ABSTRACT
In this chapter we explore how these three elements are related to each other and how, from the interrelations between them, social forms have emanated that hold consequences for social cohesion. To examine these interrelations on the conceptual level we build on the
notion of sociality (Licoppe and Smoreda, 2005), a process consisting of networks of ties, forms of social interactions, and technological means of communication. Various authors have recently started to associate mobile phones with distinctive forms of network and mobile sociality (e.g., Mascheroni, 2007; Matsuda, 2005; Wittel, 2001), exploring changes in the structural features of social networks. To analyze the relationship between social cohesion and the characteristics of social networks, sustained by the uses of various communication technologies, we focus on a concept that, in our view, best describes the basic form of togetherness in contemporary societies-a personal network (Wellman, 1979, 2001). This concept lies at the heart of the dialectic process between integration and individualization (Willson, 2006), which was already implicitly pointed out in Durkheim’s (1984) definition of social cohesion as the dialectic of pursuing one’s own interests and associating with each other.
