Editorial: social network analysis and economic geography—positional, evolutionary and multi-level approaches

Although social network analysis has gained popularity in economic geography over the last decade, most of these applications focused on analyzing the characteristics of and opportunities for single actors or regions within networks. Yet, many contemporary research challenges in economic geography center on questions regarding structural dynamics and their implications in entire networks for the collective outcomes involving social actors. This special issue portrays three areas of structural methods for the analysis of entire networks: positional analysis and generalized blockmodeling, network evolution and dominant path analysis and multi-level network analysis. Moreover, these methods offer new ways of theorizing the organization and evolution of the space economy so as to enhance relational thinking in this field. Finally, we suggest there is value in having more intensive exchanges, collaboration and cross-fertilization between economic geography and social network studies.