ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates some issues which can be defined as coming under 'the social networks' approach, which is composed of both a general paradigm (Degenne, 1983; Degenne and Forse, 1994; Ferrand and Snijders, 1997; Wellman and Berkowitz, 1988) and various kinds of methodologies (Wasserman and Faust, 1994; Marsden, 1990). In this approach, individuals are seen as actors who behave intentionally and try to manage the gap between desires and prohibitions, goals and resources. Their relations, and the networks they form, are effects and conditions of actions - effects when actors bargain to create or transform relations, conditions when relations provide resources and alternatives, or impose constraints on actions. Then existing relations influence some emerging or other existing relations. Another way of saying this is that some kinds of relations - not all - are interdependent or form 'systems'.
