Digital Formations : : IT and New Architectures in the Global Realm / / ed. by Saskia Sassen, Robert Latham.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• MitwirkendeR: Alker, Hayward R.,; Bach, Jonathan,; Cederman, Lars-Erik,; Ernst, Dieter,; Garcia, D . Linda,; Guthrie, Doug,; Kraus, Peter A.,; Latham, Robert,; Sack, Warren,; Sassen, Saskia,; Stark, David,; Weber, Steven,
• HerausgeberIn: Latham, Robert,; Sassen, Saskia,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2009]; ©2005
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Edition: Course Book
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (384 p.) :; 20 line illus. 4 tables.

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List Of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction Digital Formations: Constructing an Object of Study -- SPACES OF KNOWLEDGE -- Recombinant Technology and New Geographies of Association -- Electronic Markets and Activist Networks: The Weight of Social Logics in Digital Formations -- The New Mobility of Knowledge: Digital Information Systems and Global Flagship Networks -- NETWORKS OF COOPERATION -- Cooperative Networks and the Rural-Urban Divide -- Networks, Information, and the Rise of the Global Internet -- The Political Economy of Open Source Software and Why It Matters -- DESIGNS AND INSTITUTIONS -- Designing Information Resources for Transboundary Conflict Early Warning Networks -- Discourse Architecture and Very Large-scale Conversation -- Transnational Communication and the European Demos -- Information Technology and State Capacity in China -- List of Contributors -- Index