Page - (000145) - in Knowledge and Networks

138 gists, geographers, and historians need to collaborate when pursuing the joint research agenda of tracking OMRT and their effects on collective action. Indeed, it may be that the social sciences are able to treat these systems of places, these forms of the division of labor, as endogenous only with the assistance of geog- raphers or other specialists on spatial and organizational movement (Bathelt & Glückler, 2011; Glückler, 2012, 2013). Geographers become crucial in the description and modeling of OMRT dynamics of all kinds because the social reality that such researchers observe is spatial, organizational, relational, multilevel, and dynamic. Contemporary public statistical datasets are ill suited for this purpose and for the measurement of OMRT dynamics in interaction with social stratification in the organizational society. Geographers and sociologists can design joint research projects on residents switching neighborhoods (e.g., Lévy, 1998), people migrating from countryside to the city and back (Lemercier & Rosental, 2008), entire popula- tions making an exodus from one continent to the other, and the changes occurring at the meso- and macrolevels because of such movements. Much of what happens in social life at meso and macro levels combined is OMRT-related phenomena char- acterized by the dynamics of multilevel structures where relational infrastructures necessarily function as gears driving evolution. They can be reconstituted in all areas of social life provided that a longitudinal perspective articulates coevolution- ary changes across places (mobility) and in relationships (networks). Neostructural sociologists argue that social change at the mesolevel must be examined process by process at each level of agency (interindividual or interorganizational). To describe and analyze these systems adequately, the challenge is in observing and reconstruct- ing these combined dynamics in interdisciplinary collaboration conceived to make sense of vast amounts of heterogeneous data gathered on various scales. That work will provide the framework for building a general theoretical approach to such OMRT phenomena with up- and down-stream effects. Mapping and modeling OMRT is how geographers and sociologists can account for the link between the meso- and macrolevels, indeed for the way in which meso- level actors build the macrolevel. Therefore, their function in documenting and explaining social change is to explore these OMRT dynamics at multiple levels simultaneously. These modalities are the ways in which actors manage the multi- level dimension of their society, moving (or not) from one level to the other and organizing these adjustments and their costs. As shown in analyses of regulation and governance, such exploration can yield a theory of action to guide dynamic, multi- level modeling and, eventually, to afford a fresh look at politics. In this respect much remains to accomplish. Acknowledgment I thank David Antal, Julien Brailly, Johannes Glückler, and Andreas Kalström for very helpful suggestions. Support for writing this chapter was provided by Sorbonne Paris-Cité as part of the program Dynamique des réseaux multiniveaux (DYREM). E. Lazega