Reputation: A Network Interpretation

This book argues that a network interpretation of reputation advances our understanding of an essential and inescapable feature of social life and integrates many of its' varied facets. Reputation is a dispersed phenomenon that is to be found in the beliefs and assertions of an extensive number of other individuals. Reputation is part of the environment but uniquely referenced to a specific person. Discussions concerning reputation are often vague with regard to who are those others holding beliefs or making assertions about a person and thereby contributing to that person's reputation, with reference perhaps to 'people in general' or 'society at large.' A network model of reputation generates conceptual innovations that have systematic implications for such diverse disciplines as network theory and social network analysis, gossip research, person perception and cognition, social representation research, personality theory and assessment, publicity and public relations, libel law, biographical studies, and cultural history. Craik argues that reputation is not simply a central topic for the study of social life. Rather, it holds the potential to sustain an interdisciplinary field of inquiry in its own right.