Relational approach- mathematics with emotions

In my class soci245 08, teaching lecture 10lecture-10-08.ppt about relational approach, did a class experiment. Asked people to talk about their interests and find out abut each other’s interests so as to identify networks.

The trigger for grouping was – a fake horoscope and each person having to relate to relevant issue in the horoscope and place it on a piece of paper so that all could see, and congregate around. This was used as a kind of ice breaker to get a less formal atmosphere.

Two groups were formed. One group tried to list their areas of interest and focused on the task of listing (5 members) finished their interaction in a short while

The other group engaged in a conversation and even asked for extra time (this was a group of 3 people)

First group – came up with very generic groups

Second group also came up with generic groups but their interactions told the story of building relations on the sheer notion of more interactions

In a way this proved the point of relational approach though being based on mathematics – which sheer numbers can actually result in meaningful relations because the more people interact the more meaningful their relation is- so relations are about frequency. But this frequency is about increasing familiarity knowing more about each other – contributing to the dimensionality of the personalities involved – they are more than just a cardboard front, hence contributing to the complexity of the relations.

 

Living in the virtual

Virtual communities, virtual lives, and other virtual platforms are said to fulfill human needs. People have always sought the company of other human beings and congregate together for mutual causes or needs which had to do with their real lives, with their survival. Survival is not only about living in the wild and battling against the elements. Urban life has also created a need for humans to work together towards maintaining their mutual urban environment, hence we have organised waste management, water supply etc. People live in physical communities that enable the creation of mechanisms that sustain life and support their social needs as well as survival needs. However, physical communities are restricted to the people living in a specific locality. The virtual opens up the opportunity to go beyond and explore interactions with people which we would have probably never met in real life. This is not only exciting it also has the potential to enrich our lives, but this is also the turning point that differentiates virtual from real life. The key difference between the two is the purpose and motivation driving each life format.

 

Real life communities congregate around issues that are of mutual interest to the individuals comprising them, but they are also issues that require collaboration in order to support both the individuals and the system sustaining them.

Virtual environments on the other hand are not in the business of sustaining physical needs, and therefore can concentrate on issues which do not necessarily require the resources of a whole community, in other words, virtual spaces can indulge in catering for the needs of individuals. 

 

Catering for mutual interests seems to be the interest of both real and virtual communities; however, the purpose, necessity, and motivation for fulfilling these interests are different. The virtual can afford to be primarily individual centred, catering for the interests and needs of individuals, rather than supporting a mutual system that supports each other. The virtual rarely creates interdependent relations. The real world communities are about making sure that interdependent relations are supported so that they will fulfil the needs of its members and at the same time maintain its stability as a social system that is in place so that it can provide support and resources.

 

The difference between the two raises questions of loyalty, and commitment to others, and about social responsibility.  

Living in the virtual may have an impact on how we relate to real life situations and personal relationships, perceptions of collegiality, commitment, and interdependency.

These in turn will have an impact on our perceptions of belonging.

 

 In summary the fact that more people today are spending considerable parts of their life in virtual worlds raises questions about the structure of our real- life social systems, and their sustainability. If life in the virtual alters our perceptions of what is needed in order to sustain real life, how will we cope?

 

Will life in the virtual hinder our ability to cope with the interdependencies of sustaining life in the physical? Will life in the virtual hinder our ability to sustain long-lasting personal relationships? 

 

Social Structures on the Web- or what the Web has done to society

Mary’s soci 350 introduction – brain dump

What is the internet? – what a tangled web we weave
Information Superhighway Cyber Society
The Internet viewed as a super database The internet facilitating the emergence of virtual society/ies
Facilitating access to people; groups; organisations for retrieving existing information- people perceived as sources of information Facilitating access to people; groups; organisations for observing people driven processes/ interactions where information is created and shared
People; groups; organisations perceived as entities where information is stored
People; groups; organisations perceived as networks generating, constructing and relying mutual understandings

Studies of the internet in this perception tends to investigate its content
(Web Content mining – as seen in Kosala 2000) Studies of the internet in this perception tends to investigate its structure to identify links and relations leading to networks and social structures
(Web Structure mining as seen in Kosala2000)

Some historical facts – Berners- Lee, Licklider ….

The most important thing about the Internet is interactions – not only of people, but of content- the internet as its name suggests is a web. It has a web structure and a web way of interacting behaving representing, and delivering. This applies to humans as well as content.
Examples of web of people – social networks,
Example of web of content

How ubiquitous is it in our lives? What do we include in this when we say our lives,

The internet is changing the way we relate to ‘time’ , place, ourselves and others

My note;
Time is linear- on the internet time is contextual reference ( we don’t relate to something because it is being discussed now- in our physical time , but because we are connected to a specific context being discussed online , this discussion could take place on and off at different periods of our physical time, but online we shall be creating a coherent continuing context, and content. This context could appear to have been created as a unit or it can maintain a perpetuum mobile constantly evolving and drawing on emerging contextual references. These references are not necessarily hierarchical, and rather resemble a tangled web. These tangled webs are the mirrors of our minds, because the human mind is not a linear machine.

End of my note.

Our online identity and relations to others- because of the change in the way we refer to ourselves online, our relation to others change. Furthermore, because of the network, or web structures, notions of hierarchy, power, and control take a different meaning than those we are accustomed in the physical world.
So , the Internet is a super web of interaction, references and links, affecting people and their content, therefore there is no Internet super highway and a cyber society, like I have illustrated in the table above, but rather a cyber web of humans and artefacts.

The internet is a place where we can link, communicate, and by doing so create a context, a social, a temporal, a contextual environment created solely by the power of relations ( of people , artefacts, people and artefacts people and people.)

From print to Hypertext
The internet allows us to think in nonlinear forms, which is a great leap for our long tradition of being a ‘literate society’(see Postman and McLuhan), we are moving away from this linear based culture defined by written language and printed materials to a linked, clustered hypertexted society. The change from print to hypertext has implications not only for our thinking, but our organisation of knowledge and the way we relate to it and its authors. This has implication for hierarchy, power, control, cultural- guidelines (constraints).

Who creates the web of the Net?
The Internet is powered by the ability of our minds to relate, to organise, categorise, cluster and reference. That means we not only create the content but decide who would contribute and in which order to the emergence of the context. Deciding on order of contribution is another way of allocating roles.

How are roles affecting the creation of social structures?

Adopting Radcliffe-Brown’s(1965/1952) and Nadel’s (1957) notion of
structure as being comprised of positions relative to one another, and Bourdieu ‘s notion of ‘field’ as consisting of a set of objective, historical relations between positions anchored in certain forums of power(Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992), indicates a ‘relational ‘ perception of social structures, and the conceptualisation of structures as networks of social relations among objective positions, rather than relations among individuals(Allan, 2005).

Allan, M. (2005). Conceptualising Social Space in Cyberspace: A Study of the Interactions in Online Discussion Forums. Unpublished PhD (embargoed), University of Canterbury, Christchurch.