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This chapter aims to identify the main determinants that define the architectural properties of network emergence and significantly influence the dynamics underlying network evolution in time. The identification and analysis of these determinants, as well as the dynamic processes tied to them, allows to appreciate the competitive bases and consequences of network morphology. To this purpose, using a complex systems perspective as an integrative conceptual approach, we represent networks as complex dynamic systems of knowledge and capabilities. We perform a comparative in-depth analysis of the processes underlying the emergence and evolution of STMicroelectronic's global network and of Toyota's supplier network in the US so as to allow an elucidatory empirical assessment of the theoretical representation elaborated in the article.

The controversy about performance ethnography and other new modes of sociological reporting in the US tends to be highly partisan and often uninformed. Toscano, one of a handful of symbolic interactionists in Italy, places new modes of reporting, which he calls “artistic performances,” in the proper historical and contextual perspective. He points out that the boundaries between art and everyday life and art and science are changing and can no longer be viewed as dichotomous and it is time to redefine the fluid relation between these different realms.Toscano identifies C. Wright Mills as the first sociologist to stress the relationship between the arts and sociology to the point of referring to his work as a “sociological poem.” Not coincidentally Norman Denzin and other supporters of new mode of sociological reporting invoke a return to C. Wright Mills, not only for his poetics of expression but for his quest and passion to help the downtrodden.Toscano analyzes the artistic productions of Goffman, Denzin, and others, focusing on the production of new sociologies that are no longer mere “texts” but become “performances.” He realizes that performance can only partially communicate the emotional struggle of those we study. Yet with its pathos and its passion performance can begin to melt the crystal palace of modernistic meta-theoretical sociology. Andrea Fontana; University of Nevada, Las Vegas