Reconsidering the role of the digital in global production networks

Global production networks (GPNs) have become a key framework in conceptualizing linkages, power and structure in globalized production. However, this framework has been less successful in integrating the influence of digital information and ICTs in production, and this problematic in a world where relationships and power are increasingly mediated by digital information flows and resources. We thus look to adapt the GPN framework to allow more substantive analysis of ‘the digital’. Primarily, this is done through a theoretical analysis of the three core categories of the GPN framework – embeddedness, value and networks – to highlight how these categories can better integrate a more dynamic and contested conceptualization of the digital. Illustrations from research on the digitalization of tea sector GPNs in East Africa highlight how these theoretical advances provide new insights on the digital and its expanding role in economic production.     

从Internet的发展看电子商务的前景

本文在考察互联网、国际互联网的产生和发展的基础上，着重分析以国际互联网为依托的国际电子商务产生的条件、优势发展前景及其对世界经济发展的影响，并论述了我国信息产业面临的机遇和挑战。     

On the Vicissitudes of Cyberspace as Potential-Space

This paper examines some issues which emergefrom the use of cyberspace within organizations,focusing on the extent to which cyberspace facilitatesand/or interferes with individual and organizational growth. It is argued that the Internet has cometo facilitate a form of interaction which may appearlargely social and related, while remaining relativelyisolated, asocial or at best partially social, self-protective, and removed. This is a form ofinteraction which is often characterized by partialrelationships as well as confusion or ambiguity betweenwhat is happening and what is imagined. In much of our relational life, we maintain a tensionand dynamic interplay between our experience ofourselves and of the world as structured and ordered andour experience of ourselves and of the world asdisordered and chaotic. In the organizational Internetinteractions explored in this paper, this tension isoften suspended, or at times obliterated. However, it isproposed here that, as profoundly ambiguous and disturbing as these Internet interactions maybe, they may at times serve the function of a potentialspace in which growth is facilitated. In otherinstances, however, they serve to inhibit or evendestroy potential. The theoretical basis for thesefindings is built on the contributions of Klein,Winnicott, and Matte-Blanco and is illustrated byclinical examples from organizations.     

Hybrid networks and the global politics of the digital revolution – a practice‐oriented,relational and agnostic approach

The rapid growth of internet users and the importance of networked technologies for most spheres of life raise questions about how to foster and govern the digital revolution on a global scale. Focusing on internet governance and the use of ICTs for development purposes, I provide a multi‐sited, ethnographic exploration of two UN‐based multi‐stakeholder arrangements – comprising governments, business and civil society groups – that have contributed to the construction of the digital revolution as an object of global governance. In this article I show how analytical insights from governmentality studies and actor‐network theory can be used to capture how objects of governance and organizational arrangements are constructed and consolidated. Conventional approaches to networks and governance tend to treat organizational arrangements and issue areas as bounded, separate and fixed. By contrast, I demonstrate the merits of a practice‐oriented, relational and agnostic research strategy, which foregrounds the governmental techniques and moments of translation involved when new objects and modes of governance are assembled and negotiated.     

浅谈数据挖掘与图书管理

随着数据库技术的不断发展及数据库管理系统的广泛应用,数据库中存储的数据量急剧增大,在大量的数据背后隐藏着许多重要的信息,如果能把这些信息从数据库中抽取出来,将为公司创造很多潜在的利润,而这种从海量数据库中挖掘信息的技术,就称之为数据挖掘.从网络技术角度来看,数字图书馆与其它WEB信息源没有两样,它们都是建立在INTERNET上的信息站点.数字图书馆是一个标准的电子信息基础设施,它采用分布式数据存储,用户可以通过各种链接和操作在一个较大的地域范围内搜索和检索出自己所需的信息,而且整个操作对用户是开放的.     

网络信息资源的开发利用研究

通过Internet发展进程及其特点的分析，对网络信息资源数量巨大、宏观无序、动态性的特点进行研究，论述了网络信息资源开发利用的理论内涵，并具体探讨了作为网络信息资源开发利用典型形式的联机检索数据库及开发网络信息资源的有效工具搜索引擎的现状及发展。     

Exploring the joint dynamics of intercity internet and corporate networks: a stochastic actor‐based modelling approach

In this article, I show one possible solution to synthesis dynamics in multiple intercity networks. I adopt a stochastic actor‐based modelling approach to explore the co‐evolution of an intercity corporate network of 57 globalized advanced producer service firms across 93 cities, and another intercity internet network between these 93 cities, for the period 2004–2010. Stochastic actor‐based models (SABMs) help to connect interactions among cities and firms on the local scale with empirically observed networks on the global scale. My analysis accounts for the co‐evolution/interdependence among multiple world city networks (WCNs) and associated network changes in individual WCNs with exogenous city‐related covariates and endogenous local network structures.     

The digitization of diaspora engagement: managing extraterritorial talent using the internet

In this article, I examine how the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) seeks to manage its skilled emigrants in the information age; I investigate the rationales, techniques and imageries underlying the use of the internet by the state. For the research, I used interviews, participant observation and documentary analysis to explore the case of London‐based Chinese professionals and their contacts with the PRC government. The findings demonstrate that two modes of internet use mainly manage these skilled emigrants. First, digitized diasporic associations play a key role in brokering the influences of the government among the diaspora. Second, the PRC government has set up websites to collect and manage information on skilled emigrants pertaining to their labour market potential. A nationalistic discourse of a caring and protective state of origin surround both governing practices. Nevertheless, some emigrants resist these internet‐mediated governing practices, through distrust and a calculated rationality underscored by a neoliberal logic.     

Mapping homelands through virtual spaces: transnational embodiment and Iranian diaspora bloggers

In this article I examine Iranian diaspora blogs in an attempt to understand how Iranian bloggers outside Iran create and occupy online transnational spaces. Although it is acknowledged that the internet does not make offline borders and bodies redundant, there is a need to understand how the awareness of bodily presence in offline locations and situations continually informs and shapes online expressions. Through content analysis of English language blogs by Iranians based in the USA and Canada, as well as interviews with diaspora Iranians who read and write these blogs, I advance a concept of ‘transnational embodiment’. The importance of physical travel to, proximity to, and sensory impressions of particular places within two bounded, politically distinct nation‐states shows that diasporas rely heavily on embodied experience in constructing transnational spaces and not only on psychic ties and recalled memories. Members of the second‐generation Iranian diaspora reveal unique types of embodied ties to a diaspora ‘home’ through their apparent search for authenticity.     

电子商务和INTERNET

进入90年代以来,随着计算机技术、通信技术的日益发展和融合,尤其是INTERNET的普及应用,一种崭新的商务形式—电子商务,正在风靡全球,为了让更多的人了解电子商务,本文介绍了电子商务的发展历程、特点及在IN-TERNET上的应用。