Technologies and Materialities of Globalization
1. Introduction – Regulating Fordist and Post-Fordist Global Production
This unit considers key questions relating to globalization and global economic regulation in the context of the changes in the nature of global production from ‘Fordist’ mass production systems to ‘post-Fordist’ networked production systems. It also explores the nature of Network Society. It further explores the nature of changes in legal and other regulation consequent on these changes.
Key Readings:
Waters, M (1995) Globalization, London: Routledge, pp93-95.
Sklair L (2002) Globalization: Capitalism and its Alternatives Oxford, Oxford UP, pp35-48.
Tshuma L (2000) “Hierarchies and Government versus Networks and Governance: Competing Regulatory Paradigms in Global Economic Regulation”, also Social and Legal Studies http://sls.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/9/1/115
Castells M 2000 The Information Age: Economy Society, Culture. Vol 1 The Rise of the Network Society 2nd ed. Blackwell, Oxford.
Exercise:
Consider the ways in which the car production and distribution industry has changed from the pre-World War II period to the post-War period to the 21st Century. What has been the nature and role of information technologies in these changes? What legal and other regulatory changes have accompanied these changes? Prepare a 500 word list of the issues. Make a 10 minute group presentation in class based on these issues.
2. Digitalization & Information as a Global Public Good
Information technologies have been at the core of the intensification of global economic, social and cultural relationships, although it is difficult to divide these into cause and effect. However, contemporary society is often described as the Information Society. Benkler takes this one step further in suggesting that ‘the networked information economy’ is a radically different mode of production from the previous forms of mass production economic forms and therefore will have enormous social and regulatory consequences. This unit therefore considers the new division of haves and have nots in this ‘information’ or ‘networked information economy’ in the context of a global digital divide. Key questions to be considered include:
a. the extent to which global regulatory practices contribute to digital discrimination.
b. Whether information is a public good and the extent to which the encroachment of the digital commons by intellectual property law undermines the public good.
Key Readings:
Kaul, Grunberg and Stern eds 1999, Global Public Goods pp xix- xxxvii.
Paliwala A 2004. Legal Regulation and Uneven Global Digital Diffusion. Paper presented to CSGR Conference on Globalization. University of Warwick.
Benkler Y 2003 “FREEDOM IN THE COMMONS: TOWARDS A POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INFORMATION” 52 Duke LJ 1245.
http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?52+Duke+L.+J.+1245
Liang L 2004. “Copyright, Cultural Production and Open Content Licensing” Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdr/pubsfolder/liangessay/view
Bowrey, K (2005) “Telling Tales: Digital Piracy and the Law” in Bowrey, K Law and Internet Cultures CambridgeUP , Cambridge.
Paliwala A (2006) “Free Culture, Global Commons, Pirates and Cowboys: A development agenda for information technology diffusion” Second International Symposium on Information Law, “Alternative Frameworks for the Validation and Implementation of Intellectual Property in Developing Nations” University of Wolverhampton, UK. February 2006
Wider Readings
Benkler Y 2002. “Coase’s Penguin, or, Linux and the Nature of the Firm” 112 Yale Law Journal, 369.
Benkler Y 2004. “Sharing Nicely: On Shareable Goods and the Emergence of Sharing as a Modality of Economic Production” 114 Yale L J 273
Boyle J 2004. “A manifesto on WIPO and the Future of Intellectual Property” 2004 Duke Law and Technology Review 0009.
Coombe R. 1998. The cultural life of intellectual properties: Authorship, Appropriation and the Law. Durham, London, Duke University Press.
Castells M 1998, Information Technology, Globalization and Social Development. Conference on Information Technology and Development, Geneva, UNISRD.
Castells M 2000 The Information Age: Economy Society, Culture. Vol 1 The Rise of the Network Society 2nd ed. Blackwell, Oxford.
Correa C 2000. Intellectual Property Rights, the WTO and Developing Countries: The Trips Agreement and Policy Options. Zed Books: London and New York, TWN: Penang.
Drahos P & Braithwaite J “Information Feudalism : Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?” London Earthscan [Reprint. New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2003]
Lessig L. 2004. Free Culture: How Big Media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity. London and NewYork: Penguin Press.
Norris P 2001. Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Warschauer M 2002. Reconceptualising the Digital Divide. First Monday 7: 7
Warschauer M 2002a. Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide, MIT Press, Cambridge, ma
WIPO 2004. World Intellectual Property Organisation. “Proposal by Argentina and Brazil for the Establishment of a Development Agenda for WIPO”, WIPO, Geneva Wo/Ga/31/11
WSIS 2003. World Summit on Information Society: Declaration of Principles, Building the Information Society: a global challenge in the new Millennium. WSIS – 03/GENEVA/DOC/4-E 12.12.2003. See also Report of the genevaphase of the World Summit on the Information Society Document WSIS-03/GENEVA/9(Rev.1)-E 18 February 2004
WSIS 2005. TunisAgenda for the Information Society 18.11.2005 WSIS-05/TUNIS/DOC/6 (Rev. 1)-E
WSIS 2005a. TunisCommitment. WSIS-05/TUNIS/DOC/7-E 18.11.2005.
Exercise:
Prepare a 500 word submission on one of the following. Make a 10 minute group presentation in class.
Option A: What is the role of globalization in digitalization? To what extent is the digital divide a construction of global economic liberalization policies?
Option B: Consider the views of Benkler and Liang. Do Open Source and Free Software Movements and a new global commons in software promote a culture of innovation and prospects for transforming the global digital divide?
