Social supply: a personal network perspective

Abstract

Social networks are key to drug markets as they are for many other types of human interaction. Rooted in both anthropology and sociology, network analysis is increasingly adopted in drug market research. Supply side studies to date mainly focus on large organised networks, and make use of police reports or telephone taps to describe the composition of these networks. The network perspective holds important opportunities to study other topics of supply, more specifically social supply. Already included in the name, the social aspect is deemed very important when studying supply relationships. But, at the same time, this relationship still includes an exchange of goods, which implies that a certain material or immaterial goal might be intended. This chapter discusses how a network perspective allows sketching the nuanced nature of supply relationships by placing them in a relational context. First, the way a network researcher views the world in general and drug markets in particular is discussed. Drug markets are then defined as a fluid collection of personal networks of different types of actors (e.g. users, suppliers, brokers, non-users…). It is in these particular personal networks that social supply is situated as a specific relationship between two actors that combines an aspect of exchange with an aspect of closeness.