Aha! I catch myself being loose with these terms (and two or three
others). What is the difference between relation and association? Are they
equivalent? Synonymous?

These are connective devices, right? They indicate a tie that can be
expressed, though perhaps this is not always so for association. They do
not seem to me equal in this job they do of indicating ties. Relation, as in
relation-ship, is describable, identifiable, and perhaps even compulsory (cannot
opt out; the evidentiary ground is too firm). Association, as I think of
it, tends to be breezier and more speculative. Association meanders;
relation takes the shortest available route. Association nods in assent;
relation points its index finger. Association is spherical, maybe even
elliptical, curvy; relation linear by comparison. Association is possible
and sometimes roundabout; relation is direct and existent, meaning it plots a
different ontology. Relation is verifiable; association is a degree
removed, hazy and faint (not equally observable; therefore, refutable,
enigmatic). The two terms begin to have a pact something like connotation and
denotation.

Could all of this be flipped around? Reversed? Well, maybe (try it and
you will see whether anything happens). Yet association has become much more
theoretically important for me in the past year. With Latour’s Reassembling
it is the activation (and verbing) of the social that manifests in networks, and
so association gives off sparks, emits a different energy than it once did
(first in algebra, with the associative property). Every encounter with "social"
is interrupted with this: associative how? The "social turn" is, when
matched with network studies, an "associative turn," which, in effect, is an
expansive turn outward. What are "social networks" if we take association for
granted or treat it as a given?

This does not quite make the point I thought it might make when I first typed
"Relation and Association." The point: these two have diverged (I hedge,
hesitate; I am also asking). I should add that I have been thinking lately about
vocabulary, about "speaking the same language" in the sense that Raymond
Williams mentions it early in his introduction to Keywords:

"When we come to say ‘we just don’t speak the same language’ we mean
something more general: that we have different immediate values or different
kinds of valuation, or that we are aware, often intangibly, of different
formations and distributions of energy and interest" (11).