the wherewithal

Important looking event being advertised over at Socializing Finance:

http://socfinance.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/conference-announcement-reembedding-finance/

Just got back from the excellent ATACD Cultures of Change conference in Barcelona.

The conference explored the possibilities opened up by thinking of the social world along topological lines. In that respect, most interesting for me were those approaches that tried to take on the challenge posed to thinking about social (and material) connectedness as posed by mathematical descriptions of multidimensional, recursive, mutually enfolding topological spaces. These approaches sat in contrast to work that focused more on attempting to the connections between entities that are thought of as more or less discrete – descriptions of which were often accounted for by reference to topological networks. This can be somewhat oversimplified – with the help of some of Wikipedia’s finest – as topological space A vs topological space B:

Topological space A         Topological space B

Translating concepts from the natural to the social sciences is, however, a notoriously difficult and potentially problematic task, as – for me – was exemplified in one session, in which a discussion broke out about whether or not thinking topology could serve as a useful metaphor for the analysis of social life. The debate can be very loosely summarised as follows:

The challenge: given that a topological way of thinking about the world rejects seeing entities as standing for other entities, isn’t using topology as a metaphor inherently un-topological?

The defence: while mathematics can afford the luxury of operating in a world of pure concepts, entering the social world requires an entry into the world of the metaphor. This is because language is inherently metaphorical and consequently, so is culture. In that light, while the concept of topology may be useful in shedding a different light on the things we study, it can only do so when used metaphorically.

Perhaps there is a route between these two. For now, I will leave the question open, but if anyone has some thoughts, post away.

In the meantime, you might want to have a look around the topological media lab. This is a project that really does try to take the challenge of topology seriously. It’s chaired by Sha Xin Wei from Concordia University, who I not only saw speak at the conference – but who also led a group of PhD student in an interactive workshop. He was, it has to be said, pretty great. If you prefer the written word, there is also a draft of an article he wrote for the journal Configurations available to download here.

If you have a working knowledge of either Spanish or Catalan, you would do well do check out this Network & Matters blog, which addresses many things relational. My sources tell me that there may be some English posts too in future, so keep an eye…