Daniela Campana

Social network analysis is one of the most interesting approaches to study Human Interaction. According to John Scott, it comes from two different theoretical «lineages»: the anthropological theory of Manchester’s authors (as Barnes and Mitchell) and the structural analsys of Harvard (Harrison White) that leads to the Graph Theory. Italian sociologist Antonio Chiesi looked into the latter theory, which first proposes to quantify human relations, but he criticizes its inability to analyse the qualitative dimensions of relationships. Therefore Italian sociology tries to study the social dimensions of networks, through the inquiries of Paola Di Nicola, PierPaolo Donati and Lia Sanicola. As a social worker, Sanicola proposes to use «Network Design» to represent networks of social help. To exemplify this approach, the essay shows the results of an Italian research work about Social Support Networks for old patients Care. This work was conducted by teams at the Catholic University of Milan and the University of Bologna, Cagliari and Campobasso, in 2002 and 2003. Research staff (a psycologist, a sociologist and two social workers, with the supervision of Clemente Lanzetti) looked into four cases of old patients and shows the social worker as a «co-ordinator of helping networks», supporting the relation between Informal Care and Formal networks.