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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.
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DIGITAL FORMATIONS
IT and New Architectures in the Global Realm
Edited by
Robert Latham and Saskia Sassen
PRINCETON U N I V ERSITY PRESS
P R IN C E TON
AND
OXFORD
ConUn� Copyright © 2005 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire 0X20 1SY All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Digital formations: IT and new architectures in the global realm I edired by Robert Latham and Saskia Sassen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical ref�ences and index. ISBN 0-691-119864 (cloth, alk. paper) - ISBN 0-691-11987-2 (pbk., alk. paper) 1 . Information rechnology. 2. Computer networks. 3. Communication, Interna tional. I. Latham, Robert. II. Sassen, Saskia. HM851.D53 2005 303.48'33-dc22
2004062467
British Library Caraloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Saban Printed on acid-free paper. pup.princeton.edu
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List ofIllustrations
Acknowledgments
vii IX
Introduction Digital Formations: Constructing an Object of Study ROBERT LATHAM AND SASKIA SASSEN
SPACES OF KNOWLEDGE
35
Recombinant Technology and New Geographies of Association
37
JONATHAN BACH AND DAVID STARK
Electronic Markets and Activist Networks: The Weight of Social Logics in Digital Formations
54
SASKIA SASSEN
The New Mobility of Knowledge: Digital Information Systems and Global Flagship Networks
89
DIETER ERNST
NETWORKS OF COOPERATION
115
Cooperative Networks and the Rural-Urban Divide
117
D_ LINDA GARCIA
Networks, Information, and the Rise of the Global Internet
146
ROBERT LATHAM
The Political Economy of Open Source Software and Why It Matters
178
STEVEN WEBER
DESIGNS AND INSTIT