Essays in social space: Applications to Chilean communities on inter-sector social linkages, social capital, and social justice

This dissertation is focused on defining and to measuring the structural composition of the social space, and on determining their effects in terms of social resources for a set of regional communities. The social space is used to represent contextual spaces in which social relationship are taking place. It is defined as a complex milieu where social entities-actors are embedded in systems of social relations with distinct attributes and practices.;In the first part, complexity theory is used to explore the degree of social interconnectedness in a community. The main goal there is to evaluate the effect of social structures on community economic performance. The set of applied tools comes from the social network and spatial analysis frameworks, and they are integrated in a multilevel system of analysis, oriented to quantify within, between, and within-between community complexities.;The second part uses a Social Capital perspective to evaluate the participation levels in social organizations and how they are impacting the formation of social structures. The results reveal important differences between communities and some influence of potentially contact resources on the interaction patterns exhibited in each location.;These applications were developed using data from Bio-Bio and Tarapacá regions in Chile. The first area includes 52 local communities (municipalities) and the second 9 municipalities. In both cases, the information comes from a national household survey for the year 2000 (CASEN, 2000).;In the last section, a method to characterize accessibility to a set of collective goods provided by a municipal government is developed to the case of Concepción city (Chile). Here the problem is contextualized in a social space constructed by profiles of perceived distances to points of provision. The evidence suggests a pattern of social exclusion where poor households face worse relative conditions of accessibility.;The findings have implications for scholars and public policy design in regional and community development, participatory networks, and urban studies.