Elizabeth Bott and the formation of modern British sociology

This paper examines the contribution of Elizabeth Bott's Family and Social Network to the elaboration of modern British sociology. I show that although Bott is often identified as one of the key figures in the emergence of social network analysis, this misunderstands her contribution. I show how her work drew strongly on key aspects of the research programme of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, and that it was her use of the in-depth interview, allied to an interest in probing class identities, which was to be seminal. This case study is used to show how a focus on the practical inscription techniques mobilised by social scientists can give a radically different perspective on the discipline than approaches which focus on schools of thought or ‘great men’.