Hi
Michel, Pedro and everyone,
I
really don't want to launch into an on-going discussion of epistemologies here
but I think that much of sociology and sociological (read network in this
instance) analysis (now) suffers from precisely the same sets of issues as those
of classical economics i.e. that once one accepts certain assumptions everything
else flows forward with a smooth consistency until the system confronts reality
and then the whole thing is demonstrated as being the ideological mind game that
it is...
The
necessary process of reconstruction has to begin either from a philosophical or
a practical critique of those assumptions (the best situation is when both are
done at the same time)...
Accepting these "approaches" as "theoretical
insights" is I think rather in the form of choosing a particularly insightful
monetarist theory to explain and thus provide a strategy in response to the
recent/current financial crisis--the problem isn't in the theory but in the
assumptions (and thus the overall conceptual structure) on which it is
based.
So, to
my mind looking for insights useful to for example the p2p project in network
analysis leads inevitably to the profoundly disempowering, cynical and
ultimately ideological and wrong headed (and misdirectional) analysis that
Zeynab's "analysis" presents.
M
Hi Michael,
I completelely agree with the
critique of the reductionist aspects of network theory, which removes human
intentionality from its considerations.
Nevertheless, even from our
point of view of human emancipation and how to get there, seeing that some
structures and network topologies are more likely than others to result in
hierarchical solidification, is of paramount interest.
Seen in this
way, network theory insights, divorced from their philosopical reductionism,
can be very useful,
But you are right, people like Martin Luther King
or Gandhi didn't ask themselves, what are all the reasons why we will fail,
but how can we overcome the obstacles,
Michel
On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 8:07 PM, Michael Gurstein
<gurstein@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi
Michel,
Thanks very much for the
below and I must confess to not having read the comments on Zeynep's
original post. I found the comments, particularly those of "Parliament of
Things" more or less directly parallel to my own
thoughts.
I've never had a lot
of interest in network analysis or network theory--thinking about it. I
realize that the reason for this is that to my mind network analysis is a
way of avoiding class or (in my case) community analysis where the issues
are not simply about analysis but also about social change ("networks" are
to "communities" (or P2P?) as "social and economic status" (SES) is to
"class"--I go into this in a bit more depth in my little book "What is
Community Informatics..." http://www.docstoc.com/MyDocuments/ ("Networks" in
this approach, at least as presented in "network analysis" are statistical
constructs a la SES and bear little relationship to the lived world of real
networks, P2P associations, communities or whatever...
The issue is not, I think,
some "iron law" (or statistical regularity) but rather what it is that one
wants to do and what the best way is of accomplishing it. If one wants
the opportunity for democratic participation then there are potential means
for achieving this and examples where it has been done. If one believes that
P2P relationships are the necessary underpinnings for democratic
participation then one can work through ways of realizing these. Of course
after the fact it is possible to design analyses that show why one or
another approach is more or less useful in achieving the goal (or not), but
the pragmatics of moving forward toward the objective are, as several
of your commentators pointed to, rather more in the hands of the
participants than they are constrained by any kind of social
behaviourism.
(But maybe that's why I
stopped being an academic sociologist 20 years ago or so...
:-)
Mike
Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2011 9:00 AM .
To: P2P
Foundation mailing list
Cc: Pedro Gioya; Michael Gurstein; Dougald Hine; Paul
B. Hartzog
Subject: Re: [P2P-F] FW: Blogpost: Applying the ICT
Lessons of Revolt to the Institutional Challenges of Reconstruction: They
overthrew Hosni Mubarek, Now Can They Overthrow Robert
Michels?
Hi Pedro,
I follow Zeynep closely and we've covered
this particular entry in our blog as well,
these are if you will,
the two sides of the same coin, and do not necesseraly contradict each
other,
Michael points out the real changes that took place through
the use of these media, and their further potential, while Zeynep points
to the dangers that do not just come from outside, but from within
the peer to peer dynamic itself
from the blog,
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/preferential-attachment-in-p2p-networks-is-that-really-the-issue/2011/02/21but
especially this:
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/debating-the-iron-law-of-bureaucracy-and-the-power-law-knowing-networks-as-an-alternative-to-scale-free-networks/2011/02/18Paul
Hartzog also had a comment on this,
Michel
On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 3:30 AM, Pedro Gioya
<pg@institutodeliderazgo.com> wrote:
Hi
Look at this post on the same issue but
with different perspective (Sure you know, but
anyway....)
Pedro
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2011
6:52 PM
Subject: Re: [P2P-F] FW:
Blogpost: Applying the ICT Lessons of Revolt to the Institutional
Challenges of Reconstruction: They overthrew Hosni Mubarek, Now Can
They Overthrow Robert Michels?
This is really brilliant Michael and I warmly recommend
it to our listmembers,
Michel
On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 4:11 AM, Michael
Gurstein
<gurstein@gmail.com> wrote:
Michel,
I think this is one that you will
find
interesting...
M
---------------------------------------------
http://wp.me/pJQl5-5Z
"In this, I think
that the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia have access to
skills
and resources which were unavailable to earlier movements that
is-the
Internet, social networking, mobile telephony and perhaps
most important,
the experience and knowledge of how to use these
in support of collective
social
ends."
--
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Foundation:
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