Tag Archives: Networks

#iAMb Communities

The lines have ten syllables but they don’t scan. Never mind, it was an attempt to encapsulate this week’s thoughts on networks, connections and communities. It reminded me slightly of The New Mobilities Paradigm, an article full of visions of networks, fluidity, sudden flights and resettlings, circulation and points of stasis. The paper is a description of an emerging paradigm in social studies and voices not only the more romantic or commercial rhetoric surrounding networks and connection, but speaks, too, of the necessary static and immutable infrastructure that enables them. It is a reaction against sedentarist theories and details how commodities of every kind are “on the move”. The paper evokes feelings of time and hurry for me too with its evocations of dynamic, contingent, emergent and ephemeral communities and happenings.

A much better network iAMb posted subsequently.

Urry, J. & Sheller, M. (2006). The New Mobilities Paradigm