The fabrication of networked socialities

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the fabrication of networked socialities, i.e. to address the complex interweaving of technologies of information and communication and the manifold instantiations of sociality. Networked socialities constitute emerging forms of society, and the materializations of its electronic constitution. Networked socialities are digital formations being produced out of the intertwining of social logics outside and inside digital spaces and society (Latham & Sassen, 2005b). We will argue that technologies can be seen as destructive, reproductive as well as constitutive of forms of sociality, not relying on the essence, substance, or intrinsic logic of technology but on the situated fabrication of technology and society. In this sense, we will try to expand the analysis of the forms of sociality given by Latham and Sassen (2005a), by encompassing the dystopian effects of technologies, such as the destruction of sociality inherited by the sociology of industrial society, or the post-sociality forms of post-modern reflections on the re-shaping of knowledge societies. This chapter proceeds as follows: first, it will present the theoretical frame necessary to grasp the fabrication of socio-logies in our information age, drawing on some concepts elaborated by the social studies of science and technology, together with the studies of the global digital worlds. Then, it will highlight the analytical fruitfulness of this perspective by describing some digital formations, such as social network sites, virtual communities of practice, and electronic markets. Finally, it will discuss the effects and the implications of such fabrication as a re-configuration of social, the emerging post-social relationships as well as the increasing fragility of knowledge societies.