From Technology and Change to Knowledge and Power Global Political Economy in the Information Age examines how established theoretical traditions of international relations and global political economy are changing in the information age. Global Political Economy in the Information Age is an insightful, fresh and comprehensive assessment of the conceptual challenges of globalization and the new information age.
Preface
The book was a critical reflection on the conceptual limitations of state-centric core International Relations (IR) in the context of globalization, drawing primarily on critiques of International/Global Political Economy (IPE/GPE), Foucaultian and feminist IR. There's a lot that's new in the information age, and I want to explore that here, but I also want us to hold on to insights from the past and revisit them to see how they connect to what's happening in the modern world. slow world.
Acknowledgements
UNAIDS The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS UNCTAD UN Conference on Trade and Development.
Introduction
So how should we approach GPE in hybrid geospatial and sociospatial conditions. The final section of the book focuses on long-term questions of technology and power.
Time/space frameworks
1 States and markets
Such perspectives help us unpack the complex symbolism of the euro and its potential. A dollar identity (economic and political citizenship in the US) carries with it the status of the dollar internationally as well as nationally.
2 Virtual realities
In these ways, technologies are seen as part of the human, institutional and physical environment. The concept of the Web can also be seen as second order in terms of Internet development. Berners-Lee is very much portrayed as a visionary who heads global industry.
Since its founding in 1994, the Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has continued its commitment to developing 'the full potential' of the web and. The complex messages of the films Metropolis (Lang 1926) and Matrix Reloaded (Wachowski and Wachowski 2003) cover several such areas. These complexities are simply left out of the picture in the main case in disembodied analysis.
I would argue that in the information age this is part of the history of sociospace, where wo(man)/.
3 The political economy of time
Darby (42) points to the problem of a limited and West-centred understanding of modernity (and consequently late modernity and postmodernity) embedded in notions of the global in contemporary times. The information age means, in part, the colonization of the world by code and the expanded forms of control and production that result from it. In these and other ways, they are an intrinsic part of the story of globalization.
The extent of the digital divide within and between countries around the world testifies to the material problematic of this ideology. Almost a third of the population was online in Europe and America, the highest penetration rates. By 2004, only 2.5 percent of the world's population (38 percent of Internet users worldwide) had broadband Internet access.
We can note that digital developments map onto some of the most important features of inequality in the familiar geospatial environments of globalization.
Borders and inequality
4 Transcendence and communication
The 24/7 (24 hours a day, seven days a week) and interactive nature of the Internet gives concrete meaning to its potential as a global public space in the making. Attention to both indicates how bounded political communities (states) are communities of knowledge, linking collective and individual senses of identity (history and culture), and how the mass media are integral to the daily maintenance of the country's public sphere. modern states.11. We need to think about horizontal communications and the Internet in different ways to deepen our understanding of the political economy of access in the information age.
These features are part of a policy of access and freedoms for those participating in the public sphere to mark their identities as producers and consumers. The nature of the Internet and its transcendence of geospatial (including national) boundaries provides direct, socio-spatial connectivity for individuals with an international/global realm (in part because there are currently restrictions on who is actually online worldwide). Part of this new surveillance culture, however, is the role of self-monitoring by Internet users.
Since the anarchic sphere is clearly beyond the control of the geospatial (state) sphere, the obvious way to regain control is through the means of accessing the anarchic sphere at the individual (citizen) level.
5 Inequality as driver
This followed China's attraction of the bulk of inward investment in developing economies worldwide in the latter part of the twentieth century. The fact is that it is as much part of the picture of widening inequality gaps (within and between countries), as it is economic growth and revival, including in the developing world. At the same time as bringing dramatic news of economic growth, it also adds to the stock of the world's problems of inequality.
The gender empowerment measure (GEM) introduced in the UNDP's 1995 Human Development Report is one of the main annual statistical methods that attempts to address some of this complexity. The issue of skill levels, and the education and training that goes with it, has become all the more influential in the high-tech orientation of the information economy. In terms of the overall pattern and problems of inequality, the information age is another unfolding of the old as well as the new.
Commentators such as Ronaldo Munck address this in terms of social exclusion, including as it applies to the long-term exploitation of the poorest economies in the world.
6 Embedded patriarchy
Understanding the gender matrix of time contributes to detailed explanations of the links between technology and processes of globalization. The ability of ICTs to restructure relations of time and space is at the heart of the story of globalization. Feminist analysis looks at the gendered underpinnings of the rational actor's view of the world.
This can lead to discourses of globalization that in effect celebrate “the transnational triumph of the technological imperative” (Youngs 1997a: 31; see also Youngs 1996). Second, it is relational in the sense that this role of social reproduction is aimed at serving and sustaining the public world of production. However, they are useful in helping us think about the contrasting conceptual time frames that make up the gender matrix of time.
Access to these uses of time can be considered part of the digital divide debate.
Technofutures and power
7 Complex hegemony in the twenty-first century
Given that the US accounts for roughly half of all global military spending (estimated at US$1,035 billion in 2004 current dollars), its power is unmistakable, especially when added to coalition partners including the UK (the second highest military power). expenditures, but only with a five percent share of global military expenditures).4. Nevertheless, US dominance is real, and the collapse of the USSR made it global' (see also Kaldor 2001). It illustrates that the failures to address the inequalities of the past, far from being less important in the information age, are even more so.
The expansion of the commodity form provides what amounts to material embodiment for digitization” (156). In the mass media age of the twentieth century, television is an iconic piece of technology. In the new media age of the late twentieth century and the twenty-first century, we are talking about the computer screen.
The Internet is part of a changing context for hegemony in vertical (state and market) and horizontal networks and contrasting forms (political and economic) of expression, production and consumption.
Conclusion
My arguments are directed towards the problem of the functioning (and non-functioning) of the principle of equality. The logic of free flow is a technology, as well as communication and exchange, characteristic of the connection of socio-spatial networks. It is also an expression of the symbolic as well as actual effects of the high-tech mode of economic progress.
The nature of the information age is also such that, as well as the means for such new rights, the virtual sphere is also the site where they are explored. The destructive as well as productive purposes of technologies also remind us of the extent to which their innovation and use cover the full range of human tendencies. This is part of the problem of generating imaginative uses for the sociospatial towards sustainability.
Perhaps we need to return to some basic principles of the organization of the economy, incorporating both the sociospatial and geospatial frameworks, and consider how these should and could be linked more effectively towards sustainable development goals.
Notes
One of the most accessible and authoritative discussions of related issues with a political orientation is Stiglitz (2002). 4 For details on the US in World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, see, for example, Calvocoressi and Wint (1972). Strange (1996) includes a discussion of the special role of major accounting firms in the global economy.
22 Schiller (2000) remains one of the best analyzes of the history of the Internet and the political economy of communication related to it. Extract published on the Internet Watch Foundation website, accessed 15 April 2006 at
10 Schiller (2000) is one of the best references for digital development in the US in terms of GPE.
Bibliography
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Index