bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Cosmopolitan Virtue: On Religion in a Global Age
Authors: Turner Bryan S.
Published: July 2003

The sociological debate about globalization has often neglected the place of religion in a global age. This absence is problematic, given the creative role of the world religions in the shaping of the modernization and globalization processes. This article treats globalization as a particular phase of the general process of modernity, and considers religion in terms of four paradoxes. The first (the Nietzsche paradox) argues that, against the received wisdom, fundamentalism is a form of modernization. Although religious fundamentalism may be a reaction to the hybridity brought about by globalization, it is not a traditional reaction. The second (the Parsonian paradox) argues that modernization and globalization constitute religion as a special and separate institutional sphere of society, and hence transform religion into a problem of modernity. Fundamentalism attempts to reverse this pattern and, in the marginal societies of the global system, fundamentalist religion challenges this western version of modernized religion. The third (the McLuhan paradox) is that religious values in a global village expose the incommensurability of cultural systems, but relativism is not easily sustained in practice and globalization paradoxically increases the need for human rights universalism. While nationalism as a framework for cultures conflicts with attempts to develop general systems of rights discourse, it is not evident that the creation of alternative rights systems (such as Confucian codes) appears to be immediately viable. The final (the Montaigne paradox) explores the contradiction between Orientalism as a necessary consequence of the discovery of Otherness and Otherness as a necessary experience of cosmopolitan humanism. The article concludes with a discussion of the possibilities of cosmopolitan virtue in the context of these paradoxes of globalization and religion.
Refusing the Realism—Structuration Divide
Authors: Stones Rob
Published: July 2003

This article argues against the view put forward by Margaret Archer that there is an irreconcilable divide between realist social theory and structuration theory. Instead, it argues for the systematic articulation of the two theories at both the ontological and the methodological levels. Each has developed a range of insightful and commensurable conceptualizations either missing or underdeveloped in the other. Archer's contention that structuration theory rejects the notion of `analytical dualism' central to the realist approach is shown to be mistaken; Giddens's rejection of `dualism' refers to a different conceptualization of the term. Similarly, Archer's critique of structuration's notion of a `duality' involving structure and agency is rejected by showing that Archer's own morphogenetic approach itself relies upon such a notion. A final section distinguishes between six key problematics of social analysis. It is clear that, for a large number of possible questions within the majority of these problematics, it is a combination of both ontologies that would facilitate the most adequate substantive account.
The Problem of Suffering and the Sociological Task of Theodicy
Authors: Morgan David , Wilkinson Iain
Published: July 2003

Once the preserve of philosophy and theology, what Weber called `the problem of theodicy' - the problem of reconciling normative ideals with the reality in which we live - recurs in the social sciences in the secular form of `sociodicy'. Within a functionalist framework, sociodicies have offered legitimizing rationalizations of social adversities, inequalities and injustice, but seldom address the existential meaning and ethical implications of human affliction and suffering in social life. We suggest that an apparent indifference to these questions in social theory reflects a deeper tension between modernity's millennial expectations of moral progress and the escalating history of violence, exploitation and suffering in the modern world. The task of sociodicy, we argue, should be reconstructed as a critique of the decivilizing implications of this tension, not just to document the consequences of suffering on people's lives, but in order to reassess the experience of modernity at the end of one of the most disturbed and violent centuries the world has known.
In Quest of a Possible Re-Enchantment of the World Reflections on Schelling's Study on the Deities of Samothrace
Authors: Goudeli Kyriaki
Published: July 2003

This article introduces the significance of the mythic tradition for modern theorizing, through a discussion of Schelling's study on the Deities of Samothrace. It argues that the mythic tradition constitutes a relatively unthematized legacy offering large resources for the investigation of the inscrutable aspects of human consciousness and the unconscious and their relation to the world. In particular, it extracts theoretical conclusions deriving from the specific traits of the myths and cult-practices of the Deities of Samothrace, which open new horizons as far the notion of cognitive experience is concerned. This is undertaken with a view to challenging both Enlightenment conceptual models and traditional mythological ones, thereby opening the problematic for a new re-enchantment of the world.
Dilthey, Empathy and Verstehen A Contemporary Reappraisal
Authors: Harrington Austin
Published: July 2003

Wilhelm Dilthey's late nineteenth-century doctrine of `re-experiencing' the thoughts and feelings of the actors whose lives the social scientist seeks to understand has been criticized by several commentators as entailing a `naïve empathy view of understanding' in which social scientists are said to transport themselves into other cultural contexts in a wholly uncritical, unreflective manner. This article challenges such criticisms by arguing that Dilthey's writings on hermeneutics amount to a highly sophisticated defence of the role of psychological feeling in understanding that should still be of interest to contemporary social theorists. Beginning with a review of the reception of Dilthey's work by Max Weber and the Neo-Kantians, the article goes on to enumerate a number of significant parallels between Dilthey's insights and more recent approaches in social and cultural theory.
Making up People
Authors: Sparti Davide
Published: July 2003

This paper is an account of the co-construction of categorical identity and personal identity among human beings. As people recognize themselves within a socially sanctioned categorical scheme, they reproduce that scheme, and hence institutional and personal reflexivity occur as a joint movement that, at the same time, can be seen as an exercise in social control. The inspirations for this account are lan Hacking's view about the distinctiveness of social kinds from natural kinds, and Dan Sperber's idea about cultural communication as a form of social epidemiology.
Capitalism as a Religion?
Authors: Deutschmann Christoph
Published: July 2003

The inner affinity of money and religion has been a central issue of the `classical' theories of money, in particular of Georg Simmel and Karl Marx. The paper argues that the conceptualizations of money in current economic sociology and mainstream economic theory are deficient, and that a more promising approach can be developed by referring to those classical authors, whose thinking was not yet dominated by the institutionalized academic division of labour between sociology and economics of today. It is shown, how the concept of money as `Vermögen' (Simmel) or as `capital' (Marx) can be combined with current constructivist theories of economic `myths' and `visions', thus opening a new perspective for sociological analysis of entrepreneurship, innovation, economic growth and social change.
Social Capital and Local Development
Authors: Trigilia Carlo
Published: July 2003

The concept of social capital has become more important in understanding contemporary economic development in the era of globalization. This concept, however, requires a theoretical framework that could help to distinguish between forms of social capital with positive effects on local development and other forms that may have negative consequences. This article argues that in order to understand this difference, two conditions are crucial. First, social capital has to be considered in terms of social relations and social networks, rather than in terms of culture and civicness. The second condition is that the interaction between social capital and other institutions, especially political institutions, has to be carefully analysed. Therefore, this article points to the crucial role of political factors - of the `embedded autonomy' of political action - in favouring a positive role of social capital in local economic development.
The Sociology of Economic Knowledge
Authors: Steiner Philippe
Published: July 2003

Economic knowledge is an important element of modern society and an important topic for sociologists interested in the reflexive dimensions of social life. However, economic knowledge cannot be reduced to economic theory; following a Weberian approach, this article distinguishes between economic theory (either formally rational or materially rational), material economic thought and popular economic representations. The article then examines how economic knowledge affects economic behaviour; and finally, it considers the cultural dimension of economic knowledge when `calculative agencies' help actors to implement formal economic theory.
Nation, Nature and Natality
Authors: Kharkhordin Oleg
Published: July 2003

The concepts of nature and nation are both rooted in the notion of birth. Thus both can be conceived anew if the underlying vision of natality is conceptualized, following Hannah Arendt, not as a set of inexorable biological processes, but as the fundamental human capacity for political action. This reconceptualization of natality allows proposing an alternative to the prevalent commonsensical ethno-nationalist definitions of nation-hood, and also allows a view of the realm of nature itself as inherently political. Arendt's theory finds an interesting referential point in modern developments in biotechnology that threaten to undermine the `naturalness' of existing notions of ethnically conceived nations. Similarly, nature might be revealed to have a polis working at the very heart of what seemed to be a set of inexorable processes, independent from human beings.
Rom Harré on Social Structure and Social Change
Authors: Harré Rom
Published: July 2003

The question of whether social structures are efficacious can be tackled by examining how they are produced. There are roles and rules, and there are people. Only the latter have the necessary powers to generate social worlds as products. Changing the social world can be achieved only by changing the rules and customs active people follow. Selectionist models of change also draw our attention to rules. Finally, there are obstacles to social change in `reductions' - the minute social practices that shape actual social orders.
Breaking Frames
Authors: Teubner Gunther
Published: July 2003

Globalization processes imply the self-deconstruction of the hierarchy of legal norms. Thus, legal pluralism is no longer only an issue for legal sociology, but becomes a challenge for legal practice itself. Traditionally, rule making by `private regimes' has been subjugated under the hierarchical frame of the national constitution. When this frame breaks, then the new frame of legal institutions can only be heterarchical. The origin of global non-state law as a sequence of recursive legal operations is an `as if', not only a founding myth as a self-observation of law, rather the legal fiction of concrete past operations. This fiction, however, depends on social conditions outside legal institutions, on a historical configuration in which it is sufficiently plausible to assume that in earlier times, too, legal rules were applied.
`The Transition to the Human World of Democracy'
Authors: Guilhot Nicolas
Published: July 2003

Whether to a `liberal' or a `people's' democracy, the evolution of modern political systems has been consistently theorized as a `transition'. Elaborated within Marxism as the `transition to communism' and later recycled by modernization theory and comparative politics, this concept has been tightly connected to the development of macro-societal analysis. This paper argues that any attempt at writing its history should be sensitive to the deep-seated ambivalence of this concept, which has alternatively lent itself to either teleological or non-teleological interpretations. But far from matching the ready-made division between Marxist and non-Marxist political sociology, this ambivalence has always been internal to these different social scientific traditions. As a result, the same conceptual issues and tensions can be identified within the Marxist and, later, Soviet doctrine on the one hand, and Western social sciences on the other hand, from the sociology of development of the 1950s to comparative democratization in the 1980s.
Toward a Theory of Social Practices
Authors: Reckwitz Andreas
Published: July 2003

This article works out the main characteristics of `practice theory', a type of social theory which has been sketched by such authors as Bourdieu, Giddens, Taylor, late Foucault and others. Practice theory is presented as a conceptual alternative to other forms of social and cultural theory, above all to culturalist mentalism, textualism and intersubjectivism. The article shows how practice theory and the three other cultural-theoretical vocabularies differ in their localization of the social and in their conceptualization of the body, mind, things, knowledge, discourse, structure/process and the agent.
Culture as Opposed to What?
Authors: Orchard Vivienne
Published: July 2003

The past twenty-five years have seen an explosion of interest in nationalism and nationality in the social sciences - the past ten also in cultural studies. These two disciplinary areas define their objects of study differently, but both have recently started to converge in the pervasive use of the term `national identity', which in turn relies on the term `cultural identity'. Although theoretical complications entailed by the use of `identity' as a concept have been noted, the theorization of identity as culture has occurred almost by default, with the term `culture' merely designating what needs to be explained, and the inherent circularity of `cultural identity' as a category remaining unaddressed. The two approaches differ in their understanding of the crucial categories of `culture' and `politics' in their accounts of nation and national identity. Cultural studies accounts focus on politics in terms of cultural politics, and thus fail to take on board important aspects of the social science accounts which they take as standard reference points. Both approaches ultimately rely upon `culture' as an all-inclusive category of social subjectivity, which remains undertheorized in both approaches, albeit in significantly contrasting ways. The place of culture in recent work on European identity functions differently, and provides a useful counterpoint to these difficulties.
Imagined Europe
Authors: Sassatelli Monica
Published: July 2003

The EU has recently introduced a cultural policy. This includes symbolic initiatives, among which is the creation of the `European Cities of Culture' (ECC), that are a primary example of EU attempts at awakening European consciousness by promoting its symbols, while respecting the content of national cultures. This goes together with the realization that the idea of `Europe' as the foundation of an identity is key for the legitimization of the EU. This article addresses the question of European cultural identity as it is appropriated and shaped by the EU in the process of becoming an `imagined community'. It is grounded on a critical systematization of current ideas of Europe as a cultural identity and on a fieldwork analysis of the nine ECCs in 2000. The article argues that if we are to appreciate how Europe is imagined, it is important both to take EU symbolic initiatives seriously, and to try and grasp the specificity of these symbols and the peculiar conditions of their use.
What's So European About the European Union?
Authors: Burgess J. Peter
Published: July 2003

This article explores the tension between an understanding of Europe as purveyor of a certain kind of cultural, spiritual or religious identity and the more or less bureaucratic project of European construction undertaken in its name. The central axis of this tension is the theoretical relationship between identity and legitimacy. The classical modern problem of nation-state building involves integrating the legitimating force of collective identity into the institutions of the state. How does the project of European construction respond to an analogous challenge? This article develops this theoretical question by turning to two canonical positions concerning the relation between institutional legitimacy and its cultural, spiritual or religious under-pinnings - Montesquieu and Weber. It then returns to the founding documents of the EU in order to interrogate the legitimacy of the EU in light of the concept of European identity.
Rethinking the Conditions for a Public Sphere in the European Union
Authors: van de Steeg Marianne
Published: July 2003

The central question of this article is how to deal (both theoretically and empirically) with the notion of the public sphere with reference to the EU. First the literature on the European public sphere is examined in order to disentangle various assumptions underlying the definition of the concept. Then, the concept of the public sphere is opened up by focusing on `public discourse' instead. Following from this change in perspective, a different model is sketched that can be used to make sense of the public debate held in European media. Finally, the proposed approach is illustrated by applying it to the discourse developed on the issue of the EU enlargement in four weekly magazines, namely Cambio 16 (Spanish), Elsevier (Dutch), the New Statesman (British), and der Spiegel (German).
Pain: The Unrelieved Condition of Modernity
Authors: Morgan David
Published: July 2003

Max Weber is noted for his analysis of the `specific and peculiar rationalism' of western culture. However, his diagnosis of a life disenchanted by reason draws attention to his lesser known formulations of the problem of theodicy - the problem of reconciling pain and misfortune with moral expectations of the world. Weber suggests that cultural responses to this problem change with the increasingly secular rationalization of life. The present paper traces this development from the cultural representation of pain as the embodiment of moral strife in the early modern novel to contemporary images of pain and suffering in medicine, the mass media and film. The comparison suggests that late modernity is confronted by an `inverse' problem of theodicy, in which representations of pain and suffering are disassociated from ethical and political contexts and the quest for meaning within a human frame.
Who Belongs?
Authors: Thomas Elaine R.
Published: July 2003

This article presents a new set of analytical tools for understanding competing conceptions of political membership. Controversies concerning nationality and citizenship are often seen as products of conflict between `civic' and `ethnic' visions. However, the conceptual roots of current discussions and disagreements about political membership are actually more complicated than this might suggest. After examining the dichotomy of civic and ethnic and its limitations, this article identifies five competing ways of understanding the meaning of belonging to, or being a citizen of, a given polity. Political membership may be understood and discussed as a matter of descent from common biological ancestors, cultural attachment, or identification with particular political principles. Alternatively, it may also be imagined either as an exchange of rights for duties or as a benefit granted to those contributing materially to the community. Each of these conceptions figures significantly in current political and intellectual discussions of citizenship and nationality. The typology may also prove applicable to new kinds of debates about global citizenship.
Symbolism and Social Phenomena
Authors: Hałas Elżbieta
Published: July 2003

This article takes up, but in a different key, an argument of postmodernists that the over-rationalized conception of society tends to ignore important phenomena such as those belonging to the symbolic domain. It is suggested that the emerging programme of symbolic sociology may contribute toward a new synthetic and interdisciplinary thinking in social sciences. The concept of symbolism as a social phenomenon rather than as an autonomous linguistic or semiotic system is presented; and the argument is made that if social knowledge is constitutive of society, similarly collective sentiments, temporality and collective memory are also symbolically produced. They are created from and create discursive symbolism, symbolic objects and symbolic behaviours. Finally, the article focuses on collective actions where the sociology of symbolic processes is most promising.
A European Identity
Authors: Stråth Bo
Published: July 2003

The history of a European identity is the history of a concept and a discourse. A European identity is an abstraction and a fiction without essential proportions. Identity as a fiction does not undermine but rather helps to explain the power that the concept exercises. The concept since its introduction on the political agenda in 1973 has been highly ideologically loaded and in that capacity has been contested. There has been a high degree of agreement on the concept as such, but deep disagreement on its more precise content and meaning. The concept of a European identity is an idea expressing contrived notions of unity rather than an identity in the proper sense of the word and even takes on the proportion of an ideology. In this sense the concept is inscribed in a long history of philosophical and political reflection on the concept of Europe. On these grounds the analytical use of `identity' in social sciences can be questioned.
European Identity and Architecture
Authors: Delanty Gerard , Jones Paul R.
Published: July 2003

Architecture has become an important discourse for new expressions of post-national identity in general and in particular for the emergence of a `spatial' European identity. No longer tied to the state to the same degree as in the period of nation-building, architecture has become a significant cultural expression of post-national identities within and beyond the nation-state. The article looks at four such discourses, first, taking the Millennium Dome in London and the Reichstag in Berlin, we show that architecture can express in a reflexive way contested and ambiguous national identities; second, the case of architecture in post-communist European societies illustrates the dual identity of architecture as a project of building and of re-building; third, the EU's search for a cultural form is discussed with respect to the architectural designs on the Euro banknotes; and finally the question of architecture as a relation to a lived space is considered with regard to cityscapes as yet another expression of a tendentially spatialized European identity.
The Myth of Modernist Method
Authors: Outhwaite William
Published: July 2003

Postmodernist thinkers have often claimed that there is something like a `modernist' model of theory and metatheory in the social sciences which is objectivistic, dogmatic, and generally over-ambitious, aiming to dominate the theoretical landscape like a modernist skyscraper. This paper suggests that there is little to support such a view, and that most sociologists and social anthropologists, and many other social scientists, have been much more cautious and tentative in their claims than postmodernists have claimed. The alleged distinctiveness of postmodern social science is therefore itself open to question. The paper includes a discussion of reflection and reflexivity in realist philosophy of science and in the social theory of Habermas and Bourdieu.
Hermeneutic Culturalism and its Double
Authors: Strydom Piet
Published: July 2003

Proceeding from the debate opened by Beck, Giddens and Lash, this article seeks to clear the way for a more consistent and coherent concept of reflexivity in relation to the cultural-symbolic foundations of society. Seeing that Lash in his contribution to the debate inadvertently raises a key problem, i.e. the board cognitive problem, the paper develops a critique of his hermeneutic culturalism. It focuses on the disparity between the position explicitly put forward in the debate with Beck and Giddens and the cognitive position which implicitly comes into play throughout his relevant essays. The disparity first appears in his treatment of the problem of mediation, but it comes to a head in his appropriation of Bourdieu. The argument is supported by elements of a socio-cognitive theory which has been gaining visibility in social theory and in the philosophy of social science. While the article is critical of Lash, its overall aim is to strengthen his contribution to the debate.
What Gives (with Derrida)?
Authors: O'Neill John
Published: July 2003

This article is a close reading of Jacques Derrida's critique of Marcel Mauss's classic, The Gift, and its revision through Charles Baudelaire's `The Counterfeit Coin'. Derrida's rejection of any exchange/reciprocity relation in the gift as an immoral binding of free subjects strangely accommodates the current ideological crisis of the gift in welfare societies. Moreover, Derrida's textual substitution of Baudelaire for Mauss repeats the counterfeit practice on which his own aporia of the gift is based.
The Evolution of Parliaments and Societies in Europe
Authors: Burns Tom R.
Published: July 2003

This article argues that parliamentary institutions have increasing difficulty in addressing and dealing with the growing complexity, highly technical character and rapidity of many developments in modern societies. Deficits in representation, in knowledge and competence, and in engagement or commitment effectively erode the authority and status of parliamentary government. Major rule- and policy-making activities are being substantially displaced from parliamentary bodies and central governments to global, regional and local agents as well as agents operating in the many sectors of a highly differentiated, modern society. Governance - and sovereignty - are increasingly diffused upward, downward and outward beyond parliament and its government. The author identifies problems, practical as well as normative, with this general development and discusses the possibilities and limitations of reform.
Nationalism, Globalization, Eastern Orthodoxy
Authors: Roudometof Victor
Published: July 2003

Although the historical process of globalization has promoted the nation-state as a universal cultural form, national ideologies are far from uniform. This article explores how the competing discourses of citizenship and nation-hood evolved in Southeastern Europe throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By comparing the articulation of Serb, Greek and Bulgarian identities, the essay examines how regional historical factors led to the concept of nationhood becoming central to the formation of national identity among the region's Eastern Orthodox Christians. It demonstrates that the subsequent regional national rivalries have been the consequence of the local peoples' route towards modernity, and cannot be attributed to a 'clash of civilizations'. Rather, the history of Southeastern Europe suggests that the production of heterogeneity is inherent in the globalization process.
After Justification
Authors: Wagner Peter
Published: July 2003

This article presents the moral and political sociology developed by the research group around Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot from its gradual dissociation from the tradition of critical sociology during the 1980s to the present. Taking the major presentation of this approach, De la justification, as the point of departure, the key items of criticism to which this book was exposed are discussed, both in terms of their intellectual merit and in light of the ongoing debates in French social and political theory. The work of this group was often rather erroneously taken to have provided both a new theory of society and a new normative political philosophy. What it aimed at achieving in the first place, in contrast, was a questioning of the assumptions on which reasonings in social theory and political philosophy are based and how those reasonings relate to social actors' own engagement with the world. Not least in response to the criticism received, however, the approach has been further elaborated in recent years, and it works now towards a new representation of the contemporary state of social relations and towards a comprehensive analysis of the practical political philosophies employed in political disputes.
Social Theory from a Sartrean Point of View
Authors: Knöbl Wolfgang
Published: July 2003

From the beginning of his career Alain Touraine tried to develop a heterodox sociological terminology which promised to open up new ways of thinking about the dynamics of modern societies. This article tries to bring to light some of the Sartrean roots of Touraine's early theoretical tools and to reconstruct his intellectual development through the 1970s and 1980s when he formulated his ideas on the emergence of social movements within post-industrial society. It will be argued that Touraine's major works of the 1990s - though not without some theoretical problems - offer fresh insights into the conditions of modernity and are able to correct and modify interpretations of modernity of major theorists such as Habermas and Taylor.
Digital Radio Production
Authors: DUNAWAY DAVID KING
Published: July 2003

Digital audio technology, though only a decade old in broadcasting, is being so comprehensively integrated into control rooms and studios that the time for wake-up calls to critics and theorists is past. Based on eight years' observation at BBC Radio and Danmarks Radio studios, this article speculates on how the new technology of radio is shaped by the old: how the process and texture of digital radio production influences the aesthetic decisions, and political economy, of radio producers.
Regulating Access in the Information Society
Authors: BURGELMAN JEAN-CLAUDE
Published: July 2003

This article focuses on two issues with regard to the policy debate on the regulation of access of communication systems. The first issue deals with the concepts that are commonly used in communication policy with regard to the regulation of `access', i.e. universal service and public service. The article then goes on to challenge the validity and usefulness of these concepts in the new communications environments. The analysis points at many shortcomings in this respect. Attention is focused consequently on what communication policy in a networked society - or information society - should take into account. Here the main argument is that communication policy has to shift from media policy to social policy. What this means for regulating access, and its two main concepts, will be briefly outlined.
Stalking, Monitoring and Profiling
Authors: CASE DONALD O.
Published: July 2003

The advent of caller identification (CID) services has brought additional complexity to the issue of telephone privacy. Federal hearings and other documents written between 1988 and 1996 are analyzed to create a typology of possible harms caused by CID, including the potential for CID to be used in the stalking of women by abusive men.

Four examples of CID usage that led to a murder of a spouse or lover were located through NEXIS searches of electronic newspaper archives. Analysis of these cases suggest that: stalking has not been a common feature of murder cases involving CID; men have been equally likely to be victims as women; half of the cases have taken place in one of the two states with no restrictions on CID; in half the cases it was the misinterpretation of CID information, rather than the data itself, that led to the murders; and in half the cases the victim's CID device was used against them.
Exile and the Electronic Frontier
Authors: MEEK ALLEN
Published: July 2003

Much of the rhetoric that surrounds the so-called `electronic frontier' of the new communication technologies has emerged at a moment when discourses about borders, margins and exiles are also proliferating in the arts and in critical writing. What Mark Poster has called the `second media age', which he sees as constituting a mode of information fundamentally different to broadcast media, can also be seen as defining a period in which electronic technologies service individuals and populations who are culturally and geographically displaced on a scale previously unknown in history.

The article critically interrogates the writings of Mark Poster, Mark C. Taylor and Esa Saarinen as theorists of the new media and draws from different articulations of exile by Edward Said, Theodor Adorno and Hamid Naficy to present an alternative theoretical response to contemporary electronic culture.
Hypercapitalism
Authors: GRAHAM PHILIP
Published: July 2003

In this article I identify specific historical trajectories that are directly contingent upon the deployment and use of new media, but that are actually hidden by a focus on the purely technological. They are: the increasingly abstract and alienated nature of economic value; the subsumption of all labour — material and intellectual — under systemic capital; and the convergence of formerly distinct spheres of analysis — the spheres of production, circulation and consumption. This article examines the implications of the knowledge economy from an historical materialist perspective. I synthesize the systemic views of Marx (1846 [1972], 1875 [1972], 1970, 1973, 1976, 1978, 1981), Adorno (1951 [1974], 1964 [1973], 1991), Horkheimer and Adorno (1947 [1998]), Jarvis (1998) and Bourdieu (1991, 1998) to argue for a language-focused approach to new media research and suggest aspects of Marxist thought which might be useful in researching emergent socio-technical domains. I also identify specific categories in the Marxist tradition which may no longer be analytically useful for researching the effects of new media.
Defining Interactivity
Authors: DOWNES EDWARD J. , McMILLAN SALLY J.
Published: July 2003

The literature on interactivity includes many assumptions and some definitions but few tools for operationalizing the concept of interactivity in computer-mediated environments. This article takes an early step in filling that gap. In-depth interviews with 10 individuals who work and teach in the field of interactive communication led to a conceptual definition of interactivity based on six dimensions: direction of communication, time flexibility, sense of place, level of control, responsiveness, and perceived purpose of communication. Suggestions are made for applying these dimensions to multiple forms of computer-mediated communication. Future research should empirically test the existence and application of these dimensions.
Impact of Media Messages about the Internet
Authors: WHITE CANDACE , SCHEB JOHN M.
Published: July 2003

The study explores a concept defined as `internet anxiety', and uses mass communication theories to help explain it. Findings suggest we believe `other people' are responding to media messages about the internet, perpetuating beliefs that internet use is higher than it actually is, and that we are further behind other people than we actually are.

Evidence of third-person perception and overestimation of internet use were found. An understanding of internet anxiety can help structure messages for mass audiences, and lead to more efficient and appropriate use of the internet by business.
Online Personal Networks
Authors: HAYTHORNTHWAITE CAROLINE
Published: July 2003

Personal relationships are noted for intimacy, frequent interaction, the maintenance of multiple relations, face-to-face contact and a desire for proximity. What happens to such relationships when face-to-face contact is unavailable or severely limited? How do pairs maintain personal relationships at a distance and via computer-mediated communication, and what do their personal networks look like under these conditions? Social network data from four computer-supported distance learning classes are used to build a picture of the size and composition of students' personal online networks. Individuals reported on their communications regarding instrumental and social relations with others in their class, and on which media they used to maintain these relations. In keeping with social network studies, those who communicate more frequently maintain more relations and more socially supportive relations, and report more positively about their desire for future work and social interaction. Individuals benefit from closer ties by feeling a stronger belonging to the class and perceiving greater social interaction among class mates. Unique to the online multi-media environment, strongly tied pairs use more media to communicate and appropriate both the technology and occasions for interaction to maintain their ties. Interview data from members of the same program reveal that pairs with closer ties used computer media to create virtual proximity, whispering to each other via Internet Relay Chat during synchronous classes, and seeking out others via email late at night.
A ROM of One's Own or a Home for Sharing?
Authors: SPILKER HENDRIK , SØRENSEN KNUT H.
Published: July 2003

In the last few years, new multimedia products have been designed in order to attract female users. Some of these products even reflect some kind of feminist programme to make girls and young women more interested and better qualified to exploit new information and communication technologies. The article analyses two Norwegian examples of such initiatives, a CD-ROM called JenteROM and a webservice called HjemmeNett, based on interviews with the most prominent actors of the respective design constituencies. The analysis focuses on the ways gender is constructed in multimedia form and content, in order to explicate gender as a process of social learning. What is observed is a set of ongoing transformations of gender as well as computers, related to controversies about proper definitions of gender and femininity as well as about how new media content and form should be designed in order to cater to women's interests.
The Photo-Journalist and the Changing News Image
Authors: TIROHL BLU
Published: July 2003

Despite the many arguments which imply a fallibility inherent in the information contained within a photograph there is a tendency for audiences to treat the photographic still as a witness and the reputation of the press image is dependent on this. There has been a widespread integration of computer technology into newspaper production over the last 10 years and this has led to the production of images through qualitatively different production techniques. This article will examine, through fieldwork, the practices of photographic journalism, the transformation of picture desks into electronic environments for image control and the perception of picture producers as to the feasibility of enhancing the aesthetic quality of a photograph without tampering with its other qualities.
The Tower of Babel vs the Power of Babble
Authors: LEHMAN-WILZIG SAM
Published: July 2003

Since the dawn of human history, language differences have served as a barrier to full intercultural and international communication. The recent advent of synchronous, automatic translation systems (SATS), incorporated into the internet, are but the first sign of a communications revolution as profound as the invention of print. This article briefly surveys the following: (1) text/speech recognition and translation problems; (2) current developments in machine translation (MT) and artificial intelligence (AI) devoted to resolving these problems; and (3) potential future SATS technological developments and uses. The second half of the article is devoted to a wide-ranging analysis of several potentially profound future political, economic and cultural consequences of SATS. The main conclusion points to a paradox: although (perhaps because) SATS will lead to greater linguistic (and external-cultural) differentiation, the overall impact will be centripetal - greater integration among the world's peoples, more international peace, and a general higher level of agreement regarding norms and values.
Between Online Heaven and Cyberhell
Authors: RÖSSLER PATRICK
Published: July 2003

The diffusion of the internet in Germany was accompanied by strong attention from the traditional mass media who considered the new medium extensively in their coverage. Their media framing of the internet is analyzed following the four dimensions of framing identified in earlier research on media issues. Central to this process are the argumentation patterns used in this research which were defined with regard to a qualitative analysis of the multimedia discourse. Results of a quantitative content analysis of German news magazine coverage (1995-8) indicate that these media had a strong tendency towards a favorable assessment of the internet. The euphoric and economically optimistic argumentation patterns were most important, and outcomes of the development were evaluated as supporting the emancipation of the individual. However, this particular way of framing the internet issue is only partly reflected in the perceptions of users.
The World According to Sound
Authors: BULL MICHAEL
Published: July 2003

Through the analysis of Walkman use I propose a reevaluation of the significance of the auditory in everyday experience. I argue that the role of sound has been largely ignored in the literature on media and everyday life resulting in systematic distortions of the meanings attached to much everyday behaviour. Sound as opposed to vision becomes the site of investigation of everyday life in this article. In focusing thus, I draw upon a range of neglected texts in order to provide a dialectical account of auditory and technologically mediated experience that avoids reductive and dichotomous categories of explanation. I propose a new evaluation of the relational nature of auditory experience whereby users manage their cognition, interpersonal behaviour and social space. The Walkman is perceived as a tool whereby users manage space, time and the boundaries around the self.
Barangays of IT
Authors: SY PETER
Published: July 2003

In broad strokes this article adumbrates some issues in Filipino virtual communities and social interactions mediated by information technology (IT). Problems and prospects are explored with the optic of the barangay, a social unit that evolved from the pre-Spanish `boat community' ( barangay) to its present dominant geo-political form. While IT tends to be instrumental in Western hegemonic encroachment into the Filipino lifeworld, some of its libertarian potentials are gaining ground in emerging cyber-barangays which require new `focal things and practices'. The emerging Filipino communities mediated by IT are spheres of localization amid globalization and questions of nationhood. The article also proposes to `Filipinize' IT - that is, to creatively and critically appropriate IT into practices congenial to Filipino culture.
Telemedicine in South Dakota
Authors: BAREISS WARREN
Published: July 2003

The term `telemedicine' refers to health care and health education transmitted over large distances via computer with interactive audio and video capabilities. Over the past decade, telemedicine has been widely hailed as a means of administering health care to rural areas where doctors are scarce. Most research on the subject emphasizes technological, regulatory, and utilitarian aspects of telemedicine. This study, however, develops a cultural studies perspective in order to examine how social relationships are negotiated with regard to telemedicine in a particular context. The contextual focus is South Dakota - a state where telemedicine has rapidly developed in response to an ongoing crisis in health care access. An overview of economic and health care conditions in South Dakota is followed by examinations of network structures through which telemedicine operates in the state and an analysis of how telemedicine is rhetorically constructed in the state's leading newspaper. Concluding sections discuss the hegemonic nature of telemedicine in South Dakota and raise questions about telemedicine in other contexts.
Searching for the Holy Grail
Authors: van Dijk Jan A.G.M. , de Vos Loes
Published: July 2003

This article is about the interactivity of interactive television (ITV). It is both a theoretical elaboration of the concepts of interactivity and interactive television and a presentation of a survey among 74 American, Asian and European corporate experts of ITV. First, operational definitions of the concepts of interactivity and interactive television are presented as scholarly images of ITV. Then the main results of a questionnaire investigating corporate expert images of ITV are presented. These images are assessed by the investigators to be rather weak and imprecise. Still, the experts concerned are desperately seeking a suitable and concrete business model of ITV, as a kind of Holy Grail. Experts from the world of television production and internet production appear to have different images of interactivity, applications of ITV and the future of television. Finally, the authors present the main components of business models of ITV and the future prospects of this medium.
Beyond Modernism
Authors: Nerone John , Barnhurst Kevin G.
Published: July 2003

After reviewing the emergence of online newspapers, we offer observations based on historical and design analyses of major US sites, supplemented top-down by innovators in the Americas and Europe and bottom-up by sites serving one locality in Massachusetts. Despite losing typical print elements, the late modern designs emphasize text, with minimal multimedia content, especially on local sites. Instead of giving outlet to news handicraft, corporate and promotional models abound. The web flattens hierarchies, exposes content sources, and deforms journalistic authority by disarticulating the audience. Historical parallels include 19th-century flows of design innovation from advertising into news and of informational tasks from reporting into photojournalism. Newspapers can coexist with the internet while surrendering some tasks, such as archiving factual background, becoming instead more analytical advocates.
College Student Motives for Chatting on ICQ
Authors: LEUNG LOUIS
Published: July 2003

Results from a random sample of 576 college students show that relaxation, entertainment and fashion are instrumental motives for ICQ (`I seek you') use while inclusion, affection, sociability and escape are the intrinsic motives. Students who are heavy users of ICQ are motivated by affection and sociability whilst light users are motivated by fashion. Use of emails and ownership of cellular phones seem to be significant predictors of ICQ use. Students who spend longer time on ICQ sessions also play online games more often for entertainment, live in dormitories, have a lower household income, and do not subscribe to any ISP service at home. Female ICQ users tend to chat longer and more frequently for reasons of sociability while males spend less time on each session for entertainment and relaxation. The findings suggest that ICQ is a technology that facilitates social relations and is a major source of entertainment for college students.