Social Networks

: This article outlines network research in German-speaking countries since the turn of the millennium. After briefly clarifying what is meant by network research in this context, it provides a short retrospective of German-language sociology ’ s contributions to network research in the previous century. It then focuses on the socio-political activities of sociological network research in German-speaking countries over the past 20 years. German-language network research exhibits two unique features in international comparison: a far-reaching debate on qualitative methods in network research (Section 4) and a theoretical debate on what has been coined relational sociology (Section 5).The article goes on to outline the contributions of network research to special sociologies in Section 6. Section 7 deals with the applications and developments of special methods of network research. The article ends with an outlook on the future of network research.