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In defence of context:

Loet, some context matter - other does not.

Your age and the type of PC are irrelevant to our communication and to
our interaction - as long as I can understand your writing and interpret
it in a meaningful way.

Other context is critical - to derive at a meaning of what you are
trying to say with your 'words' and 'postings'. For example, your
signature (i.e. institutional affiliation), helps me a lot to interpret
what you are trying to say, and to derive at a meaning.

Unfortunately, due to lack of time, I can not engage in a regular
communication and interaction (the relevance of my context) - to get to
more precise meaning. Hence, on some occasions I understand only vaguely
what you are trying to say, and although I mostly agree, this time, I
'felt' I disagree with you.

This single posting - as 'intervention' into your 'discussion' with Ryan
- will serve very little to convey my understanding of all the issues
that have been discussed under this 'heading', and in addition I
'choose' to put some words in overted commas - in case you would like to
think about it - what do I 'mean' by that (which is another context,
i.e. of my thought processes) - relevant to our understanding, shared
meaning, communication, interaction.... or what I try to convey.

Other relevant context, which I picked up, and which helps me to
interpret your communication is - fluent English, quick response, passed
correspondence, sharp mind - I guess these are a mixture of 'facts' and
my subjective interpretations / judgements, where the communication
processes is immersed into my context, and crystallised into
interpretative frameworks - that help me to understand your
communication. My 'interpretative frameworks' are very relevant context
- for the communication process to take place - beyond a single
communicative act.

Best wishes
Emanuela

Dr. Emanuela Todeva
School of Management
University of Surrey
Guildford, Surrey, GU27XH
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel: +44(0)1483 68 2056
http://www.som.surrey.ac.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: Social Networks Discussion Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Loet Leydesdorff
Sent: 10 January 2007 07:09
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Networks and conformity

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Dear Ryan,

Do you really believe (like most STS scholars) that contexts are so
important? For example, can you discover from this message whether it
was written on a laptop or a desktop, on a PC or a Macintosh? If you
would not know, could you recognize my age or gender from it? No: this
is STS rubbish.
(It enables them to legitimate the writing of thick histories.)

Contexts matter only if they are structural. For example,
university-industry relations may matter in pharmaceutical research or
in the food industry. But it would not matter in itself whether I had a
brother who was running a company. The crucial question is whether
variation is significant. If it is, we may be able to hypothesize
structural factors.

With best wishes,


Loet
________________________________

Loet Leydesdorff
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR) Kloveniersburgwal
48, 1012 CX Amsterdam
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681 [log in to unmask] ;
http://www.leydesdorff.net/

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