Social Geography and Social Topology: On Interpreting the Results of Social Network Analysis

The source of information for the article was the Interactive Atlas Virtual Population of Russia (2017), which accumulates open personal data on users of the social network VKontakte and their locations and preferred directions of communication. The methodological tools of graph analysis are used to identify patterns of network interactions of residents of three obviously different macroregions of Russia: the South, Ural–Volga Region, and Far East. The substantive interpretation of graphic images is based on the theoretical provisions of social topology, the analytical apparatus of which, unlike social geography, assumes a relational approach to understanding the category of space and is based on positional principles. The concept of “social space,” widely used in human geography, is treated in the article as a material–semiotic environment with physical (Euclidean), social (unequal positions in systems of relations), and symbolic (cognitive categories and mental constructs) metrics. Geographical maps are compared with their topological analogs, spatial features of the established network patterns are described, and their common and distinctive features are identified. The authors adhere to the distinction proposed by M. Castells’ between “space of places” as a space of physical proximity and neighborhood and “space of flows” referring to network structures, hierarchies of connections and positions. Trying to understand what the substantive rather than technical novelty of social network analysis is for human geography the authors conclude that it adds a moving spatial component to the study of the “fixed” realities of the territorial organization of social life. As a discipline aimed at studying the laws of connectedness, social topology provides theoretical and methodological tools for tracing continuous changes in the space of people’s life activities under the influence of transformations of the social world (the so-called fluid modernity) and allows for empirical verification of qualitative observations and intuitions.