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Jeffrey,

I think it is even better to ask "how does the network *create* the
person?" We are not a collection of attributes that interact with the
world without feedback and learning. We may work for years to become a
physician, lawyer, academic or any number of roles that are a part of
who we are as a person. It is not a matter of imposing conformity: a
huge degree of conformity is the essence of what these roles are. We
don't get to make how such people behave to fill the role.

The question is the variation across networks. For instance, I play
guitar. Am I a musician? Certainly if I play for people that do not
play themselves, they might be impressed. However, I hang out with
"real" musicians, and they are orders of magnitude better than I am.
They devote their lives to it. I have different identities in different
circumstances. So the answer is "it depends." And, it depends on the
network. The "attribute" "is a musician" is not something that is part
of me like my height or eye color.

So, what I am pointing out is that we are always forced to conform in
subtle ways because meaning itself is strongly influenced by our networks.

-Don

> ***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org *****
>
> 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
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Social Networks Discussion Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Moses Boudourides
> Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 4:25 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Science Articles -- SNA and Being Human
>
>
> ***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org *****
>
> Well, I think I understand what Ryan wants to say - perhaps not. This could
> be related to what Richard Dawkins has formulated as "God's utility
> function" in living nature, by which he was implying that living beings are
> the means for the self-reproduction of genes and not the other way around
> (see the wikipedia page:
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God's_utility_function>.) Slavoj Zizek has
> held a similar position with respect to the self-reproduction of ideologies
> too (in his forward at Peter Hallward's book on Alain Badiou's A Subject to
> Truth). In any case, this issue has a tremendous theoretical interest and it
> might be a good idea if we were exploring it in the context of emergent
> phenomena like social networks: For instance, is there a "natural" purpose
> as an intrinsic utility function over social conglomerations like social
> networks? What about the unintended purposes/consequences (or "absent
> causes" in the Althusserian/Lacanian idiom) emerging throughout such
> structural aggregations? And so on..
>
> --Moses Boudourides
>
> On 1/3/07, Paul B. Hartzog <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> ***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org *****
>>
>> On 12/22/06, Ryan Lanham <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> ***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org *****
>>>
>>> Said another way, smart apes evolved because they needed to deal
>>> with complex territoriality of overlapping networks-tribal rivalries
>>> versus needs for broader gene pools, mating opportunities, etc.
>>> Migrators or inter-actors inevitably evolve as smarter beings that
>>> can solve which groups it is smart to belong to. Said another way
>>> still, ontologies are applied when they make sense. The ontologies
>>> that win-including science-based reason-are those that are useful
>>> for surviving in complex group domains-or ecosystems...
>> I can't believe I am hearing someone seriously suggest that the
>> ontology of "science and reason" is "winning" because it is "useful."
>>
>> The counter-arguments are too numerous to mention, but any climate
>> change, global poverty, or suicide index should suffice. The
>> historical contingencies involved in the "evolution" of scientism and
>> rationality are legion.
>>
>> -p
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------
>> http://www.PaulBHartzog.org
>> [log in to unmask]
>> [log in to unmask]
>> --------------------------------------------------------
>> The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
>> --Muriel Rukeyser
>> --------------------------------------------------------
>>
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