New Forms Of Sociality Research Articles

Against the “Networked Information Economy”: Rethinking Decentralization, Community, and Free Software Development

Against the “Networked Information Economy”: Rethinking Decentralization, Community, and Free Software Development Ben Roberts (bio) The free, libre, and open source software (FLOSS) movement is often cited as an example of fundamental changes in production associated with the rise of information networks. Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams see it as an example of wikinomics, a powerful new form of economic production based on sharing and self-organization.1 Yochai Benkler argues that the form of social or peer production evident in FLOSS can compete with or even displace traditional forms of capitalist organization and sees it as a symptom of the “networked information economy,” replacing the “industrial information economy,” which has been in force since the late-nineteenth century.2 The main feature of this networked information economy is the much greater role within it for decentralized individual action.3 This essay contests this broadly liberal take on the significance of the free software movement. It argues that Benkler is typical of an approach that tends to view the Internet as the primary enabler of decentralization (for example, in the form of decentralized software development). Of course, it would be foolish to discount the role that networks have played in the success of FLOSS. But, as I will argue, an examination of its history suggests that its origins can’t be entirely accounted for in purely technological and economic grounds. The proponents of such an approach often resist the claim that their focus on networks is technologically determinist,4 arguing that the network itself is shaped by social and cultural factors. However, this makes the explanatory power of networks rather circular: the existence of networks explains social and cultural behavior at the same time as being explained by it. The explanation of free software in terms of the economic properties of networks is simply too static and asocial; it serves to explain how a particular mode of production can functionally compete with the market without really being able to account for how this change has come about. In particular, as I will show, the marginalization [End Page 385] of the question of labor in theories of peer production disconnects the analysis from wider changes in the nature of economic production. Moreover, the emphasis on the empowerment of individuals ignores the possibility that decentralization consists in radical new forms of sociality and collectivity, something that can perhaps be seen in the communities built around particular free software projects. As I will argue, Gilbert Simondon’s concept of individuation may help inform a better understanding of the emergence of such free software communities. From the perspective of a nonprogrammer, it is easiest to understand the concept of FLOSS by explaining how proprietary software such as Microsoft Windows is distributed. The operating system and applications that users run on their personal computers (PCs) are most often compiled software. The creators of the application have written the code in any one of a number of different human-readable programming languages; this program is known as the source code. The source code is then converted by another program known as a compiler into object or binary code, which is a machine-readable version of the program executed when the application is run on a PC. Binary, or object, code is the form in which software is most often distributed to users, either on installation media such as compact discs (CDs), installed on a computing device before sale or, increasingly, downloaded over the Net. The end user of proprietary software created and distributed in this fashion has no access to the original source code and is therefore unable to alter, change, or fix the software running on their machine: in the words of Bob Young, the former chief executive officer (CEO) of open source software company Red Hat, purchasing proprietary software is like buying a “car with the hood welded shut.”5 In addition to the absence of source code, proprietary software is usually distributed under the terms of a highly restrictive software license. In effect, the applications run by a user remain the property of the software maker and may be used only under the terms of this contract. Typically, the license prevents sharing...

INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION VALUE IN GLOBALIZING COMMUNITY

The attention in this article is paid to social changes in terms of global information processes and the influence of these changes on the appearance of some new forms of socialization. The transformation period of modern society is in many ways determined by informational processes which are based on modern means of communication and technology. The evolution of these technologies transforms interpersonal communication, it being the vital need and universal value. Tarpasmeninės komunikacijos reikšmė globalizuotoje bendruomenėje Santrauka Šiame straipsnyje dėmesys sutelkiamas į socialinius pokyčius globaliųjų procesų sąlygomis ir į šių pokyčių įtaką pastebimoms naujoms socializacijos formoms. Moderniosios visuomenės transformacijos laikotarpis yra nulemtas informacinių procesų, kurių pagrindą sudaro modernios komunikacijos priemonės ir technologijos. Šių technologijų evoliucija keičia tarpasmeninę komunikaciją, nulemdama jos esminį poreikį ir universalią vertę.

In the Field of the Ubiquitous City .

The technologized urban environment has fundamental effects on us: it modifies our understanding of time, distance and privacy. For example, by talking on a mobile phone with someone who is waiting for you, you are already with that person. This means that the concepts of communality and communication need rethinking to fully understand the existing and emerging effects of technological development in socio-cultural reality. What does it mean in a space full of ubiquitous technology to ‘be with somebody’, or to ‘be present’? Clearly, a person forms a socially constructed physical and virtual hybrid space by using communication technology, but it should also be noted how social hierarchies and norms restrict or encourage the utilization of technology and the social interaction linked to it. Thus, technology can create new forms of sociality but, on the other hand, it can also produce new forms of separation and isolation related to gender, age, education and social status.

Polyphony in Social Classification: Exploring Hybrid Forms of Speech, Practice, and Text in Digital Settings

As information technologies grow and the digital online spaces become increasingly popular places for social interaction, we are confronted with new forms of sociality, practice, and knowledge organization that defy traditional distinctions between document, text, speech, language, and practice. This paper argues that due to these shifts, we also need new theoretical frameworks that reflect these changes. This paper presents a study of a social classification system, del.icio.us from an ethnographic approach to introduce that concepts speech and practice into the study of digital engagement. This paper specifically introduces concepts of monologue and dialogue to elucidate the ways in which people participate in social classification systems and, more importantly, the ways in which they negotiate their relationships to a larger digital public.

"Forse domani mi sposo.." Organizzazione sociale, aspetti simbolici e immaginari sulle famiglie romene in migrazione

- In this article, the migrant family is analyzed from several points of view: on the one hand, as a cluster of ties, practices and social relations; on the other hand, as a symbolic creation. In rural Romania, family embodies the basic social aggregate: it is the unit of economic production, as well as the main source of affection and individual identities. Build-ing a family represents a major step in the transition to adulthood: today as well as in the past, to young Romanians migration represents the means to accumulate the resources the new family unit needs. Over the years, this process has become more and more complex because of the changes occurred in the social, economic and political conditions of the arrival context. In Italy, the young Romanian migrants experience new ties, new residential solutions and new forms of sociality. They must cope with different conceptions: the way family is conceived in the leading Romanian thought, the ideas Romanians have acquired about Italian family, and, vice versa, the images Italian people have developed about Romanian family. The negotiations and growing distances, the strives and mediations that mark the en-trance in adult life, are placed in the social transnational space between Romania and Italy.Keywords Family; Migration; Romania; Social representa-tions; Transnationalism

Health Identities and Subjectivities:

The formation of identity and subjectivity in relation to health is a fundamental issue in social science. This overview distinguishes two different approaches to the workings of power in shaping senses of self and other. Politics of identity scholars focus on social movements and organizations concerned with discrimination, recognition, and social justice. The biopower approach examines discourse and technology as they influence subjectivity and new forms of sociality. Recent work in medical anthropology, especially on chronic problems, illustrates the two approaches and also points to the significance of detailed comparative ethnography for problematizing them. By analyzing the political and economic bases of health, and by embedding health conditions in the other concerns of daily life, comparative ethnography ensures differentiation and nuance. It helps us to grasp the uneven effects of social conditions on the possibilities for the formation of health identities and subjectivities.

I network. Modelli e processi di comunicazione, socialità e produzione delle conoscenze

Mariella Berra’s work, Sociologia delle reti telematiche, presents an original and comprehensive perspective which involves the complex relation between communication networks and the global economy processes, the transformation of work organization, and the new forms of socialization on line. A central focus in Berra’s reflection is the idea of the networks as a complex socio-techical system: they’re not only the “infrastructures of contemporaneity” but tend to become “sense” and “content” of our present social relations, cognitive processes and production practices. According to this perspective Berra’s work can be placed coherently among the socio-technical analysis of Patrice Flichy and Luciano Gallino, even though her book emphasises some central nodes peculiar to the communication networks: the increasing value of knowledge as a common good, the emerging role of cooperative production processes compared to traditional models based on competition and the importance of on line communication as a new mean of access and democratization of institutional policies.

From Dissonance to Resonance: Cognitive Interdependence in Quantitative Finance

This study explores the elusive social dimension of quantitative finance. We conducted three years of observations in the derivatives trading room of a major investment bank. We found that traders use models to translate stock prices into estimates of what their rivals think. Traders use these estimates to look out for possible errors in their own models. We found that this practice, reflexive modeling, enhances returns by turning prices into a vehicle for distributed cognition. But it also induces a dangerous form of cognitive interdependence: when enough traders overlook a key issue, their positions give misplaced reassurance to those traders that think similarly, disrupting their reflexive processes. In cases lacking diversity, dissonance thus gives way to resonance. Our analysis demonstrates how practices born in caution can lead to overconfidence and collective failure. We contribute to economic sociology by developing a socio-technical account that grapples with the new forms of sociality introduced by financial models – dissembedded yet entangled; anonymous yet collective; impersonal yet, nevertheless, emphatically social.

Foragers, Farmers and Fishers: Responses to Environmental Perturbation

This paper proposes an anthropological approach to understanding responses to environmental perturbation, one that is aligned with the humanistic and environmentalist agendas of political ecology while seeking to develop a more generic understanding of processes that shape human action in, as well as on, the worlds that people experience. We outline a comparative model that recognizes and prioritizes the role of prevailing expressions of ethos and sociality in conditioning responses to perturbation and takes variation in those expressions as focal to analysis. The model concerns the complexity of social systems, identifying two dimensions of complexity that we label ‘the involvement of parts’ and ‘the individuation of form’. Drawing on our own ethnographic studies of two, linguistically-defined, societies in Papua New Guinea and two, activity-defined, communities of commercial fishers in Australia we show, first, how differences in sociality and ethos may influence short-term responses to environmental perturbation and, secondly, how environmental perturbation may, in the longer term, influence the emergence of new forms of sociality and ethos. Where new forms do emerge, we argue, the trajectory of change will be strongly influenced by people’s prior understandings of their relations with environment and with each other, with their understandings of the extent to which they themselves were causal agents and, hence, their understandings of the extent to which they may act to ameliorate the likelihood or the effects of similar perturbations in the future.Keywords: environmental perturbation, social change, myths of nature, blame

The Teso Insurgency Remembered: Churches, Burials and Propriety

AbstractFrom 1986 to 1993 the Teso region of eastern Uganda experienced a violent insurgency. The insurgency was remembered as a time of brutality, when norms of respect and reciprocity were broken down. Younger men targeted and killed older men, and life retreated inwards. In the years since the insurgency a number of institutional developments have reflected on this experience. A growing number of Pentecostal churches have been established in the region, while charismatic forms of worship have been introduced in Anglican and Catholic churches. Burial societies have been set up and in the local courts the presentation of cases has undergone a change of emphasis. In all these different institutions there has been an attempt to draw a line under the violence of the recent past. A growing emphasis on notions of propriety and respectability – whether in church, in court, or at a burial – was a common theme in the life of Teso villages. In emphasizing new forms of sociality and obligation, churches and burial societies promoted a sense of fortunes restored; a belief that the past could be divorced from the present. At the same time, however, the attempt to draw a line under the past made the insurgency, or rather the memory of the insurgency, a powerful catalyst for change. The article examines the continuing influence the insurgency has over processes of social and political change in Teso.

Backpackers as a Community of Strangers: The Interaction Order of an Online Backpacker Notice Board

While commercial images of “backpacking” emphasise adventure, youth and sightseeing, recent ethnographies of backpackers identify other motivations and rationales that accentuate travel experiences as formative of the self and identity. This raises the question of the basis of this apparently common orientation. This paper investigates, through analysis of postings on an electronic backpacker notice board, “backpacker” as a collaboratively constructed category. We propose that the shared understandings of “backpacker” enabled by these notice boards are consistent with cultural orientations captured in notions of cosmopolitanism (Beck 2000) involving a shift to new forms of sociality across borders: a solidarity with strangers.

Selvdannelse og nye former for socialitet - technofesten som eksempel

Self Bildung and new forms of sociality: the technorave as example
 
 One of the most significant traits of late modernity is increasing individualization. This article deals with the question of what this radical individualization does to forms of sociality by analyzing individualization as self Bildung or formation of the self. The concept of Bildung is interesting in this regard, since the central conception is that personality and sociality are created in the same process. The Danish social analyst Lars Henrik Schmidt uses the concept of post traditional Bildung or simply self Bildung and outlines how Bildung may be conceived under late modern conditions. For him it is a type of Bildung that takes place on the individual’s terms. The article uses this concept of self Bildung as a point of departure to propose an interpretation of how to conceive sociality under these conditions. Finally as an example of such a form of sociality the articles analyses technorave (this kind of music and dance culture). It concludes that the new forms of sociality tend to resemble sociability in its pure form. The technorave is a form of controlled dionysiac sociality that is oriented towards experiencing union with others. Finally these forms of sociality are characterized by being orient-ed more by tunings than by reasons and interests. Therefore they can be described as a type of sociality that is less articulated but ‘broader’ than traditional forms of sociality.

Ciudadana X: Gender Violence and the Denationalization of Women's Rights in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

Cuánto falta en México para el pleno ejercicio de la democracia? . . . La clase gobernante desprecia lo que ve o cree ver: masas ingobernables por irredimibles, masas indóciles y sumisas, masas regidas por el complicado matrimonio entre la obedencia y el relajo. En el otro extremo, quienes ejercen la democracia desde abajo y sin pedir permiso, amplían sus derechos ejerciéndolos.1 —Carlos Monsiváis, Entrada Libre (1987) From the beginning the paradox involved in the declaration of inalienable human rights was that it reckoned with an "abstract" human being who seemed to exist nowhere . . . —Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, is not New York, Tokyo, Paris, or even Mexico City. Nevertheless, it shares with these global cities all the markers of a denationalized metropolitan space where new forms of sociality emerge with the migration of people, goods, and capital across [End Page 255] national borders (Sassen 2001).2 Since the establishment of the Border Industrialization Program in 1965, the city has contributed a vast supply of labor and resources to the reformation of industrial and financial capital. The information technologies that support the "global cultural economy" are made en masse in the city's maquiladoras by workers for whom consumption is only slightly less compulsory than their high levels of productivity (Appadurai 1996, 29). Decades before the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico experimented with political projects that would suspend national sovereignty in the border space in favor of attracting foreign exchange.3 Following the crises of the mid-1980s, Mexico's neo-liberal program of economic privatization and deregulation entailed the wholesale conversion of the northern border into a platform for cheap labor and out-migration. The integration of world markets, the expansion of transnational corporate power, and the concurrent displacements of peoples from southern Mexico have, in their turn, produced urban forms in Ciudad Juárez bearing the distinct signature of globalization's restructuring of the nation-state. This article examines the troubling status of poor migrant women as political actors in the denationalized space of Ciudad Juárez. Subaltern women's labors have served the state as a stabilizing force amidst the economic and political crises of the neo-liberal regime in ways that both promote and delimit new forms of female agency in the border region. The acute rise in armed social conflict in Juárez, much of it targeted at young women and girls, requires that we examine how the denationalized subjectivity that has occupied recent scholarship on globalization and citizenship is itself produced through state failure and state violence. The impunity of violent crime necessarily devalues both citizenship and citizens: it produces a climate where sociality is defined less by national belonging than by the more atomizing force of collective fear.4 If globalization has in fact encouraged the disarticulation of citizenship rights from membership to a single national community, as many analysts maintain, it is nevertheless unclear whether subaltern Mexican women can make substantive claims to the global civil society that the Juárez industries have helped to produce. [End Page 256] Recent scholarship on citizenship contends that changes in the nation-state that result from several aspects of globalization "significantly alter those conditions that in the past fed the articulation between citizenship and the nation-state" (Sassen 2003, 41).5 Saskia Sassen writes that the processes of market integration, coupled with the expansion of the international human rights regime, enabled the "deterritorializing of citizenship practices and identities," just as they "have directly and indirectly altered particular features of the institution of citizenship" (42). Although scholars hold no clear consensus on what constitutes the precise substance of denationalized citizenship, the term enjoys currency both as an expression of an "aspirational claim" to new forms...

THE ART OF DESIGNING SOCIALLY INTELLIGENT AGENTS: SCIENCE, FICTION, AND THE HUMAN IN THE LOOP

In this article, socially intelligent agents (SIAs) are understood to be agents that do not only from an observer point of view behave socially but that are able to recognize and identify other agents and establish and maintain relationships to other agents. The process of building SI As is influenced by what the human as the designer considers “social,” and conversely, agent tools that are behaving socially can influence human conceptions of sociality. A cognitive technology (CT) approach toward designing SIAs affords an opportunity to study the process of(1) how new forms of interactions and functionalities and use of technology can emerge at the human-tool interface, (2) how social agents can constrain their cognitive and social potential, and (3) how social agent technology and human (social) cognition can co-evolve and co-adapt and result in new forms of sociality. Agent-human interaction requires a cognitive fit between SI A technology and the human-in-the-loop as designer of, user of and participant in social interactions. Aspects of human social psychology, e.g., storytelling, empathy, embodiment, and historical and ecological grounding, can contribute to a believable and cognitively well-balanced design of SI A technology in order to further the relationship between humans and agent tools. It is hoped that approaches to believability based on these concepts can avoid the “shallowness” that merely takes advantage of the anthropomorphizing tendency in humans. This approach is put into the general framework of Embodied Artificial Life (EAL) research. The article concludes with a terminology and list of guidelines useful for SI A design.

The Future Role of Women

During the next century, societies will have to plan their populations along with other national resources. The success of this objective will depend, in large part, on the reproductive ambitions of women and the availability of effec tive substitutes for maternity. These broad developments will necessitate a reorganization of national priorities, as well as changes in family, household and work patterns. Among the foreseeable consequences are: reduced occupational sex typing, lessened emphasis on marriage and maternity as su preme goals for women and greater participation of women in all spheres of the labor force. As a result, we must expect and prepare for both new forms of socialization and self- images by gender. Concluding the paper are suggestions for steps society might take to help ease the transition into the new era.