LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

Grewal no longer defines power as influence but reconceptualises it as a peculiar mixture of individual agency and systemic coercion,3 captured within the term ‘network power.’ Grewal’s theory supports the understanding that power must not necessarily be conceived of in oppressive, coercive, and totalitarian terms but that the absence of voluntariness suffices as evidence of coercive structures. To formulate his argument, Grewal introduces the notion of standard, a “shared norm or practice” that facilitates cooperation among members of a network (21). He puts forward that individuals adopt a given standard whenever they hope for personal advantages in entering a network, providing examples ranging from linguistics to economics. Conceptualising English as a linguistic network, he argues convincingly that a desire to learn a new language, particularly the world’s number one trade and business language, is motivated by the wish to gain access to this community (cf. ibid. 74): “the French Canadians in Quebec are under pressure to learn English in order to benefit from national economic and political life, which occurs in predominantly Anglophone setting” (ibid. 71), although they might have preferred to enhance their competence in French or any other language. Whoever wishes to participate in the standard of English – a standard with “great network power” (ibid. 75) – must study English vocabulary and thus devote time and energy, which can no longer be invested in learning Hungarian, for instance. The same mechanisms are detectable in economic spheres, particularly money and the gold standard, which “was required for access to the [imperial] British market,” thus constituting a barrier to anyone wanting to engage in trade at the middle of the 19^th century (ibid. 97; cf. also Metcalf). In the first part of his analysis, Grewal has thus shown how self-reliant, rational individuals might perceive of the idea of switching to a certain standard without external coercion or threat to life and liberty. On the contrary, the switch to a dominant network seems to bring only advantages.

      Broadly speaking, a standard is a neutral entity on display, an offer to autonomous agents who aim at maximising their chances in life. These standards can spread, all “propelled by people’s desire for access to members of a network” (Grewal 23). Network power is “the amount of real and potential influence exerted by that standard in relation to others” (J. Ai-Etsuko Brown, emphasis in the original), meaning the appeal of a given standard to be adopted by initially free individuals in the hope of obtaining previously unattainable advantages in whatever aspect of life. Ultimately, as Grewal concludes, “the growth of a network is driven by the active choices of individuals rather than by their passive acceptance of something external to them” (26, emphasis in the original) – choices that are neither tainted by a false consciousness nor the product of coercion (cf. ibid. 128). Grewal makes it absolutely clear that “[i]t is our choices that lie behind network power, and nothing beyond or outside them” (26). While this first step in the development is often an autonomous decision by a rational individual, the following step conflates the notions of coercion and freedom considerably.

      We can call a standard whose invitation has been taken up by everyone a universal standard. The power of a standard thus follows a peculiar trajectory on its way to universality: starting from reason [i.e. intrinsic or extrinsic motivation], force [i.e. avoidance of direct and indirect costs], or chance [i.e. accidental convergence], it grows in relation to the size of its network – even at an increasing rate – up to the point at which it replaces all competing standards. (ibid. 42, emphasis in the original)

      Once a standard has become a ‘universal standard,’ “[c]hoices made in such conditions can become more and more constrained by the lack of acceptable alternatives until they prove formally free but substantially coerced” (ibid. 106). It becomes ever more costly for individuals to actively refuse a given standard, until it might actually be conceived as impossible, leaving them with no choice but to ‘choose’ the dominant standard no matter how disadvantageous: “[a]s a dominant network moves towards universality, the costs of deviation from the to-be-universal standard increase until not being a member of the universal network is equivalent to social exclusion in the domain governed by that standard” (ibid. 107). Fateful moments are times when events come together in such a way that an individual stands, as it were, at a crossroads in his existence; or where a person learns of information with fateful consequences. Fateful moments include the decision to get married, the wedding ceremony itself – and, later, perhaps the decision to separate and the actual parting. […] There are, of course, fateful moments in the history of collectivities as well as in the lives of individuals. They are phases at which things are wrenched out of joint, where a given state of affairs is suddenly altered by a few key events. (113)

      Universal standards may thereby eliminate the opportunity to choose due to their tendency to reduce choices to non-choices. Without active coercion, people can find themselves in situations where they have no choice left but to accept a dominant standard – due to past choices they and others have made. This is a phenomenon captured with the term of ‘path dependence,’ an idea that boils down to “history matters,” that is to say, “where we are today is a result of what has happened in the past” (Liebowitz and Margolis, “Dependence” 17). This helps to explain the phenomenon “that we are pulled by our choices along avenues smoothed by the prior choices of others” (Grewal 140) and are thus shaped by powers beyond control.4

      Such a standard can be found within a neoliberalist world order. David Harvey describes the effect of network power by tracing the history of neoliberalism itself: “[t]he general progress of neoliberalization has therefore been increasingly impelled through mechanisms of uneven geographical developments. Successful states or regions put pressure on everyone else to follow their lead” (Neoliberalism 87, emphasis in the original). His ‘creeping neoliberalization’ can thus be seen as a slow erosion of impediments of neoliberalism (e.g. trade barriers), forcing other countries to adopt the standard even if they originally opposed it (cf. ibid. 89, 93). Manuel Castells, too, comments on the network structure of neoliberalism, calling it “self-expanding logic”: “the more countries join the club, the more difficult it is for those outside the liberal economic regime to go their own way. So, in the last resort, locked-in trajectories of integration in the global economy, […] amplify the network, […] while increasing the costs of being outside the network” (142).

      Grewal argues that neoliberalism and network power are a match made in heaven. They form a unique blend of coercion and reason, yet seemingly favour freedom (cf. 252):

      Neoliberalism […] privileges relations of sociability and mistrusts those of sovereignty, since (on its own accord at least) the latter are distorted and corrupted by power in a way the former are not. Instead, neoliberals place their faith in those activities that people undertake as individuals choosing to participate in broader structures of social life. (ibid. 247)

      But while neoliberalism and its defendants like to think of themselves as formally free, they are bound by the principle of network power – or in the words of Karl Marx, “[t]he social division of labour entails that each free-worker is inserted into, and thus becomes entirely dependent upon, a system of production that vastly exceeds him/her, geographically, temporally, spatially, and so on” (Best 501). The fact that neoliberalism does not originate from a single centre of authority – and thus does not force its participants like totalitarianism would do – does not mean that it is free from oppression. On the contrary, globalization and neoliberalism prove to be “coercive or entrapping even if [they are] entirely driven by free, choosing people who create the conditions under which their agency gradually loses the power to later the circumstances” (Grewal 56). Grewal furthermore argues that “[m]arket relations offer obvious examples of this domination of formally free persons obligated not by direct authority but by interest” (118) – thus creating a potentially threatening system disadvantageous for themselves, which once created is difficult to be tamed by individual decisions any longer.

      Following Serena Olsaretti, Grewal introduces a necessary differentiation between free and voluntary choices, thereby arguing that what appears to be a free choice due to the absence of external coercion, must not be confused with voluntariness. To say it in the words of Serena Olsaretti, “[f]reedom does not guarantee voluntariness” (141). Grewal goes on to argue that

      [i]n liberal political thought, particularly of libertarian

Скачать книгу