ABSTRACT

This chapter introduces methods for reimagining international political sociology through social spaces of power, alliances and positions. The spatial methodologies introduced, social network analysis (SNA) and multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), build on a relational ontology that represents the social not in terms of individuals or organizational entities, but connections and interactions, spaces of positions and position taking. One appeal of spatial methodologies like SNA and MCA, compared to other quantitative methods, is that by “drawing things together” (Latour 1990) they enable us to visualize hitherto invisible social spaces in graphs and sociograms. As descriptive and explorative methods, they allow for complex relations of interdependence rather than pure one-way relations between independent and dependent forces (Emirbayer 1997). These methodologies are the backbone of the “descriptive assemblages” (Savage 2009) unifying different contemporary sociological traditions.