Globalisation and Networked Civility in the Arab Region

Murphy, Emma

Abstract

Globalization is the latest phase in the historic evolution of expansionary capitalism (see also Hinnebusch in this volume). Preceding eras of the internationalization of trade, capital, and labor saw power being located in control over the means of production and exchange of goods and services. In recent decades, however, and most specifically since the development of transistors and semiconductor materials in the 1940s, power has increasingly been located in control over the production and exchange of information. The information and communications technologies (ICTs) that facilitate this exchange include a wide range of modes and applications that are progressively converging into a profoundly connected, multiplatform network. The capacities of ICTs to collapse physical and temporal distances drive a new phase of capitalist expansion—what Manuel Castells termed informational capitalism (Castells 1997)—in which the heart of power lies not in autonomous transnational corporations but in networks of information producers, distributors, and consumers. In Castells’s world, networks diffuse the previously geographic concentrations of capitalist power, although the networks still exhibit spaces of higher or lower density that may correlate with physical spaces, such as Silicon Valley in California or Fukuoka City in Japan.

Citation

Encounters and Horizons (41-58). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137031761_3

• Publication Date: 2012
• Deposit Date: Oct 11, 2013
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Pages: 41-58
• Book Title: The Middle East and Globalization; Encounters and Horizons
• ISBN: 9781349440856
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137031761_3