Mapping Cultural Networks in the Global South Book Market

2.1. Pierre Bourdieu and the Peripheric Circulation of Culture

The article employs concepts developed by Pierre Bourdieu, such as the “cultural field” and the notions of “social”, “cultural”, and “symbolic capital”. It simultaneously examines the extent to which these theoretical frameworks can effectively analyze literary landscapes in “non-central” regions like Latin America as well as the distribution of its literature. While Bourdieu briefly touches upon writer-institution relationships (Bourdieu 1995, 318), his focus remains more on the fields than on the human actors involved.

According to Bourdieu, the field can be used to measure the structure and functioning of the social world, segmented according to different areas of action. What the sociologist understands as the literary field – to which he devoted articles and books throughout his career – is not simply the context in which literary works and authors are inscribed, nor merely the circuit of personal interrelationships among writers, but an authentic field of forces that operates on all those who enter that space. It is determined by the position they occupy in it, such as being the author of successful plays or an avant-garde poet (Bourdieu 1989, 22).

The concepts of social capital as well as economic, cultural, and symbolic capital are also taken from Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory. This capital, which can also be understood as a form of power, can manifest in various forms: Economic capital (Bourdieu 1997, 108) referring to monetary or financial power; social capital – associated with the size of interpersonal relations among actors; cultural capital (Bourdieu 1997, 108) which refers to the possession of various cultural assets; and symbolic capital – linked to prestige and recognition, generally public, acquired by agents and institutions. The latter is perhaps the most difficult to define since Bourdieu described it in different ways. In Raisons pratiques, symbolic capital is ambiguously demarcated as the form that any type of capital acquires when it is perceived through the categories of perception (Bourdieu 1997, 108), which in the context of the literary field can be understood as the acquisition of a name that is known and recognized (Bourdieu 1995, 224).

Symbolic capital is fabricated in the literary field through the agency of academics, critics, editors, juries, and other actors who concur in granting value to works and their authors. Bourdieu insists that symbolic capital is explicitly constructed in opposition to economic capital, and the more independent the literary field is from other fields (economic, political, etc.), the more autonomous it will be. However, this formula not only ignores the participation of multiple actors and institutions from outside the literary field but also overlooks the distinctive features that characterize “peripheral” literary systems such as the Latin American one. In these systems, the interconnection among literary spaces and political and economic fields was not an obstacle since colonial times to produce original works and establish a solid literary production and circulation system (Canclini 2010).

Furthermore, Bourdieu’s field theory primarily centers around the struggle between opposing forces contending for dominance within their local spheres. However, network analysis emphasizes the importance of social structures not only in the pursuit of legitimation, but also in the circulation of ideas and aesthetics which significantly influence the individual works of writers. In this regard, digital methods challenge the limitations of Bourdieu’s field theory, offering valuable insights into the intricate structures of cultural circles on a broader scale. These methods reveal that concepts such as “autonomy” or “opposition” (Bourdieu 1995, 145) are intricately linked to social, economic, and political factors embedded within specific contexts. In this sense, concepts such as Jacques Dubois’s literary institution (Dubois 2019) and Itamar Even-Zohar’s polisystems (Even-Zohar 1979, 2005) can complement Bourdieu’s literary field theory, extending the space of literature to include interrelations with other fields and detaching it from the Eurocentric context that inspired Bourdieu’s definition of autonomy.

As previously mentioned, when the scheme of literary fields is extended to the context of global circulation and reception, we enter the so-called world literature studies, aimed at reconstructing the itinerary of those books and authors that reach a global distribution – or, more probably, Western – dimension through awards, translations, reviews, and publications in publishing houses outside their country of origin. While authors such as Pascale Casanova and David Damrosch have transferred concepts such as “autonomy” or struggle to the world arena, reiterating the center/periphery dichotomy based on aesthetic arguments, a recent trend involving many of the authors previously mentioned in the introduction seeks to point out the non-literary factors that determine Western consumption of other literatures located outside the Global North. Thus, the question of how world literature is made (MÜller 2021) implies explaining the different mechanisms of selection and reception, the intervention of multiple agents and institutions that often compete unequally in Latin American literature to achieve such westernization or globalization.

In this sense, the change in the Latin American publishing system has played an essential role in these globalization dynamics. Here we will use the concept of the “monopolistic printing system” developed by Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo in A la sombra de los libros: mercado, lectura y vida pública (2007), where he distinguishes two milestones in the world publishing system: The classical moment, which spans the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, and the monopolistic moment, which he locates starting from 1959, when for the first time the shares of the Random House publishing house were listed on the New York Stock Exchange (Escalante Gonzalbo 2007, 201). This second stage, which extends to the present day, is defined, according to Escalante, by the progressive concentration of publishing imprints in an ever-smaller group of large transnational companies, interested exclusively in the rate of profit. This represents an abrupt shift from the previous model of the quasi-family business of the bookseller-critic-publisher to the economistic logic of the large consortiums. These, later transformed into multimedia groups, eventually also own newspapers, television channels, and publishing houses, crystallizing the model of standardized production typical of the cultural industry in the Adornian sense, which adds a kind of market censorship (Schiffrin 2006). This system, which undoubtedly continues to dominate, has undergone hopeful changes in the second decade of the twenty-first century with the proliferation of local and independent houses, reaching its peak in the early 1990s.

2.2. Field Theory, World Literature, and Social Network Analysis

As Gisèle Sapiro has pointed out, Bourdieu’s perspectives also disregarded the close relationship between social networks and social and symbolic capitals, as well as how convenient it could be to employ Social Network Analysis (SNA) to analyze the circulation of cultural resources among individuals who belong to the same network (Sapiro 2016). Social capital functions here as a means of calculating the socio-cultural contacts among the members of the network and the variety of literary and social resources mobilized inside those organizations. Since networks are formed by an intricate system of nodes and edges, a literary network compresses a set of actors (authors, editors, critics, agents) who are linked through different forms of interrelations (cultural activities, common publications, shared polemics, to cite just a few examples). Even the correspondence among a group of literary actors can be taken as a measure of the fluctuations of social capital in the literary field, as well as of the mislaid role played by certain subjects in the cultural space at a given moment, as the aforementioned article demonstrates (Li and Corbett 2024).

Inspired by a recent paper on the effects of social capital in two social networks in Latin America (Alcaide Lozano et al. 2019), it is possible to relate what the authors call social impact – “the beneficial effect of change that social innovation projects generate on the target groups of those projects” – with Bourdieu’s symbolic capital since both are oriented to the beneficial effects that the membership of a network can provide to its members. In this sense, the lesser or higher amount of social capital acquired from those social structures can be identified with SNA metrics such as centrality and centralization but also with eigenvector centrality, closely connected to the brokerage position in the system, showing the interrelation between the structure of the network and the members’ works. What the SNA literature states, that the more heterogeneous and diverse a social ecosystem is, the greater the possibilities of gaining access to new ideas and strategies (Granovetter 1973), can be translated into the literary networks showing that those holding these brokerages tend to develop original aesthetic proposals as well as playing essential roles in providing their partners visibility, highlighting the neglected role of different agents. Furthermore, this SNA metric could be put in dialogue with what Marling (2016) has called gatekeepers in the printing system, which are individuals and institutions dedicated to creating the “concentric circles of nurture” through which the creativity industry flows (Granovetter 1973).

On the other hand, according to SNA theory, innovation is less likely to happen in hierarchical systems, given great visibility exclusively to the heads of the system (Newman 2018), which is something that also connects with the differences between prestige or symbolic capital and the economic capital considered by Bourdieu as the opposite. In this sense, SNA applied to literary networks can illustrate what English (2005) has named the “economy of prestige”, often embodied in literary prizes but used in a further way as the different non-literary and literary organizations and agents involved in making a book or an author “prestigious”, that is, with higher symbolic capital, simultaneously showing how the economic and literary fields are not detached, as Bourdieu suggested.

Finally, if we consider that by the 1990s, the expansion of Latin American authors to non-Latin American publishers – i.e., global publishers – marked them as “brand writers” (Lluch Prats 2009), we can interpret the publication by Spanish publishers as an expression of symbolic capital at that time. This is why, in addition to combining field theory and social network analysis, we will add a modest geospatial representation to document the acquisition of symbolic capital by some network members, as well as the correspondence between this and the structures of the network. As Alcaide Lozano et al. (2019) has pointed out, SNA metrics should be “context-sensitive”, which makes it necessary to contextualize the results obtained by SNA techniques when it comes to the Latin American publishing environment. In summary, putting SNA and the sociology of literature together, networks are seen not only as a source of social capital but also of cultural resources, which is a departure from the traditional sociological view where they are seen only as instruments, as ways to access resources and move up the social ladder. This makes even more sense when it comes to the recognition system and canonization book system at the end of the twentieth century in Latin America.

3.1. The Shanghai Network through SNA: Approaches and Metrics

As it has been previously demonstrated by Rodríguez-Alfonso (2022, 2024), the analysis of the Shanghai community reveals a complex system of relations among its members. These connections are considered in a broad, non-exclusively literary dimension, encompassing not only the corpus of quotations, prologues, and mentions of other members’ works, as well as their collaboration in common cultural projects (such as publications in the same magazine issue or participation in collective works), but also informal meetings among the Shanghai writers in cafeterias, newspaper offices, book fairs, and presentations. These encounters have been described in magazines from that time and can likewise be found in interviews and autobiographical memoirs. However, the significance of these connections is considered hierarchically. While the first type of connections is seen as fundamental on a discursive-material level, the social encounters are viewed as boundaries that, instead of being determinants of their literary poetics, carry weight in the critical appraisal of their works and their reception in the market. Therefore, the first type of relations, based on shared readings and quotations, are considered a more accurate evidence of literary exchange than mere meetings among friends.

The directions of these links have been taken into account. On the one hand, it is assumed that collective encounters in cafeterias, events, and publications in the same book or magazine are bidirectional relations. On the other hand, mentions, quotations, or prologues to a writer’s work by other group members are considered unidirectional links, as there is no mutual ‘transaction’ of ideas and legitimation involved. The analysis of the Shanghai group demonstrates that some writers received a large amount of attention while others are barely mentioned. So, in more than one case there is a close relationship between centrality gained within the network and the subsequent internationalization achieved by those writers. However, there are interesting exceptions that demonstrate that other factors beyond social capital further play a role in obtaining visibility and prestige in the literary field. From a sociological perspective, factors such as the genre and the place of residence (in or out of Argentina), as well as the aesthetic features of these writers’ works and the expectations surrounding their novels, are decisive too.

The number and direction of these connections reveal the importance of those who serve as sources of multiple interactions but receive only a few mentions in return. These cultural actors can be considered brokers, as they occupy brokerage⁵ positions that connect otherwise disconnected writers.⁶ I refer to these actors as “gatekeepers” (Marling 2016) since they have higher “eigenvector centrality” and “clustering coefficients”, and are often the less visible members of the group in terms of global and publishing presence, while simultaneously being the main sources of symbolic capital for their partners. As will be shown, the majority of these actors embody editors, translators, and literary critics who contribute from inside to the dissemination and visibility of other members’ works, not only nationally but also globally.

As announced, SNA metrics are used: Density is the ratio of existing connections to the total number of possible connections in a network, representing the degree of interconnectedness among actors. In a graph representation, it is calculated by dividing the total lines connecting nodes by the maximum number of possible lines, while a result closer to 1 indicates a more densely populated network (Scott 2000). The clustering coefficient in social network theory assesses how well a node connects highly connected regions without considering its importance in terms of information flow (Zhang et al. 2010, 4). Centrality measures the extent to which certain nodes accumulate the highest number of interactions, inspired by the concept of “star” actors in Sociometry. Local centrality applies when nodes are central only to their closest contacts, while global centrality means they are central to the entire network (Scott 2000).

PageRank and weighted degree have been used as measures indicating the centralization of the network. Both were calculated with Gephi (Page et al. 1999), and while the first one is an algorithm that measures the importance of nodes within a network based on the quantity and quality of connections to them, the second one shows the sum of the weights of edges connected to a node. The eigenvector centrality, also estimated by Gephi, measures the influence of a node in a network, determined by the centrality of its neighbors.

Considering the constraints of the Latin American publishing system, the representation of this literary network is examined in terms of geospatial dynamics. The movement of books written in Latin America to Spain, from South to North, entails a change in “symbolic status” that is also material. This change occurs because the arrival in the Spanish market often involves an increase in the number of printed copies and the geographical expansion of the readership through distribution and translation procedures. Consequently, the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean still signified a growth in the distribution and readership of these books, along with the acquisition of “layers” of intangible recognition, despite the recent emergence of the regional book market during the nineties. Therefore, the evolution of the Shanghai network is analyzed alongside the national and international publishing trajectories of its members.

3.2. Data Compilation and Preparation

The data analyzed in this study were collected from a corpus of cultural magazines in Argentina during the 1980s and 1990s. Babel. Revista de Libros (1988-1991), Diario de Poesía. Información, creación y ensayo (1986-2012), Con V de Vian (1990-1999), as well as the cultural columns from newspapers such as El Porteño (1982-1993) or Página/12 (1987-present), served as the primary sources for tracing the Shanghai network during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Information about the network from the twenty-first century onward was obtained from personal interviews, memoirs, and publishers’ catalogs, demonstrating the network’s existence at least until 2010.

The process of data extraction proceeded as follows: Initially, I conducted a “distant reading” of each issue of the journals, accumulating a body of reviews, articles, interviews, and essays in which prominent authors belonged to the Shanghai group.⁷ Given that a majority of these documents were scanned magazines, I employed optical character recognition (OCR) software to convert images into searchable text. Once the text was digitized, a Python function was employed to identify all capitalized letters.⁸

The function generated an extensive roster of proper names linked with each text and author, encompassing names of individuals, geographic locations, institutions, and titles of artistic works – all of which are conventionally capitalized in the Spanish language. Subsequently, data cleaning was performed to eliminate names unrelated to human beings. Additionally, a distinction was made between individuals associated with the Argentine cultural sphere and other international authors frequently referenced by Shanghai members. While the latter group could prove valuable in studying the global literary canon established by these authors, they did not contribute to insights regarding social interactions within the local literary arena.

This list played a key role in establishing the datasets for Shanghai’s network during the 1980s and 1990s. However, during the final stage of interactions (2002-2010), the dearth of periodic publications provoked the exploration of relations through local editorial catalogs, digital newspaper searches, and interviews. Due to the scarcity of information there, the data collection process was not automated and I manually introduced it into the dataset.

Once the initial database with the list of nodes was concluded, I constructed a relational database organized as shown in Table 2.

“id” served as an enumeration for each relationship within the network. “source” indicated the author signing each text, while “target” represented the names of Argentinian writers extracted using the Python function. The “type” field classified relationships as either “directed” or “undirected”. The “relations” column described the specific nature of the connection between nodes, drawing from the type of text or textual reference found in the corpus.⁹ The “weight” attribute assigns a value to each relationship, where all the weights are normalized so that they sum to 1.0. Higher weights were assigned to inter-textual interactions like comments (C = 2.5) and mentions (M = 1.5), while social encounters (Enc = 0.3) and participation in the same issue of Babel. Revista de Libros (B = 0.25) held lower significance.¹⁰ Finally, the “year” column encompassed the date of the relationship or, in the case of the magazine network dataset, the issue number (1-22) in which the interactions occurred.

The fundamental dataset was formed by the “source” and “target” columns, while attributes like “relations”, “type”, “weight”, and “year” provided additional context. The research data has been divided into four tables to represent the network’s evolution over the years¹¹, accounting for fluctuations in the number of members and metrics such as density, centrality, clustering coefficient, and centralization specific to each period. As the primary focus was on investigating diachronic changes within the network, the tables indicating the years of exchanges offer a comprehensive view of how the metric changes are intertwined with literary and sociological developments in the Shanghai circle over time.

Furthermore, an extra table dedicated to publishing houses has been generated to illuminate the writers’ global circulation. This table provides insights into the categorization of publishing houses – whether small, medium, or large – based on their location and scope. Maps accompany this information to illustrate the countries in which these publishing houses are situated.

4.1. The Beginnings of the Association and the Local Book Market (1982-1987)

The first stage encompasses the early activities of the group (1982-1987), during which it cannot be accurately classified as a “network” due to the absence of a corpus of “aesthetic exchange”. This “aesthetic exchange” refers to the collection of fictional novels that would only be published starting from 1990 and the subsequent reviews they would inspire among the group members. The structure of the community during this period reflects a “formation period” characterized by a scarcity of literary works to discuss, as the majority of the group members were still unpublished at that time.

In Figure 1¹², we can observe the early Shanghai circle with only a few participants involved. The color palette of the nodes provided by Gephi, ranging from green to purple, illustrates the PageRank of every node. Some actors, like Daniel Guebel, Alan Pauls, Luis Chitarroni, and Sergio Chejfec, share dense relations and participate in the same events. The position of Jorge Dorio indicates a non-central position, as he is only connected to the group through Martín Caparrós. The presence of writer Matilde Sánchez is noteworthy, as she occupies a central position in the visualization despite having weak links with the other members. In the metrics, Sanchez only occupies an intermediate position (the fourth one, ordered from highest to lowest) in terms of its “eigenvector centrality”, while it occupies the penultimate position in the remaining metrics (such as PageRank and degree). This can be attributed to her being mentioned as part of the group, even though she does not actively participate in the main Shanghai group activities. This discrepancy highlights the divergence between the “narrative” surrounding the group as portrayed by national critics and the actual reality of the relationships among the writers.

Figure 1: Structure of the Shanghai network (1982-1987). Participation in the same magazines (dark green), cultural activities (light green) as well as group reviews (rosa) are considered.

These initial distinctions regarding the network’s center and periphery can be further examined in Figure 2. The shortest path, which involves finding the minimum distance from a starting point (here a node) to a destination point (a second node) between two well-connected members, Daniel Guebel and Sergio Chejfec, excludes the nodes representing Sánchez and Dorio. While the other writers appear to be densely interconnected, there is no direct path through Sánchez or Dorio, as they seem to be somewhat ‘detached’ from the Shanghai network.

Figure 2: Shortest path between Guebel and Chejfec.

4.2. Network Consolidation in Babel Magazine (1988-1991)

The time frame from 1988 to 1991 covers the most prolific period of the Shanghai group. The foundation of Babel. Revista de Libros and the publication of their opera prima made room for an enlargement of the writers’ sociability system, as well as for a genuine ideo-aesthetic exchange.

Figure 3¹³ provides a picture of the expansion and density acquired by the network by March 1991 when the last issue of Babel. Revista de Libros was launched. By this time, the number of members had tripled, and the types of relations among them had increased and diversified. The colors of the edges indicate the kinds of links that exist between the nodes, while the nodes’ green degree and size serve as indicators of the writers’ centrality. Centrality has been calculated using the PageRank concept provided by Gephi, relying simultaneously on the assigned weight of the edges and the directions of the links denoted by arrows.

Figure 3: Density and expansion of the Shanghai network (1988-1991). The types of links such as publication in the same issue (rosa), common activities (green), mentions (blue), promotions (brown), comments (orange), reviews (fucsia), polemics (cyan), and prologues (beige) were taken into account.

The graph reveals the existence of two well-defined clusters inside the social system: On the one side, there is a large “semi-group” of dispersed participants who are mostly associated by writing in the same magazine issue – pointed out with rose edges –, and on the other side, there is a second cluster consisting of a small group of people densely entwined by other types of relationships, as Figure 4 shows in detail.

Figure 4: Detail of the semi-cluster in the Shanghai network (1988-1991).

As illustrated, the Argentinian writer and journalist Martín Caparrós held the most central position in the magazine at that time, followed by the authors Alan Pauls and Sergio Chejfec. While Dorio and Caparrós served as the editorial directors of Babel. Revista de Libros, Caparrós’ centrality cannot be solely explained by his position in the magazine. His extensive interactions within and outside the network contrast with the limited interactions maintained by Dorio across it. Caparrós, along with Pauls and Chejfec, garnered the majority of mentions, reviews, prologues, and shared polemics, which not only led to the centralization of their network but also increased the visibility of their literary works. Knowing that he was one of the more quoted writers at that time, one can consider that the fact that people discussed them and their novels extensively contributed to a “resonating box” effect in terms of the diffusion waves writers such as Caparrós and other relatively unknown authors gained within the network and the local literary field that surrounded it.

Another interesting aspect of the network during this period emerges when we focus on another participant from the smaller cluster: the writer and editor Luis Chitarroni. Both Figure 3 and Figure 4 depict him holding a high PageRank despite not being in the center of the network. This suggests a distinction between “influence” and “visibility” since Chitarroni accumulated a significant number of interactions in the network despite not being one of its most central figures. It can be said that he contributed more than he received, as indicated by the arrows in Figure 3. In other words, the Argentinian editor actively participated by mentioning, reviewing, and writing prologues about the works of his peers while receiving only occasional attention from them. This finding is not reflected in the previous literature of the group, where until now Chitarroni has been considered a member of lesser importance for the establishment and the maintenance of the circle.

In fact, it is worth comparing the social structure of the magazine with the network outside Babel. Revista de Libros during that time, where Chitarroni’s PageRank is even the next highest after Caparrós, as shown in Figure 5 and Table 3.¹⁴

Figure 5: Chitarroni’s “PageRank” (1988-1991): The graph is focused on the node sizes based on PageRank metrics.

In addition to the social relations fostered by the magazine, we can observe that the network in the Argentinian literary field is primarily based on the densest cluster within Babel. By disregarding the directions of the edges, the role of Chitarroni as a mediator becomes even more evident in this context. In fact, if we revisit the network formed by the magazine and delve deeper, we discover that Chitarroni possesses the highest eigenvector centrality.

Table 4 provides a contrasting view of the network’s structure by revealing which members consistently engage in mediating interactions among the most influential actors, a pattern that results from the frequency of their collaborations within Babel. This finding highlights mediation and centralization as contrasting roles, with the exception of Chitarroni, who, despite not being among the most visible nodes, holds a position within the central cluster. Chitarroni occupies a medial position between the two subgroups, granting him access to two different sources of ideas and literary aesthetics, thus diversifying his social capital. Furthermore, his role as a mediator extends beyond the magazine, particularly considering his work as an editor at Sudamericana, a local publishing house where Caparrós published his novel La noche anterior in 1990. In the following pages, we will delve into the significance of the role played by actors like Chitarroni in the diffusion and recognition of their peers in the years to come.

4.3. Shanghai’s Expansion and Local Publishing Circulation (1992-2002): Social Capital, Publicity, and Prestige

During the 1990s, the Argentinian cultural field witnessed the increasing recognition of several writers from the Shanghai network, alongside their collective endeavors. After the closure of Babel. Revista de Libros, the magazine’s staff members transitioned to other local magazines and newspapers, such as El Porteño, Diario de Poesía, Página/12, Clarín, and V de Vian. In these new stages, they continued to write about their peers’ books.

The period saw the release of new novels by authors like Caparrós, Pauls, Chejfec, and Guebel, while Chitarroni, Sánchez, and Feiling published their first fictional works. Alongside the previously identified types of relations, new modes of interaction emerged. These included dual publications, appearances in the same anthology, and collective works in the form of “exquisite corpse” collaborations. Furthermore, national critics began identifying these writers as part of a distinct “literary generation”, further solidifying their collective identity and endurance as a network throughout the decade.

The continued collaboration and support among the Shanghai network members, along with the recognition they received in the literary field, exemplify their enduring presence and influence. Despite the closure of the magazine, their collective undertakings and individual successes contributed to the cultural landscape of the time, showcasing the lasting impact of the network.

Figure 6 depicts the major shifts in the network’s structure during this time.¹⁵ The node colors, ranging from green to brown, represent their centrality degree, while the violet-painted edges indicate the weight assigned to every kind of relationship. On the one hand, a notable change is observed in the center of the network, where Chitarroni and Guebel now centralize the system, surrounded by Chejfec (whose centrality has considerably decreased), Pauls, Bizzio, and a newly central Feiling. On the other hand, Caparrós, although still connected to members of the small cluster, occupies a peripheral position. The few women connected to the group, such as Graciela Montaldo, María Martoccia, Claudia Gilman, and Sánchez, are located at the extremes of the network, belonging to the network but being in its periphery. It is worth mentioning that Montaldo, Martoccia, and Gilman are included in the network based on Chitarroni’s designation as representatives of new trends in Argentinian literature, alongside the Shanghai group.

Figure 6: Major shifts in the Shanghai network’s structure (1992-2002): The node color and size ranging from green to brown are based on their PageRank, and the violet-painted edges indicate the edges’ weight, from thinner to thicker lines, according to the most highly rated links, evaluated in the following order of relevance: group reviews, shared activities, interviews, anthologies, and collective works.

The composition of network participants has changed as they reduced interactions with other collaborators in Babel (Rodríguez-Alfonso 2024). Writers from other sociability systems that coexisted in the national sphere at this time, such as Juan Forn and Rodrigo Fresán, are now part of the margins of the Shanghai group. This can be interpreted as an expansion of the network into other social grids, as well as a change in the type of relationships. The dense links of the small circle have been replaced by a larger system where associations are weaker because part of the grid now belongs to other social networks. Caparrós, for example, began publishing in mainstream newspapers in the 1990s, covering topics such as politics and cinema, which connected him to other social groups. Similarly, Pauls started publishing in newspapers with a larger audience, which can explain his slight distance from the center. Additionally, Chejfec’s distance from the epicenter can be attributed to his move to Venezuela in 1990 and his engagement with new cultural circles in that country.

When examining the publishing market and the magazines/journals of that time, it becomes apparent that some writers who were slightly distanced from the network’s center were among the most “visible” during the period. This visibility was not only related to their active participation in the public sphere (through television programs, magazines, and cultural newspapers), since these writers often pursued other professions, such as journalism, scriptwriting, or television presenting, but also because some of them started to publish in larger publishing houses, such as Planeta or Alfaguara, which, although they still had a local distribution, possessed greater symbolic capital (associated with their prestige), as well as economic and social capital (linked to the printing of a larger number of copies or the presentation by prominent players in the cultural field, among other factors). Table 5 provides a list of the main writers from the Shanghai group organized by their publishing houses grouped by colors, with green representing local and small editorial houses, blue indicating medium-sized publishers, and red indicating big publishers. Figure 7 illustrates the geographical distribution of these publishing companies during the period. The map is not only related to the localization of the publishing houses but also to the symbolical movement implied (from a local distribution and recognition to an international one) as well as a physical one (due to frequent travels by the Argentine authors for book presentations and other forms of ‘book tours’).

Figure 7: Local publishing houses from Shanghai writers in Buenos Aires (1990-2002): Local and small editorial houses (green), medium-sized publishers (blue), and big publishers (red) are represented.

This finding contrasts with the previous period, where Pauls and Caparrós, the more central writers in the network, were additionally the most visible ones, which prompts reflection on the relationship between the network’s distribution and the status held by writers in the cultural field. It suggests that there might be a connection with belonging to a dense and small network during the early stages of a literary career. However, expanding into other circles of sociability and establishing weak ties in each of these networks appear to be an advantage once initial local recognition and prestige have been attained.

Indeed, there is a notable distinction between Caparrós and Chejfec/Pauls in terms of their relationships with former partners and its influence on their publishing and critical responses. It is not coincidental that the local publishing houses where Pauls and Chejfec published during the 1990s often published other members of the dense clusters, such as Marcelo Cohen, C.E. Feiling, or Chitarroni himself. This could indicate a connection between the visibility acquired in the cultural field and the position held in the network, as well as a link between the type of visibility and the type of recognition received. In other words, the majority of the writers who were still part of the dense cluster by this time published in local and independent publishers, while those who distanced themselves from the cluster started to publish in international publishing groups.

Historiographically speaking, Caparrós’ works primarily gained recognition from journalists and newspapers, while the novels and essays of Pauls and Chejfec were acclaimed or at least noticed by academics, editors, and literary critics. This highlights a new distinction in the critical reception of these authors, emphasizing the differences between the “social capital” held by Caparrós and the still modest “symbolic capital” already possessed by Pauls and Chejfec at that time, as the structure of the network suggests.

Setting up a dialogue between both types of diffusion and recognition received by these authors, those can be connected to their respective positions within the network and their connections to specific clusters. On the one hand, Caparrós, with his ties primarily to journalists and newspapers, gained social capital through broader public visibility and recognition. On the other hand, Pauls and Chejfec, with their closer relationships to other network members and connections to specific publishing houses, garnered attention and acclaim from more specialized audiences, including academics, editors, and literary critics. This distinction reflects the different types of capital and recognition that these authors were able to acquire within the cultural field during that period.

Furthermore, the case of C.E. Feiling exemplifies the complex relationship between social capital, publicity, and prestige when it comes to author recognition. Figure 8, which organizes nodes based on their PageRank, demonstrates that Guebel and Chitarroni’s nodes overlap in Gephi because their distance in terms of metrics is so small, in part due to their joint projects. Pauls, Bizzio, and Chejfec closely follow them in proximity. However, C.E. Feiling, positioned as the sixth writer on the PageRank line, holds one of the most advantageous positions when it comes to eigenvector centrality, ranking third from highest to lowest. He remains authentically well connected to the central cluster, as depicted in Figure 9, while the looseness of ties with its members suggests his simultaneous involvement in various other networks. This can be seen through his collaborations in local magazines such as El Porteño, Diario de Poesía, Página/30, Conjetural, as well as his work as an editor and translator in publishing houses like El Ateneo. In this sense, C.E. Feiling’s position in the network is a novelty compared to the previous literature of the group. Being usually considered a “minor” figure in the network, his actual position as revealed by the graph has been barely mentioned, overlooking the key member he was in the history of the group.

Figure 8: Nodes Organization by “PageRank” in Shanghai network (1992-2002).

Figure 9: Feiling’s Position in the Central Cluster (1992-2002).

It is worth noting that Feiling’s career path stood out as the most promising in terms of prestige and diffusion within the network. He became the first member of the cluster to be nominated for the renowned literary prize, the Planeta Award (Premio Planeta), in 1995. Unfortunately, his career was tragically cut short by his premature death in 1997. Feiling’s trajectory showcases the interplay between social capital, publicity, and prestige. His strong connections within the central cluster and simultaneous engagement in other networks allowed him to navigate diverse literary spaces and expand his recognition, something that the network analysis has revealed.

4.4. New Forms of Shanghai’s Association and the (G)local Circulation (2003-2010)

The death of C.E. Feiling prompted new forms of association within the authors of the dense cluster, leading to homages, collective works, and self-reflective memoirs. In network analysis terms, we can say that Feiling transitions from being a node to becoming an edge, serving as a form of relation within the writers’ system.

The first decade of the twenty-first century proved decisive for the globalization of Shanghai writers. Caparrós, Pauls, and Chejfec embodied different aspects of the internationalization undertaken by a portion of contemporary Latin American authors across the region (Castany Prado 2007; Noguerol 2020; Noguerol 2008). In 2004, Caparrós received the Planeta Award, one of the most popular literary prizes in Spanish literature. A year prior, Pauls had won the Herralde Award, an esteemed annual prize presented by the Catalan publishing house Anagrama, which held great significance in the Spanish-language narrative field during that time. In a different direction, Sergio Chejfec published his novel Mis dos mundos with the Catalan independent publishing house Candaya, known for its interest in groundbreaking literary works.

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, writers such as Chitarroni, Sánchez, Guebel, Bizzio, and Cohen remained active in the local arena, engaging in a reverse process that can be described as “localization”. They began publishing with even more “independent” and “local” small publishing houses like Beatriz Viterbo, Eterna Cadencia, Mansalva, and interZona.

The provided Table 6 showcases the publishing houses associated with each author during the period from 2003 to 2010. Anagrama and Random House were among the publishing houses for Alan Pauls, while Caparrós had works published by Planeta, Booket, Seix Barral, and Anagrama. S. Chejfec had his publications with Alfaguara, Norma, and Candaya, while Chitarroni had a connection with interZona and La Bestia Equilátera. Daniel Guebel published with Emecé, C. de Troya, and Beatriz Viterbo, while S. Bizzio had works with Beatriz Viterbo, Eterna Cadencia, Mansalva, and Mondadori. M. Sánchez had publications with Icaria, Alfaguara, and Mondadori. Cohen’s works were associated with Ambrosía, and María Moreno published with Sudamericana (abbreviated to “Sud” in Table 6).

These publishing connections demonstrate the evolving trajectories and localized shifts within the Shanghai group during this period, reflecting their diverse experiences in terms of recognition and circulation in both global and local contexts.

The last analyzed stage of the writers’ network demonstrates a significant decrease in its scope and number of participants. The distribution of the nodes is a consequence of the main type of relations during this period, which can be characterized as bidirectional connections such as joint publications in shared anthologies and monographs considered in this period as forms of relationships. Here the edge weight represents the similarity between the node degrees, where a higher similarity means a smaller edge length, which can be appreciated through the metrics since the difference in terms of PageRank and weighted degree is very small among the first four authors (Guebel, Chejfec, Chitarroni, and Pauls).

Figure 10: Local and international publishing houses from Shanghai writers in Madrid (2002-2010). The meaning of the colors (green, red, and blue) coincide with the ones in Table 5 and Table 6.

Furthermore, there was a “boom” of collective books published by local publishing houses in Argentina during this time, and it is common to find more than two or three members of the previous Shanghai group contributing to these anthologies. Daniel Guebel appears as the most recurrent name in these compilations, actively promoting group identifications. He, along with Sergio Bizzio, authored a collective work that pays tribute to C.E. Feiling titled El día feliz de Charlie Feiling. Additionally, Guebel participated in a documentary about Alan Pauls’ works titled Alan Pauls. Conversaciones con Daniel Guebel.

These collective projects and collaborations further highlight the ongoing connections and sense of community among the writers from the Shanghai group, even as the network’s size diminishes. It underscores their continued engagement and mutual support, as well as their commitment to honoring their shared history and the memory of their fellow writers.

Pauls’ position within the group is indeed interesting, as he once again centralizes the network in the final period, despite not being among the most involved in group activities.¹⁶ While Chitarroni continues to play a significant “gatekeeping” role within the group, Pauls acts as a mediator between the network and external circles due to his worldwide recognition. As a result, he remains connected to everyone in the group without being tied to any particular member. This “in-between” position can explain his central role without his active participation in group events.

Figure 11: Local and international publishing houses from Shanghai writers in Barcelona (2002-2010). The meaning of the colors (green, red, and blue) coincide with the ones in Table 5 and Table 6.

Figure 12: Local and international publishing houses from Shanghai writers in Buenos Aires (2002-2010). The meaning of the colors (green, red, and blue) coincide with the ones in Table 5 and Table 6.

Figure 13: Shanghai network’s structure (2003-2010). The node size and blue degree indicate the members’ PageRank.

Unlike Chejfec, Pauls still resides in Argentina during the first decade of the twenty-first century, making him more readily available for group events where he may choose to participate. Furthermore, Pauls’ acquired symbolic capital is not insignificant, as he can potentially open doors for his former partners. However, Pauls’ position can be seen as an example of the benefits of being “in-between”. He absorbs ideas, social capital, and new literary trends from different cultural contexts, both locally and globally (Rodríguez-Alfonso 2024). This allows him to navigate multiple grids and enrich his own work, as his literary work has proven.

In summary, Shanghai’s itinerary demonstrates a clear correlation between an author’s position in the network and their level of internationalization. Those who occupied central positions in the network during the initial stages are the ones who eventually achieved international recognition and published their works in major global publishing houses. On the contrary, the authors who were initially located on the periphery of the social circle had a limited impact, often publishing locally or within national publishing houses.

Furthermore, writers who remain within the local publishing sphere encourage their membership in the network and its maintenance. In contrast, those who achieve internationalization tend to leave the local system altogether (like Caparrós) or remain in a peripheral position within the global circuit. Essentially, authors with a “local” distribution still rely on the “community” for support, as well as for potential material and aesthetic exchange.

Additionally, it is evident that authors who have achieved “global” status have expanded beyond the original Shanghai network and integrated themselves into other transnational networks. As discussed in a previous article, this integration into local or multiple global networks not only impacts the circulation and reception of their books but also influences their ideas and aesthetics (Rodríguez-Alfonso 2022, 2024). Writers within a smaller sociability sphere, such as a local network, have access to a narrower diversity of ideas, though these ideas tend to be more pronounced due to the dense ties within local networks. Equally, authors exposed to multiple global networks have access to a broader understanding of dominant aesthetics in the international market, leading to more multifaceted works but also possibly conforming more frequently to market standards. This dynamic contributes to the emergence of experimental and highly local aesthetics in authors such as Chitarroni, Guebel, or Cohen.

While the primary objective of the study did not center on this aspect, the obtained results have proven invaluable in unveiling or, at times, refuting existing literature on the literary group. On the one hand, assumptions of antagonism between writers from Shanghai and their contemporaries around the Planeta group (Klein 2014; Rodríguez-Carranza 1992) have been dismantled. On the other hand, it has been demonstrated that writers such as Juan Forn or Rodrigo Fresán were part of the Shanghai circle during the 1990s, exposing the disparity between the actual social structure in the field and the promotion of an authorial discourse that pits supposedly different schools against each other in pursuit of demonstrating originality.

On another level, the extensive bibliography emphasizing Martín Caparrós as the “head” of the group during the last decade of the twentieth century, and the most well-recognized author of that time, has been questioned. This came to light upon the discovery of the significance of C.E. Feiling before his abrupt demise. In contradiction to previous literature (Sassi 2006; Conde de Boeck 2017) asserting that no women truly belonged to the group, our research has underscored the affiliation of more than one Argentinean female writer. Even when they were clearly segregated to the peripheral sections of the network, they were more closely connected to the group than has been reported. Lastly, while recent literature on the Shanghai group tends to prioritize the significance of writers such as Alan Pauls, Martín Caparrós, or Daniel Guebel (Castro 2009; Conde de Boeck 2022), the results unveil the key role played by Luis Chitarroni and C.E. Feiling in the maintenance and legitimization of the group throughout the years.

Bourdieu’s concept of the cultural field emphasizes the struggle for recognition, yet the network analysis approach reveals that legitimation is just one facet of a multifaceted system of relationships. Within this system, mediation and circulation hold significant roles on both social and aesthetic planes. Moreover, the rigid dichotomy between opposing groups has been deconstructed through a meticulous examination of the Shanghai network structure. This analysis has unveiled that writers from seemingly opposing circles, such as Juan Forn and Rodrigo Fresán associated with the “Planetarios” group, were in fact part of the same social ecosystem as the Shanghai writers.

This approach sheds light on another limitation of Bourdieu’s theory: The differentiation between “actual” divergent aesthetic agendas and the adoption of “authorial postures”, as named by Meizoz (2007). The necessity to discern between a writer’s public demeanor and the true essence of their literary work becomes evident upon discovering that both “Planetarios” and “Shanghai” authors, who projected themselves as contenders for local literary power, were interconnected within the same social network.

Furthermore, Bourdieu’s assertion regarding the “autonomy” of the cultural field has been challenged by our study of the Shanghai network. Social and symbolic capitals, exemplified by metrics like centrality, eigenvector centrality, and density possessed by network mediators, do not guarantee visibility and legitimation within the Latin American “eccentric” circles of global literature, where groundbreaking works often remain confined to the local sphere.

In this sense, this article has not proposed a deterministic relationship between internationalization and social capital. Rather, a clear example has been our insistence on the role played by the “brokers” or mediators who have hold high social capital, which may not necessarily serve to achieve internationalization for themselves, while playing a crucial role in legitimizing and promoting the work of their peers. Moreover, the article recognizes that other factors play significant roles in shaping the circulation and globalization of Latin American authors, such as gender, being the disadvantage faced by women writers in the group, although not as noticeable through the SNA performed in this paper. The style or themes of their literary works, where those with distinct local references or experimental nature may face greater challenges, could still play a significant role, as previous studies have pointed out (Apter 2006; Walkowitz 2015), as well as factors like migration, social class, or even death.

In another vein, considering the temporal division of the regional publishing system over the last four decades mentioned in the introductory section, internationalization and/or recognition through awards and transnational publishers may be deliberately rejected by authorial decisions. By 2010, the majority of cultural relations within the Shanghai group had disappeared, and the network’s decline had progressed. While some social interactions among the writers still remained, they were not sufficient to sustain the vitality of the literary network. Additionally, the second decade of the twenty-first century witnessed significant changes in the book market and literature’s modes of circulation. Visibility and legitimation strategies analyzed in this study have been dramatically replaced by new forms facilitated by the World Wide Web, which offer global and immediate reach such as blogs or platforms as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

The Latin American publishing market has undergone significant transformations, with publishing in small and independent houses no longer seen as a limitation for national isolation. Many books now circulate across the continent and internationally. Furthermore, the aesthetic and political avant-garde orientation of these local publishing houses has led many authors to intentionally publish with them, distancing themselves from the imperatives of readability and mass-marketing imposed by large transnational publishers. As previously mentioned, the choice to publish with small and ‘cult’ publishers can be an authorial preference in recent decades, providing as much or even more symbolic capital than publishing with a large publishing house, as illustrated in the Argentine system by the writer César Aira (Riveiro 2020, 2021). In this sense, members of the Shanghai group such as Luis Chitarroni, Sergio Chejfec, or Matilde Sánchez exemplify this shift towards local independent publishers at the expense of international ones, at the end of the first decade of the 2010s. This shift may be motivated by the pursuit of “distinction” and “exclusivity” on which this new form of symbolic capital rests. In conclusion, Shanghai’s case exemplifies how an author’s position within the network is closely linked to international success, while it also highlights the complexities and various factors influencing the trajectory of those writers who came from Latin America at the turn of the twentieth to the twenty-first century.