Leitner Evoking Ignorance Final With Figure

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Evoking Ignorance: Abstraction and Anonymity in Social

Networking’s Ideals of Reciprocity.

David S. Leitner

Introduction

Social networking is a standard lay and professional description for how social relations “do”

things.1, 2

The term is now shorthand to describe an entire online industry devoted to enabling

people to follow, tweet , poke or otherwise connect to others through acts of digital

communication, marketing or (self-)promotion. News reports alternately extol the virtues of this

new form of “community” or express anxieties that it is alienating individuals in modern society.

In addition to contemporary uses of the term on the Internet, an older assemblage of self-help

and business oriented publications, classes and workshops have devoted themselves to helping

individuals and firms improve their productive capacities by exploiting social networks. In these

fora, knowledge and ignorance play reciprocal roles. “Evidence” is cited to show that networks

are something more than metaphors. Scientific and popular literatures mingle with “common

sense” anecdotes to demonstrate both the facticity of networks and their utili ty in revealing the

unknown. The reason given for learning to network is to sensitize a person to the very existence

of networks so that they might uncover potentials that would otherwise have remained hidden.

Yet little attention has been paid to the kind of knowledge and ignorance that these new folk

models of social relations produce, nor how they produce it.



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Ignorance

Ignorance itself is a little studied topic, although that has begun to change in the last decade.3

Proctor and Schiebinger (2008) have coined the term agnotology to refer to the cultural

production of ignorance and Proctor (2008) has suggested a tentative classification of the means

and ends of its production. First, ignorance can be held as a “native state” or the ground from

which knowledge springs: as we acquire knowledge ignorance is obliterated, nullified, or

replaced. In this case ignorance is something to be resisted and overcome. Ignorance is depicted

as an absence or a cavity, something to be filled with knowledge. However, it needn‟t be the

complete absence of knowledge, but the presence of faulty or flawed knowledge as well.

Sometimes a person is expected to “unlearn” one thing before they can learn another. Ignorance

in this mode is seen as a resource that produces an inexhaustible fuel, which drives our

investigations. Second, ignorance is identified as a “lost realm”, “selective choice”, or a “passive

construct” (Proctor 2008). Here the idea is that “inquiry is always selective”(2008 :7). It is

inattention that produces ignorance. Ignorance in this view is any knowledge we are not

presently concerned with. Additionally, this view concedes that we live in a vast universe, one of

infinite possibilities for knowledge. However, while there might be infinite possibilities, our

capacities for capturing and incorporating that knowledge are always finite. As we acquire new

knowledge we do not obliterate ignorance or fill a void so much as we shift our focus from one

problem to another. Finally, Proctor suggests that ignorance can also be intentionally produced

and manipulated as a “deliberate ploy” or “active construct”. Here spaces of ignorance a re

strategically produced and maintained by tactically stressing doubt and emphasizing the inherent

uncertainty of knowledge. Such instances of deliberate ignorance can be employed in the

protection of secrets as well as in the efforts of groups or individ uals engaged in “moral



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resistance”. Proctor cites the tobacco company executives‟ insistence on prudence in interpreting

scientific data, always leaving a sliver of doubt as to the links between tobacco and cancer.

Rather than calling for the end of research on tobacco and health risks, the tobacco industry

repeatedly invoked the need for more research, explaining that we didn‟t yet know enough to

“prove” that cigarettes cause cancer. In this vein, methods for measuring certainty are

transformed into proofs of uncertainty. Thus statistical correlations, no matter how high their

confidence level, are used as proof that there is still space for doubt. Peer review is likewise

turned on its head and just a few published studies can be employed to call into question a much

larger body of research. Importantly, Proctor stresses the moral neutrality of the processes

themselves. Proctor correctly points out that such strategies are not strictly the purview of those

with power, but can be employed for very different purposes. He describes what he calls

“virtuous ignorance”: the deliberate refusal of knowledge in response to moral dilemmas. Proctor

cites several examples, ranging from the Luddite movements of the early nineteenth century to

contemporary archaeological journals‟ practice of refusing to publish research on artifacts whose

provenance cannot be adequately proven. In all of the cases he cites, individuals or groups refuse

knowledge on the basis that even valuable knowledge isn‟t worth knowing at all costs.

Summary

In this chapter I describe a case in which a technique for revealing hidden knowledge in fact

creates and maintains spaces of ignorance in order to function. However these spaces of

ignorance do more than enable the revealing of knowledge, they also serve as engines in a

system of stochastic reciprocity in which social relations are continually being produced in the

hopes of reaping benefits from knowing the right people. The chapter is divided into three main

parts. First, I provide a description of a daylong workshop on networking in Newcastle, England.



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A main focus of this workshop was instruction on how to draw a social network map. The

second part briefly analyzes the moves of abstraction that this activity performs on social

relations. In the third section I provide an analysis of the ideals of reciprocity that are presumed

to underlie the workings of social networks. In order for this system of reciprocity to work as

informants described it, it is necessary for the networker to bracket several spaces of knowledge

on his network map, creating spaces of ignorance by anonymizing potential exchanges and

exchange partners and deferring the return of the reciprocal gift. This is done through the

opening of narrative spaces in which the networker can interject putative relations between gifts

received and given. The main ethnographic material is drawn from research on social networks

as folk models of kinship deployed by high-tech workers in Cambridge, England. Social

networks are almost exclusively deployed as explanations of social and economic phenomena

and as such, the material is presented here as ideal typical representations of networks and

networking. Scientific and mathematical research is often deployed to authorize this folk model,

blurring lines between the lay and professional meanings of that research. Here I treat such

instances as part of how people come to chart spaces of possibility for social action using social

networking explanations.

Networks and Networking

The Centre for Life in Newcastle-upon-Tyne describes itself as a “pioneering science village”. It

was originally part of a joint initiative by the UK Department of Health and the Department for

Trade and Industry to create a network of six Genetics Knowledge Parks (GKPs) in England and

Wales. Like the other GKPs, the Centre for Life had a triple remit: to further genetics research, to

educate the public on issues around genetics, and to exploit genetics research developed at the

park and in the region (Department of Health 2002). The Centre fulfills its remit by combining



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an interactive science centre, research and development facilities and a 60,000 square foot

biotech incubator (the Life Bioscience Centre) on a site located just a few hundred feet from

Newcastle Central Railway Station and much of the city‟s bustling nightlife.

The mini-cab dropped me off at the entrance to the centre early on a July morning. It was the

middle of the work week and people were already streaming onto the site. I stood and snapped a

picture of the giant sign under which people were passing. In primary colors it shouted Life--the

“f” formed from a stylized “x” chromosome. I checked the map and directions that had come in

the post a couple of days earlier along with the other workshop materials. Getting my bearings, I

proceeded through the space under the sign and then to the Life Bioscience Centre building on

my right.

A week before, I was at a biotech networking meeting in London where I met the director of a

science park in the area around Oxford. She and I traded business cards but I was surprised to

receive an email from her a couple of days later. It contained a brief greeting and an

announcement for a day-long workshop, “Making the most of your network…Managing

relationships and networking with business and industry”. She wrote that she regretted she

wouldn‟t be able to make it, but thought that I might find it interesting. The workshop was to

take place at the Life Bioscience Centre and was being sponsored by the Continuing Professional

Development arm of the Association for University Research & Industry Links (AURIL-CPD).4

The workshop was designed for knowledge-transfer (KT) workers in publicly funded research

establishments and universities. Its stated goal was to teach techniques for “networking

effectively” and to raise participants‟ awareness of social networking as a tool for “linking the

university and industry”.5



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Now, a few days later, I found myself in a meeting room in Newcastle waiting to learn how to

network. The meeting room was in fact two adjacent rooms whose shared wall was designed to

be removed. Six large circular tables were scattered along the length of the room and a projection

screen and digital projector were set up in the front. To the side, two small rectangular tables

stood against the wall. One supported a basket of fruit, tea biscuits, croissants and other snacks.

The other held carafes of coffee and hot water, tea bags, cups, spoons and plates. As the other

participants arrived they helped themselves to refreshments and struck up conversations with one

another. Most of us stood and talked near the side tables until we were told that the workshop

was about to start.

Much of the morning session of the workshop was spent learning how to map our personal

and professional social networks. The first of our two instructors for the day introduced himself

and directed our attention to a PowerPoint slide on the screen at the front of the room. It

displayed two definitions:

A network is a label that can be applied to describe a group or

system that works together or are interconnected. [sic]

Networking is a process of building and maintaining relationships

with people who can help you to achieve your goals.

“Networks,” he told us, “are all around us. This slide demonstrates something very important

to understand up front. We are, all of us, part of many different networks. But networking is

different. Networking involves using those networks to do something. And while all of us do this

naturally, without ever thinking about it, like most things we do naturally, if we learn how to do



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them deliberately, more scientifically, we can do them more effectively. By the time you leave

here today, hopefully you will have a better idea how to recognize your networks and how,

working with them, you can connect the research at your institutions with the world outside of

academia more effectively.”

The instructor then reviewed much of the science behind networking.6

He described a long

history of research from the social sciences, and in particular Stanley Milgram‟s “Small World”

or “Six-Degrees of Separation” experiments (Milgram 1967; Travers and Milgram 1969), and

Mark Granovetter‟s work on “The Strength of Weak Ties” (Granovetter 1973; Granovetter 1974;

Granovetter 1983). He explained that Milgram‟s research revealed that we are all much more

closely connected through our acquaintances than we might imagine. However, he pointed out

that Granovetter‟s work showed us that when our ties with people are too close, they can be a

hindrance to achieving our goals.7

The instructor then described the relatively recent

“rediscovery” of this research by scientists working in the field of “complexity theory” (e.g.

Barabási 2003; Watts and Strogatz 1998; Watts 2003). He stressed that all of this research had

two very significant implications for how we, the participants, might interface between

universities and industry. First, it indicates that personal relationships, no matter what they are

based on, are an invaluable resource for accomplishing goals. This is because even if you don‟t

personally know the individual you need to know, you might know someone else who does know

that person. Second, the research also indicates that social networks are a “natural” part of the

world around us, an untapped and “free” resource of which we might avail ourselves if we go

about it scientifically and deliberately. In other words, far from simply showing us how social

relations get things done, this research also gives us a strategy for how we might do things. And

the first step in putting that strategy in place, the instructor explained, was to map our networks.





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more than they received. Second, almost everyone noticed that there were a few key people in

their network who connected them to a large number of people. These people acted as

“gatekeepers”. Third, not every map contained the same networks. Some maps neglected

networks that others felt should be there. One woman felt very strongly that we should ask

ourselves how much the support we receive from our families has contributed to our success.

Finally, the point was raised that there might be other networks beyond those we could “map”.

We could be miss many networks if we don‟t recognize our entry points into them. The

instructors responded by stressing to us that this mapping exercise is the key to revealing those

“hidden” networks.

Moreover, he explained that the shape of the connections we had drawn could tell us certain

things about how the pattern of our network was affecting our behavior and others‟. For instance,

we were told we could ask:

“Who are the hubs in our network? How closely are we connected

to them. The map will tell us how many steps it will take us to

reach any given person in the network. If we are close to the hubs

(within one step or maybe two), we have a better chance of

contacting more people in fewer steps, saving us time and effort.

The map could also tell us if there are any people we should spend

more time making a connection with. We could ask if there are any

negative (-) connections that we could or should make positive (+)

ones. Or whether there are some connections we should let

atrophy. We could also ask how diverse our contacts are. Do we



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have too few or too many “weak ties”? Diversity and weak ties

give us access to knowledge not already available in our immediate

group. ”

The instructor explained that mapping networks would not only help us understand who we

are connected to now, but would reveal the opportunities that come our way all the time, but

which we might not always see. “Opportunities can take many shapes, like an introduction to

someone with access to funding, or potential clients”. “More importantly,” he stressed, “it shows

us how to manage our connections by doing little favors: trading advice on how to fabricate a

molecule in the lab, passing on useful news, giving feedback, introductions to interesting people.

Mapping networks is the key to revealing the flows of these hidden opportunities by letting us

anticipate the directions they might come from.” His final point was that the map also reminded

us that our network is always a work in progress. There are always new connections being made.

Some of them were off the edge of the map. But, he stressed, just because we can‟t see them

doesn‟t mean they don‟t have an effect on us. “We must always keep growing our networks,” he

said, “because you never know who that next opportunity is going to come from.”

Mapping Metaphors

Historically, network metaphors have been employed to represent and map a variety of systems

and their properties. Mattelart (1999) has traced the idea of the network as a structure or

organizing principle based on “communication” (flows of people, material or information), to

late eighteenth- and early nineteenth century civic planning and liberal utopian social

movements. Barry (1996) has described the symbolic and structural impacts of undersea

telegraph lines for magnifying the image of centralized order and control in the late nineteenth



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century British Empire. Even then, the network metaphor was not restricted, to the technological

and logistical concerns of states. Otis (2002) has argued that the language and knowledge of

networks in electrical, telegraph and railroad engineering played a vital role in shaping the

language and models that anatomists used in early attempts to describe and map the human

nervous system. And most accounts of the history of Social Network Analysis chart its origins to

the birth of graph theory in mathematics with Euler‟s solution to the Seven Br idges of

Königsberg problem, a mathematical problem expressed in the geographic terms of roads,

bridges, and intersections.8

Contemporary uses of networks are similarly diverse. Barry (Barry

2001) has identified the use of networks in EU technology and harmonization policies as

rhetorics for the liberating potential of technological networks to connect groups deemed

culturally and politically marginal with the rest of Europe. Riles (Riles 2000)has identified the

network as an idealized form in the context of development groups where institutional,

international and local groups emulate the connectedness of networks even down to the

information elicited in documents. Finally, though she does not specifically cite networks, in her

study of the meanings of immunity in American culture Martin (Martin 1994) places a great

emphasis on the importance of the concept of flexibility and its relationships to ideas about

complex, dynamic systems. Networks seem to be highly versatile, deeply rooted and culturally

dominant metaphors in Euro-American societies. All of these studies demonstrate that network

metaphors are deployed in the imagination, not only of technological systems, but also social,

political and cultural assemblages. If so, then what does the mapping exercise at the networking

workshop tell us about what social networks are imagining?

Inscribing and Abstracting



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Mappings have agency because of the double-sided characteristic

of all maps. First, their surfaces are directly analogous to actual

ground conditions [...] walks and sightings across land may be

literally projected onto paper through a geometrical graticule of

points and lines drawn by ruler and pen. Conversely, one can put

one‟s finger on a map and trace out a particular ro ute or itinerary,

the map projecting a mental image into the spatial imagination. By

contrast, the other side of this analogous characteristic is the

inevitable abstractness of maps, the result of selection, omission,

isolation, distance and codification. (Corner 1999:214-215)

The social network mapping exercise in this workshop was concerned with inscribing a social

space, not only on paper but also in the behaviors of the participants. Although not a geographic

space, the spatial language of distance and proximity was deployed when speaking of the

relations inscribed on paper and in the analyses and valuations participants were meant to

conduct on those inscriptions. Indeed, the explicit aims of the network mapping exercise were to

identify one‟s location in this social space and to chart social paths through it to other

individuals. But what exactly is being mapped? What entities are being abstracted?

Inscribing Relations

In the analogous mode, to use Corner‟s language, the result of projecting “points and lines” onto

the networking map is little more than the creation of an image of points and lines, or in the

instructor‟s words, “nodes and connections”. The nodes are defined on the map as specific

people; whether people one knows or people one could potentially know. However, the



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qualitative content of those connections is considerably less distinct. According to the instructor,

those lines represent your connections to other people, your social relations. There was

disagreement among most participants as to which kinds of social relations they should include:

co-workers, clients, family, friends, schoolmates and such. The instructor seemed to suggest that

any connection could qualify and he stressed the unpredictable nature of social relations--how

you never know from what direction an opportunity might arise. Moreover, another theme of the

day was reflected in the instructor‟s interpretation of Granovetter‟s work on weak ties. Even

though any relation will do, it was the “weak ties”, acquaintances and oth er passing or fleeting

relations, which held the greatest value in a general sense.

Abstracting People

I suggest that one effect of this mapping of people as nodes and social relations as lines is that

people are abstracted to the set of “resources” they can make available to others Similarly, the

content of the social relation (by which I mean the complex assemblage of cultural meanings,

kin-based rights and obligations, and emotional and affective implications) is reduced to its

potential utility in the present or future and the ties between people are reduced to a single

dimension: the tie that connects person A to person B is the line AB. In other words, the relation

is abstracted from a complicated mix of structural and associational circumstances to a binary

question: is there or isn’t there a connection?

Additionally, the mapping of relations is not only performed to chart existing relations, but

also to mark potential relations: future paths along which opportunities might travel. In analyzing

the map of existing connections, patterns of possible paths are projected onto it and a meaningful

story about the potential flows of opportunity is evoked. As such, the relation that is inscribed on

the paper is doubly abstracted. As well as being abstracted in content to a binary question, it is



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abstracted in time from being one of many possibilities for action in the future to a single path on

the map. But what travels on those paths? What is the point of charting these paths? Paths to

what? To answer this, we need to understand two key words which were used repeatedly that

day: opportunity and resource.

Inferring Opportunities and Resources

During the lunch break, over sandwiches and fruit, I struck up a conversation with the instructor.

I had come to this workshop on the recommendation of a bioscience network manager I had met

at a networking event in London the week before. I asked several people at the London event if

they thought that networking at such activities was really very effective and whether they could

point to any benefits they had derived from networking. Most people's answers were positive,

but somewhat vague. They seemed to find pointing to specifics difficult. However, one tech-

transfer officer was especially frank: “I can trace a number of jobs that I‟ve gotten directly from

these sorts of events, but as far as my work goes, I can‟t think of an instance of a contact I‟ve

made at one of these things turning into a useful lead for the university.”

I told the instructor this story as we finished our lunches and asked him whether there was

some limit to the effectiveness of networking. His answer was unequivocal. He explained that

the technology transfer officer to whom I had spoken was mistaken: “He probably had benefited

from the networking contacts he made, but he might not know this was the case because he

wasn‟t deliberate about it. If he didn‟t employ these mapping techniques, how could he know

whether those contacts produced opportunities?” According to the instructor, what this

technology transfer officer didn‟t understand was that “we are all networking all of the time”. By

not making himself aware of his wider network he had almost certainly failed to recognize

opportunities to do his job better.



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This wasn‟t the first time that day that the instructor had used the word “opportunity”.

Revealing and capturing opportunities was a reason for networking. Opportunities are chances to

access the resources that people possess. And accessing others‟ resources is what will make one

a successful networker. During the morning session the instructor stressed that when a person

gives something to someone in their network they are “making a measure of the intangible”.

According to him, the person will calculate the benefits of making her resources available to

others. That calculation is the perceived likelihood that, at some future date, someone will also

make his or her resources available to them. It is this exchange that often constitutes the social

relation between individuals in a social-networking sense. These relationships are in turn

valuable objects of exchange. They become resources which may have value to others and

which, if one possesses them, give one value as a potential node in someone else‟s network. Put

another way, the relationship can be both the object and the objective of the exchange. Mapping

these relations helps the networker see where opportunities to access others‟ resources might

come from and what actions he or she might take to (perhaps literally) draw them in. To

understand this better, however, we first need to understand what kinds of relation networking is

imagined to create.

The Network Gift

During a question and answer period after lunch one of the participants commented that all of the

morning‟s activities and the advice that the presenters had given (about “mapping” our social

networks, “rating” our relationships with people based on how much we think we give and

receive, figuring out how to play on what motivates people in order to get them to feel more

willing to interact or transact with us later) seemed to amount to manipulation. He protested that



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most people are “turned off” rather than “incentivized” by someone who is trying to ingratiate

themselves.9 The instructor‟s response was direct:

This might seem Machiavellian, like we‟re telling you to just

manipulate people, but it‟s not. The relationship always has to be

two-way and voluntary to work best. The goal is to incentivize

people into your network, to make them want to know you, and the

only way to do this is to make sure people think you are as useful

to them as you think they are to you. You have to give in order to

get .

She stressed this last point. Networking activities must be genuinely motivated by mutual

benefit and by the balance of the relationships one creates and maintains. Networking is “not

Machiavellian” in the sense that, although it is a means to an end, that end is not only for

personal gain. Rather, the more that people “feed” and grow their networks by producing new

connections, the more likely everyone in the network is to benefit. She emphasized that although

you might have nothing to give a person now, in the long run they will benefit from knowing you

because network connections are always changing, and opportunities are always flowing through

them. In some way, you are doing someone a favor by simply getting to know them because the

more connections you have, the more likely you and others in your network are to reap

opportunities from those connections.

The notion of the “Free Gift”



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“You have to give in order to get.” For the anthropologist, there should be an echo in the

instructor‟s maxim. A resonance with longstanding debates about the “pure gift”, the “free gift”

or the ideal of “generalized reciprocity”. This notion, that a gift cannot be given without the

expectation of return, has formed the foundation of many anthropological discussions of non-

commodity exchange. However, several scholars have challenged this, observing that the so-

called impossibility of the pure gift has largely resulted from Anglophone anthropology‟s

tendency to substitute Mauss‟ central thesis in The Gift (that the evolution of the modern contract

involved the development of inalienable exchange forms that persist in modern capitalist

economies) with his discussion of reciprocity and his treatment of the Maori hau (Hart

2007:482-484; Sigaud 2003). In his Malinowski Lecture, Parry (1986) describes how, in

Anglophone anthropology, particular ideologies of reciprocity and personhood were read into

Mauss‟ Essai sur le don shortly after its publication.10

Parry takes particular notice of the kinds

of persons described by Malinowski in his psychology of gift exchange and draws our attention

to the assumption, already present in Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), that the exchange

of gifts is conducted by persons acting as “self -interested” individuals. As Parry describes,

Mauss‟ Essai was in part a response to Malinowski‟s early contention that every gift carries with

it the obligation of a “calculated” and “equivalent” return at some point in the future. According

to Parry, Mauss stressed that gifts are always based on “a combination of interest and disinterest,

of freedom and constraint,” and that this interest is not a matter of the self -interest of individuals

because “the persons who enter into the exchanges which centrally concern Mauss do so as

incumbents of status positions and do not act on their own behalf” (1986 :456). Parry goes on to

argue that, whereas the Malinowski‟s reading holds that the self -interests of individuals pervade

all aspects of primitive exchange, thus making the pure gift impossible, Mauss‟ text argues that



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the very idea of the “individual self”, which makes Malinowski‟s analysis possible, is itself part

of the evolution of the same modern societies in which the contract has evolved from archaic

exchange forms. In each successive form, the role of the persons involved becomes increasingly

individualized--from total prestations, through gift exchanges, to modern market exchanges

between individuals. Parry concludes that “an elaborated ideology of the „pure‟ gift is most

likely to develop in state societies with an advanced division of labor and a significant

commercial sector.” (Parry 1986:467) In other words, it shouldn‟t surprise us to find that

members of a society based on the idea of the individual self might also have an ideology of

reciprocity based on the self-interests of individual selves.

I think Parry provides us with an interesting ethnographic observation relevant to the

instructor‟s statement that, “You have to give in order to get.” If, as Parry describes, the societies

that gave birth to anthropology also gave anthropologists their notions of reciprocity, then

recognizing a similar ideology of reciprocity in other aspects of those societies should not

surprise us. It isn‟t hard to imagine that members of a society that produced the anthropological

narratives of generalized reciprocity might share similar ideological underpinnings. But some

care is needed in making this observation. Although it is familiar, the story of this network

“reciprocity” is not precisely the same as ones that anthropologists tell.

Potentials Given, Opportunities Received

“Giving”, in the networking sense, takes many forms. Although just about anything can

constitute the basis for forming a connection with another person, the most commonly described

tokens of exchange are information, expertise, and contacts. By and large, these exchange

objects themselves are immaterial, or their materiality is considered secondary to the potential

exchange of opportunities that the relation enables. A business card, for example, is not entirely



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necessary for passing on contact information. The same information could be jotted on a scrap of

paper or on the back of a conference packet. The business card is only one marker of the

exchange of contacts. If viewed solely in terms of the exchange of information, there seems to be

little in the way of pure gifts involved. It is a discreet and dyadic exchange of like goods.

However, what is exchanged and what is expected to return are two different things.

For the networker, this exchange of contact information is only an initial step. Whether or not

it marks some immediate exchange of opportunities, it also sets in motion the possibility for

future returns. It is deemed poor networking etiquette to exchange contact information and leave

it at that. The point of the exchange is not to gain information but to form a relationship that

might prove advantageous to either or both of the parties at a later date. The exchange marks a

potential course along which future opportunities might flow, be they business contacts, funding,

advice or jobs.11

To increase that likelihood, the networker is exhorted to “cultivate” the

relationship through more acts of giving: little favors such as making introductions and

forwarding interesting news and research articles. The networker hopes that such acts will spark

a feeling of solidarity in the recipient which will in turn make them more likely to pass on

equally useful favors later. This is often put in terms of social capital. The idea of social capital

employed here was (explicitly in some cases) drawn from the work of sociologists like Robert

Putnam (Putnam 2001; Putnam 2002) but was most commonly equated to the idea of “trust”.12

Specifically, the little favors one gives are meant to produce in the recipient trust and positive

mental attitudes toward the giver. The giver might leverage these attitudes at some later date.

The motivation for giving and the hoped-for outcome of an act such as trading business cards are

the same: the explicit creation of a certain kind of social relationship, one which entails an

affective obligation to pass the favor on sometime.



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However, the gift is generally given in an alienable form. Unlike the hau as Mauss describes

it, the obligation to give back the networker‟s gift is not described as being carried in the thing

given, but in the potential psychological effects that the act of giving has upon the recipient.13

Take the following comments from a twenty-something Chilean technology consultant I met at

my neighbor Sebastián‟s birthday party. Sebastián, a biotech consultant (also from Chile) and

“champion” networker himself, knew about my research and told me I needed to meet Tomás.

Sebastián described Tomás as, “A great networker! He knows everybody, David.” As we

chatted, Tomás gave me this advice about networking effectively:

Make sure you get someone‟s details when you meet them. Then,

as soon as possible--the next day, maybe even as soon as you get

home--send them a quick email saying how nice it was to meet

them, and remind them who you are and what you both talked

about or something you found interesting about the conversation. If

you have a website or something else to send them that will help

them remember you, this helps too. This puts you in their mind so

they are more likely to think about you if something relevant to

your business comes along, and they might pass it along. It also

helps them remember you again later if you come to them for help

or if they are in a position where you can help them.

For Tomás, creating reciprocal obligations through networking consists of inducing

psychological states or mental attitudes of goodwill, and trust. Giving your time, your contacts,



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and your knowledge makes you seem useful, or at least willing to share. In the process a sense of

goodwill is created that makes possible a return of that favor in the future. It is not the gift itself

but the act of giving which is assumed to do this. Sincerity, or at least the perception of sincerity,

is key to achieving a reciprocal return on one‟s investment.

But this poses a problem for thinking of network exchanges as gifts. Unlike the Mauss‟ read

of the taonga, with its hau that compels it to return, the networker‟s gift does not have any

control over the recipient in and of itself. Gifts are made but returns are unpredictable, even with

the exercise in mapping. Without something like a hau to compel the gift‟s return, how does the

networker know that giving will entail getting something back?

Stochastic Reciprocity

Something discussed several times at the workshop was the constantly evolving and potentially

limitless nature of networks. According to the instructor, it is the need to access different kinds

of resources for different projects or goals that results in constant shifts in the kinds of

opportunities that will be useful. This in turn shifts the pattern of connections that have potential

value. Similarly, the addition of new connections and new individuals in the network rearranges

the potential flows of opportunities, making new people and their resources reachable. As one‟s

goals and relations shift, so too does the pattern of the network. But, with potentially infinite

possibilities for connecting to other people and constantly shifting needs, how does one ever

know which connections will be the right ones and when they will be relevant. At what point

does the network stop?

One implication of the networking etiquette that was discussed was that one should never

“burn bridges”, even with those people whose relationship the networker consistently values as a

minus. Instead, if the networker feels that they spend too much time with someone who isn‟t



22

giving much value back, then the networker should let the relationship “atrophy”, weakening, but

not disappearing. According to the instructor, “You can always revive it later if things change.”

Similarly, as with the story of Lois Weisberg, the instructor stressed the need to make new

connections with interesting people, even if it isn‟t clear whether they are useful to know. You

never know who you‟ll need to know in the future. Thus, rela tions, and the access to resources

they represent, can be banked or even speculated on. Even if Joe doesn‟t have much to offer me

today, I should keep in touch because maybe he will next month, or next year. In a sense,

networking generates a speculative value, especially when your network is constantly growing.

Making relations begins to take on a stochastic quality. The more people one gets to know, the

more likely it is at least one of them will be useful. Network persons seem to become instantiated

with value by virtue of their access to resources in other persons. And, as with the participant‟s

comment above about the possibility that networking is “just manipulation” this linking of the

monetary value of persons in themselves can generate some discomfort in critics.

In her article, “Cutting the network”, Strathern (1996) is concerned with the ways that Euro-

Americans have come to think of many new technologies as challenging to their historically held

notions of a sharp division between humans and non-humans. She notes that, until fairly

recently, modern Euro-American conceptions of ownership drew a sharp line between the owner

(person) and the thing capable of being owned (property), the ownership of persons being

generally abhorrent.14

However, since the 1980s the incursions of commodities into the legal and

cultural frameworks around organ and tissue donation and surrogacy, for example, have

complicated this arrangement. Strathern observes that “experiments” in personhood and

exchange have taken place in these venues and understanding them requires new theoretical



23

resources. To clarify the concern with commoditized persons as a concern with relations, she

draws on idioms of bridewealth she encountered in Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea:

It is not buying and selling as such, of course, that are at the heart

of anthropological understandings of commoditization, but the

quality of relationships. The Hagen husband who speaks of his

wife as a purchase, like something from a tradestore, awards

himself new freedoms. But in some formulations, the bride is the

tradestore itself. If so, then she is a store of wealth for others who

benefit from their relations through her, and it seems to be the

person of the bride who [...] contains the possibility of converting

the fertile essence or nurture of others into wealth. (Strathern

1996:518)

There is at least one parallel here with the persons who are imagined on the network map as

nodes. The idioms of Hagen bridewealth draw comparisons with flows of money through

tradestores. The bride‟s wealth is a repository of nurture her kin have paid in which she also

contains as a store or a bank of the wealth they are due in return. In the case of Hagen

bridewealth, the flow of nurture into the bride is stopped or cut when it comes to rest in her.

In the networking case the flows of little favors and opportunities, which the networker is

exhorted to persistently generate, are stored in other persons as the potential for future returns.

However, for the networker, while the flow of favors and opportunities is hoped to return

directly, the possibility remains that this flow will also trigger more flows of favors and



24

opportunities, but outward to other persons. This extensional flow is potentially reproduced by

those persons, and so on, ad infinitum. Recall the instructor‟s response to my question about the

skeptical networker in London. One of his points was that the networker was being affected by

this process of infinite flows, whether he knew it or not. The exercise in mapping and evaluating

our networks was not only for visualizing potential new connections immediately in front of us,

but also for reminding us that some chains of opportunities were started off of the map, beyond

the network we could immediately know. The networker is exhorted to constantly initiate new

circulations of opportunities as an investment, betting that, while some of those opportunities

might fall off of the map, at least some will return. The map is used to imagine and make visible

possibilities the networker might otherwise not have seen. And the investment of time, interest,

effort and energies in a relation is revealed to be not just an investment in a single person, but an

investment in the extensional potentials of the network and an investment in networking itself.

The more opportunities one initiates, the more likely it is some will trigger chains that will link

again to oneself (see fig. 1).



25

Figure 1: Investing in Networking--Every time the networker decides to do a favor or make a gift to someone in his or

her network he or she makes what the instructor called “a measure of the intangible.” That is, the networker assesses

what he or she perceives to be the likelihood that the gift will be returned. All acts of giving are assumed to start a chain

of gifts and other acts of giving. There are four possible outcomes for any act of giving. (a) The gift could be returned in

kind by the same person the gift was given to--a direct return ( α gives to β who eventually returns another gift to α). (b)

The gift could return through an indirect route, but through known individuals ( α gives to β who gives to γ who gives to

α). (c) The gift might be returned directly or indirectly through unknown connections beyond those which the networker

knows (α gives to β, who in turn gives to δ--the collective of anonymous, individual other persons who remain unknown

to α but by whose actions a chain of giving might eventually return to α). Finally, (d) there is always the possibility that

once a chain of gifts enters δ it might not ever return. This is why expanding one’s network becomes so important. By

knowing lots of people, especially people outside of his or her immediate circle, a networker is thought to increase the

number of paths upon which a particular gift chain might return to him or her. Investing in making connections through

networking becomes an investment in the likelihood that gifts will return, thus making new opportunities available to the

networker.



26

However, the networker faces a problem. If flows of opportunities are revealed only in

mapping the network they are a part of, how does one account for all of the connections that fall

off of the page? A potentially infinite network is not easily mapped on a poster board. Strathern

gives us another hint. In the same article she interrogates another kind of network analysis,

Actor-Network Theory (A-NT):

However, the power of such analytical networks is also their

problem: theoretically they are without limits. [...] Analysis

appears able to take into account, and thus create, any number of

new forms. And one can always discover networks within

networks; this is the fractal logic that renders any length a multiple

of other lengths, or a link in a chain a chain of further links. Yet

analysis, like interpretation, must have a point; it must be enacted

as a stopping place. If networks had lengths they would stop

themselves. [...] In coming to rest, the network would be “cut” at a

point, “stopped” from further extension. (Strathern 1996:523)

Her critique of A-NT is relevant to the social networker as well. The network must be cut

before it can be seen. Something must both draw together the appropriate elements of the

network and delineate a boundary that defines them as appropriate elements. Strathern describes

how ownership can act as such a boundary-maker. However, for the social networker, a goal

becomes the fence and the field. The network inscribed on the map is drawn from an idealized

network of infinite potential connections. Because networks are said to be dynamic and shifting



27

things, the set of connections in a network is not limited to the actually present connections one

can see, but includes all of the potential connections one can foresee in the future or recognize in

the past. The selection of a goal immediately cuts off certain kinds of potential connections

between individuals in the network, rendering the set of connections to something manageable

on an A4 size sheet of paper. Potential connections lie off the page as a field of possibilities.

These possible exchange partners remain anonymous. Although any one of them could become

known every time the networker meets a new connection. This space where persons are

unidentifiable, however, opens the possibility for a general narrative of causes and effects in

which time is a main character.

Time and the gift’s return

In The Fame of Gawa (Munn 1992), Nancy Munn sketches a framework for understanding the

interplay of multiple levels of exchange and the creation of value which constitute Gawan Kula

exchanges. Munn introduces the notion of a Gawan intersubjective spacetime in which

individual exchanges are not just the focus of immediate exchange but the setting up of potential

future exchanges. Regarding Gawan hospitality practices, she describes,

[I]t is of considerable importance to them that the connection being

created goes beyond Gawa and that, through the transaction of

food on Gawa at one particular time, one can produce for oneself

the possibility of gaining something beyond that time and from

beyond Gawa itself. […] Gawans are concerned with the relative

capacity of certain acts or practices to create potentialities for



28

constructing a present that is experienced as pointing forward to

later desired acts or material returns (Munn 1992:11).

Elsewhere, she comments on how, in the interplay of witchcraft beliefs and expectations of

Kula exchanges, the direction of experience is not merely pointing forward, but is actively

drawing possible pasts (in the form of stories about illness, attributions of witchcraft, and

unexpected Kula events) and potential futures (in the form of expected Kula exchanges several

cycles forward) into the same moment, eliciting the past and the present as real in shifting event

histories (Munn 1990).

It is not difficult to see similarities with the mapping of a social network. Identifying an

opportunity‟s origin in the network of relations is always a selectively retrospective act. Hidden

connections cannot be identified as definitively relevant to producing a single opportunity until

after the opportunity has arisen. Even then, only certain connections can be identified. There is

always an element of uncertainty in the narrative. A few putative connections are evoked to give

meaning to the opportunity and to the network that revealed it. Similarly, in calculating how to

manage his or her connections, a networker takes in past accounts of the effectiveness of

connections while simultaneously eliciting possible futures. These futures, both desirable and

undesirable, are what the networker seeks to align with his or her present activities. Time is the

key element in this. The effects of the act of giving are necessarily always deferred .

Deferral both creates and negates the possibility of the pure, or free gift, the gift for which no

return is expected. For Bourdieu (1977; 1990) it is the precondition for a pure gift. The

separation of time between giving and return allows for the “misrecognition” (méconnaissance)

of the return gift as one element in a cycle of exchanges, thus masking any calculation of self-



29

interest that might have been present when a particular gift was made. For Derrida (1992), time

actually precludes the possibility of a free gift. Once the gift is given it is recognized as such and

the obligation to return the gift emerges. It becomes part of a cycle of exchange. However, as

Venkatesan has noted there is an underlying similarity between these two approaches, “Both

Bourdieu and Derrida recognize that gifting involves a certain degree of masking and

misrecognition. When these cease to hold sway (either because the passage of time is collapsed,

showing straightforward reciprocity, or because time has elapsed allowing recognition of a gift

as such), the gift is revealed not as a gift but as a component of exchange” (2011:51).

Deferral plays a role in constituting the network gift as both a free gift and an exchange.

When a particular gift to a particular person in the present does not return immediately, it is

shifted into an abstract register of potential returns in the future. In other words, the networker

remains ignorant of the exact nature of the return that this exchange will produce, yet expects

that some kind of return is likely. But from whom, or where, does the return come? By

bracketing this question of identities, the networker can successfully maintain a state of

anonymity that produces a general narrative. But to understand how this anonymity works, we

must understand how it comes to be in the first place.

In her study of egg donation in the UK (Konrad 2005), Monica Konrad takes up Munn‟s

notion of intersubjective spacetime and deploys it to understand the ways that women who

donate ova come to understand their act as a “gift”. The key problem for Konrad, a problem that

issues from Titmuss‟ classic work on blood donation (Titmuss, et al. 1997), is that the targets for

egg donation (the recipients of the gift) are anonymous. The identities of recipients and donors

are kept secret and not divulged, bound up in a complex arrangement of legal, “practical”,

technical, and “ethical” assemblages.



30

Arguing against a free market in human blood, Titmuss suggested that a system of anonymous

blood donation would shape the meaning of the act of giving. He held that, because gifts forge

relationships between persons, the absence of a knowable individual to identify with the gift

would mean that giving would be done on behalf of or for the sake of “society” itself in the

context of the National Health Service. However, Konrad demonstrates that anonymity in human

tissue donation can produce far more complicated effects. She finds that, in many cases, women

conceive of their donation not simply as the transference of their “tissue”, but as the donation of

“chances” or “the gift of life”. In a variety of narratives, these women transform the donation

from “tissue” to an ethical and moral act done for the good of others. Konrad‟s contention is that

the transilience that the fact of anonymity sets up (a shifting of registers between idioms of

ownership and altruistic giving) is brought about by the inventive play of “related non-relations”.

Anonymity opens a space between knowing and not-knowing in which these meanings can be

creatively evoked (Konrad 2005:39-43).

There are of course differences between the anonymity of ova donation and the anonymous

individual others of social-networking. Importantly, anonymity in egg donation is legally

enforced, and the possibility of knowing the recipient is remote, if it exists at all. In networking

the most important thing about anonymity is that the un-known other is also always a potentially

known other. That is, though I might not see the connections that link me to a person today, I

might sometime in the future. Nonetheless, anonymity or the engagement of

unknown/unknowable others, has a similar effect in both cases. As I have previously mentioned,

there is a knowledge horizon that emerges as a social network is mapped. There comes a point

where a person cannot identify any more persons in their network. At some point, the pattern of

the network and the identities of the individuals involved in it are, as a practical matter, invisible.



31

A space emerges where individuals in the network fade into a statistical blur. Individual nodes

become anonymous except as a collective space of possibilities. In this space, reciprocity

between persons as individuals is rendered impossible as anonymity severs the relations that

would reveal them as individuals. Yet it also creates a new entity of the collectively unknown, an

aggregate actor through which reciprocity can be engaged in despite the gulf of knowledge and

time that separates gift and return.

Conclusion--Narrating the Network

About a year after the Newcastle workshop I received a phone call from Paul, a knowledge

transfer worker at a publicly funded research establishment in the Midlands. He and I sat next to

each other during most of the workshop and, when it was over, he and I shared a pint in the

railway station while waiting for our trains. We had chatted for a couple of hours and spent at

least some of the time talking about the workshop and whether it would be useful or if it made

sense. He expressed a certain amount of skepticism that he could find the time to constantly map

his network, but then he admitted that, at least having the map he‟d made that day was a start.

He‟d give it a go, he said, and we both agreed that whethe r skeptical or not, there was something

about the idea that we‟re all connected that makes some sense. We exchanged details before he

boarded his train and then part.

However, as so often happens, neither of us had contacted the other since then. Now, he told

me that he was writing a thesis for a part-time, post-graduate management certificate and had

remembered that I was interested in “networks”. He was calling to see if I could point him in the

direction of some good citations on networking and the high-tech sector.

Before asking for the citations he apologized for being such a “bad networker” for the past

year and not being in touch before now. We both made a few jokes about our mutual failings as



32

networkers and then we started to talk about the workshop again. I asked him whether he had

found it useful at all and if he still used any of the techniques we learned that day., “Well, I still

have my map pinned next to my desk. But...” He paused before continuing:

Paul: Actually I was about to tell you that I hadn‟t really used it,

but now that I think of it, I looked at it last week and realized there

was someone who could contact this person I need to meet for one

of our projects. So I guess, yeah, I do still use it.

David: But is that the only map you have? Have you drawn any

new ones?

Paul: No, not really. But it‟s like I said. When I looked at that map,

I realized what I needed to do. There was already someone in my

network who could help me solve this problem. And I suppose that

I‟ve been doing that a lot. Using things we talked about in the

workshop, just not thinking of them as networking per se. I think I

am more aware of how people are connected now, and I make

more of an effort to meet new people when I go to networking

meetings and conferences. Not to just hang around the edges. So, if

you‟re asking me if the workshop was helpful? Yes, I suppose the

proof is there. It‟s had an effect on me, anyway.

David: But you don‟t need to draw the map again and again?

Paul: No. Well, I mean I think that it probably would be helpful if I

was better about updating it regularly, but I don‟t really have the

time. There‟s too much to get done in the day. And really it‟s



33

probably more important to just remember to look for networking

opportunities than to always be drawing maps--better to get out

there and do it, right? I think that might be why it‟s still next to my

desk. It reminds me every time I look up.

Here I think we have a bookend to the idealized network presented in the workshop. There are

some contrasts. Paul doesn‟t map his networks on paper and admits he doesn‟t self -consciously

map his connections with people. Yet he contends that he does network now and his proof is not

so much that he uses the specific tools that were presented at the workshop but his own mindset.

He says he feels more aware of his connections with others, even if he isn‟t charting them

regularly. However, this doesn‟t mean that the map is irrelevant to him. His narrative about the

map goes from doubt to certainty. He doesn‟t update the map, but it reminds him to netw ork. By

its mere presence it seems to evoke the lessons of the workshop. Perhaps more importantly it

evokes a generalized social geography that helps him frame his actions. Connectedness made

sense to him.

Here is the more lasting effect of the social network map. It isn‟t so important whether it is an

accurate representation of a networker‟s relations, nor whether it can reveal everything it is

claimed that it can. So long as it plays a role in communicating a story about relatedness and

action that “makes sense” to the networker, it has done something significant. Likewise, the

point of the workshop wasn‟t to get us to adopt every technique that was taught. At the end of the

day the instructor said, “The measure of whether or not this workshop was a success won‟t be

whether you use all of the tools we‟ve given you, but whether you find yourself starting to think

in terms of networks. Then you‟ll begin to see the world differently.” Paul adopted very few of

the day‟s techniques, but he was convinced in some broad way that approaching relations as a



34

network, seeing people as bearers of resources and acquaintances as beneficial, was a more

effective way to approach his work. The network map was an effective part of demonstrating this

view of the world, and for Paul, it continues to evoke the idea of networking when he

contemplates how to approach problems, just by being next to his desk.

This act of evocation isn‟t simple. As we have seen, in order to express the possibilities that

the network map represents, the networker must engage in a series of exercises in bracketing his

or her knowledge. And this is no mean feat for an activity (mapping) and an object (a map)

whose primary purpose is to reveal knowledge. In order to visually reveal opportunities the

networker must first make several moves of abstraction and deferral of knowledge. The social

network map is simultaneously an inscription of an imagined social space, a chart of the

possibilities for social action couched in the potential for future returns, and a chart of spaces of

potential knowledge. Ignorance is deployed in every step of this. First as the space of an absent

knowledge (“Who am I connected to?”), then as a space of impossible or impractical knowledge

(“There are some connections I will never know about...”), which is transformed into a space of

strategic inattention (“...but I needn‟t know the details of those connections...”) which generates

possibilities of future returns (“...because opportunities will eventually fall out of that space...”)

and choices for present actions (“...if I continue to network deliberately”).

These shifts are enabled by a series of abstractions and deferrals which depend on the

deliberate bracketing of some kinds of knowledge in order to make others manageable. The lines

between nodes abstract the rich, qualitative content of social relations to a binary pattern of

connections. The map itself is an abstraction of a notionally infinite network--both as a small

piece of an infinite whole, and as a temporally frozen representation of a dynamic system.

Knowledge of the individual identities of network connections off of the map is not likely and



35

they become anonymous as a result. That anonymity in return combines their individual effects

into a collective space in which the effects of connections are probabilistic. That collective space

of anonymity creates the possibility for narratives connecting acts of giving in general with

specific opportunities. The act of mapping one‟s social network is not just the calculat ion of gifts

and returns, but the evocation of an anonymous space of potential from which opportunities

might arise. It allows the networker to say, “I have to give in order to get”. Mapping networks

demonstrates how networking works and is offered simultaneously as proof of the reality of

these networks and their effectiveness in producing opportunities. The time between when the

gift is given and when an opportunity returns is dilated or foreshortened. The space beyond the

map becomes a narrative space in which any opportunity can be tied to the activity of networking

in general if not to specific acts of giving. In the spaces opened by the impossibility of knowing

one‟s entire network, one is able to constantly evoke the extended benefits of networking

precisely by extending them into a space of ignorance: a putative collection of anonymous,

individual, others. Constructing and maintaining these multiple spaces of ignorance lies at the

heart of the exercise in mapping networks. Knowing the exact chain of network connections that

brought this particular opportunity to the networker is less important than the “fact”, already

demonstrated to the networker either through anecdotes or through previous successes in

mapping opportunities, that networking in general produces the conditions for opportunities to

arise.



36

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Notes

1 I would like to acknowledge several people whose feedback and assistance were invaluable

while writing this chapter: the members of the U.C. Davis Department of Science and

Technology Studies Food for Thought workshop for providing stimulating feedback on an earlier

version; the editors of this volume, for their support on the current chapter and for organising the

symposium from which it evolved; Marilyn Strathern for her support and inspiration throughout

the research from which this chapter is drawn. Thanks and credit are due to these and others for

improvements, all faults are solely mine.

2 In some cases, I have changed individuals‟ names in the interests of anonymity and out of

respect to my informants. Likewise, cited quotations are taken verbatim from handouts, power-

point presentations, or other documentary evidence collected on site. However, unless otherwise

noted, direct quotations of ethnographic participants are approximations of statements made and

noted in the pages of my field notes. Recording in many of these instances was either impractical

or potentially disruptive or transgressive.

3 Proctor and Schiebinger (2008) represents the most coordinated attempt in recent years to

understand ignorance per se, however there are other notable examples. In her study of the

effects of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, Petryna describes the tactical applications of

ignorance by Ukrainian workers: “Where ignorance once amounted to a form of repression (in

the Soviet period), it is now used as a resource in the personal art of biosocial inclusion.

Nimenko based his self account on an accumulation of unknowns. In this regard, he used

scientific knowledge in a specific way: not to know but to circumscribe what he can never

know.” (Petryna 2002:32)



43

4 AURIL‟s mission is described as fostering commercial and professional links between

higher education and industry.

5 During the course of research some of the KT workers I interviewed estimated that they

spent as much as half of their time in a given week on activities they considered to be networking

and many had been on courses similar to the this one.

6 There are many brief histories of SNA but see especially the book-length treatment by

Freeman (2004) and an article by Knox, et al. (2006) comparing the anthropological (British) and

sociological/psychological (American) schools of network analysis and their different

trajectories. For classic Social Network Analysis literature in anthropology, see Barnes (1954),

Boissevain (1974), Bott (1957) and Mitchell (1969; 1974). For more recent work on social

networks as a branch of complexity (chaos) theory in physics and mathematics see Barabási

(2003), Buchanan (2002), Watts (2003) and Watts and Strogatz (1998). It is no coincidence that

Barabási, Buchanan, and Watts all had bestsellers about social networks and small worlds in the

year or so before this workshop was held. In fact, all three of their books were discussed at points

during the workshop.

7 Milgram‟s work on the small world phenomenon is known colloquially by some of the

initial findings that indicated it takes an average of approximately six connections between

friends and friends-of-friends in order to connect any given pair of people (Milgram 1967;

Travers and Milgram 1969). The instructor concentrated on one specific publication by

Granovetter titled The Strength of Weak Ties (Granovetter 1973) and a follow-up piece he wrote

ten years later (Granovetter 1983). Granovetter posits that individuals have two kinds of

relations: close ties made up of family and friends, and weak ties made up of one‟s

acquaintances. Acquaintances are vital links between locally dense groupings of close ties,



44

allowing ideas, news and fashions to spread quickly between groups and across a society.

Granovetter speculates that the “macroscopic” implications of a society lacking in weak ties are

that, “New ideas will spread slowly, scientific endeavours will be handicapped, and subgroups

separated by race, ethnicity, geography, or other characteristics will have difficulty reaching a

modus vivendi.” (1983:202)

8 Briefly, in the city of Königsberg, Prussia there was a river in the middle of which were two

islands connected to each other and to the rest of the city by seven bridges. The problem was to

prove whether or not it was possible to chart a path that crossed each bridge once, and only once,

and ended at the same point at which it started. Euler proved it was not possible, and he

approached the problem by abstracting the bridges and islands as vertices and edges. Graph

theory has also played an important part in the formulation of Social Network Analysis in

Anthropology (see Hage & Harary 1983).

9 This neologism was used several times that day to describe any activity of persuading,

convincing or otherwise playing on people‟s interests in order to increase the likelihood that they

will cooperate with you. I take the word incentives to mean external circumstances that affect

internal psychological dispositions to act. Its frequent use seems to reinforce the presumption

that the locus of the obligation to return the gift lies not within the gift itself but within the

psychological states that giving produces in others, a point made further on.

10 Parry remarks that in the case of Cunnison‟s (Mauss 1969) translation, these assumptions

were literally written into the text. Parry‟s lecture was delivered before the publication of the

now widely available translation of by W.D. Halls (Mauss & Halls 1990). A systematic

comparison of both of these translations and the original along the lines of Parry‟s argument

would be interesting, however, a cursory look at Halls‟ treatment of the specific passag e that



45

Parry finds problematic in Cunnison‟s would seem to suggest that Halls‟ translation does not

resolve all of Parry‟s observations.

11 Although the “opportunities” are potentially anything one can imagine in relation to a goal,

in practice they were almost exclusively described in professional, career, and business terms.

This is not surprising as so much of the social networking literature today seems to come from

business and management studies, and most popular treatments are aimed at professionals and

businessmen. Indeed, the bulk of this literature and the workshops I attended might easily be

described as part of the late-twentieth/early twenty-first century “self -help” movement which has

typically concerned itself with people‟s work and business lives. Much of this literature rests on

ethical obligations for individuals to construct their own selves, sometimes explicitly deploying

market models that depict the self as an enterprise (Rose 1992) and the need for the individual to

collect marketable skills and training that will make them “flexible” (Martin 1994:143-159, 193-

225). On self-help as part of the development of late twentieth century technologies of the self

see Rose (1996; 1999).

12 I noticed a strong tendency, when attribution was mentioned, to link the idea of social

capital with Putnam rather than Bourdieu. However, it seems that trust here is taken more

literally as “capital” and more directly informed by the logics of “markets” than either Putnam or

Bourdieu might have intended.

13 “What imposes obligation in the present received and exchanged is the fact that the thing

received is not inactive. Even when it has been abandoned by the giver it still possesses

something of him. Through it the giver has a hold over the beneficiary just as, being its owner;

through it he has a hold over the thief. This is because the taonga is animated by the hau of its

forest, its native heath and soil. It is truly “native”: the hau follows after anyone possessing the



thing. [...] In reality, it is the hau that wishes to return to its birthplace, to the sanctuary of the

forest and the clan, and to the owner.” (Mauss 2002 :15)

14 While acknowledging her point that the period of this attitude toward the disposition of

human tissues is historically brief, one must note that whole persons were kept as property in the

United States until the mid-19th century. But even there, slavery was only possible with the

denial of some extent of personhood to the slave as a necessary condition of their being property.

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