Week 8: Navigating the Network Society

Our class discussion revolved around the network society, on the methods by which people organize their relationships. The associations between nodes, or actors in the network, is what Latour argues are the most important aspect of the network. Through his “principle of generalized symmetry,” Latour explains that everything has a function and a purpose in a network, even inanimate objects, which produce as much of a relationship as humans. Some might find this definition a little too “Terminator,” but James Cameron’s version of humans and machines competing for dominance came from a clearly human perspective, and lacked the objectivity with which Latour examines relationships. Looking purely at their function, machines have as much an impact on the network as human beings. We have made them so, both through the fact that machines are a direct result of human invention, and also through our resulting dependence on them. However, the main problem with Latour’s version of the network society is that it begins to break down once everything is looked at as a network—a bit of analysis paralysis.

So, using Castells’ version of a network as the defining method by which people relate to one another, the associations and relationships between individuals and organizations, can be a bit more of a realistic and feasible option for explaining the network society. The network society has been enabled, Castells says, through several occurrences in the past hundred years or so: economic deregulation, failed reform of the nation-state, the rise of counterculture movements, and a reconfiguration of media and information systems. This leads to Castells’ ultimate concern of how networks distribute power. This is displayed in what I think is his most interesting examination of networks: the flow between nodes, their direction and symmetry. And we can see how networks are becoming more and more complex, as states and organizations, such as those described by Castells, are increasingly the result of network relationships.

Looking too much at the structure of a network can be misleading, however, because ultimately, it is the actors in a network that define how successful it is, as well as its structure. A node could change a network by determining a new direction of flow to another, thereby changing the structure. This connects with our discussion of network literacy, and the keys to navigating the concept of a network society—the most interesting of which I think is citizenship, or determining not only one’s involvement in a network but also one’s responsibility to a network. Because networks define meaning, defining our place within them gives us greater control over their structure and our associations.