Putting People Back into Networks

This article argues that political scientists should spend more time observing policy networks, using ethnographic tools to capture the meaning of everyday activities. The first section reviews briefly the literature on policy networks, arguing for an ethnographic approach. To show how individual actors construct networks, the second section looks at the experience of consumers, managers and permanent secretaries of living and working in networks. The final section comments on what the fieldwork tells us about both network theory and ethnographic methods.