Digital Formations

IT and New Architectures in the Global Realm

By: Robert Latham (Editor), Saskia Sassen (Editor)

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Paperback | 4 October 2005

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384 Pages

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23.4 x 15.2 x 235

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Computer-centered networks and technologies are reshaping social relations and constituting new social domains on a global scale, from virtually borderless electronic markets and Internet-based large-scale conversations to worldwide open source software development communities, transnational corporate production systems, and the global knowledge-arenas associated with NGO networks. This book explores how such "digital formations" emerge from the ever-changing intersection of computer-centered technologies and the broad range of social contexts that underlie much of what happens in cyberspace.

While viewing technologies fundamentally in social rather than technical terms, Digital Formations nonetheless emphasizes the importance of recognizing the specific technical capacities of digital technologies. Importantly, it identifies digital formations as a new area of study in the social sciences and in thinking about globalization. The ten chapters, by leading scholars, examine key social, political, and economic developments associated with these new configurations of organization, space, and interaction. They address the operation of digital formations and their implications for the development of longstanding institutions and for their wider contexts and fields, and they consider the political, economic, and other forces shaping those formations and how the formations, in turn, are shaping such forces.

Following a conceptual introduction by the editors are chapters by Hayward Alker, Jonathan Bach and David Stark, Lars-Erik Cederman and Peter A. Kraus, Dieter Ernst, D. Linda Garcia, Doug Guthrie, Robert Latham, Warren Sack, Saskia Sassen, and Steven Weber.

Industry Reviews

"A valuable contribution to scholarship, and one that I enjoyed reading, Digital Formations takes a unique approach to the subject of information technology. In seeking to build new conceptual frameworks and develop new perspectives, it provides a solid foundation for the elaboration of future empirical and theoretical work on IT and globalization." - Michel S. Laguerre, University of California, Berkeley, author of The Informal City and The Global Ethnopolis "Comprehensive and insightful, Digital Formations will be greeted warmly in the fields that over-lap its concerns. It addresses a most important set of questions concerning the relationship of information technologies to globalization. And this is an urgent topic for social science." - Mark Poster, University of California, Irvine, author of The Mode of Information and What's the Matter with the Internet?"

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Sociology & Anthropology Science Science in General Impact of Science & Technology on Society Engineering & Technology Technology in General Computing & I.T.Information Technology General Issue Ethical & Social Aspects of IT Computer Science Society & Culture

Social Issues & Processes Globalisation

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: Digital Formations: Constructing an Object of Study	p. 1
Spaces of Knowledge	p. 35
Recombinant Technology and New Geographies of Association	p. 37
Electronic Markets and Activist Networks: The Weight of Social Logics in Digital Formations	p. 54
The New Mobility of Knowledge: Digital Information Systems and Global Flagship Networks	p. 89
Networks of Cooperation	p. 115
Cooperative Networks and the Rural-Urban Divide	p. 117
Networks, Information, and the Rise of the Global Internet	p. 146
The Political Economy of Open Source Software and Why It Matters	p. 178
Designs and Institutions	p. 213
Designing Information Resources for Transboundary Conflict Early Warning Networks	p. 215
Discourse Architecture and Very Large-scale Conversation	p. 242
Transnational Communication and the European Demos	p. 283
Information Technology and State Capacity in China	p. 312
List of Contributors	p. 339
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Digital Formations

IT and New Architectures in the Global Realm

At a Glance

Paperback

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

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