Network Sociality

Andreas Wittel on network sociality

" The term network sociality can be understood in contrast to ‘community’. Community entails stability, coherence, embeddedness, and belonging. It involves strong and long-lasting ties, proximity and a common history or narrative of the collective. Network sociality stands counterposed to Gemeinschaft. It does not represent belonging but integration and disintegration… In network sociality social relations are not ‘narrational’ but informational; they are not based on mutual experience or common history, but primarily on an exchange of data and on ‘catching up’. Narratives are characterised by duration, whereas information is defined by ephemerality. Network sociality consists of fleeting and transient, yet iterative social relations; of ephemeral but intense encounters. Narrative sociality often take place in bureaucratic organisations. In network sociality the social bond at work is not bureaucratic but informational; it is created on a project by project basis, by the movement of ideas, the establishment of solely temporary standards and protocols, and the creation and protection of proprietory information. Network sociality is not characterised by a separation but by a combination of both work and play. It is constructed on the grounds of communication and transport technology. Network…, I suggest a shift away from regimes of sociality in closed social systems and towards regimes of sociality in open social systems. Both communities and organisations are social systems with clear boundaries, with a highly defined inside and outside. Networks however are open social systems." (source: A. Wittel (2001): Toward a Network Sociality. Theory, Culture & Society 18 (6), p51-76.)