Social science is inexorably political. While STS scholars have demonstrated how culture and politics have permeated technoscientific endeavors such as missile guidance systems, failed public transportation systems, and the detection of gravity waves,1 there is little reason to suspect that the social sciences themselves are immune to the same sociopolitical forces that affect science and technology. Indeed, social scientists would be unique among human beings if their perspectives were not even subtly shaped by their cultural experiences and political commitments. In any case, the incorporation of cultural assumptions and value commitments into the minting of new social facts helps drive the naturalization of what are in actuality socially constructed realities.2 When caught up in this process of naturalization, social science no longer merely describes reality but contributes to its reconstruction—insofar as it leads some citizens to cease to agitate for change and to adapt to the status quo. In characterizing such assumptions and commitments with respect to networked approaches to sociality, I aim to denaturalize and, in turn, repoliticize networked individualism.
My argument is similar to sociologist Leonard Nevarez’s analysis of how dominant understandings of “quality of life” influence debates about the greater good in contemporary societies. Nevarez described the popular and academic discourses centered on the concept of “quality of life” as reflecting and reinforcing individualistic conceptions of well-being, hiding social and political divisions and inequities, and limiting the range of thinkable actions to “accommodating and finding satisfaction from the choices and constraints presented by the world before us.”3 As a result, thinking about the greater good becomes limited by exclusively individualistic and consumerist values; collective, socially just, and democratic conceptions of the good are, in turn, buried. Hence, I ask: What are the limitations of the network-based theory of community with respect to the politics of networked individualism as a social phenomenon? In what ways do assumptions within network scholarship seem to foreclose debate about alternative technological futures? What is the political character of these assumptions? My exploration of these questions will show that discourse around networked individualism often risks limiting the range of thinkable actions regarding technology and community. Simply put, scholarship on networked individualism has politics.
There is nothing wrong with using network metaphors and methodologies to understand social life per se. Indeed, even Putnam’s work on social capital makes use of the concept of social networks.4 My focus is mainly on occasions when discourse regarding networked individualism does political work: naturalizing the fragmentation of community, downplaying the production of winners and losers, or depicting the individualization of sociality as an inevitable feature of modernity. This chapter is not meant to be a diatribe against network sociology writ large but a provocation: a challenge to reexamine the politics of networked individualism.
Politics can be defined as the answer to the question “Who gets what, when, and how?”5 If large-scale technological changes influence “Who gets what kind of community, when, and how?” then such changes amount to a kind of politics regarding social life. They are tantamount to political regulations achieved via technical means. Directing one’s attention to the “who,” “what,” and “how” of the social phenomenon of networked individualism helps clarify its political dimensions, which tend to be underemphasized in many networked individualist theories of community.
Under networked individualism one belongs to multiple fragmented communities, which themselves owe their existence only to the temporary coalescing of otherwise unrelated social ties. Community in a networked world is simply the extent of the personal ties that individuals have managed to amass for themselves. Networked individuals attempt to obtain a sense of social belonging through their Facebook connections and the contact list of friends that they text to meet up for coffee. Networked sociality occurs across space rather than in places. Socializing entails driving or communicating across considerable distances rather than simply showing up at a local pub or walking in one’s neighborhood.
For many people, however, “networked community” may be as much a problem as a solution with respect to contemporary belonging (see box 1.1). People differ regarding the extent to which they feel it satisfies their needs for social connection. Why is this the case? One possible reason is that, under networked individualism, belonging is more of an individual responsibility than a public good. Political scientist Robert Lane noted that “What was once given by neighborhood and work now must be achieved … [Contemporary market society] makes friendship hard work.”6 While some people have little trouble creating and sustaining a social network, the constant organizational labor of parties, dinner dates, and meetups requires a level of social aptitude and energy that others can find discouraging. In networked societies, people’s locales rarely provide repeated, unplanned, and mostly pleasant interactions with proximate others, which, in turn, form the social soil from which friendships and other communal relationships can blossom.
In the shift from being a public good to a private responsibility, marketlike language has increasingly come to characterize discourse concerning social belonging. Network theorists have described networked communities as “portfolios” of social support that are assembled by “entrepreneurial operators.”7 Likewise, community informatics scholar Michael Arnold has argued, regarding local Internets, that “a Community Network should not be theorised as a public good infrastructure supporting … community. In an important sense a Community Network is a resource for building private assets”8 (emphasis added).
This shift in discourse, of course, partly reflects on-the-ground changes: tech firms such as Facebook and Apple, providers of social gathering spaces (e.g., Starbucks), and gated community builders play an increasing, and increasingly profitable, role in helping entrepreneurs of social connection earn a suitable rate of return on their social portfolios. Belonging depends evermore on citizens’ ability to afford special gadgets to access social networks or the financial means to live in certain neighborhoods.
The shift from social connection being a public good to a private responsibility affects the character and benefits of belonging. One classic study found that the unconditional forms of mutual support characteristic of thick communities help people weather the stresses of everyday life, contributing to better health. As one small Pennsylvania town became less communal and more individualistic, rates of heart attack and old-age dementia quickly rose in tandem.9 Similarly, as developmental psychologist Susan Pinker has outlined, studies of the spry health and longevity of residents in centenarian-laden places like Sardinia attribute their high levels of well-being to the strength of local webs of supportive, long-lasting face-to-face ties more than to any other factor.10 Even though networked individualism offers more choice regarding with whom one socializes when compared to thick community, it may come with risks to citizens’ physical well-being.
The privatization of social connection, furthermore, directly discriminates against certain populations. Those lacking the financial, social and cognitive resources to network, such as the mentally ill, homeless people, and those challenged in their social skills and charisma, are put at a disadvantage. Such groups were disadvantaged, of course, prior to the dominance of networked individualism, but the privatization of community only increases the social disparity between them and others. This is because the moral logic of networked individualism makes having some kind of “good” to offer—whether it be social support, charisma, or something else—a prerequisite for social connection. On the other hand, thick communities, at their best, unconditionally integrate those who might be socially awkward, eccentric, or cognitively atypical (see box 2.1). Moreover, because networked individualism is premised on individual mobility, it suits well-off, itinerant professionals better than those who are not so physically mobile, namely children, disabled persons, and the elderly.11 The latter are put at a disadvantage in contemporary urban spaces defined by transportation networks premised on individual ownership of a private automobile. Simply put, those unable to drive to visit friends and loved ones must see them less often.
Donald Triplett was the first person in the United States diagnosed with autism. In his early years he was significantly challenged in terms of his functioning, unable to feed himself and eventually unwilling to eat, seemingly oblivious to environmental dangers, prone to violent tantrums at the slightest deviation from his routine, and mostly nonverbal. After institutionalization proved unhelpful, if not damaging, Donald’s mother took a far different tack: ensuring that he was included in the community, engaged in meaningful activities, and educated. While growing up in Forest, Mississippi, working on a family friend’s farm, and attending public school, Donald’s oddities were accepted and his strengths recognized. Classmates and others saw it as their duty to help Donald integrate and improve his abilities, such as by trying to help him to learn to swim or use slang. Someone witnessing Donald as an adult would have scarcely been able to imagine his rough early years: he graduated from college, traveled solo around the world, learned to drive and play golf, and—most importantly—became part of the social life of Forest. Indeed, when researching Donald Triplett for their history of autism, John Donvan and Caren Zucker experienced one manifestation of the community’s caring for him: being warned on several occasions, “If what you’re doing hurts Don, I know where to find you.”15
Even if some traditional communities might have been just as likely to excommunicate atypical members and although contemporary social networks no doubt help people with autism connect more easily with others like them, the case of Donald Triplett nonetheless illustrates something special about the practices of integration that are possible within thick communities. As Donvan and Zucker note, “being accepted, even embraced, by the community … supported a fulfilled life [for Donald], with a network of people watching out for him.”16 That others watched out for Donald did not seem to be because of his ability to “entrepreneurially operate” networks of social ties or because he had really all that much to offer in the networked marketplace of social exchanges; indeed, his ability to hold a conversation has remained limited his entire life. Rather, citizens of Forest appear to have cared for Donald because he was part of the community and that is what members of their community do for one another.
For others the problem with networked individualism is that it is not experienced as a satisfactory form of community. For example, Alex Marshall, a person helping to build New York City’s first cohousing project, believes “that the generally fragmented lives so many of us lead break up marriages, disturb childhoods, isolate people when they most need help, and make life not as much fun. We live, to speak frankly, in one of the loneliest societies on Earth.”12 Similarly, some stay-at-home mothers blog about the loneliness of contemporary suburban motherhood, despite the opportunities for social connection afforded by digital devices. Indeed, one described going to Target just to be around other people but ultimately lacking the courage to ask a fellow parent-shopper: “Are you lonely too? … Can we be friends? Am I freaking you out? I don’t care. HOLD ME.”13 Loneliness among new stay-at-home mothers is not solely a byproduct of suburbia or the Internet age, of course; nevertheless, their plight illustrates how some remain poorly served by networked social life. Such sentiments—as well as the existence of social movements striving to build more communal urban spaces and establish food cooperatives and farmers’ markets—demonstrate that not everyone is content with the kinds of togetherness offered by suburbs, supermarkets, and social networks.
Despite the hype about virtual community, some people do not find computers or smart phones to be suitable gateways to communal belonging. Recent research has uncovered the existence of “cyberasocials,” people unable to feel a sense of social connection through digital devices.14 For such people, a Facebook message or a friendly text simply does not register. Their need for social connection depends on physical copresence. As a result, the increased digital mediation of social connection amounts to a form of discrimination: it specifically diminishes cyberasocials’ opportunity to experience belonging.
Networked individualism is political—a social change entailing winners and losers. Yet this political side of networked individualism is rarely dealt with in a substantive way. There seems to be a reluctance to recognize the networked individualization of community as a sociopolitical process. Too little attention gets paid to the fact that the how inexorably shapes the answer to who gets what. The range of possible ends is influenced by the available means, legislating outcomes just as well as laws do. The lack of curb cuts or entrance ramps, for example, limits access by the disabled. Expensive automated machinery can facilitate the centralization of an industry just as well as lax antitrust regulations.17 Likewise, technologies help determine which citizens enjoy what kind of social life. Although walking to a neighborhood pub or café remains ostensibly legal in America, it is technically prohibited: the spatial organization of most suburban neighborhoods and prevailing zoning codes prevent such places from existing in the first place.18
Technologies are not political solely in terms of prohibiting or discouraging certain actions: They collectively act as “forms of life” as well. Artifacts, techniques, and systems “generate patterns of activities and expectations that soon become ‘second nature.’”19 As the activities they support become taken-for-granted habits, the very conditions of everyday life often change dramatically. Consider how asking for directions today as often as not results in a quizzical look and the question “Don’t you own a GPS?” Similarly, a television is not simply an isolated entertainment device, for we live in a world where television cannot really be turned off. The ubiquity of TV has led it to seep into nearly every corner of day-to-day life, from surrogate babysitting to a focus for water cooler conversation. Even those who do not watch TV must contend with a culture shaped by television and its ancillary practices.
In this vein sociologist Ray Oldenburg criticized networked theories of community as being merely the best fit for “the disastrous spatial organization of the typical American city.”20 That is, a networked understanding of social life only begins to make sense in a world where suburbia has become as enmeshed in culture and in the minds of citizens as it has in the physical landscape.
Social network theorists, to be fair, do recognize that the Internet has affordances for the practice of networked individualism.21 The design features of much of today’s infrastructure correspond well with the practice of maintaining fragmented social ties. Not enough attention is given, however, to how these affordances (and corresponding constraints on thick community) have political consequences. The end result of mass suburbanization is not simply that citizens more often pick up the telephone, get in their car, or go online to connect with loved ones but that neighboring, frequenting the local café or pub, and pedestrianism are, practically speaking, rendered less viable. Technological changes lead to certain ways of life becoming harder to realize. Again, altering the how influences who gets what.
This insufficient attention to technological politics can be partly traced to a misunderstanding—visible in some network scholarship—of the dynamics of large-scale sociotechnical change. For instance, Rainie and Wellman assert:
The impact of technology unfolds in three stages. The first stage is substitution as new technology performs older technology’s tasks more efficiently. The second stage is enlargement as new technology is used to increase the volume and complexity of tasks that old technology used to perform. The final state is reconfiguration as new technology fundamentally changes the nature of the things it was created to address.22
The idea that technology unfolds according to a simple logic of increasing efficiency and complexity, however, has been undermined by decades of technology studies research. It is simply too easy to refute. The introduction of pneumatic molding machines into one nineteenth-century reaper factory actually produced an inferior product at higher costs.23 The machine’s purpose, in contrast to commonly held myths about automation, had less to do with increasing efficiency than with eliminating the skilled workers who had organized the local union. Similarly, while cars can be the most time-effective means of travel in low-density areas, they are grossly inefficient with respect to energy and resource usage. The dominance of the automobile in North America has as much to do with sociopolitical factors as with the technology’s perceived advantages. Companies like General Motors, Firestone, and Standard Oil worked together to buy out electric trolley companies and replace streetcars with buses. The unattractiveness of buses to transit users precipitated declines in ridership, and lower profit margins led to further service reductions. The situation was exacerbated by municipal requirements that trolley services extend their lines into low-density suburbs without financial assistance, as well as by the Great Depression, which saddled transit companies with debt.24 Finally, highway building and suburbanization have been heavily subsidized by governments. If end-consumers had been required to pay more of the costs, the automobile would have been much less appealing.
Much of the bigger picture is lost when technological changes are explained solely in terms of efficiency and similar concepts; the embedded political interests and values are swept to the side. Efficiency may be influential for a narrow range of technical issues, such as when a novel engine design improves vehicle mileage, but most cases are far too complex for the concept to be very helpful. At worst, it is a post-hoc rationalization or makes sense only once the values built into the technology become taken for granted, as in the widespread assumption that moving two tons of steel at high speeds is the best way to transport a single individual to work in the morning.
Ignoring the politics of sociotechnical change implicitly naturalizes it. Rainie and Wellman, for instance, advised, “Technology continues to spread through populations, so the emerging need is for people to learn how to cultivate their networks—and to get out from the cocoon of their bounded groups.”25 “Technology,” however, is not a singular thing that spreads as if by its own accord but is a linguistic category used to describe the stuff that humans build. It is far better to talk about technologies, which are developed, advocated, and embraced by some people for various reasons, including gaining an advantage over others. Sociologist Eric Klinenberg likewise argued that it is better simply to accept networked individualistic solo dwelling as “a fundamental feature of modern societies” and dismissed doing otherwise as “indulging the social reformer’s fantasy.”26 Such depictions of technological evolution risk repeating the mistakes of mid-twentieth-century “modernization theory” by giving the impression that there is some universal social development pattern inherent to becoming “modern.” Although such claims may simply reflect a degree of pessimism regarding the feasibility of realizing alternative modernities, they can imply that networked individualism is the natural or unavoidable state of technological civilization.
This process of naturalization limits the possibilities for imagining or striving toward alternatives. If democracy is the ability for citizens to collectively govern the structures that shape their lives, and if technologies are a subset of such structures, then depoliticized technological discourse is fundamentally antidemocratic.27 It frames innovation as outside the purview of collective debate and control, as if sociotechnical change were governed by some logic internal to technology, not by people. Such discourse is hardly new. Consider the motto of the 1933 World’s Fair: “Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms.”
Depoliticized technological discourse, moreover, can become a vicious circle. Technological development often appears autonomous because citizens have collectively failed to exert adequate control over it—in part because more sophisticated mechanisms of governance have yet to be implemented. When technological drift is interpreted as autonomous, the steering of technological development is more rarely attempted. Hence, societies fall victim to technological somnambulism, largely sleepwalking through the process of large-scale sociotechnical change.28 Humanity’s half-blind fumbling from one sociotechnical change to another begins to be confused with technological evolution. It starts to be unimaginable to subject new gadgets or technological systems to scrutiny before they become widely entrenched. The interstate highway system, for example, was mandated by the U.S. government in 1956, while much of the public debate concerning its potential consequences for community life came later. A transportation plan not amounting to a massive governmental subsidization of suburbia could have unfolded if enough people had been empowered to raise critical questions much earlier. To be fair, given most people’s lack of experience with governing technological development, the mistaken belief that technological development progresses according to an autonomous logic is in some respects entirely understandable, though politically disabling.
At the same time, even advocates of thick community could better deconstruct the politics of entrenched technologies. For instance, Robert Putnam ended Bowling Alone with a call for the development of communal alternatives to television and the building of neighborhoods more compatible with shorter commutes and with public sociability.29 Given the scale at which television and other screens are embedded in everyday life as well as the sheer momentum of suburban building forms, it would not be surprising if many of his readers remained pessimistic. Without careful attention to the sociopolitical factors sustaining the status quo—for example, the momentum of suburbia as resulting from massive levels of subsidization, the routinization of major repairs and restorations, and numerous other entrenched practices and beliefs—the present can easily appear “natural” or impossible to change. Many too quickly forget that the hollowing out of most major North American downtowns during the expansion of suburbia in the second half of the twentieth century was a colossal political undertaking, costing billions or even trillions of dollars in wasted urban infrastructure as resources were redirected to the suburbs. It took the decisions and failures to act by innumerable business executives, urban planners, local politicians, and others to nearly decimate America’s urban centers.
Innovation could be guided to preserve or to enhance a variety of forms of community life. Even those who see a lot of good in contemporary networked individualism might want to make room for more debate than is now occurring. Otherwise, they risk giving tacit approval to reverse adaptation: the process in which human ends are molded to match the available technical means rather than the other way around, even if the original ends are distorted or replaced with something very different.30 Reverse adaptation has too often been the standard answer to concerns about communal decline. Consider Herbert Gans’s suggestion, more than a generation ago, that widespread feelings of social isolation in the emerging suburbs might be best dealt with not by pursuing design changes to encourage thicker forms of local social connection but by lowering the cost of telephone calls.31 Even eminent scholars get trapped in the status quo.
Reverse adaptation to networked individualism looks unequivocally desirable only after brushing aside all the dimensions of community life apart from the existence of social networks, including strong practices of civic engagement and reciprocity; material interdependence and shared risk; and a felt psychological attachment to places, institutions, and groups. Community has traditionally meant a more coherent and longer lasting social entity rather than merely the plural of personal friendship. Because the theory of networked community leaves these aspects of belonging out, it too easily motivates reverse adaptation to the phenomenon of networked individualism. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg went so far as to argue that network theory “perverts the concept” of community and mainly sustains it as a myth in the face of increasing atomization.32
Indeed, networked individualism as both a theory and a phenomenon seems built on a narrow understanding of social relationships. Internet studies scholar Michele Willson, for instance, has critiqued social network theorists for starting with the presumption that humans are atomistic consumers of social connection.33 Doing so privileges individualistic and instrumental understandings of social relationships, something that is clearly visible in sociologist Eric Klinenberg’s study of the networked individualism of people choosing to live alone. His interviewees championed a mode of sociality by which social ties are kept at arm’s length. They lived by themselves and eschewed strongly binding social obligations to avoid the inevitable conflicts, disagreements, and compromises that come with living with others. The best thing about living alone is “knowing that I don’t have to consider anyone else,” reported one woman in the study.34 A young man preferred to mostly keep to himself and cultivate self-reliance in order to “get used to it when still young,” because all relationships are destined to end in tragedy or separation.35
In previous studies of community, the attitudes espoused by Klinenberg’s interviewees would have evoked concern. Sociologists such as Robert Bellah would have described them as steeped in a “language of separation” and threatening the stability of committed relationships and civic life.36 What sort of social life can exist if citizens come to view committed bonds as only burdensome and anxiety provoking? Moreover, such approaches to social life cannot be taken at face value, as evidence of the need for network individualism, because a preference for minimizing social bonds is not simply a matter of individual choice but a product of the context in which one is born. Growing up without thick community shapes people’s preferences for solo dwelling, among other practices. While Klinenberg’s interviewees no doubt have the right to “choose” the type of social life they want, there exists a real risk of valorizing such choices to the extent that networked individualism becomes presented as a model by which everyone should live.
Network advocates’ scholarly arguments would be strengthened by serious engagement with such concerns. Unfortunately, Klinenberg, among others, have dismissed the worry that networked individualism contributes to the decline of civil society on the grounds that “its vague generalities distract us,” arguing that we should focus instead on providing better support to the “truly isolated” and on recognizing the positive features of solo dwelling.37 It is perfectly natural, even desirable, for scholars to have different priorities regarding research. It is difficult to understand, however, why any social scientist would outright reject inquiry into actual and potential qualitative changes in community. One possibility is that value commitments may be embedded in the scholarship, perhaps so deeply that even the authors lack an awareness of it.
The portrayal of the networked present as continuous with the past also gives tacit acceptance to reverse adaptation. Recall Keith Hampton’s equation of Facebook status updates with the community work previously done on front porches.38 Such discourse seems like a continuity argument: an exaggeration of the resemblance between an emerging practice and past activities, which results in novel risks or consequences being minimized or ignored. As technology ethicists have argued, a continuity argument “is often an immunization strategy, with which people want to shield themselves from criticism and to prevent an extensive debate on the pros and cons of technological innovations.”39 Barry Wellman, for instance, has used the observation that networked individualism predates the Internet in order to dismiss worries about accelerating networked individualization.40 Indeed, he has insisted that those concerned about communal decline suffer from “misplaced nostalgia,” asserting that “researchers have found thriving communities wherever they have looked.”41 On the one hand, Wellman may be simply trying to counter the pessimism or doom saying that often infects cultural commentary regarding technological change. On the other hand, in overstating his case, he ends up implying that the continuity of friendship networks is all that should matter with respect to social life. Such a position undermines the possibilities for debate about potential declines to other dimensions of community.
While the above arguments might seem pragmatic, given the apparent momentum of network technologies, they implicitly serve the interest of some while treating those not benefitting as if they did not exist. To advise citizens to simply forgo their bounded groups to better cultivate their social networks42 is to forget that some may be harmed by the decline of bounded groups. Similarly, recall Zeynep Tufekci’s research uncovering “cyberasocials,” people whose need for a sense of social connection cannot be provided through digital devices. She nevertheless concluded, “We would be better off debating how we can use new communications technologies to combat the economic, political, and cultural forces that threaten to tear us apart” rather than inquire into Internet technologies’ role in social isolation.43 Taking new communications technologies in their present form as a given seems practical, insofar as the barriers to substantially redesigning them remain large. Such a move, however, ends up sidestepping the question of what to do about cyberasocials. Any expansion in the use of digital technologies likely serves them poorly.
There are still other possible explanations for the tendency of scholarly discourse around networked individualism to slide toward reverse adaptation. Social scientists’ interpretations of sociotechnical change are likely influenced by their life experiences as itinerant professionals. Given that the idea that people’s views and perceptions are shaped by their social roles is foundational to the social sciences, it would be odd if they were not so influenced. As sociologist Stephen Brint has noted, “social scientists … live in a world in which a great variety of social ties are juggled and the pursuit of valuable connections looms large both at work and in informal social settings. This may encourage a view of social relations as intense but fleeting and as significant primarily for the instrumental benefits that may eventually accrue from them.”44 Because social scientists’ life experiences tend not to include being a stay-at-home mother or working in jobs that do not come with career-based networked communities, they are especially at risk of failing to give due diligence to other people’s perceptions of communal decline.
A favorable view of networked individualism, moreover, reflects the prevailing moral bias within Western and Westernizing technological societies: liberalism. By this I do not mean the political liberalism associated with the Democratic Party in the United States or liberal parties across the world but philosophical liberalism, a particular moral way of viewing the world with roots in seventeenth-century political thinkers such as John Locke. Philosophical liberalism presumes that the good life is based in the protection and valorization of individual choice.45 For right-wing liberals, such choices are ideally provided by the “free” market; for left-wing liberals, they are attained through the unrestricted expression of personal identity.
As philosophical communitarians point out, turning choice into a sacred right, an end unto itself, can lead to undesirable consequences. Political philosopher Michael Sandel argued that liberal philosophy would demand that a person be able to choose his or her social bonds autonomously, without coercion. Doing so, however, would require perpetually keeping one’s relationships at arms’ length, because sustaining relational commitments and strong emotional bonds would impinge on the ability to choose rationally. In Sandel’s words, such a person would strive to remain an “unencumbered self,” constantly wavering between detachment and entanglement, unwilling or unable to let ties with others become a strongly constitutive part of his or her own being. Sandel argued that such a person, in lacking the capacity for strong commitments, would be without moral depth.46
In any case, much of the discourse concerning networked individualism appears to assume a philosophically liberal outlook. Indeed, Rainie and Wellman seemed to celebrate the choices offered by networks: “People have more freedom to tailor their interactions. They have increased opportunities about where—and with whom—to connect.” Wellman, moreover, first called networked social activity “community liberated,” a value-laden label that takes for granted philosophical liberalism’s equation of liberty with individual choice and mobility. Klinenberg likewise has described solo dwellers as having grown to “appreciate the virtues of living lightly, without obligations.”47 The avoidance or weakening of binding social obligations, however, can only appear to be an unequivocal freedom-enhancing virtue if one has already embraced a narrowly liberal view of the good life.
The networked individualization of community, contrary to such views, has introduced new constraints and compulsions—not just freedoms. As scholars Williamson, Imbroscio, and Alperovitz noted in regard to the thinning of economic community in the face of neoliberal globalization, “If the hometown where you grew up dies out or decays economically and you are compelled to leave, a very significant life option has been extinguished.”48 In such a situation, one’s freedoms are reduced, despite the existence of new networks, like Fixxer, Lyft, and AirBnB, that could be used to eke out an individual living. A strictly liberal politico-ethical framework thus renders less visible the broader constraints on modes of life enacted via networked individualization by privileging the expansion of individual choice. Much in the same way that Henry Ford quipped that consumers could have his Model T in any color as long as it was black, networked community offers citizens any kind of freedom they could desire as long as it is a form of liberal individualism.
Finally, is there perhaps a sense in which reverse adaptation represents—ironically—a conservative approach to technology and community? Networks are hardly radical any longer, having become the status quo form of social organization in more affluent nations over the last decades, if not century. Hence, to argue that people should only look to better adapt themselves to networked sociality is to advocate for the conservation of a way of life that happens to be increasingly imposed on everyone, despite the objections of those who find it less desirable or fulfilling. More often realizing thick forms of togetherness, on the other hand, would require progressive changes to regulations, infrastructures, and institutions regarding technology that would allow for a greater degree of democratic control, rather than a passive resignation to be governed by the policies and technologies—the sociotechnical tradition—one happens to have inherited.
In contrast to far too many books on the question of technology and community, I do not pretend that what follows is a nonpartisan project. My intention is to provide social analysis that can be useful to people who currently wish for a more communitarian technological civilization as well as to those who might seek change if they were pushed to consider the issue critically. It should be noted, however, that thoughtful partisanship does not imply carelessness with data. Rather, as the eminent political scientist Charles Lindblom argued, it means that one merely acknowledges and approaches social analyses as inevitably in service to some values, groups, and interests rather than others.49 Otherwise rigorous social scientific scholarship should not falsely give the impression that it serves the interests of everyone equally. Unlike many other commentators on contemporary life, I do not use the word “we” carelessly—if at all.
The next chapter provides the foundation for an alternative way of looking at community, one that recognizes it as a multifaceted and diverse set of phenomena. This reconceptualization of belonging offers a starting point for better examining the communitarian limits of contemporary technologies. That is, I aim to break away from stale arguments that appear to presume that humanity is faced with a dichotomous choice between some romantic ideal of bucolic rural togetherness and mass urban society, or even some melding of the two. Rather than reject practices such as network individualism or virtual community as inauthentic, I depict them as relatively thin instantiations of community among a diversity of possibilities. Moreover, there are practical advantages gained by viewing different manifestations of togetherness as lying on a spectrum with respect to several different dimensions of communality. Community advocates are better off if they can move beyond a general sense of malaise to zero in on the dimensions of communality that they find to be too “thin” or missing in their lives. Any effort to enhance community life is likely to flounder without a clear sense of exactly what one is hoping to strengthen or create.