Social Networks in a Society of Strangers. The Discovery of Social Connectivity in France, the United States, and Germany (1860-1940)

• Applicant: Dr. Christoph Streb
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 570921386

Today, social networks are often regarded as basic elements of all societies. However, this idea itself can be historicized. It was not until the late nineteenth century that an explicit awareness of manifold, intersecting networks of relationships between individuals emerged among the elites of Western states. Documents as diverse as studies in social psychology, etiquette manuals and private address books now described the social world by understanding connectivity as a phenomenon in its own right. From the perspective of the history of knowledge, social networks are therefore less universal than they seem - they were discovered around 1900. The research project examines this discovery of social connectivity in France, the United States and Germany in the period between 1860 and 1940. On the one hand, it works out the reasons that explain why knowledge about social connectivity suddenly became plausible for contemporaries. On the other hand, the project examines the functions that this knowledge fulfilled and thus sheds light on its consequences. Three empirical case studies address these key questions. The first, Social psychologies (1), analyses social science texts of the time for theories of interpersonal relationships. The second, Doctrines of conduct (2), examines etiquette books that formulated practical guidelines for social interactions in an increasingly complex world. The third case study, contact management (3), investigates the medium of the private address book, which organised an overwhelming number of social contacts of modern city dwellers into neatly arranged directories. The guiding hypotheses focus on the origins and consequences of the phenomenon under investigation: knowledge about social connectivity only became plausible in the face of a problematisation of the late nineteenth-century social world; but it not only apprehended the social world, it also formulated social norms. Mechanisms of individualisation had produced new everyday situations to which middle-class elites in particular reacted with fears of social atomisation. It was only in such a ‘society of strangers’ (James Vernon) that the image of the social network became relevant as a structural pattern. Those who favoured networks upheld individual freedom, but also obliged people to cultivate social relationships and therefore engage with society. At the same time, inequalities were ignored and conflicts were not taken into account. The research project aims at a critical contribution to the pre-history of the network society. Instead of a history of ever-increasing interconnectedness, in which the category of the network itself has no boundaries, the project defines networks more narrowly and historically along the lines of concrete phenomena of knowledge production. The aim is to clarify how ‘network’ and ‘society’ came together and what exactly this means.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants