both kinds of networks exist in a society.