Visualizing Social Groups

Although they might not agree with the precise terms of Moreno’s statement, most contemporary structural analysts would still subscribe to the view that visual images continue to play a key role in both exploring and presenting the patterns displayed by structural data. Among the many kinds of structural patterns that have been explored and presented visually, one stands out. Structural analysts have devoted an enormous amount of attention to the problem of uncovering social groups. This attention to the group concept makes sense, since groups have been a concern of sociologists from the beginning (see Durkheim [4], Tönnies [27], Simmel, [25] and Cooley [3]). All of these early sociologists saw groups in structural terms—as a patterning of interaction. Freeman and Webster [10] described this view: