Institutional Power and Information Technology: American Foreign Policy and the Uneven and Combined Development of the Internet

制度权力与信息技术：美国外交政策与互联网的不平衡和综合发展

• 批准号: ES/J003484/1
• 负责人: Daniel McCarthy
• 金额: $ 9.56万
• 依托单位: University of Sussex
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2012 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FJ003484%2F1
• 关键词: Institutional; Power; Information; Technology; American

The proposed course of research will seek to outline a theory of information communications technology as a form of institutional power in international relations. Technological institutions carry a social and political bias due to their design and production within a particular social and historical context. When these institutions spread through the international system they function as a form of agenda setting power, forcing other actors in the international system to accept the bias of the technology, or to attempt to alter it at a significant cost. This is a deep understanding of social power, in which dominant actors structure the everyday practices of social reproduction through a global material culture. The key contemporary example is the development of the Internet. The Internet expresses a particular bias due to its creation in a specifically American context, a bias towards liberal freedom of speech present in the free flow of information on the Internet. When this bias is enacted in other societies that have adopted the technology - such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, and many others - it creates political problems that require the either technological or social change. This is seen most clearly in the development of Internet filtering strategies. Understanding the power of technology in this way is important in gauging the nature of power in international politics, a topic of significant controversy and importance touching upon a potential decline of American power, the possible rise of China to superpower status, and the purported diffusion of power represented by social media and Wikileaks.With these concepts in place, this research will seek to further elaborate how this process of technological development and diffusion is generated sociologically. Considering social development as uneven and combined provides the theoretical grounding for this project. The characteristics of an uneven international society create the space for technology's institutional power, while the process of combination is the manner in which this power is enacted upon other actors. The development of technology in domestic contexts thereby always contains an element of 'international' causality, in which the presence of multiple political societies actively informs domestic social development through technology's institutional character. Seen in this light, technologies are no longer viewed as developing according to a single linear rationale, nor are they viewed as neutral tools which can be turned to any particular task. Instead, the process of technological develop is correctly viewed as a politically contested process, constituted by the multiple, fragmented, and global process of social development. The primary output of this research will be one book length manuscript that develops the initial insights of my doctoral research on the institutional power of the Internet. I will also write three draft papers developing some of the above arguments, two of which I will present to large conferences in the social sciences in order to ensure maximum impact for this research. Finally, I will submit two papers to academic journals that will outline the importance of these ideas for ongoing research agendas within the field of International Relations and Sociology.

拟议的研究课程将试图概述信息通信技术作为国际关系中的一种制度力量的理论。技术机构由于其在特定社会和历史背景下的设计和生产而带有社会和政治偏见。当这些机构在国际体系中传播时，它们就成为一种议程设定权力的形式，迫使国际体系中的其他参与者接受技术的偏见，或试图以巨大的代价改变它。这是对社会权力的深刻理解，其中占主导地位的行为者通过全球物质文化构建社会再生产的日常实践。当代的一个重要例子是互联网的发展。互联网表达了一种特殊的偏见，因为它是在一个特定的美国背景下创建的，对互联网上信息自由流动中存在的自由言论自由的偏见。当这种偏见在其他已经采用该技术的社会--如沙特阿拉伯、伊朗、中国和许多其他国家--中形成时，它会产生政治问题，需要技术或社会变革。这在互联网过滤策略的发展中表现得最为明显。以这种方式理解技术的力量对于衡量国际政治中权力的性质非常重要，这是一个具有重大争议和重要性的话题，涉及美国权力的潜在衰落，中国可能崛起为超级大国地位，以及社交媒体和维基解密所代表的所谓权力扩散。这项研究将力求进一步阐述这一技术发展和传播过程是如何在社会学上产生的。社会发展的不均衡性和综合性为这一课题的提出提供了理论依据。不均衡的国际社会的特征为技术的制度性权力创造了空间，而组合的过程则是这种权力对其他行为体的作用方式。因此，国内背景下的技术发展总是包含一个“国际”因果关系的因素，其中多重政治社会的存在通过技术的制度特征积极地告知国内社会发展。从这个角度来看，技术不再被视为根据单一的线性原理发展，也不再被视为可以用于任何特定任务的中立工具。相反，技术发展的过程被正确地视为一个政治上有争议的过程，由社会发展的多元、分散和全球性过程构成。这项研究的主要成果将是一本书长的手稿，它将发展我对互联网制度力量的博士研究的初步见解。我还将撰写三篇论文草稿，发展上述论点，其中两篇我将提交给社会科学的大型会议，以确保这项研究的最大影响。最后，我将向学术期刊提交两篇论文，概述这些想法对国际关系和社会学领域正在进行的研究议程的重要性。