Social relations have often been developed in this model as a version of a mathematical theory that focuses on “a set of localically interconnected tautologies” with no real application towards “the theory of social relations” (Barnes, 1972, 5). This had led to a matrix-focused approach to the study of a given network, with an almost binary look of connection and interconnectivity (with regard to order-level connections and with regards to the concept of boundaries). Therefore, most of the previous work associated with social network analysis has dealt with visual representations of networks as “nodes, roads, and modes” or binary matrixes.
