Network Of Metaphors Research Articles

Brokering between (not so) overt and (not so) covert networks in conflict zones

ABSTRACTThere is a tendency to consider covert networks as separate from overt networks. Drawing on data from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we demonstrate that this is not the case and identify how covert and overt networks are mutually constitutive. While most studies of African brokers have relied on network metaphors like ‘Big Men’ and ‘social membranes’, we consider the embeddedness of ‘covert’ networks in ‘overt’ networks explicitly. We perform two analyses on a large original dataset encompassing 396 partially overlapping ego-nets obtained from a hybrid link-tracing design. An ego-net analysis reveals a large degree of homophily and a deep embeddedness of the different networks. A multilevel exponential random graph model fitted to the reconstructed network of a 110-node subset shows that demobilised combatants are the actors likely to broker between armed groups, state forces, and civilian blocs, suggesting their capacity to broker peace or foment war.

Cultural perspectives on positive responses to extreme adversity: A playing field for metaphors.

In Euro-American societies, "resilience" and "post-traumatic growth" are commonly used metaphorical terms for positive responses to extreme adversity. However, research on illness narratives has demonstrated that other cultures may have different metaphorical concepts that act as vehicles for shared beliefs about how to overcome extreme adversity or traumatic experiences. The purpose of this article is to identify metaphors used in various cultures to describe positive responses to extreme adversity and to discuss the cultural ontologies and other socio-cultural factors that shape them. Metaphors of this nature were extracted from psychological, anthropological and ethnographic studies and were organized into categories: battle, path, container, balance, weight, object and network metaphors. Findings support the notion that metaphorical expressions related to positive responses to extreme adversity vary widely across cultures. We argue that an understanding of cultural differences in metaphors for mental health-related concepts is crucial to assisting trauma survivors from different cultural backgrounds.

“Ava’s body is a good one”: (Dis)Embodiment in Ex Machina

Abstract This article discusses the role of the body in Alex Garland’s film Ex Machina (2015). It focuses on Ava’s female cyborg body against the backdrop of both classic post-humanist theories and current reflections from scholars in the field of body studies. I argue that Ex Machina addresses but also transcends questions of gender and feminism. It stresses the importance of the body for social interaction both in the virtual as well as the real world. Ava’s lack of humanity results from her mind that is derived from the digital network Blue Book in which disembodied communication dominates. Moreover, the particular construction of Nathan’s progeny demonstrates his longing for a docile sex toy since he created Ava with fully functional genitals but without morals. Ex Machina further exhibits various network metaphors both on the visual and the audio level that contribute to the (re)acknowledgement that we need a body in order to be human.

Rethinking Organic Metaphors in Poetry and Ecology: Rhizomes and Detritus Words in Oni Buchanan's ““Mandrake Vehicles””

This essay analyzes the relationship between organic form in poetry and organicism in ecology through a reading of Oni Buchanan’s “The Mandrake Vehicles” (2008). Buchanan revises organic form by replacing Romanticism’s single plant with rhizomatic root structures, with implications for the metaphors that drive much ecocritical thought. While traditional nature poetry’s “closed-circle” organicism sees both literature and ecology as ways of recuperating waste, Buchanan’s poems insist that organic growth and poetic composition both thrive through bursts of superfluous energy. Buchanan’s poems suggest that network metaphors and a poetics of excess might redirect the persistent drive toward organicist holism in ecocritical discourse.

From biological and social network metaphors to coupled bio-social wireless networks

Biological and social analogies have been long applied to complex systems. Inspiration has been drawn from biological solutions to solve problems in engineering products and systems, ranging from Velcro to camouflage to robotics to adaptive and learning computing methods. In this paper, we present an overview of recent advances in understanding biological systems as networks and use this understanding to design and analyse wireless communication networks. We expand on two applications, namely cognitive sensing and control and wireless epidemiology. We discuss how our work in these two applications is motivated by biological metaphors. We believe that recent advances in computing and communications coupled with advances in health and social sciences raise the possibility of studying coupled bio-social communication networks. We argue that we can better utilise the advances in our understanding of one class of networks to better our understanding of the other.

Place and Music: performing 'the region' on the New South Wales Far North Coast

This paper draws on research conducted for over a decade on the musical cultures of the New South Wales Far North Coast, as a contribution to debates in geography and popular music studies on the links between music, place and articulations of cultural identities. Patterns of migration and economic restructuring over the last 20 years have transformed the Far North Coast region, with associated changes in the images conjured to describe the region – from those centred on dairying, fishing and sugar harvesting to those of a ‘lifestyle’ or ‘alternative’ region, with growth in employment in tourism, recreational services, ‘gourmet’ agricultural production, culinary delights, homewares retail and the arts. Music has been a constant presence in the region throughout generations, but became much more pronounced after significant counter-urban migrations to the area began in the 1970s. As music emerged as a unique part of the cultural mix of the region, it became much more diverse, was entangled in local politics, and in the transitions and tensions that have surrounded successive waves of new migrants – both domestic and international – to the region. This article discusses music as a social practice within the region that has played a part in shaping and reflecting evolving regional identities; but at the same time, music constitutes a set of activities that unsettle notions of ‘boundedness’ or ‘stable’ associations between place identities and music. I begin with debates about the links between music, place and identity, and the extent to which such associations are performative – constituted in an embodied fashion in the process of describing and enacting certain cultural discourses. Two broad trends are outlined here as ‘storylines’: one focused on constructions of music as ‘authentic’ that are linked to place identities, the second emphasises mobility of musical languages, and network metaphors for the repetition of musical practices across locations. Interpretations of musical practices on the Far North Coast hold these storylines in tension; one focused on ‘fixing’ musical practices in place, the other emphasizing the fluidity of ‘the region’ in a wider musical geography.

And if the Global Were Small and Noncoherent? Method, Complexity, and the Baroque

What is it to be big? What is it to be small? And what is it to be global? Common sense, including a good deal of the common sense underlying network metaphors for complex globality, involves the assumption that the global is large, that it includes the (smaller) local, and that to understand it we need to adopt a holistic approach in which we look up to explore emergent complexities, and so obtain a provisional overview of the whole. In this paper I argue, following Chunglin Kwa, that this is a particular and romantic method for imagining complexity. I then follow Kwa by considering a baroque alternative. Instead of looking up, this looks down and discovers limitless internal complexity within, which is materially heterogeneous, specific, and sensuous. In this monadology there are no limits to complexity within, but neither is there any possibility of modeling and knowing that complexity in full. There is no overview and neither is there any assumption of coherence. In this way of thinking the global lies within each site and is small, sensuous, specific, heterogeneous, noncoherent, and cannot be more than patchily modeled.

Dominant metaphors in the IMP network discourse: ‘the network as a marriage’ and ‘the network as a business system’

As the wide use of the network concept within and outside marketing implies, the term may be filled with different meanings depending on the textual and disciplinary context. This is true especially as far as the currently popular IMP (Industrial/International Marketing and Purchasing) group interorganisational networks research is concerned. Building on earlier contributions on the metaphorical nature of networks, we find it relevant to extend the scholarly discussion of how various network metaphors and the meanings attached to them are able to guide the current research in industrial and international marketing. In this article, we identify and explore two network metaphors that organise the research questions and subsequent research contributions within the research field. We name the two metaphors ‘the network as a marriage’ and ‘the network as a business system’. Furthermore, we show evidence of how metaphors guide us towards asking specific questions and giving specific answers. It is our argument that these two metaphors leave certain, less-obvious or taken-for-granted aspects unexplored.

Irradiating intranet knowledge: the role of the interface

The article considers the relationship between effective knowledge creation, acquisition and management and the user interface. The need for and problems associated with knowledge management are discussed and a useful model for organisational learning development is proposed (IPRAM). The article makes a detailed consideration of interface issues in relation to knowledge management and their role in synergising the personal‐corporate knowledge nexus for organisational and economic benefit. Alternative customisable representations of intranets are presented with their implications discussed. Network models, metaphors and iconic interfaces all have their merits. Besides improving interface representations of the intranet researchers need to consider how conceptual and experiential knowledge can be captured in the intranet.