Networks and Identifications

This article introduces a series of research studies that have opted for a `structural interactionist' approach to social identity. It is argued, starting from the categories defined by the macro-social institutions that are used to refer to the social contexts in which individuals live, that actors define, negotiate and claim their micro-social identities out of socially organized interactions in the mesosocial relational structures that form personal communities, according to the situations and aims that the actors pursue. This special issue explores different aspects of the complex relationship between personal communities that constitute concrete social networks and identification with abstract imagined communities.