Cyberspace is convenient for communities who lack an encompassing physical environment to articulate collectivity. Place is used in the construction of communities; it facilitates a collective identity by locating individuals in a shared environment and provides a context for mobilizing community action. While Rave.ca caters primarily to Montreal’s underground electronic music culture, it is also used to promote events and establish social networks in Quebec City, and to a lesser degree Ottawa and Toronto. The fact that Rave is fairly localized (compared to massive social network sites like MySpace and Facebook) makes place highly tangible for members and it is enacted regularly on personal profiles. Members have an “Events Attended” list on their profile; each event is displayed as a hyperlink which opens onto a description of the event in question with a list of attendees and their comments. Attendance lists navigate the online-offline dynamic of Rave.ca by localizing people (however ephemerally) in the same physical place (the event) and then transposing these places into cyberspace. In this way Rave.ca encompasses the diasporic and ephemeral face-to-face encounters and provides a coherent place for community.
Notably, events also seem to stimulate the most comment-posting on personal profiles. In my experience, members frequently leave comments on each other’s profiles just before and after social events, often just simple comments like “It was nice to see you!” Thus member comments transpose offline places online by referencing them on personal profiles. Photos from events which are uploaded onto personal profiles also transpose offline place online through the same referencing of physical places. Members are tagged in images with other Rave friends; these images are hyperlinked to the personal profiles of the individuals in the picture, and to the event’s page on Rave. Hyper linking is, therefore, significant to shared place.
Offline places also seem to stimulate the mobilization of social capital; members leave messages, and these messages recreate place online. Thus, Rave.ca mediates online and offline interactions through the construction of place.
I can’t argue that place is imperative to every community, but I can say that it seems central on Rave.ca for creating a collective identity and for acting communally.
Simply by opening a personal profile on Rave.ca individuals are asserting their presence in a shared virtual space. Every time a member logs in to their account on Rave, the date and time of that login is posted on the user’s profile. These times and dates also serve to locate people in place by identifying when the user was last “here” on Rave. Furthermore, users who are online at the same time are visibly so, thus people can participate in a shared virtual space. There is no instant messaging on Rave, but private messaging and profile comments can establish “real-time” on Rave when both users are online at the same time.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Using social capital
Face-to-face social encounters are difficult in electronic music parties. Usually there is very loud music, dancing, and an extremely festive atmosphere; frequently I am introduced to friends of friends, or meet complete strangers, on the dance floor. These introductions are for the most part incredibly brief. We exchange names and a few anecdotes and continue with the party. Rave.ca mediates these ephemeral encounters by allowing their articulation within an institutionalized place; the social network site, and more particularly, on personal profiles. Most of the comments left on my profile clearly refer to offline encounters, and most of them were left either directly before or after events that the commentator and myself were attending.
Here are three comments left on my profile:
1) “hey you! come to Passeport tonight! I am playing with Mana. my set is 2-3 =)”
(Passeport is a bar in Montreal; Mana is a dj; “playing” refers to djing, also called mixing or spinning, and “set” is the dj’s presentation, usually lasting 1-2 hours)
2) “hi! nice to meet you at CTRL FRK on Saturday with Mikael!”
(CTRL FRK is the name of an event)
3) “Hello Jess ! It's was so nice to see you friday, your energy is amazing :) See you at Psybass ! Peace”
(Psybass is the name of an event)
These comments: crystallize ephemeral social relations, create a sense of place and history, and mobilize cultural and social capital.
Comments on profiles allow the accumulation of what social network theorists are referring to as “bridging” social capital. A distinction has been drawn, for the purpose of measuring social capital, between bridging and bonding social relations. The difference between the two is not complete and the line drawn is sometimes more of a hindrance for understanding online interactions. Bridging social capital refers to casual social relations characterized by low levels of intimacy and moral obligation. Bonding social capital refers to more intimate relations like family and close friends, or more broadly, to people we feel morally obliged to and interact with on a more or less regular basis. Of course, the nature of social relations is probably better described as a spectrum than as mutually exclusive categories. The binary distinction seems to undermine the importance of bridging social capital; presumably bonding social relations are richer in social capital. I would argue that bridging and bonding are simply different, and both are vital to identity and community construction.
The ability to create a list of friends on a profile allows the articulation of complex social networks. Bonding relations create smaller and more coherent groups which are networked through bridging relations to other bonded groups. For example, a tightly knit group of friends create and promote “hardtek” electronic music events. They are linked through bridging social relations to another tightly knit group of friends who organize “psychedelic trance” events. Hardtek and psychedelic trance are hugely different styles of electronic music with significantly different cultural practices. However, as a result of bridging social capital they have succeeded in organizing events together and expanding their own cultural practices by creating pluralist electronic music festivals. Rave.ca has been an important institution for the articulation of these relations because they are made publicly accessible and tangible. By articulating bridging social relations in friend’s lists, and mobilizing them through profile comments, these relations become important community resources.
Monday, April 6, 2009
....
After careful thought, I believe Rave.ca is a social network and not a community. It was by playing with the ideas of cultural capital and social capital that I arrived at this conclusion.
I was contemplating the degree of institutionalization of social relations on Rave.ca and realized that there is virtually none.
Social networks are always hierarchically organized; some individuals have more social capital and cultural capital than others. In the context of Rave.ca, a "highly ranked" member could easily influence his/her social network to change their orientation in respect to underground electronic music. That is, mobilization is more individual than collective, activity on Rave.ca is organized by individuals not unchanging institutions.
Not that we don't imagine a community, regardless of how hollow these musings may be, they do orient our subjective intentions. But there is no external community, only endless networks of social relations, constantly transforming the cultural landscape of Rave.ca.
I was contemplating the degree of institutionalization of social relations on Rave.ca and realized that there is virtually none.
Social networks are always hierarchically organized; some individuals have more social capital and cultural capital than others. In the context of Rave.ca, a "highly ranked" member could easily influence his/her social network to change their orientation in respect to underground electronic music. That is, mobilization is more individual than collective, activity on Rave.ca is organized by individuals not unchanging institutions.
Not that we don't imagine a community, regardless of how hollow these musings may be, they do orient our subjective intentions. But there is no external community, only endless networks of social relations, constantly transforming the cultural landscape of Rave.ca.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Social Network or Community?
I've been reading "The Trouble With Community: Anthropological Reflections on Movement, Identity, and Collectivity" (Amit 2002) in an attempt to determine the structuring of social relations and social capital on Rave.ca.
Originally I dove straight into theories of social capital without exploring the field of relations that social capital is activated in. I was forced to back track. Without a conceptualization of the 'structuration' (to borrow Anthony Giddens term) of Rave.ca social relations, that is the play "between structure and agency (and agency and power)" (Giddens 1984: 169), social capital becomes a hollow concept; devoid of significance.
Rave.ca is a self-proclaimed "Nightlife Community", at the outset of my research I simply took this label at face value and began my work from there. It took several comments from others for me to finally clue-in to the completely absence of critical thinking on my part. Community? What does that even mean in our postmodern world of transnationalism, diasporas, and fragmentation? I was pretty familiar with the concept of imagined communities, during my studies I have read both Benedict Anderson and Arjun Appadurai's work on this concept and in retrospect, I had internalized these ideas without any critical questioning. Vered Amit's (2002) "The Trouble with Community" provided me with an intelligent and articulate problematization of imagined communities, as well as offering me directions for a more apt classification of Rave.ca social relations. Social networks, social groups, cultural categories, and communities are all compared and contrasted in the opening chapters of this volume. I spent many days walking around with all these concepts in my head, trying to find my experiences on Rave in them, trying to understand what is actual and what is imagined...
Imagining a community suggests that members of such a community "would not stress simply the possession of certain attributes (material, linguistic,or territorial) but the consciousness of these attributes and their naturalization as essential to group identity" (Amit 2002: 20). However, such an essentialized view of consciousness hides the multiplicity of experiences, identities, and social networks that anyone Rave.ca member may hold. In many ways the idea of cyber "communities" fit nicely with the postmodern notion of diasporas; which, by their very fragmented nature, entail heterogeneity and hybridization. So the question that follows is; how do heterogeneous and diasporic individuals possess a naturalized and essential consciousness?
The answer is, "they probably don't".
The "ideal" and the "actual" seem to be at odds in conceptualizations of imagined communities, and this rupture distances social analysis from uncovering the real impact of social relations in lived worlds. For Amit, community requires the "mobilization of social action" (2002: 18), and cannot, therefore, be found in imaginings alone. This idea of social action as a measure of community, is an important dimension in my exploration of social capital on Rave.ca precisely because I am examining profile activity. Social action on Rave.ca is guided by fairly "sociocentric" norms of cultural capital, yet social capital seems to be enacted in "ego-centric" ways.... I don't dare go further in this vein because my ideas are not fully developed.
I'm thinking that the concept of "cultural category" is a fairly accurate description of underground electronic music; this might explain the sociocentric nature of cultural capital.
Rave.ca is looking less like a community and more like a social network as I continue to break down activity and meaning.
Amit writes that "social network analysis tended to take the individual, rather than the social group, as its point of departure, and so with it came a focus on strategic action, on the cumulative construction of ephemeral webs of social relations which were not likely to outlast their chief protagonist" (2002: 15). This has been particularly troubling for me. I can't determine to what extent, if at all, social relations are institutionalized on Rave.ca. I feel like I'm having trouble seeing past my own preconceived ideas. That I'm wearing rose-colored glasses, naively believing in a world a live in... I feel stuck right here!
Works Cited:
Amit, Vered and Nigel Rapport. 2002. The Problem With Community: Anthropological Reflections on Movement, Identity and Collectivity. London; Sterling,VA : Pluto.
Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Originally I dove straight into theories of social capital without exploring the field of relations that social capital is activated in. I was forced to back track. Without a conceptualization of the 'structuration' (to borrow Anthony Giddens term) of Rave.ca social relations, that is the play "between structure and agency (and agency and power)" (Giddens 1984: 169), social capital becomes a hollow concept; devoid of significance.
Rave.ca is a self-proclaimed "Nightlife Community", at the outset of my research I simply took this label at face value and began my work from there. It took several comments from others for me to finally clue-in to the completely absence of critical thinking on my part. Community? What does that even mean in our postmodern world of transnationalism, diasporas, and fragmentation? I was pretty familiar with the concept of imagined communities, during my studies I have read both Benedict Anderson and Arjun Appadurai's work on this concept and in retrospect, I had internalized these ideas without any critical questioning. Vered Amit's (2002) "The Trouble with Community" provided me with an intelligent and articulate problematization of imagined communities, as well as offering me directions for a more apt classification of Rave.ca social relations. Social networks, social groups, cultural categories, and communities are all compared and contrasted in the opening chapters of this volume. I spent many days walking around with all these concepts in my head, trying to find my experiences on Rave in them, trying to understand what is actual and what is imagined...
Imagining a community suggests that members of such a community "would not stress simply the possession of certain attributes (material, linguistic,or territorial) but the consciousness of these attributes and their naturalization as essential to group identity" (Amit 2002: 20). However, such an essentialized view of consciousness hides the multiplicity of experiences, identities, and social networks that anyone Rave.ca member may hold. In many ways the idea of cyber "communities" fit nicely with the postmodern notion of diasporas; which, by their very fragmented nature, entail heterogeneity and hybridization. So the question that follows is; how do heterogeneous and diasporic individuals possess a naturalized and essential consciousness?
The answer is, "they probably don't".
The "ideal" and the "actual" seem to be at odds in conceptualizations of imagined communities, and this rupture distances social analysis from uncovering the real impact of social relations in lived worlds. For Amit, community requires the "mobilization of social action" (2002: 18), and cannot, therefore, be found in imaginings alone. This idea of social action as a measure of community, is an important dimension in my exploration of social capital on Rave.ca precisely because I am examining profile activity. Social action on Rave.ca is guided by fairly "sociocentric" norms of cultural capital, yet social capital seems to be enacted in "ego-centric" ways.... I don't dare go further in this vein because my ideas are not fully developed.
I'm thinking that the concept of "cultural category" is a fairly accurate description of underground electronic music; this might explain the sociocentric nature of cultural capital.
Rave.ca is looking less like a community and more like a social network as I continue to break down activity and meaning.
Amit writes that "social network analysis tended to take the individual, rather than the social group, as its point of departure, and so with it came a focus on strategic action, on the cumulative construction of ephemeral webs of social relations which were not likely to outlast their chief protagonist" (2002: 15). This has been particularly troubling for me. I can't determine to what extent, if at all, social relations are institutionalized on Rave.ca. I feel like I'm having trouble seeing past my own preconceived ideas. That I'm wearing rose-colored glasses, naively believing in a world a live in... I feel stuck right here!
Works Cited:
Amit, Vered and Nigel Rapport. 2002. The Problem With Community: Anthropological Reflections on Movement, Identity and Collectivity. London; Sterling,VA : Pluto.
Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
