Public Spaces and the Christian Imagination: Insights from Nicholas Christakis

Public Spaces and the Christian Imagination: Insights from Nicholas Christakis

 

This reflection is divided into two parts. Part one is a summary of Nicholas Christakis presentation on How social networks predict epidemics. Here is a link to the video:

The second part discusses how Christakis insights can spurn on the Christian imagination for engaging public spaces.

 

Summary of Christakis Presentation

Nicholas Christakis starts out his presentation by asking the following questions about social networks:

1.) What are the rules that govern how these social networks are assembled?

2.) What are the rules that govern how they operate?

 

Christakis is mainly concerned with the question of how a deeper understanding of social networks can provide insights that benefit our world. He illustrates his point by demonstrating how a deeper understanding of the governing rules of social networks yields insights that enable the prediction of epidemics.

 

Traditionally research on epidemics has been carried out by retrieving random samples from a population. With this method researches have not been able to predict epidemics; rather by the time the data is analyzed the results are no longer reflective of the current situation. An understanding of human social networks enables researchers to obtain up to predict epidemics in a timely manner. Christakis argues that the diffusion of innovation could be understood and predicted by a mechanism that understands how social networks operate. Trends don’t diffuse in human populations at random, they diffuse through networks.

 

Christakis explains that we live our lives in networks, which have a particular structure. People occupy different locations within the network. These positions are determined by the types of relationships within the networks such as: friendship, sibling, spouse, co-worker and neighbor. Different phenomena spread across different types of ties. For example, STD’s spread across sexual ties. Charitable giving might spread through co-worker ties.

 

Since people occupy different positions within a network, each individual – or node – will have different types and different numbers of connections. Some individuals will be located in the center of networks and others on the periphery.

 

In order to track any phenomenon spreading through the network, Christakis proposes to set sensors on the central individuals within the network. By observing these individuals, it is possible to get an early detection of whatever it is that is spreading through a network. This method is more effective than observing a random sample of people (a random sample is employed in the traditional way of investigating epidemics).

 

Christakis moves on and addresses the looming question: How do you map out social networks? Is this possible and feasible? “How can we figure out who the central people are in a network without actually mapping out the entire network? He decides to exploit an old known fact about social networks – the friendship paradox. Basically you ask people the question, “Which friend do you know that has more friends then you?” The friends of random chosen people are more central than a random chosen person. When a random person nominates a friend of theirs you move closer to the center of the network. It is possible to exploit this idea of “friendship paradox” in order to predict phenomena within this network.

 

The “friendship paradox” method allows us to get to people at the center of social networks without having to map out the entire network. Christakis demonstrates that by monitoring the friends from the randomly chosen people they can monitor the sensors that are more central in the network and predict epidemics up to 16 days in advance. How far in advance it is possible to obtain information depends on a number of factors, for example: the nature of a pathogen or the structure of the human network. This method can be used to predict how any trend or phenomena spread in the population of a network such as pathogens, information, norms, and behavior (criminal, health, product adaption).

 

Christakis also highlights some innovative ways of data collection. For example, data can be collected through mobile phone networks where the volumes of calls between people give structural insights to social networks.

 

Christakis concludes by highlighting that we have now access to these kinds of data that allows us to understand social processes and social phenomena in an entirely new way. Furthermore, with this science we can understand how exactly the whole becomes to be greater then the sum of its parts. We can use these insights to improve society and improve human well being.

 

Public Spaces and the Christian Imagination: Insights from Nicholas Christakis

 

In George Fox’s Doctor of Ministry program that I am currently enrolled in we have been reading James Davison Hunter’s book, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. Since this book deals with how Christians engage their world it's a good conversation partner with Christakis presentation on social networks. Christakis ends his presentation on the exciting note that the insights into social networks have the potential to improve society and human well being.

 

I want to point out one particular way in which Christakis insights provide a way for Christians to move away from what Hunter calls the politicizing of public space, and how Christians can reengage the public space in a more faithful way by looking at it through the spectacles of social networks.

 

First, let me briefly reiterated Hunter’s critique of how Christians in America engage their world predominantly through politics. Hunter states,

 

Politics has become a “social imagery” that defines the horizon of understanding and the parameters for action. Myth and history provide narrative context but in each of the three dominant perspectives [Right, Left and neo-Anabaptist] on the church’s engagement with the culture, politics is the way in which social life and its problems are imagined and it provides the framework for how Christians envision solutions to those problems (168).

 

This politicization of public space has limited our Christian imagination and how we can engage the world and address pressing problems in a more faithful way. Thus Hunter finds it,

 

difficult to think of a way to address public (by which I mean collective, common, or shared) problems or issues in any way that is not political. Politics subsumes the public so much so that they become conflated. And so instead of the political realm being seen as one part of public life, all of public life tends to be reduced to the political (105-106).

 

Ultimately Hunter desires to move Christians towards a post-political witness in the world. In order to do that the church in the US has to address two major tasks. He envisions that the first task is,

 

to disentangle the life and identity of the church from the life and identity of American society (186).

 

But more importantly for my purpose is the second task, namely,

 

for the church and for Christian believers to decouple the “public” from the “political.” Politics is always a crude simplification of public life and the common good is always more than its political expression. As we have seen, the expectations that people place on politics are unrealistic for most of the problems we face today are not resolvable through politics. That, however, is not the most serious problem. Far more grave is the way politicization has delimited the imaginative horizon through which the church and Christian believers think about engaging the world and the range of possibilities within which they actually act (186).

 

This is where I believe Christakis discoveries about social networks are insightful. Rather then viewing public problems through politics Christakis provides a new paradigm through which to view the public space, namely social networks. As can be seen in the video, a deeper understanding of how social networks operate can be used to address a host of issues such as epidemics and crime. Hunter argues that Christians have dealt with the challenges of “difference” and “dissolution” in unhelpful ways. The paradigms of engagement have been, “defensive against,” “relevant to” and “purity from” where most Christian engagement with the world is done from an “over against” type of position. My argument is that rather then placing ourself over against culture we should view ourselves through social networks, thus placing ourselves concretely within culture. This fits to Hunter’s proposal of engaging the culture as faithful presence within. When we understand or view our world through social networks we find ourselves in a particular place where faithful presence can be lived out. Hunter writes,

 

faithful presence in the world means that Christians are fully present and committed in their spheres of social influence, whatever they may be: their families, neighborhoods, voluntary activities, and places of work (247).

 

In essence all those spheres that Hunter lists are part of our social networks. Furthermore, he argues “that a theology of faithful presence first calls Christians to attend to the people and places that they experience directly” (253). Simply the reason being because in their daily life is where faithful presence is lived out.

 

Thus Christakis presentations provides insights into a paradigm that can be developed and used in engaging our world in a more faithful way. Christians and their communities have the possibility of discerning through the paradigm of social networks what purpose God has for them in the places they find themselves in. Using a social network paradigm can be a way for Christians to re-imagine their engagement in public spaces.