Regions, Networks and Fluids: Anaemia and Social Topology

Abstract

This is a paper about the topological presuppositions that frame the performance of social similarity and difference. It argues that 'the social' does not exist as a single spatial type, but rather performs itself in a recursive and topologically heterogeneous manner. Using material drawn from a study of the way in which tropical doctors handle anaemia, it explores three different social topologies. First, there are 'regions' in which objects are clustered together, and boundaries are drawn round each cluster. Second, there are 'networks' in which distance is a function of relations between elements, and difference a matter of relational variety. These two forms of spatiality are often mobilized in social theory. However, we argue that there are other kinds of social space, and here consider the possible character of a third, that of 'fluid spatiality'. In this, places are neither delineated by boundaries, nor linked through stable relations: instead, entities may be similar and dissimilar at different locations within fuid space. In addition, they may transform themselves without creating difference.

When Soft Spaces Harden: The EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region

“…Still, as John Law has repeatedly cautioned (Law, 1992(Law, , 2001), we must take care not to confuse and conflate the degree of formalization or fixation of an entity with degrees of durability or stability. For instance Mol & Law (1994) have argued that there is sometimes a certain specific resilience in more fluid forms and topologies. In their seminal 1994 paper, Mol & Law discuss fluid spaces as phenomena that are continuously altering -as amorphous, but at the same time peculiarly robust in their resilient fluidity (Mol & Law, 1994:662).…”

“…Still, as previously related in the theoretical section of the paper, we must take caution not to conflate or confuse such institutional fixity or hardness with durability. For as conceptualizations of the BSR now appear to be becoming more increasingly stabilized and singluarized through the EUSBSR and the Commission-centred governance network being put in place to implement the strategy, we also -following Mol & Law (1994) -see the emergence of 'strongpoints in need of defence in order to preserve continuity' (DG Regio/European Commission), a rising need for 'police action to safeguard the stability of elements and their linkages' (stakeholders enrolled in the strategy) and the establishment of 'network structures to be protected' (the emerging EUSBSR governance arrangements). Thus, the institutional stabilization of the BSR that is occurring through the EUSBSR process at the same time also appears to produce new types of vulnerabilities and venues for challenge.…”

Sustainable development (1987-2005): an oxymoron comes of age

“…Today 'sustainable development' needs to be linked to new material realities, the product of our science and technology, and associated shifts in consciousness. We have entered a world in which 'sustainability' is understood in terms of new material 'realities', as well as epistemological positions (Mol;Law, 1994;Touraine, 2003, Urry, 2003. The challenge for critical thinking, then, is to identify the ways in which material changes -in the physical environment, information technologies and the human body -require us to revisit the idea of sustainable development.…”

Unreliable eating: Patterns of food adulteration in urban India

“…It allows the outside world into what it wraps around. In this case plastic can be poison, with properties more liquid than solid (see Mol and Law, 1994). These features suggest that reliability can reveal a technopolitics of difference as plastic forms and deforms (Hecht, 2009).…”