Living in Networks
The Dynamics of Social Relations

Innovative study examining how relationships and personal networks evolve throughout life, and how these connect individuals and society.

Claire Bidart (Author), Alain Degenne (Author), Michel Grossetti (Author)

9781108841436, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 October 2020

225 pages
24 x 16 x 3 cm, 0.9 kg

'Living in Networks will help you understand you and your personal network. Drawing on two rich sets of data, the authors elaborate on a number of relational concepts like social circles, embedding and dissembedding mechanisms, dissociation, densification, centralization, and decentralization. This book explains convincingly the dynamics of personal relations across the life-course, the influence of education, social class, mobility, internet, and even chance. Read it. You will understand why your world is how it is.' José Luis Molina, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

How do personal networks emerge from social contexts? How do these evolve during the course of a lifetime? How are relationships established, maintained, connected, disrupted? How does the structure of a network evolve as people face transitions and events? Based on a classic text originally published in France and that has become the standard on the empirical study of social networks there, for the first time, a network analysis perspective is extended from contexts and social circles to relationships and life events through empirical studies. Following in the tradition of personal network studies, this contribution to the field of structural analysis in Sociology offers both a synthesis of knowledge and original results from two immense surveys carried out in France. This volume proposes an original theory grounded in relational dynamics, offering novel perspectives on individual social relations over the course of a lifetime through the context of personal networks, access to social resources, and inequalities.

Part I. Foundations of a Sociology of Relational Dynamics: 1. Understanding Relationships
2: Analyzing Networks
Part II. Networks and their Dynamics: 3. Relationships Do not Come out of Nowhere
4. The Dynamics of Relationships
5. Relationships that End, Relationships that Endure
6. Networks and their Dynamics
7: As the Years Go By
Part III. Networks and Social Worlds
8. Networks Have a Spatial Dimension
9. Soft Segregation
10. Relationships and Networks as Resources
11. Unequal Networks
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Social research & statistics [JHBC], Social theory [JHBA], Sociology [JHB], Research methods: general [GPS], Research & information: general [GP]