Quote:
Moses makes a key point about the relative autonomy of social or cultural
formations, including social networks. If we phrase this issue in network
terms, would it not be an issue of -- at what point does the network take
precedence over its members, enforcing confirmity upon them -- that is,
becoming very "sticky" ?

Jeffrey Broadbent
End Quote.


Eisenberg and Goodall (2004) suggest that is perhaps an unresolvable
tension ...

Some of their thoughts regarding individuals, society, and communication;
can probably translate to network terms:

Communication as a balance between creativity and constraint
- Macro perspective sees individuals being molded and controlled by society
and institutions. Micro perspective sees individuals as creating society
and its social systems.
- The theory of structuration sees human behavior as an unresolvable
tension between creativity and constraint—of creating social reality and
being constrained by that construction.
- Communication is the moment-to-moment working out of the tension between
individual creativity and organizational constraint.
- Consider the simultaneous enabling and constraining aspects of
communication (rather than sequential).
- There can be no meaning without context. People both create contexts
through communication and are constrained by those contexts once they are
created.

Dan Novak - Alliance Executive, IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences
6821 Sawgrass, Fort Worth TX 76132 817-870-3956