Managing the Global: Competing Perspectives
Anthony Giddens, 'Globalization and Communication'
Professor Gidden's keynote @Annenberg session will address critical issues tied to globalization and communication.James R. Beniger, 'The Meaning of Globalization'
Professor Beniger will critically examine the concept of 'globalization' - is it a central process of contemporary society or an over-worked platitude?Cultural Perspectives on Global Communication
Sandra Ball-Rokeach and others, 'The Globalization of Everyday Life'
A concrete concern for most of us is how the communication revolution of the Internetaffects the possibilities and conduct of our everyday famiy and work lives.One theme we explore concerns immigrants to Los Angeles from the Pacific Rim andNAFTA regions. We ask whether there is evidence for the development of regional communities that parallel these political economies. For example,do recent immigrants from these areas maintain strong communication connectionswith their countries of origin for the development of their careers as well asfor cultural and social reasons? If we find evidence of such connectedness, this would signal a change from traditional patterns of immigrant disconnection from their countries of origin, save for immediate family ties. It would also suggest the possibilitythat regional communities might be the new social formation congealing weakened nation states. Is the Internet being employed to sustain family and friendshipties that might have been unsustainable in pre-Internet times?Roger Silverstone, 'Finding a voice: minorities, media and the global commons'
This is a paper about voices and spaces. It raises a number of questions about the capacity of minority groups to occupy what I want to call the global commons. It is a prologue to what I hope will be a research project investigating the potential of the new, and the less than new, global media for the construction of sociality, for the creation of minority, marginal, diasporic, presence, in cultural and in political space.It argues that the media must be central to any analysis of the global, that through the media the world, the globe, is reflected, refracted, represented, imagined, claimed and reflected upon. It argues that this is a political process, historically conditioned, sociologically contested, and driven by various contradictory longings: for profit, for identity, for community. It suggests that those who claim a piece of this increasingly digital world, and a place in it, must contend powerfully with the other, for its occupation and its appropriation. And it examines, both briefly and hesitantly, the chances of minority groups, variously constituted and defined, to share, and to share in, what might still be thought as an open, predominantly electronic, space.
Sarah Banet-Weiser, 'The Politics of Innocence: Entertainment Culture and National Identity'
As the definition of what counts as entertainment continually shifts, it is important to recognize the way in which entertainment culture both creates and legitimates national identity. This presentation will examine this connection between entertainment and national identity, and will focus on children and entertainment culture. Primarily created by adults, the current concept of childhood as a place of innocence functions to assuage fears and anxieties about living in late twentieth century post-industrialist society. Dr. Banet-Weiser will argue that in order to understand the relationship between children and entertainment culture, we need to think about children's own desires, fantasies, and agendas--not how adult culture is mapped onto the lives of children, but how children are active participants in culture.Douglas Thomas, 'The International Politics of the Hacker'
Prof Thomas will focus on hackers and global politics in an effort to comment and extend on Arjun Appadurai's idea of globalization and 'technoscapes' in his Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.Sonia Livingstone
Prof Livingstone will be a discussant and rapporteur onthe cultural dimensions of global media and communication.The Business and Industries of Communication and Entertainment
Leslie Sklair, 'Global Production and Consumption'
Leslie Sklaair will provide a sociological perspective on global industries and global consumption.David Puttnam, 'The Film Industry'
David Puttnam will not be able to attend the LA forum, butwill develop a paper on the global film industry.Marty Kaplan, 'Entertaining the World'
Marty Kaplan will focus a position paper on the globalization of entertainment, and discussions of the global entertainment-media companies as the new nation-states.Management and Organization on a Global Scale
Peter Monge and Janet Fulk, 'Knowledge Networks'
They will present their research on 'knowledge networks'.Danny Quah, `The Weightless Economy'
Professor Quah will not be able to attend the Los Angeles forum, but will write on the relevance of the new `weightless economy'toglobalization.Colleen Keough, 'Managing a Global Workforce'
Dr Keough will present a paper on the the organizational and managament implications of a global workforce.Patricia Riley, 'Online Media in Global Organizations'
Prof Riley will focus on critical issues arising around onlinemedia in global organizations, such as how learning takes place in widely distributed organizational systems.Politics, Economics, and Governance
Margaret Scammell, 'Globalization and the Political Campaign'
Dr Scammell will discuss her work on the globalization/Americanization of political campaigns.Thomas Hollihan, 'Global and Regional Challenges to the Meaning of Citizenship'
Prof Hollihan will focus on the implications of economic and political integration for political participation and identities. Does globalization undermine citizenship? Does it open or close possibilities for democratic political participation.Terhi Rantanen, 'Globalization, Post-Communism, and Communications in Russia'
Most academic studies of globalization concentrate on Western Europe and the US. There seems to be a mental iron curtain that prevents writers from acknowledging the importance of Russia as the major post-communist country that has encountered globalization. Dr Rantanen's case studies cover various forms of communications in Russia: agencies, television, advertizing and new communication technology. News agencies, telecommunications, and television represent the 'old' institutions with their origin in Communism. Advertising and new communication technologies are representative of the 'new', born after the collapse of communism, and based on models implanted from the west.[Full text of abstract online]Prof. Majid Tehranian, 'Communication and Globalization'
ABSTRACT: As Harold Innis recognized, transportation and communication technologies have played a central historical role in the development of hegemonic world systems. The transition from premodern, multinational, agrarian imperial systems to the modern industrial empires, and the postmodern informatic empires has been accompanied by the evolution from orality to writing, print, and electronic media. While Daniel Bell and others have correctly identified this transition, power and domination have not been adequately problematized. The latest hegemonic phase is characterized by the rise of a pancapitalist project that depends for its survival and expansion upon the control not so much of land or capital as of knowledge industries. Control of research and development, patents, licenses, and copyright is thus critical to the pancapitalist project. Under the emerging world system, a global apartheid also is developing that resembles a neo-feudal regime. Unless global governance is democratized, the new regime will be planting the seeds of its own destruction (see Majid Tehranian, Global Communication and World Politics: Domination, Development, and Discourse. Boulder, CO: Lynn Rienner, 1999).Geography Matters
Dr Andy Pratt, 'Embedding Multimedia: Social Networks and the Spatial Clustering of MultimediaActivities'
Dr Pratt will not be able to attend the LA forum, but plans to develop a paperon the topic.William H. Dutton, 'Bits, Hops and Lost Packets: The Worldwide Sociology of Speed'
This paper (with Al Cooperband) reports on findings of an Internet study supported by the National Library of Medicine. The authors found that the reality of Internet connectivity challenges conventional wisdom in ways that have implications for policies oriented towards improving global access to information, people, services and technology.Communication Policy and Regulation
LSE contributor, 'Media Regulation in a Global Context'
Jonathan Aronson, 'Global Regulation of e-Commerce'
Prof Aronson will write on the regulatory and public policy implications of global networks for electronic commerce.Michael Noll, 'Toward A New Monopolization: Telecommunication Globalization & Privatization'
Previously provided by government monopolies in many countries,telecommunication services are increasingly being privatized. However,in many of these countries the government has become the majority ownerof the newly privatized telecommunication entity. Such partialprivatization is a sham and shows an unwillingness to trust privateindustry, along with competitive market forces, in the provision oftelecommunication services. Countries that are fully privatized—such asthe United States and Great Britain—should not allow partially privatized countries market entry or ownership of any firms providingtelecommunication services. Globalization seems to be simply a moreacceptable and "politically correct" term for internationalmonopolization in telecommunication. But who will regulate such globalmonopolies and cartels?Synthesis: Managing the Global