Social theories of environmental reform - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 69

2003 ) sets himself the task of elaborating and refining the conceptual
apparatus as introduced by Castells. The two authors develop their
analyses of time and space along very much the same track, although
Urry does not make use of the dichotomy of the space of flows versus
the space of place, which is so central to Castells's work. Instead, Urry
offers more, and more detailed, concepts to analyse the development
of social practices in terms of flows and networks. He suggests that
one should approach spatial patterns in three ways or modalities, dis-
tinguishing among regions, globally integrated networks, and, finally,
global fluids (cf. Chapter 2 ). The networks and flows in these three cat-
egories are partly social and partly material or technical in character.
Urry employs the notion of 'scapes' to refer to networks in their func-
tion of sociotechnical infrastructures: “networks of machines, tech-
nologies, organizations, texts and actors that constitute various inter-
connected nodes along which flows can be relayed” (Urry, 2000 : 35).
The power of these network systems vis- a-vis human agents are related
to the size of the networks, their density, their relations to other net-
works and so on. As 'large socio-technical-systems' these networks
display dynamics that are described in terms of 'path-dependencies',
'lock-in-factors', 'sunk-costs', momentum, iteration and other concepts
that figure prominently in the sociology of (large) technological sys-
tems. With that, Urry's sociology of flows leans heavily towards systems
theory, with a moderate role for human agency and with nonhuman
actants getting actors' qualities. 13
The relevant innovations of the sociology of networks and flows for
the social sciences of environmental reform are fourfold. First, with the
introduction by Castells of the space of flows, and contrasting it with
the space of place, a new kind of time-space organisation of practices
is introduced that takes globalisation fully into account. Globalisation
is no longer simply understood as elevating the same processes on a
higher level. 14 Second, the sociology of networks and flows lifts the
sharp distinction between the social and the material world, between
flows of information and money and flows of material substance,

13

Here, Urry comes close and refers to the French work on actor-network theory
by Callon and Latour. In his more recent work, Latour ( 2004 ) seems more
interested in, or at least pay lip service to, ecological questions.

14

Ulrich Beck joins in criticizing the idea that with globalisation “es handelt sich
letzten Endes um die Strategie eines 'Weiter-so' auf gehobenem Niveau” (Beck,
1997 : 221) (“In the end, it is a strategy of 'more of the same thing' on an
elevated level” [my translation]).