ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that disconnection is as important an element of networks as is connection, and that culture is indeed in the network, in three ways. First, by showing that networked relations need to be meaningful and relevant and secondly, by arguing that people are using the idea of network as a metaphor to discuss other things. And thirdly, by arguing that network is a familiar and culturally marked concept, and one that is a popular way to view sociality at the moment, at least in Britain. To put the situation for case of lesbian feminist separatists in London: some women’s groups and individuals, involved in the social networks that lesbian feminists were attempting to transform, directly challenged the lesbian feminist reading of sexuality and proposed different kinds of ‘alternative’ connections between lesbians. The case of Manchester Women’s Electronic Village Hall was different from lesbian feminist experience, but the outcome, sense of disconnection, was the same.
