Universality, foreign agents and how the network topology defi(n)es territories

For a long time, scientists working with the graph theory assumed networks to be rather homogeneous systems where each node has approximately the same number of links. Contemporary research ex-plains that networks are scale-free and directed and that networks create small-worlds. In other words, some nodes become so extensively connected that they can be labelled as hubs, some of the links between nodes operate only in one direction and each node can be connected to any other with a limited number of links. While serious progress has been made in the charting of the characteristics of different real-life networks, social scientists, at the same time, have grown to replace the society with networks. Theories of networks often avoid considering territorial borders, yet networks are frequently used as short-hands of societies. The directional networks can generate their own ‘cores’ and ‘continents’, but these clusters can cross borders regardless of territorial power. Networks between city-regions, airports and computers provide mobility and flows in highly unequal ways. Even though we produce perpetual networks and flows between places, power, language and culture can make the links stronger or weaker. Thus, networks can defy territories and their reach can also define the ends of a territory. Transnational networks work as long as there is trust between the territories that try to govern their space. Empirically, this paper looks at the concept of universal human rights, the networked spaces of NGOs and EU-Russia connections. By examining universality as a European associated concept and the term ‘foreign agent’ in relation to Non-Governmental Organizations in Russia, the paper will shed light how the ideas of networks and topological reach are contested in within the European space. The argument is that borders continue to matter especially if networks are used only as euphemisms of societies.