show that whereas social network sites (SNSs) are often viewed as concrete manifestations of the social networks studied for decades by social network analysis (SNA), SNS networks actually have a very different ontological status. Social networks turned from a theoretical construct, a model used by sociologists and anthropologists to represent and understand social relations, into a material infrastructure and performative data objects, representations of social ties that are used by algorithms to regulate and reorganize social life. By doing so they offer sociology a new ontology and an alternative object of research, the connective. Like the collective, the connective offers a way in which individuals, their external actions and their internal mental states are intertwined and linked into something bigger which is irreducible to its parts. Like collectivity, it relies on a certain material infrastructure. The chapter reviews the literature on two connective phenomena, connective action and connective memory (and briefly discusses other connective phenomena), while building on these cases to theorize the connective (the computational aggregation of audiences, individual actions and attention, through algorithms that rely on objectified representations of social networks) and its social ontology.
Chapter 4 discusses social capital in the digital era. Social capital is a key concept in both Bourdieusian theory and SNA that helps us understand power and inequality. My main argument is that digitalization in general and SNSs in particular transform social capital dramatically in ways that require significant theoretical revisions – transforming its modes of accumulation, operation, maintenance, appropriation and control, and its (in)dependence of symbolic power, as well as its relative importance vis-à-vis other forms of capital. After briefly presenting the theoretical role of ‘social capital’ in different traditions, I discuss in detail how the materialization of social networks has transformed social capital and the theoretical implications of this transformation. I then develop the concept of generalized social capital to refer to this new digital form of social capital, and discuss its growing importance across social spheres and its emerging status as a new form of meta-capital. I show how multiple fields are reorganized around the accumulation of generalized social capital and competition over it, and how its meta-capital status leads to the concentration of social power in the hands of digital platform operators who turn into social capital banks or mediators.
Chapter 5 goes deeper into the sociology of power. After briefly discussing the increased governability of social life in the digital era (as ever-larger chunks of social interaction become digitally mediated and leave digital footprints as they transform into data objects), I focus on algorithmic power in order to make two main arguments. First, I suggest that as algorithms play an increasingly central role in the exercise of organizational power, the sociological theory of power must shift its focus away from the problem of free will that preoccupied it for much of the twentieth century. It should also take the material dimension of power more seriously, since unlike other forms of social power, the effective exercise of algorithmic power is not dependent on human consciousness. The chapter reviews and critically discusses several theorizations of this shift in the relations between power and consciousness. Second, I show that algorithmic rules challenge the distinction between potentiality and actuality. By doing so they shed new light on the old central theoretical debate on whether power is potential or actual, that is, whether power exists before it is exercised. I suggest that by blurring the potential/actual distinction, algorithmic power makes it much more difficult to claim that power does not exist as a potentiality between the moments of its actualization. In order to make these arguments, the chapter discusses in detail the unique characteristics of algorithmic power and its generative rules, while comparing them to earlier forms of rules in law and bureaucracy. I discuss the shifting relations between power and abstract rules, consciousness, legitimation and categorization; and the rise of ‘generative rulers’ who wield algorithmic power.
Chapter 6 explores how digitalization compels us to rethink work, labour and their relations. Work is not a universal category but a historical social construction. The notions of work and labour were devised for different sociological tasks, but could be used as synonyms in the twentieth century due to unique historical circumstances which have recently changed. I explore how digitalization processes helped transform (in different ways) both waged labour and unwaged labour (that is, unremunerated production of economic value), and review the debates on whether the use of social media and smart devices should be classified as labour. I present the ‘Google Glass diagram’ behind surveillance capitalism and show how this new mode of accumulation relies on the interaction-object duality, which has rendered social action and interaction more productive than ever. Can a productive activity undertaken without consciousness of its productivity, and which lacks purpose, exertion and instrumentality, still qualify as labour? Can the Marxist labour concept retain its critical power even when departing from work in its lay common sense? To answer these questions, I develop the notion of ‘workless labour’, as the digital economy continuously widens the gap between these once-synonymous terms, and precludes us from continuing to view labour as a subcategory or a special case of work.
Finally, the conclusion (chapter 7) discusses the contributions of the different chapters together, pointing to the commonalities they share and the main features that should characterize sociological theory for digital society in the future.
Notes
1 1 E.g. for the application of Bourdieusian theory in digital sociology see: Ignatow and Robinson (2017), Schwarz (2010).
2 2 Schroeder (2018) tried to offer such a catch-all theory of mediatization. Couldry and Hepp (2017), building on both phenomenological and figurational sociology and debates on mediatization in communication and media studies, offer a very different and more refined account of deep mediatization and its social and theoretical implications.
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