Social capital and personal networks

My research on personal networks has examined how people make the connections that prove useful to them. Much of my work is not formally in the social network analysis (SNA) tradition, where relations are conceived as nodes and the ties between them and the analyst attempts to understand the networks' underlying structure. Rather, my work has focused on social interaction, the importance of context, and how people make sense of their connections. My new book proposes a model of network inequality in which the nature and quality of people's connections, including how trustworthy they are and what obligations they carry, depend on the everyday organizations in which those networks are embedded.

• 2009. Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everday Life. New York: Oxford University Press.
• 2007. Small, Mario Luis. "Racial Differences in Networks: Do Neighborhood Conditions Matter?" Social Science Quarterly. 88(2):320-43.
• 2004. Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• 2002. Small, Mario Luis. "Culture, Cohorts, and Social Organization Theory: Understanding Local Participation in a Latino Housing Project." American Journal of Sociology. 108(1):1-54.
• 2001. Small, Mario Luis and Katherine Newman. "Urban Poverty after The Truly Disadvantaged: The Rediscovery of the Family, the Neighborhood, and Culture." Annual Review of Sociology. 27:23-45.