Samenvatting

This article discusses what is left aside in the perspective of nodal governance: namely the adaptability and dynamics of social reality itself. The challenge is to research ‘what actually happens’ without reducing it to collective structures or specific frameworks in advance. Previous to specific structures (‘teams’) and frameworks (‘meetings’, ‘contracts’) there is constant change, movement and difference. By using the work of the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904) the authors research how the nodes police, insurers and loss adjusters cooperate in the fight against transport criminality and how interactions between these nodes take content and shape. Consequently, their cooperation is not interpreted as a static theme, but rather as a dynamic process that requires constant interpretation in terms of relationships, unexpected events, adaptations and coincidences. On the basis of fifteen in-depth interviews the authors show in which way a ‘new language’ with ‘new mechanisms’ originates within the cooperation. As a consequence, ‘informal contacts’, ‘goals and interests’, ‘mutual confidence’ and ‘information-exchange’, which play an important role between the nodes, are constantly re-defined.