Studying Relational Chains from Narrative Material

International audienceRelational 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 chainsfrom 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