Past, Present and Future 161sometimes emerge at the level of interface – translations that, in turn, produce a
highly ordering effect, even though it is not chosen by anybody as such.
Interface studies are essentially concerned with the analysis of discontinuities in social life.
Such discontinuities are characterised by discrepancies in values, interests, knowledge and
power. Interfaces typically occur at points where different, and often conflicting, ‘life-worlds’
or social fields intersect. More concretely, they characterise social situations ... wherein the
interactions between actors become oriented around the problem of devising ways of ‘bridg-
ing’, accommodating to, or struggling against each others’ different social and cognitive worlds
(Long, 1989, p232).The development of a project implies risks, which are largely related to the ques-
tion of whether the required connections with other projects can be established.
Considerable risks exist on and around the interfaces. Heavy investments are often
required in the creation of concrete agreements. The withdrawal of one actor can
imply a major disappointment. Realization of possibilities that have thus far not
been taken advantage of is risky, for the individual actors involved in the construc-
tion of a new network, and for all of those involved as a whole.
Risks are perceived in various ways. If the realization of a certain project pre-
supposes a considerable input of external capital – that is, the association with an
external financier – this introduces a perspective in which the relation between
opportunities and risks are decisively different from when this does not apply.
External funding implies a particular way of valuing invested capital – that is, as an
increase in the value of invested capital. This entails particular criteria: it forces the
actors involved to develop their project in a particular way – that is, to extend
certain possibilities, to curtail or exclude other possibilities, to enter into certain
coalitions, to rule out others. Such ‘coercion’ will apply less if one can use one’s
own resources and if other forms of valuation can be chosen.
Financial capital^33 wields a highly conservative influence: it ‘forces’ the devel-
opment and utilization of new possibilities into the mainstream of established
projects and their related interests and visions. It corkscrews new plans towards
dominant constellations and towards their associated certainties. These constella-
tions seem to offer trust, the (supposed) certainty that there is no, or a lesser degree
of, risk. Related interests are reproduced via the chain of risk avoidance, the search
for certainty and dominant visions. Capital, in the Marxist sense, represents power
and dominance, but not for intrinsic reasons. Capital retains its dominance because
it is repeatedly used as a guiding compass in the process of project development.
There are, of course, other ways to develop and realize a project:
1 by using resources that do not need to be used as capital in the narrow sense of
financial capital;
2 by using other calculi, with a broader range of values;
3 by structuring the development process differently (for example, step by step
as opposed to all at once).