I 590 (temporary) D. Hakken
Globalizing Informatics Fall, 2006
Working Course Syllabus
Catalogue Description:
Explores the processes that promote and impede movement of human action and informational activities to the most general levels, e.g., the level of the world as a whole. Surveys diverse theories of globalization to identify the best approaches for professional informatics career planning and making information globally accessible.
General Approach
This course draws out the implications for the professional practice of Informatics of globalization and all the talk about it. Common to this talk is the idea of a profound change in the scale at which social formation reproduction takes place. Thus, globalization can be defined as a process that results in a substantial increase in the extent to which social formations reproduce on very large, today a trans-national scale; i.e., that reproduction is marked by globality.
“Social formation reproduction” is the concept used in social science to refer to process by which social relations replicate, either in simple or extended form. Because human social relations do not “naturally” replicate—e.g., by genetic means—their reproduction must in some sense be deliberate, or at least are dependent upon “positive” activities. A shift in reproductive scale, like globalization, implies at least some deliberate intervention.
A “nation” is a geo-political entity claiming sovereignty over a particular area, “sovereignty” meaning having power dominance, the actuality of rule. In recent history, the nation has been the focus of most deliberate efforts to influence how social formations reproduce. In the current era, one can point to several developments in which national sovereignty has contracted: the extension of markets in capital and the emerging influence of new organizational forms like The Internet Society are obvious examples. Several efforts to increase the scale of reproduction, in order to transcend national boundaries, correlate in time with these developments. Thus a first question to ask about globalization is whether this correlation indicates a causation: To what extent has globalization been caused by deliberate efforts to promote it?
For many social commenters (e.g., Thomas Friedman), changes toward the global command our attention because they transform the way humans live. So another basic empirical question is, how significant are globalization’s impacts on social formation reproduction? Other scholars ask a third set of more evaluative questions: Is globalization a good idea, and what if anything should be done about it (Stiglitz)?
Finally, for many such commenters, there is presumed to be an intrinsic connection between globalization and the deployment of automated information and communications technologies; i.e., that AICTs cause globalization. What more exactly is the character of the AICT/globalization connection? Information’s digitization in some general sense affords ease of its transmission, but is globalizaion a “side effect,” a powerful but nevertheless unintended consequence of the use of AICTs, or does it make more sense to see the promotion of AICT use as in substantial part an effort to promote globalization? How strong is the ACIT/globalization link?
The professional informatician is a solver of problems through the deployment of AICTs. To do this well, she must be able to anticipate what is likely to happen when AICTs are actually used. Even if one does not, like Friedman, think that the world is flat, globalization seems increasingly to influence what happens in the AICTs use context. Thus, an understanding of the scope and likely impacts of globalization is an increasingly necessary professional skill. (Indeed, the very existence of Informatics as a field is dependent to some extent on the idea that these technologies are uniquely transformative. However, our professional practice is put at risk when we rely on overly grandiose claims regarding AICTs inherent inclinations toward changes like globalization.)
Finally, inequalities of access to and the ability to use information are a major cause of international tension. Informists can substantially increase the universality of information by knowing how to globalize it.
Consequent course learning objectives:
1. To orient the student to the wide variety of scholarly discourses on globalization and compare them to the popular talk extant today;
2. To help the student develop criteria for differentiating between more and less useful globalization talk; and
3. To improve the students’ abilities to use research to analyze the implications of potential globalization effects that might follow from implementing AICT systems, whether particular ones or in general;
4. To understand the implications of globalization scholarship for professional careers in Informatics; and
5. To develop skills in universalizing information.
To accomplish these objectives, the course will be organized around the following topics:
1. Introduction: Popular general perspectives on globalization in historical and cultural perspective
2. Serial examination of diverse perspectives on globalization according to the particular moments in social formation reproduction that they privilege, including:
a. The economic, including the rise to prominence of more global markets, especially in capital, and their implications;
b. The political and political economic, including the displacement of the nation as the key social form and international property;
c. The historical, including comparison with prior moments of globalization;
d. the cultural, including the alleged marginalization of diversity;
e. the “informatical”, including the networking of knowledge and whether AICTs are inherently globalizing;
f. the anti-global, including resistance, localization, glocalization, and lobalization
3. Development of a specifically Informatics research program on globalization; and
4. Professional Informatics practices that help one anticipate the globalizing implications of AICT deployment on one’s career and expand one’s universalizing skills.
Course texts:
Bhagwati, Jagdish
2004 In defense of globalization. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Stiglitz, Joseph E.
2002 Globalization and its discontents. New York: W.W. Norton and Co.
Student responsibilities:
1. Prepare for class by reading the assigned materials, preparing questions/comments about them, and participating actively in discussing them (10% of grade);
2. Submit weekly a journal that tracks a student-selected aspect of globalization or globalsm over the semester (10%);
3. Organize themselves into topic-related research/study teams, each student’s contribution to which will also count 10% of the grade;
4. Do a class presentation on and submit an ~15 page research paper on the relationship of some aspect of AICTs-in-use to globalization (45%), including completion of the following steps:
a. Submit initial proposal (9/20), addressing
i. The question you wish to answer
ii. The main alternative answers to the question
iii. The information which would allow you to select the best answer; and
iv. The methods you will use to get this information
b. Submit a final proposal on 10/18
c. Schedule a presentation during 11/27 or 29
d. Submit a final report on the project on 12/4; and
5. Stand a written, comprehensive final exam (25%).
Detailed class topics, readings, and student exercises and work to be developed and published shortly.
Draft SCHEDULE:
8/28 Introduction: Popular general perspectives on globalization in historical and cultural perspective
8/30 Some popular and some scholarly perspectives on globalization IU Glob TF
9/4 Globalization economics: Freidman, Wolf, Bhagwati
9/6 markets Stiglitz
9/11 capital Hutton
9/13 property Mauer and Schwab
9/18 Globalization Politics Held
9/20 Gateways and Standards Hanseth Initial Proposal
9/25 No Class; EPIC
9/27 Political Economy Hakken
10/2 Globalization Histories Wolf, Modelski
10/4 Thompson
10/9 Globalizing Culture? Inda and Rosaldo
10/11 Appadurai
11/16 Informatics Globalization Lessig, Friedman
10/18 Castells Final Proposal
10/23 Counter-currents to Globalization: Glocalization and Lobalization Hakken
10/25 Anti-globalization social movements Klein
10/30 Pro-globalization social movements: ICT 4 D and A2K (Access to knowledge)
11/1 No class?; SSSS
11/ 6 Informatics Research on Globalization Hakken, et. Al.
11/8 Indigenous property rights Christen, Shorter
11/13 Professional Perspectives on Globalization
11/15 No Class: AAA
11/20 Open Class
11/22 NO CLASS; THANKSGIVING RECESS
11/27 Presentations
11/29 Presentations
12/4 Conclusions Report due
12/6 Review
12/11 EXAM?
Additional Resources
IU Libraries Global Studies collections
Bibliography
Appadurai, Arjun
1996 Modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P.
Berger, Suzanne, and Ronald Dore. eds
1996 National diversity and global capitalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP.
Bhagwati, Jagdish
2004 In defense of globalization. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Castells, Manuel
2000 The rise of the ntework society. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers.
Finnemore, Martha
1996 National interests in international society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP.
Friedman, Thomas L.
2005 The world is flat: a brief history of the3 twenty-first century. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Hakken, David
2006 Global, Local, Glocal, or Lobal? What Study of Free/Libre and Open Source Software in Malaysia Suggests about Technoscientific “Trading Zones” and Social Formation Reproduction. Bloomington, IN: IU School of Informatics.
Hakken, David, John Lorinskas, Muzaffer Orzakca, and Venkata Ratnadeep Suri
2006 A tool approach to globalizing ethnography of information. In Globalizing Informatics Research. Bloomington, IN: School of Informatics, Indiana University.
Hannerz, Ulf
1996 Transnational connections: culture, people, places. London: Routledge.
Held, D, A. McGraw, D. Goldblatt, and J. Perreton
1999 Global transformation: politics, economics, and culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP.
Inda, Jonathan X., and Renato Rosaldo, eds
2002 The anthropology of globalization: a reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.
Klein, Naomi
2002 Fences and windows: dispatches from the globalization debate. New York: St. Martins/Picador.
Lessig, Lawrence
2005 Free culture: the nature and future of creativity. New York: Penguin.
Maurer, Bill, and Gabriele Schwab, eds
2006 Accelerating posession: global future of property and personhood. New York: Columbia University Press.
Modelski, George
2006a Globalization as evolutionary process. Vienna: IIASA.
Modelski, George, and Tessaleno Devazas
2006b Political globsalzation as global political evolution. Vienna.
Paolillo, John
2004 Language diversity on the Internet. Geneva: UNESCO Institute for Statistics.
Ross, Andrew
2006 Fast boad to China: corporate flight and the consequenses of free trade--lessons from Shanghai. New York: Random House.
Saul, John Ralston
2005 The collapse of globalism. New York: Atlantic.
Shafie, Ghazali
1998 Malay nationalism and globalisation. Kuala Lumpur: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.
Shamsul, A.B.
1999 Globalization and identity formation in Malaysia: a comment. Sarawak Development Journal 2(2):1-12.
Stiglitz, Joseph E.
2002 Globalization and its discontents. New York: W.W. Norton and Co.
Subianto, Landry Haryo
2001 Globalization, Re-structure and political stability: A view from Jakarta. The Indonesian Quarterly XXIX(3):265-276.
Taylor, Annie, and Caroline Thomas, eds.
1999 Global trade and global social issues. London: Routledge.