Social Networks and Normative Context

Abstract

A secondary analysis of three national representative surveys allows a) to illustrate hypothesis on interdependencies between social and sexual relations in personal networks; b) to compare these processes in three countries. The chapter describes: sizes of confident networks; probability to know person with HIV / AIDS and its links with behavioural response to risk; norms of fidelity that interviewees perceived in their social environments, and their own norms. Each analyse is introduced by theoretical hypothesis and methodological discussion. It provides evidences that actors don't have “a sexual behaviour”, but are engaged in sexual and social relations which influence each others, in such a way that we have to think that it is more networks than individuals which “have sexual behaviours”.