Information, Power, and Politics

Technological and Institutional Mediations

Contributions by César Bolaño, Yann Moulier Boutang, Sandra Braman, Giuseppe Cocco, Maria Eduarda da Mota Rocha, Jonatas Ferreira, Alain Herscovici, Maria Nélida González de Gómez, Dan Schiller Edited by Sarita Albagli, Maria Lucia Maciel

Publication date:

29 November 2010

Length of book:

222 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739148358

With the spread of information and communication technologies (ICTs) comes the potential both for new social and economic equalities and new forms of inequalities. Information, Power, and Politics: Technological and Institutional Mediations demonstrates that ICTs can act as an impetus for democratizing information and knowledge, while at the same time new institutional frameworks can limit one's use of and access to strategic information and knowledge. The volume's contributors address ways to strengthen and affirm the socially marginalized as well as suggest how best to incorporate (semi)peripheral countries and regions into the international system. Information, Power, and Politics offers a refreshing and timely perspective on the ever-evolving relationship between information, knowledge, and communication.

Chapter 1 Information, Power, and Politics: From the South, Beyond the South
Chapter 2 The Representational Economy and the Global Information Policy Regime
Chapter 3 Wikipolitics and the Economy of the Bees: Information, Power, and Politics in a Digital Society
Chapter 4 Information, Knowledge, and Power: From the Point of View of Relations between Politics, Economics, and Language
Chapter 5 The Crisis of Cognitive Capitalism from the Point of View of Amerindian Perspectivism
Chapter 6 Digital Capitalism in Crisis
Chapter 7 Productive Restructuring, Subsumption of Intellectual Labor, and the Contradictory Dynamics of Development
Chapter 8 Knowledge, Information, and Intellectual Property Rights: An Institutionalist Analysis of the Different Governance Modalities
Chapter 9 Digital Democracy: Beyond the Idea of Distributive Justice

This volume presents a penetrating analysis of key contradictions in the nexus of information, knowledge and power within 21st century capitalism. Through their appropriation of digital technologies, forces of resistance may lead to a deepening of democracy or, alternatively, dominant actors may succeed in institutionalising new means of control through their appropriation of the means of communication. The authors offer much needed critical assessments of alternative cultural, social and economic positionings as viewed from the 'South.'