Abstract
Jacqueline Joslyn’s slim volume embarks upon an ambitious project to construct a universally applicable theoretical model of relationships and to introduce a new set of methodological tools for analyzing and visualizing these relationships. To be successful, such a book would need to combine a strong intellectual effort with a clear and incisive argument, not least because at a mere 140 pages (108 excluding the appendix) every phrase must do considerable work. Unfortunately, the central theoretical contribution as well as the methodological innovation are incompletely developed and described. As a consequence, while the ambition of the book is laudable and its core ideas might be worthwhile, it is unable to deliver on this promise.
The book revolves around an assertion that despite the extensive work on interpersonal connections in social network analysis (SNA) and in sociology, the concept of a “relationship” is vague. As a result, it is difficult to provide clear and unambiguous answers to many questions (e.g., is a “relationship” with a deity equivalent to a “relationship” with a living, manifest individual?). Joslyn attempts to resolve this problem by providing a universally applicable definition of relationships that links time and cognition in the form of “remembered or imagined events and their cognitive outputs” or “RIECOs.” RIECOs comprise both the inputs to a cognitive process or processes (concrete experiences, whether objective or subjective) and the outputs of cognitive processing (e.g., analyses, speculations, ideas, socially constructed concepts, and “other products of mental processing” [p. 10]). RIECOs are simultaneously specific, concrete interactions and their mental result, and it is the mental awareness of these past RIECOs that defines the relationship. So long as RIECOs are consciously accessible to the individual, a relationship exists, and it is only when RIECOs are lost from memory entirely that the relationship ceases. This is essentially a restatement of the classic Thomas theorem: If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences. If an individual possesses RIECOs, even if they are of imagined events or fictitious actors, then the relationship is real.
Relationships composed of RIECOs are then studied using “pixels and flows,” which are referred to as both a visualization and a model at different points in the text. Pixels are visual representations of RIECOs or groups of RIECOs; imagine a circle or a cloud drawn on paper, which can represent an individual RIECO (circle) or a group of RIECOs (cloud) at the discretion of the researcher. Flows are variables (primarily time) that impose order on the pixels. Pixels are connected to each other by lines, which are the flows. In contrast to sociograms in SNA, flows can link only adjacent pairs of pixels, and thus the ordering of pixels on flows is determined most often by their temporal order. However, this ordering is not required to reflect the objective order in which RIECOs occurred, but can also reflect, for example, the order in which RIECOs are described during an interview.
In combination, RIECOs and the variable nature of time that they are embedded in give rise to the framing concept of “disjointed fluidity.” In that they are experienced as having an ongoing substance, relationships are an evolving fluid reality. But individuals are not continuously co-present, and the RIECOs that constitute relationships are not constantly active in mind. Moreover, RIECOs can be recalled and reexperienced/reprocessed outside of the temporal order in which they were created. As a result, this fluidity is disjointed by both interruptions in interaction and in time.
It is a strength of this book that it makes an effort to consider the cognitive elements involved in building and maintaining relationships. Likewise, the attention to widely used, but vaguely defined, concepts (e.g., “relationship”) is welcome. But despite the primacy of the term in the narrative, there is no serious effort to engage with work on cognition. For example, the text emphasizes that even if a RIECO is no longer remembered, it may still exert an unconscious effect. In cognitive terms, what she is trying to express is that episodic memory (i.e., memory for events that have occurred) is separate from, for example, semantic memory (i.e., memory for words, concepts, ideas), and that they lose information in different ways. However, these well-established aspects of the human memory system make no appearance in the book. Indeed, the problem of how a RIECO can be a meaningful entity when it combines both memory of a prior event (episodic) and the results of some cognitive operation executed because of that event (semantic) is not noticed, much less addressed. Similarly, existing research provides insight on the limits of human working memory, on improving memory by combining it into a larger structure (i.e., “chunking”), and on the use of heuristics. But none of this deep literature appears when the book refers (e.g., pp. 12–13) to how RIECOs can change over time or merge into larger RIECOs. Is this a form of chunking, a heuristic, or something else? The book’s argument takes the existence of mind seriously, but the cognitive aspects are more apparent than real.
At a methodological level, it is unclear how one would use pixels and flows in any sort of analysis. No rules or guidelines are given for how pixels should be constructed, or for how they should be arranged on flows. Indeed, the text remarks that, “the pixel and flow model is designed to be a blank canvas for theory-building” (p. 106), implying that there really are no rules to speak of. If this is the case, then the methodological innovation consists of representing vague theoretical constructs with some sort of shape and linking them with lines. The technique is intended as a tool for theory-building or qualitative investigation of complex and messy data, but the near total lack of methodological guidance means that it is impossible to tell whether a particular analyst is using this method correctly or to know whether differences in analyses of the same data are meaningful. Qualitative and quantitative approaches have different concerns and differing standards (as the text notes; fn. 4, p. 103), but the near total lack of rigor and consistency in the pixels and flows method, as described, is not typical of either approach.
Ultimately, the book sets out to do something valuable: to pin down a concept that is only vaguely defined and typically taken as a theoretical primitive. Along the way it introduces a new way of thinking about social relationships as well as a tool for working with/visualizing them. These are all valuable potential contributions, but they are not developed or explained enough to be useful. Even if RIECOs turn out to be useful theoretical constructs, the hard work of explaining exactly what they are and how they work is not completed in this book. Even if pixel and flow analysis is useful, this book does not articulate how it is supposed to be done. Until those lacks are corrected, it will be difficult for these ideas to gain substantial traction.