Network Metaphor Research Articles

Vocabulary networks workshop 4: Changing the connections in a vocabulary network

This paper is the fourth in a series of workshops that examine the implications of the vocabulary network metaphor. This workshop is looks at how a model vocabulary network reacts when changes are made to the links between the words that the network is comprised of. The workshop presents a set of computer programs that allow readers to examine these processes for themselves.

The intricate web: network and rhizome metaphors in hypertext and the web and the epistemic challenge of fake news

PurposeThis article analyses the structure of hypertext and the world wide web through the contrasting metaphors of the network and the rhizome and applies that analysis to the epistemic challenge presented by fake news.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is a critical and theoretical study of the development of concepts in information science. It outlines the limitations of the network metaphor and analyses the ways in which it has influenced both the development and critical understanding of the World Wide Web and its wider social and cultural consequences. The paper develops an alternative description of the ontological structure of the Web in terms of interrupted and dissipated energy flows.FindingsThe paper argues that the Web is better described as a dynamic reorganization of the socio-cultural system that has no determinate boundaries and which is constituted properly in the spaces between technologies and the spaces between persons.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to and extends research into the rhizomic nature of hypertext and the Word Wide Web and in understanding the role of metaphor in descriptions of hypertext and the web.

To trust or not to trust? Governance of multidimensional elite sport reality

The recent reorganization of Finnish elite sport has ended in confusion when examining the goals and modus operandi between key agents in the elite sport system. We investigate the governance of this new structure and ask how this parallel governance structure is understood by agents inside the elite sport system and what is the role of trust and social capital in the combination of centralized and network-based governance? We use an interview sample (n = 16) with key policymakers and agents and questionnaire survey targeting to the national governing bodies of sport (n = 55), with 67% response rate. While use of the network metaphor is shared amongst agents, there is no shared understanding of the governance model. Situated governance-as-legitimacy based on trust and personal relationships is more important than policymakers envisage; personal trust and cumulated individual social capital seems to appear as a more powerful guide to action than system trust.

A visual approach to interpreting the career of the network metaphor

Metaphor has had a prolific presence in sociology: as a subject of empirical study, as a tool for theorizing, and as ideas that live public lives beyond the ivory tower. Despite all this work, tracing the core dynamics of metaphors over time remains a persistent challenge. To address this problem, I propose a systematic analysis of metaphor anchored around four core questions. What do metaphors describe? How do metaphors change over time? What do metaphors do? And how do conventional metaphors emerge? I address these questions in the context of one persistent and prolific metaphor: the network metaphor. To do so, I offer a formal model of the career of metaphor by drawing on cognitive linguistics and sociological theories of public ideas and professional careers. Specifically, I integrate the Google Books Ngram corpus with computational techniques that leverage co-occurrence to visualize and interpret the career of the network metaphor with respect to four areas: its jurisdiction, temporality, ecology, and conventionality. I leverage the network metaphor as both a revelatory case for evaluating my model and a critical case for deepening our historical understanding of the network. My analysis lends validation to the argument that the network metaphor has achieved the status of a broad category for thinking about contemporary life. However, it also demonstrates that the network metaphor had a lively history prior to the twentieth century. This includes significant changes in how it was used in the first half of the nineteenth century, a career standing in for anatomical structures of the body in the mid-nineteenth century, and a predominant expression in simile form prior to the start of the twentieth century.

On the Trail of Alexander von Humboldt in the Altai: A Mental Time Travel?

The article discusses “trail travel” as mental travel in time as well as the idea of a symbolic presentation of a material object and the material framing of social relations, which altogether produce tourism. In order to reveal the meaning of the material for “trail travel”, the author uses the three metaphors conventional for actor-network theory (space, networks, and flows) unconventionally. The author illuminates the meaning of space for time travel through “containerization”, that is, the allocation of a material object into which the traveler can “enter” and, in so doing, move through time. In other words, the container, in this case, is not the previously-criticized territory preserved for tourists, but the packed space-and-time. The metaphor of fluid allows the author to reveal how a tourist, looking at a material object (such as a geological exhibit), can observe the retroactivity of time explaining the space changes. Finally, the network metaphor allows the author to show that time is not a flow of irreversible sequences, but a way of representing space. In this way, the article weaves together space and time and shows, that in “trail travel”, time is space and space is time.

The Other Legacy of Vienna 1900: The Ars Combinatoria of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis

AbstractThis article positions multidisciplinary artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis at the center of a web that spans Vienna 1900, the Weimar Bauhaus, and interwar Vienna. Using a network metaphor to read her work, she is understood here as specialist of the ars combinatoria, in which she recombines genre and media in unexpected ways. She translates the language of photograms into painting, ecclesiastical subject matter into a machine aesthetic, adds found objects to abstract paintings, and paints allegories and scenes of distortion in the idiom of New Objectivity, all the while designing stage sets, costumes, modular furniture, toys, and interiors. While she has been the subject of renewed attention, particularly in the design world, much of her fine art has yet to be assessed. She used the idioms of twentieth-century art movements in unusual contexts, some of these very brave: in interwar Vienna, where she created Dadaistic posters to warn of fascism, she was imprisoned and interrogated. Always politically engaged, her interdisciplinary and multimedia approach to art bridged the conceptual divide between the utopian and critical responses to war during the interwar years. Such engagement with both political strains of twentieth-century modernism is rare. After integrating the interdisciplinary lessons of Vienna and the Weimar Bauhaus into her life's work, she shared these lessons with children at Terezín.

Beyond Klimt: New Horizons in Central Europe ed. by Alexander Klee and Stella Rollig

Reviewed by: Beyond Klimt: New Horizons in Central Europe ed. by Alexander Klee and Stella Rollig Julie M. Johnson Alexander Klee and Stella Rollig, eds., Beyond Klimt: New Horizons in Central Europe. Exhibition catalogue Belvedere Vienna, March 23–August 26, 2018. Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2018. 389 pp. What would a more inclusive art history of the interwar years look like? With Beyond Klimt, the Belvedere sets out to remap a field that has been dominated by accounts of Weimar Germany and France. A great reference source and point of departure for future researchers, this exhibition catalogue offers an overview of art that may not fit into the better-known templates of twentieth-century modernisms. Its thesis is that circuits of creativity and artistic identity were not beholden to geography or political borders. To conceptualize this new topography of mobility, curator and editor Alexander Klee makes good use of the network metaphor: Vienna lost its status as an art center during the interwar years, becoming instead one "network node" and "first point of call" among many (341). Maps of changing political boundaries and dictionary definitions of related terminology are interspersed throughout the catalogue. Everything was in flux, including how one conceptualized "border" or "nation." Artists had various reasons for migration but created new networks and found new sources of creativity during this time. Setting the stage in the introductory essay, historian Arnold Suppan covers the political aft ermath of the dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy. Organized more or less chronologically, more than dozen essays then cover various art centers, war painters, international and local art movements, and the role of the theater and avant-garde journals that provided cultural transfer [End Page 97] in multiple directions. The first group of essays addresses the reception of Klimt, Austrian Expressionism, and trends in Czech and Hungarian art. Franz Smola's essay on the late Klimt, his exhibition activities with the next generation and subsequent musealization is beautifully written and translated. Stephanie Auer covers Austrian Expressionism in the interwar years, giving good coverage to Oskar Kokoschka, Herbert Boeckl, and Anton Kolig. This essay could have benefited from the inclusion of women to better follow through with the network metaphor. Marie Louise von Motesiczky, whom Kokoschka visited while she was in exile in London, is certainly among Vienna's greatest artists of the interwar years. Expressionist Helene Funke, originally from Chemnitz, became Vienna's "grande dame" during that period. Lilly Steiner also merited mention in this context, which proposes that Kokoschka returned to the Baroque to embrace his Austrianness in exile: "No other Expressionist artist between the wars drew on the 'Baroque heritage' to the same extent as Oskar Kokoschka, especially during his time in exile in Prague and London. He did this in order to emphasize the specifically 'Austrian' and unmistakable character of his art" (52). That may be true, but he was not alone. In exile in Paris, hearing about what was happening in Vienna, Steiner painted her key work of 1938, Baroque Composition, an allegorical landscape with recognizable architectural monuments from Vienna and Salzburg. To be fair, the Belvedere and its curators should be lauded for including all of these women and many others in the exhibition and color plates. Baroque Composition appears at the end of the catalogue in a section of plates devoted to exile and the Anschluss. One of the most valuable essay collections is subtitled "Internationalist Art." With an unusual pairing of movements, such as the Bauhaus with Surrealism, this section demonstrates that the more nationalistic politics became, the more international became the artists. Flóra Mészáros presents new information on artists from the former Habsburg monarchy who became active in 1930s France in the Abstraction-Création group. Barbara Lesák covers the rise and fall of avant-garde theater and the 1924 International Exhibition of New Theater Technology, organized and designed by Friedrich Kiesler, a figure well known to architectural historians. Judith Elisabeth Weiss has new information on the consequences of André Breton's visit to Freud's house in Vienna and the expanding Surrealist network in Prague—a fascinating read. Éva Bajkay documents the connections between Vienna and the Bauhaus, [End Page 98...

Egalitarian Aspects of Scale-free Networks

Scale-free networks are frequently described as the zenith of inequality and sometimes even pin-pointed as a natural cause of concentrations, including accumulation of resources in human society. Although coherent with theory and empirical data, there are at least three aspects of scale-free networks that are egalitarian. Using the social network metaphor (which is easier to grasp): 1) the presence of each agent (vertex or component) in diverse networks, while each agent has the same amount of resources (e.g. time) for engaging (establishing links or edges) with other individual agents, ideas or objects; 2) the constant change in the concentration of resources (in this case, links) of each agent; 3) the uniform distribution of resources with respect to the amount of resources per agent (the more resources per agent, the fewer the agents). We also consider the importance of vertices that are not hubs and overstatements on the importance of the hubs. The conclusions suggest the urge of research to better examine and model the relevance of the vertices that are not hubs (i.e. peripheral and intermediary) and verify the need to better weight the emphasis current literature places in the association of inequality to the scale-free networks (and other phenomena in which power laws are found).

A hálózatok emlékezetei, az emlékezetek hálózatai

The present paper aims to tentatively raise a number of issues regarding the complex relationship between collective memory and the internet, more specifically Web 2.0. First, I briefly demonstrate how the metaphors of the internet and of collective memory have shaped our understanding of the two topics, and I look at the possible interfaces between them. Then, capitalizing upon the metaphor of network, the most prevalent one of such ‘interfaces’, the paper seeks to explore the insights it can offer in relation with collective memories in the age of social media. Finally, I use the example of the late Kádár-era and its online memory to illuminate a few theoretical consequences of imagining contemporary online memory communities as networks.

Médialab stories: How to align actor network theory and digital methods

The history of laboratories may become controversial in social sciences. In this paper, the story of Sciences Po Médialab told by Venturini et al. is discussed and completed by demonstrating the incoherence in the choice of digital methods at the Médialab from the actor network theory perspective. As the Médialab mostly used web topologies as structural analysis of social positions, they were not able to account for the propagation of ideas, considered in actor network theory as non-humans that have their own agency. The main arguments in favour of the ‘more continuous social’ developed at the Médialab (quali-quanti, following the actors, zooming) proved to be as misleading as the network metaphor. The distribution of agency that actor network theory so successfully expands was paradoxicallty reduced to structures and individual preferences, to the detriment of the agency of replications that circulate entities in the form of messages, content or memes, and that should now become the next step for actor network theory-style digital methods.

Translocal empowerment communication: Mediated networks of civil society organizations for political empowerment

Abstract The theoretical concept of translocal empowerment communication is developed in this article on the basis of an empirical study: the Association for Progressive Communications Women’s Networking Support Program was analysed as a case study of a translocal network of civil society actors whose aim is to empower marginalized women politically using media and communication technologies. The network was analysed using a qualitative approach, and Manuel Castells’ network metaphor was helpful to structure the findings and to uncover power structures within the network and the network and its environment. The concept translocal empowerment communication points on the one hand to the translocally mediated connectivity of civil society organizations striving for political empowerment of marginalized people through local media projects; on the other hand, it refers to power structures and inequalities that are produced by translocally mediated networks of civil society actors.

Against network thinking: A critique of pathological sovereignty

This article advances a critique of network thinking and the pathological sovereignty that it gives rise to. The network is ubiquitous as a metaphor for understanding the social, economic and political dynamics of the contemporary era. Implicitly drawing on an analogy with communications infrastructures such as the telegraph or internet, the network metaphor represents global politics in terms of nodes related to one another through conduit-like links. I begin by demonstrating the widespread nature of network thinking and outline the way in which conventional metaphors structure both thinking and action. I then recreate an episodic history of network thinking in order to demonstrate the key entailments of the network metaphor. I argue that there are four entailments of network thinking: the prioritisation of connectivity; the identification of novel actors; de-territorialisation; and a lack of concern for contiguity and context. The article then outlines the corresponding political and ethical consequences that follow from these entailments, specifically: fantasies of precision; new threat imaginaries; unboundedness; and a failure to attend to culture and community. I contend that network thinking gives rise to a pathological sovereignty whose dual faces can be seen in drone strikes and invasive surveillance. Finally, I argue that thinking beyond the network requires us to foreground the importance of contiguity and context in understanding global politics. This article contributes both a novel theoretical framework for challenging the hegemony of network thinking and an ethical call for greater recognition of the harm caused by pathological sovereignty.

SOCIOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING OF INTERNET: THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO THE NETWORK ANALYSIS

The network is an efficient way of social structure analysis for contemporary sociologists. It gives broad opportunities for detailed and fruitful research of different patterns of ties and social relations by quantitative analytical methods and visualization of network models. The network metaphor is used as the most representative tool for description of a new type of society. This new type is characterized by flexibility, decentralization and individualization. Network organizational form became the dominant form in modern societies. The network is also used as a mode of inquiry. Actually three theoretical network approaches in the Internet research case are the most relevant: social network analysis, “network society” theory and actor-network theory. Every theoretical approach has got its own notion of network. Their special methodological and theoretical features contribute to the Internet studies in different ways. The article represents a brief overview of these network approaches. This overview demonstrates the absence of a unified semantic space of the notion of “network” category. This fact, in turn, points out the need for detailed analysis of these approaches to reveal their theoretical and empirical possibilities in application to the Internet studies.

Using the Network Metaphor to Design, Deliver, and Maintain a Construction Management Curriculum

Construction management programs accredited by the American Council for Construction Education (ACCE) are responding to new standards for accreditation, as the accreditation process itself is being changed to primarily focus on learning outcomes. These changes offer an opportunity and a challenge for existing programs to readjust and restructure to meet the increasingly changing expectations within the construction market. Using a network metaphor, with a critical path consisting of critical activities, activity codes, and constraints, can be a successful methodology to develop/align a construction management curriculum. As with any network, this approach can be used as both planning and control tool, being revisited regularly for further fine-tuning responding to the feedback resulting from assessment efforts to “close the loop.” The resulting network can be presented in both tabular and/or graphical format highlighting the critical path and particular critical activities (learning concepts) within that path. Different resources can be applied to the schedule reflecting their commitment and availability limits (space, labs, computers, etc.).

Olhares e reflexões contemporâneas sobre o triângulo sociedade-educação-tecnologias e suas influências no ensino das ciências

Quando se combinam termos como sociedade, educação e tecnologias, parece destacar-se a ideia de que as tecnologias têm sido associadas a algumas das mais expressivas mudanças ocorridas na sociedade do século XX e início do século XXI, e têm sido relatadas como capazes de influenciar aspetos diversos e significativos da realidade social, a ponto de alguns autores dizerem que estamos perante uma nova forma de organização da sociedade e do sistema econômico, à qual o sistema educativo deveria procurar corresponder, adequando-se. Neste artigo, apresentam-se algumas perspetivas e olhares que julgamos úteis para alavancar uma reflexão sustentada e projetiva sobre o passado, o presente e o futuro das inter-relações entre as esferas social, educativa e tecnológica e as possíveis influências daí decorrentes para o ensino das ciências. Assim, de forma mais descritiva, importa referir que este artigo é constituído por cinco tópicos que julgamos relevantes para consubstanciar a reflexão sobre a temática em apreço. Começando por apresentar algumas considerações sobre a sociedade da informação, a metáfora da rede e o potencial coletivo, segue-se um enfoque nas tecnologias e na sua relação com as "escolas que aprendem". Na medida em que o letramento digital não se esgota na competência tecnológica, a instituição escolar - e os seus agentes pode assumir um papel de mediação entre os desafios da sociedade do conhecimento e as novas gerações. Nesse contexto de interdependências múltiplas, termina-se o artigo com algumas reflexões sobre a educação em ciência, o ensino das ciências e o letramento científico na sociedade da informação.

NETWORKED IDENTITIES

Transnational dynamics have significantly changed established notions of communities and belonging. Transnational perspectives however remain marginal in research on European identities which has typically conceptualised the latter as emerging from and relying on essential national referents. Drawing on data derived from members of a transnational organisation promoting civic participation in Europe, this paper challenges existing representations of Europeanness by offering a new interpretive metaphor of networked identities. Findings suggest that through this schema members are able to construct and reimagine their belonging along axes that often bypass national identification. Identities are constructed along a spatial dimension that challenges a stable core–periphery or bounded logic, instead dynamically reorganising hierarchies and bringing to the fore individual agency, fluidity and creativity. In this context we argue, from an emic perspective, that the network metaphor represents a powerful referent for (re)imagining European identity as more dynamic, complex and processual than previously conceptualised.

Imbalance of Power: Social Service Entrepreneurss Experiences of Entrepreneur-Municipality Relationship

We investigate the complex dynamics between social service entrepreneurs and social sector managers through the lens of network metaphor, utilizing our data on social service entrepreneurs’ experiences of cooperation with municipalities. We examine what kinds of dependencies exist in the entrepreneur-municipality relationships and what kind of consequences these dependencies have on social service businesses run by entrepreneurs. Basing on the social service entrepreneurs experience, our findings suggest that while the cooperation with the municipality represents a prerequisite for success, their business represent only one alternative for the renewal of social service structures from the point of view of municipalities. In addition, the existence of legally enforced supervisory duties incorporates a considerable amount of power that influences areas of the entrepreneur-municipality relationships and interaction other than just those defined by the supervisory and regulatory rights.

Imbalance of Power: Social Service Entrepreneurs’ Experiences of Entrepreneur-Municipality Relationship

We investigate the complex dynamics between social service entrepreneurs and social sector managers through the lens of network metaphor, utilizing our data on social service entrepreneurs’ experiences of cooperation with municipalities. We examine what kinds of dependencies exist in the entrepreneur–municipality relationships and what kind of consequences these dependencies have on social service businesses run by entrepreneurs. Basing on the social service entrepreneurs experience, our findings suggest that while the cooperation with the municipality represents a prerequisite for success, their business represent only one alternative for the renewal of social service structures from the point of view of municipalities. In addition, the existence of legally enforced supervisory duties incorporates a considerable amount of power that influences areas of the entrepreneur–municipality relationships and interaction other than just those defined by the supervisory and regulatory rights.

The Network’s Blindspot: Exclusion, Exploitation and Marx’s Process-Relational Ontology

The ‘network metaphor’ impoverishes our understanding of power. Its binary logic of inclusion/exclusion leaves it blind to relations of exploitation. However, instead of ideological critique – the standard Marxist approach - this paper reconstructs Marx’s theory of exploitation from a common “process-relational ontology” that is shared by both network theorists and Marx. From this shared ontology it becomes possible to demonstrate how Marx’s materialization of process through ‘production’ and his understanding of relations as ‘internal’ and ‘contradictory’ lead him not into an inclusion/exclusion cul-de-sac but rather to a critique of exploitation writ large. This paper concludes by briefly demonstrating how the theory of exploitation that emerges from Marx’s process-relational ontology is ideally suited to understanding and critiquing the intensification and extensification of exploitation under informational capitalism.

Il territorio come infrastruttura: il caso della Provincia di Roma.

Even for the evident similarities with the results of scientific and technological evolution of the society, during the 90s the network metaphor has established itself as a dominant image, to which link the understanding/interpretation (project) of the contemporary complexity (city/territory/society). This resulted in new descriptions/interpretations (projects) of the city and of the territory that move from the material and immaterial organization of the network itself. However, not always the reduction operated within planning was able to highlight limitations and contradictions inherent in the network metaphor as an interpretative key. In reality, the planning “speech” seems to focus primarily on technical issues – which certainly are not irrelevant – as congestion of flows, inadequacy of logistics platforms and, more generally, as regards the Italian case, on the serious and continuing infrastructure deficit: all factors that determine an undeniable impact on efficiency and competitiveness, on accessibility to services and on the timing of city use. But what, however, seems to be necessary is the overcoming of the still too sectoral approach towards a truly integrated planning pattern. This difficulty can be traced to some issues/problems of a structural nature that, historically, characterized the political-cultural and disciplinary Italian context. For example, despite the obvious consequences, measures regarding infrastructures tend to be made separately from the planning system. This is derived from the organization in different sectors that historically characterized public administration in general. In addition, we have particularistic logic of both vertical and horizontal type, that is the division of powers between administrative bodies of different levels or between structures of the same sector. This limits related to the issue of segmentation are more noticeable if you switch from ordinary activities to the field of territorial development policies, which are increasingly entrusted to local and regional dimension, in which tend to manifest ideas, proposals and initiatives. On the other hand, as regards the national infrastructure policies, the long absence of comprehensive planning documents, which can provide a reference for local authorities and economic operators, has been mirrored in an episodic and often contradictory action. This situation seems to persist despite the profound changes that, since the 90s, have invested traditional” planning tools in the direction of greater institutional coordination, and despite the EU territorial policies. Thus, large territorial networks eventually take, at most, the role of (probable) elements of a scenario and not that of strategic development factors. An example of these difficulties is given by the recent territorial plan of the Province of Rome. The article suggests the assumption of the European strategic and multi-level (highly experimental) approach, based on the concept of “Territorial Platform”, towards the overcoming of the highlighted problems.