Social Classes and Networks on a Norwegian Island

British anthropologist John A. Barnes’ article “Class and Committees in a Norwegian Island Parish” (1954) is generally considered to be one of the first texts, if not the first, to use the notion “social network”. In this study of the forms of social stratification on a small island off the Norwegian coast, Barnes “discovered” a complex entanglement of social relations between co-workers, family members and friends. His ethnographic study of these relations provided some of the most important foundations of modern analysis of social networks. Six decades after its initial publication, an original experimentin open collaborative translation has finally made this article available in French.