Marx, networks and the social logic of interaction

In the last two decades or so, gradually but steadily, the concept of network has acquired a considerable importance, mainly as a metaphor through which to filter our understanding of society. Cultural theorists and specialists in media studies have been at the forefront of this development, often borrowing keywords from the work of social physics and transforming them into loose metaphors (i.e. Barabási, 2002; Castells, 1996; Prey, 2012). In this paper, after reviewing some of the main theoretical trends related to the study of networks, I propose a novel theoretical and methodological approach to the study of social networks in archaeology and broadly related disciplines, an approach that combines insights from radical social theory with network methods. Such an approach is put at work in the analysis of a number if historical instances where network phenomena are deeply intermingled with dynamics of societal differentiation.