Introduction

Abstract

In this issue of Academic Quarter, we focus on the network approach. Throughout the past 40 years the network perspective seem to have become the go-to analytical approach that emphasizes relation-making processes and descriptions of how phenomena come into being within the social sciences and the humanities. With this issue we want to engage in a discussion of the appropriateness and relevance of the network approach, and to ask; what do we (still) gain by applying a network perspective? The call for the issue invited contributions from the humanities and the social sciences. Resultantly the issue now, fortunately, contains nine articles from a range of scholarly fields. The different approaches to the concept, theories and methodologies of network(s) inherent in this issue show how thinking in networks, infrastructures, agents and actors still function as a productive scholarly perspective that enables new insights into the interplay between humans and technology, the individual and the collective and societal reproduction and change.