La coesione sociale. Un approccio di rete.

My doctoral research deals with social cohesion, a topic that, as a consequence of the many effects of the globalisation, has become more and more popular both in the academic and in the policy discourses. The study is divided into two parts. The first focuses on the theoretical debate on the conceptual definition of social cohesion. Three approaches - micro, meso and macro - are outlined; social cohesion, in fact, can be seen as an individual attribute connected to personal attitudes, as a characteristic of social networks and as an attribute of a society as a whole. The second part has an empirical nature and tries to test the presence of a relationship between the meso and the macro level of social cohesion. With regard to the existing literature, the concept of macro social cohesion is operationalized using the following indicators: interpersonal general trust, civic engagement and associationism; meso social cohesion is measured by the morphological and content characteristics of social relations. Following a structural interactionist perspective the primary research hypothesis deals with the relationship between meso and macro level of social cohesion. Specifically, it is supposed that meso social cohesion explains macro social cohesion even keeping the individual profile’s attributes under control. To verify the hypothesis relational and individual data have been collected through a structured questionnaire administered to a sample of 307 representative cases of the population of the city of Verona and have been analysed through social network analysis and a multivariate analysis technique (i.e. binomial logistic regression). Results have outlined the “autonomous” influence of the morphology and of the contents of social networks on the presence of interpersonal trust, civic engagement and level of associationism.