Re-theorizing social network analysis and environmental governance

There are growing calls for social network analysis methods to be more extensively deployed in environmental governance practice. A key claim is that social network analysis can generate knowledge to build trust, enable consensus, and facilitate the dissemination of information necessary to make environmental protection ‘successful’. By bringing social network analysis into dialogue with heterodox social theories relevant to human geographers and cognate social scientists, this article destabilizes such claims. It is argued that the current application of social network analysis enacts a particular moral and political emphasis on resilience and participation, which readily works with the grain of hegemonic environmental governance.