Whereas previous chapters have focused on networks as conduits through which important resources and influences flow, this chapter provides a more in-depth account of the positional approach to networks. In doing so, we move away from conceptualizing social structures as more or less cohesive and integrated groups, cliques, communities, etc., toward a view of social structures as comprised of role structures. To use the baseball analogy, in moving toward a more positional view of networks, we shift from seeing teams as interacting individual players with relations with one another to seeing players as enacting the game through an interrelated set of positions on the field that come with role expectations. Thus, as depicted in our view of social structure in Figure 2.3, we begin to move upward and to the right – that is, toward higher levels of structure and greater levels of conceptual abstraction. Doing so requires a different set of methods, which we introduce in this chapter.

World-systems analysis is a holistic and critical social science approach that proposes the study of social change focusing on whole systemic human interaction networks. The general theoretical approach is based on institutional materialism that is inspired by classical sociology and anthropology (Chase-Dunn and Lerro 2016). The world-system perspective emerged in the 1960s and 1970s to explicate the nature of the core–periphery hierarchy over the last five centuries.