Introduction - Methods for Multilevel Analysis and Visualisation of Geographical Networks - page 1

Chapter 1
Introduction
Céline Rozenblat and Guy Melançon
Geography is primarily concerned with society in space. Places are locations
that interact through many types of flows: people moving to a different town
or commuting between home and the workplace to benefit from services and
to socialise; airplanes and ships travelling varying distances through webs of
corridors; goods being traded; and information and financial flows that govern the
spatial division of labour and organise companies into a complex hierarchies of
subsidiaries. The interaction of these flows with a territory's inherent constraints
and dynamics reveals the individual and collective goals that motivate these
flows. The heterogeneity of social space, which is produced by unequal resources
and the spread of wealth, as well as asymmetrical spatial relations, creates a
“structural duality”, due to continual trade-offs between structure and dynamics
( Giddens , 1984 ). Dicken, Kelly, Olds, and Yeung ( 2001 ) claim that social networks
are simultaneously structural and relational: they are structural because they are
composed of established networks, such as infrastructure networks or networks
of forces, and they are relational because they link agents - institutions, objects
and knowledge, as well as individuals - across a wide variety of domains ( Latour ,
2005 ; Monge & Contractor , 2003 ). Many network interactions involve exchanges of
information and human energy-producing power ( Castells , 2009 ; Raffestin , 1980 )
that intertwine, nest and overlap with each other (see Fig. 1.1 ); these exchanges may
exhibit cooperation, competition or both in “coopetition” ( Badaracco , 1991 ; Doz,
Santos, & Williamson , 2001 ).