The potential of cultural networks: interview with Manuel Gama

Abstract

Understood as a proper foundation of collective or social life, the idea of network can be characterized, in general, as a communicative and informational system capable of dynamizing actions and interactions between individuals, groups, institutions, cities and countries. Despite being a technology with ambivalent potential since any social agent can use it, its use in the field of cultural production has led governments and international agencies to encourage the so-called networking. The potentialities of inclusion, democratic participation and mutual benefit have been some of the justifications for encouraging this systemic practice. Manuel Gama proposes that in networking the individual affects and is affected, being the subject and subjected. In this present interview, this notion of network reflects the way Gama identified his studies with initiatives that took place in Portugal and, later, in other countries. Discovering how a cultural network operates seems to be his greatest asset in understanding the opportunities and particularities of culture.