El estudio de las redes personales: contribuciones, métodos y perspectivas

The aim of this paper is to provide a state-of-the-art about the personal networks scientific field. The paper is divided in four parts. In the first part the literature is reviewed and classified in four traditions or Schools: the Manchester School, the Community Studies, the Personal Network estimation and the Social Capital. In the second part, the main contributions of those studies are summarized in a systematic way. The third part is devoted to the study of the bias involved in recalling personal relationships. Finally, we try to contribute to the study of meso structures or social phenomena where individual interactions, institutions and social structures are empirically observed.