  Interest in the analysis of networks has grown rapidly in the new millennium.
Consequently, we promote renewed attention to a certain methodological approach
introduced in 1974. Over the succeeding decade, this
two-stage--double-standardization and hierarchical clustering
(single-linkage-like)--procedure was applied to a wide variety of weighted,
directed networks of a socioeconomic nature, frequently revealing the presence
of ``hubs''. These were, typically--in the numerous instances studied of
migration flows between geographic subdivisions within
nations--``cosmopolitan/non-provincial'' areas, a prototypical example being
the French capital, Paris. Such locations emit and absorb people broadly across
their respective nations. Additionally, the two-stage procedure--which ``might
very well be the most successful application of cluster analysis'' (R. C.
Dubes, 1985)--detected many (physically or socially) isolated, functional
groups (regions) of areas, such as the southern islands, Shikoku and Kyushu, of
Japan, the Italian islands of Sardinia and Sicily, and the New England region
of the United States. Further, we discuss a (complementary) approach developed
in 1976, in which the max-flow/min-cut theorem was applied to
raw/non-standardized (interindustry, as well as migration) flows.
