3D Representation of Network Society

Global Labor Force as Network

                My 3D representation of the global labor force comes from chapter 4 of Castells, “The Transformation of Work and Employment: Networkers, Jobless, and Flex-timers.”  I started with two models of advanced economies (Anglo-Saxon countries, on the one hand, and Germany and Japan on the other) as well as the developing world.  These were represented as metaphorical regions, although they are not, in fact, geographically clustered.  These are the three cans with the flags on them.  Although they are only metaphorical, within the model, they can also be seen as physical entities that are larger than nodes because each country within the categories has its own economy, labor force, and internal social networks.  Castells does not believe that there are hard and fast distinctions between these categories of advanced economies, incidentally, and I also do not mean to imply that in my model.  However, he did distinguish the Anglo-Saxon countries (primarily the USA and the UK) from Japan and Germany in the way that the labor force is allocated between sectors and the way development has proceeded.

The labor sectors are represented by three nodes connected to each can, three chopsticks inserted between nested cans.  These nodes are (1) managerial and professional, (2) manufacturing and (3) services.  Obviously this is also an oversimplification.  The blue tape connects the manufacturing sector of the different models, so that I could represent the fact that manufacturing jobs have shifted from the Anglo-Saxon regions to the developing world.  This is shown by placing wider sections of tape next to the can that has attracted the manufacturing jobs, namely, the developing world. Notice that this is less so for Japan and Germany, who, according to Castells, have maintained a larger portion of the economy in manufacturing.  The yellow threads connect managerial and professional nodes across regions. The number of strands has some correlation to level of exchange.  This exchange could be in terms of migration, say, Europeans moving to Silicon Valley, or in terms of multinational postings, say an American working for Boeing in China.  I suppose it could also represent possible outsourcing of knowledge work, but I wasn’t thinking too much about this last source of exchange and therefore it is underrepresented in my model.  The silver flags connected to the services nodes mostly do not connect to other regions since service jobs tend to be more localized.  Nurses and waiters still have to be physically present to provide their services.  I did put a few strands of gray thread from the services sector of the developing world to the Anglo-Saxon region to show that in the US and Britain, immigrants often move into the lowest skilled of these jobs.  The beans in the cans, incidentally, can represent the labor force in the represented countries.  The cables are supposed to represent the materiality of informational networks.  In other words, there are undersea cables and satellite systems and so on that support the internet, global finance networks, wireless communications and all the rest of the network society that undergirds the global economy which in turn directly affects how the global labor force is deployed.

Below are two additional pictures of my 3D representation.

894 Mind Map

I am embedding my mind map here. This is my first time tweaking code, so I'm pretty excited that you can actually see SOMETHING here.  Let me know if it isn't working.

April 17 update

For social network analysis, I made connections to “network society,” because computing has made possible the data crunching that SNA depends on, to “relations” because SNA is looking at relations, particularly human-human interactions. I added another node as well, “data analysis,” which I have also connected to “network society.” It is true that it is primarily methodology but is so essential to SNA that it is almost like another concept.

April 3 update

I added a node for Castells and a small web of nodes capturing some of the main features I see in Castells. This is more interpretive than for some other scholars because Castells doesn’t establish a theoretical framework with a set terminology.  However, I decided to look at technological innovation and diffusion as a node and time and space, combined for convenience, as a node, which when bundled with human actors and non-human actants from previous theories, generate a synergy leading to Castells’ network society, another node.  I recognize that I am being redundant in listing “network society” in two places, except in the main node I am using at as a label for a theory and in the second as a concept, or perhaps better, an assemblage.  This node, in turn, connects to nodes for work and identity.  Connected to the work node are also nodes for the micro and macro changes in work, namely, how the network society has changed first, the nature of work, capturing the types of positions emerging and the changing workplace, i.e. the flexibility, stability and managerial climate of the workplace, and second, the structure of the labor force in terms of the economic structure of a country.  To be fai r, I should probably indicate international and global interdependence here, too, but I already have a fairly complex diagram.  I also connected concepts from Castells back to CHAT, thinking in terms of workplace and organizational studies that would probably illuminate Castells, to ecology due to the big picture nature of Castells’ system, and to laminated chronotopes because of the space and time relations that Castells include.  I also included institutions, a node previously associated with CHAT, because sociologists such as Castells inevitably implicate institutions to one degree or another.

March 27 update

I added a node for neurobiology connected to a node for "neural network," to which I attached nodes for "cognition," "emotion," "memory," "motor skills," and "sensory perception." These I connected to "mind."  The idea behind this addition was to see the entire neural capabilities of human beings, i.e. the brain and nervous system as part of "mind," through which human beings interact with the world in any of the other ways implied by other theories.  Bateson's theory, therefore, is in a sense compatible.

March 14 update

Even though I was inspired by Megan's mind map to make mine better, I haven't yet been able to come up with a better strategy.  I'll keep thinking about it. In the meantime, I added Bateson with connections to "ecologies," "actor," "non-human actant," and "mind."  I have the connections to the other nodes pass beneath "mind."  I really should have them link through it, but that was an afterthought.

March 4 update

I had the impression that I had added Latour with the last update, but I later realized that wasn't the case.  At any rate,  I added a node for Latour along with connections to ecology, actor, non-human actants and relations.  Actors and actants are obvious choices, but I think that Latour's approach, by focusing on tracing connections, makes relationships more explicit than some theories, though relationships are implicit in all network approaches.  I also added "plasma" as a new node and "black box".

February 26 update

I  added hypertext as a node and connected it to concept and rhetor/actor.  Concept was associated with Foucault, but I'm repurposing it here because hyperlinked terms are usually key concepts operating within a text, and this is somewhat similar to concepts that organize discourse in a Foucauldian sense.  I also connected hypertext to Vatz because of Vatz's claim that the rhetor generates the exigence for discourse.  In hypertext, the assumption is that the rhetor (the user/reader) makes meaning by the links that are made.  This is analogous, in that meaning is being generated by the operations of selection and connection.

February 21 update

I added CHAT as a node and connected from CHAT to actors (=people, in terms of CHAT), and actants (i.e. objects).  I also added "laminated chronotope" as a new node connected to CHAT, but also to genre, speech act, and event, since I see these as connected to the concept.  I also added "ecology(ies)" because this appears two places in the CHAT list.  The mind map doesn't allow me to handle this in the way that I'd like.  If I could do so, I would color-code connections to group nodes and connections into subsets, or I would draw boundaries around varies nodes.  Ecology, to my mind, would be better treated in this way than as a separate node.

Earlier updates

Because I didn't initially realize that I needed to put my mind map in the blog and trace my additions as I went along, it is a little hard for me to reconstruct exactly what I did when.  However, I know I did the following at different points:

• I added Foucault to the mind map and put the discursive formations as a block of nodes connected to Foucault. 
• I added Spinuzzi and genre theorists to the mind map and made appropriate connections to these as well as back to aspects of the rhetorical situation.