NETWORKS: FROM THE ORIGINAL MEANINGS TO THE NATURE OF NETWORKS IN COLLECTIVE ACTIONS

Abstract

This article aims to present the multiple uses and meanings of the network concept, highlighting its possibilities of application for understanding a variety of different natures’ phenomena. The article is the result of a bibliographic research, dialoguing with several authors from the humanities. The structure of the text is based on three stages. Initially, it starts from the identification of the original meaning in antiquity until the explosion of meanings that the concept acquired in over the past four decades. Then, we try to demonstrate the breadth of uses and meanings of the network in contemporary science, highlighting the concept qualification procedure and the formulation of adjective concepts. In the third moment, the focus is the mapping of the network conceptions adopted for the compression of collective actions, highlighting their distinctive nature. In this sense, it proposes to follow the concept’s path, identifying and “mapping” uses and meanings and defining its application to collective specific actions.