Unraveling relationships: networks, actors and meshwork

Abstract

Understanding the human experience beyond the agency - structure dichotomy is a challenge faced by different theories and anthropological schools. In this perspective, we present three different theories that sought to overcome the structuralist explanation of the world: the studies of social networks, proposed by British anthropology in the second half of the twentieth century, as a way of overcoming structural-functionalism; the actor-network theory proposed by the French Bruno Latour, as a way of overcoming the "sociology of the social"; and the notion of meshwork, elaborated by Tim Ingold in the construction of an "anthropology of life". All three perspectives, somehow, have the concept of "network" present. However, such a presence has radically different meanings in each of them.