Who is (Still) Socializing with Neighbors? A Contribution to the Analysis of Local Social Relations1

Disembedding of social relations from a local context has often been pointed out as one of the main characteristics of contemporary social changes. Taking that as a starting point, this paper explored the role of neighborhood social relations in contemporary Croatian society. The analysis presented in this paper had two aims. The first aim was to get insight into structure of local social relations in Croatia and the second one was to determine whether dynamics of local social relations are related to some demographic, socioeconomic or spatial characteristics. Data analyzed in this paper were collected through the survey entitled Pilar’s Barometer of Croatian Society. The survey was conducted in the spring of 2014 on the national representative sample of Croatian citizens aged 18 years and older (N=1000). Findings from the analysis indicate that neighboring is a usual form of social interaction for majority of the target population. Furthermore, analysis showed that the level of education and the size both of settlements and buildings where respondents live are the most important determinants of neighborhood social relations. In addition, the analysis revealed that years of residence at the present address are particularly important for density of neighborhood social relations.