Introduction

Choosing the notion of linking to talk about nature and digital technology

The reflections presented in this book, reformulated a posteriori around “linking with nature in the digital age”, emerged from a multidisciplinary research project in which researchers in information and communication sciences, computer science and ecology had to learn to articulate their disciplinary thinking with others1. The notion of a link seemed to be particularly well-suited to this exchange, as it was sufficiently mobilized by all concerned and sufficiently ambiguous to be malleable and questioned from different angles. Indeed, the notion of a link seems to be something that can be approached from an angle and not head-on. The term “link” cannot be qualified as a firm concept and, if it is mobilized more precisely, it is often by being associated with an adjective that qualifies it: the “social link” (Durkheim and Paugam 2013), the “weak link” (Granovetter 1973), etc. However, the word and metaphor of link are regularly used in scientific texts, but without really being thought of as a concept, and sometimes without any real reflection on the choice of this term in place of another.

Another advantage of a link as a way of thinking about the nature and influence of digital technology is that the word evokes something and makes sense in several disciplines. In computer science, we speak of “linked data”, “hypertext links” or even links in man–machine interfaces or networks. In ecology, we talk about “interspecies links”, “links to the environment”, etc. Two terms are possible in ecology: relationship and link, the latter being stronger and associated with close interactions, as in the case of symbiosis, which highlights the gradation in the strength of links. In the humanities and social sciences, the link is mobilized in all of its forms: the link is therefore “social”, “weak”, as well as “affective”, “symbolic”, “interindividual”, etc. However, this ease of presence can also be a flaw in the term. This begs multiple questions: how does the link relate to closely related notions such as networks (Latour 1999), communities (Kaufmann 2022a, 2022b), connections (Klein and Proulx 2012), interactions (Goffman 1998), or mediations (Deschamps 2019)? In an attempt to answer these questions, we began with the linguistic meaning of the word “link”.

The peculiarities of the “link”: semantic duality

The Centre national de ressources textuelles et lexicales (CNRTL, the French National Center for Textual and Lexical Resources) offers several definitions of the term “lien”, French for “link”, at different times and in different contexts of use2. Here, the term is defined materially as “a flexible, elongated object used to enclose a thing to hold its various parts together, or to attach two or more things together” and more figuratively as “that which joins, attaches two or more things together”. The link is first considered in its physical dimension – it is the object that attaches – before being extended by analogy to an immaterial dimension – that which ensures the relationship, of a more symbolic order. The imaginary then comes into play as a means of maintaining ties, particularly for the societies and communities that result from them (Anderson 1983).

A double movement is also present in the different definitions of the word link. It can have a positive connotation, creating solidarity – “that which unites two or more people (or groups of people) and establishes social, moral or emotional relationships between them” – or a negative connotation – “that which restrains an animal, chains or binds a prisoner or a slave”. The link thus oscillates between positive stability and negative limitation, dependence of the individual on a third party or on society. This is reminiscent of the work of Elias (2004), who described individual interdependencies as “the fabric of the social”. Individuals, the “I”, are seen as a form of modern society, different from traditional forms of society, the social “we”.

Finally, the link can be considered as innate – the family bond, the kinship bond – or as requiring a construction, sometimes of a legal nature – the marriage bond as contractualization. This distinction is also found in the work of Dumont (1983), for example, when he highlights two ways of relating to others during the French Revolution: the traditionalist ties of interdependence between the constituted social bodies of the monarchist community, and the contractual ties of revolutionary society (Kaufmann 2022a).

Thinking in terms of links means looking not at objects in terms of their identification, but rather at their relationships (Descola 2005), what links them together, what holds a heterogeneous set of elements together, and ensures cohesion, even if only fleetingly (Latour 1999). Yet beyond these etymological and semantic elements, in the scientific literature, the link is often an implicit order or a metaphor used to illustrate a point, rather than a firm concept.

Why choose to question the link?

While Klein and Proulx (2012), in the introduction to their book devoted to the strong presence of digital technologies in human communication, raise the question of “the nature and forms of the link that is established between individuals, groups, organizations, communities [...] in and outside the digital universe?” (Klein and Proulx 2012, p. 5, author’s translation), they nevertheless fail to define the term link, quickly preferring “connection”, which refers to the idea of a society technically connected by digital technology. The authors postulate the existence of “connected individuals”, whose online activity reinforces their individuality. However, this multiplication of digital connections would weaken the significant symbolic links between people, or at least transform them. We can therefore postulate that the term connection has been retained here in a digital context, whereas link has a broader meaning.

In the same work, Heaton et al. (2012) study the naturalist communities created around the Tela Botanica collaborative network. The term “link” disappears in favor of the idea of a networked device that “connects its members, and [circulates] anything that can circulate: information, reflection, resources, people [...]” (Heaton et al. 2012, p. 255, author’s translation). The term community, itself imprecise and polemical (Kaufmann 2022a), is then preferred to emphasize the idea of cooperation, of coordinating contributions, of the collective.

It is perhaps then by comparing the notion of link and that of community that we can better understand the epistemological difference between the works that mobilize them. In sociology, the nature of the link, its temporality, its strength, its intensity, its permanent or ephemeral character, are used to understand the difference between society and community, and the place of individuals in the different models (Tönnies 1944).

Political in nature, the opposition between society and community is also ontological. Whereas the bond of society is a contingent and a posteriori bond, which can only unite beings superficially and from which it is always possible to withdraw, the bond of community is an a priori bond that immerses its members in a totality that shapes them through and through [Kaufmann 2010] (Kaufmann 2022a, paragraph 1).

Thinking in terms of link(s) rather than network(s) or community(-ies) could then enable a complex approach to articulations between actors, as well as between objects, and reveal the richness of the worlds that can be built up according to the possibilities they are offered of attaching themselves to one another (Hennion 2004). The focus would no longer be on an overall, finalistic view of the worlds, societies or communities created, but rather on the choices, imaginaries, techniques, etc. that support them and bring them into being. For the elements that interest us in this book, this level seems rich in potential: nature and the digital enable – oblige? – the inclusion in our reflections of those on objects and techniques and on what they do to the possibilities of links, to the imaginaries they mobilize (Cardon 2010). However, nature and the digital also lead us to question the introduction of “non-human” actors3 into these possibilities of connection: animals, plants, as well as, more broadly, “nature” in its entirety. In this way, we are approaching the project outlined by Gefen and Laugier in Le pouvoir des liens faibles (2020):

[...] to extend [...] Granovetter’s concept [i.e. the weak link] to describe forms of tenuous attachments to beings and the world, non-utilitarian solidarities, complex and non-deterministic relationships, not only of humans to humans, but also of humans to things, natural beings, fictional and virtual beings (Gefen and Laugier 2020, pp. 17–18, author’s translation).

In the following...