Nathalie Chauvac

Studying Relational Chains from Narrative Material

Étudier les chaînes relationnelles à partir d’un matériau narratif : Les chaînes relationnelles sont une approche mal connue des réseaux sociaux, dont on classe habituellement les méthodes d’analyse selon la dichotomie réseaux personnels / réseaux complets. Plutôt que de cartographier les réseaux de façon statique, l’étude des chaînes relationnelles reconstitue les mobilisations concrètes de relations sociales dans des processus d’accès à des ressources ou de mise en relation de personnes. La méthode que nous présentons permet de reconstruire ces chaînes à partir d’un matériau narratif constitué sur la base d’entretiens croisés. Cette méthode est particulièrement adaptée à la saisie des phénomènes d’encastrement des activités économiques dans les réseaux sociaux. Nous la présentons dans cet article à partir de deux enquêtes, l’une sur les relations science-industrie et l’autre sur les créations d’entreprises. Relational chains are a poorly understood approach to social networks, whose methods of analysis are usually classified according to the personal networks / complete networks dichotomy. Rather than mapping out networks statically, the study of relational chains reconstructs the concrete mobilisations of social relations in processes for accessing resources or networking with people. The method we present reconstructs chains from a narrative material established on the basis of crossed interviews. This method is especially well suited to capturing phenomena of embeddedness of economic activities in social networks. We introduce it in this article based on two surveys, one on science-industry relations and the other on enterprise creation.

“Negative Ties, Lost Ties, Latent Ties”

This special issue intends to bring a unique perspective on some unexplored aspects of social networks, namely the negative ties, lost ties or latent ties. The texts presented here were prepared following after a conference organized specifically on this topic. Field analyzes reflect the presence of social networks that are “inefficient”, “conflictual”, “absent” or “prohibited”, and theoretical development has begun to explore and characterize these social ties. The emphasis here is on the methods used to understand these relatively difficult-to-grasp ties, both in theory and in practice. Taking into account such links, this work opens a heuristic path in social network analysis.

Les réseaux personnels des doctorants dans des chaînes latentes : retour sur une recherche-action

Latent Chains of Ties in Doctoral Students’ Personal Networks - Revisiting an Action Research: This article is based on qualitative data collected through interviews and participant observation with doctoral students in the humanities and social sciences, who used social network analysis to identify their professional colleagues. We obtained a series of name generators by asking students to list those who help them in their work, those others who work with their supervisors, and those they would like to contact to make progress. The analysis of these personal networks reveals three types of “networks”, which depend on the student’s embeddeness in the academic world or in their research field and thus their relative lack of awareness of potential direct or indirect support by their supervisor. We highlight the importance of chains of latent ties that could be activated if the student was more aware of them.

Régimes d’activité dans la création d’entreprises

Activity Patterns in Entrepreneurship - This survey presents an analysis of activity patterns of business being created, which are studied through multiple interviews and narrative syntheses. The qualitative analysis of the accumuated stories shows that we can distinguish balance between activities and projects that differ depending on whether the companies are in a project phase, an exploration phase, a stabilization phase in a market, a crisis phas or a survival phase. Coding sequences on the basis of periods of one year allows systematic analysis and the construction of a typology of trajectories.