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

拟议的研究课程将力求概述信息通信技术作为国际关系中的一种体制力量形式的理论。技术机构由于其设计和生产是在特定的社会和历史背景下进行的，因此带有社会和政治偏见。当这些机构在国际体系中传播时，它们充当了一种议程设定权力的形式，迫使国际体系中的其他行为者接受这种技术的偏见，或者试图以高昂的代价改变它。这是对社会权力的深刻理解，在这种理解中，占主导地位的行为者通过全球物质文化构建了社会再生产的日常实践。当代的关键例子是互联网的发展。互联网表达了一种特殊的偏见，因为它是在特定的美国背景下创造的，即对互联网上信息自由流动中存在的自由言论自由的偏见。当这种偏见在其他采用这种技术的社会--如沙特阿拉伯、伊朗、中国和许多其他国家--实施时，它会产生政治问题，需要进行技术或社会变革。这一点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是重要的，这个话题涉及美国权力的潜在衰落、中国可能成为超级大国的可能性，以及以社交媒体和维基百科为代表的所谓的权力扩散。有了这些概念，这项研究将试图进一步阐述这种技术发展和扩散的过程是如何在社会学上产生的。认为社会发展是不均衡的、综合的，为本项目提供了理论基础。不平衡的国际社会的特点为技术的制度性权力创造了空间，而联合的过程是这种权力被赋予其他行为者的方式。因此，技术在国内的发展总是包含一种“国际”因果关系的因素，在这种情况下，多个政治社会的存在通过技术的体制特征积极地影响国内社会发展。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，也不再被视为可以转向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竞争的过程，由社会发展的多重、支离破碎和全球性的过程构成。这项研究的主要成果将是一本书长的手稿，它发展了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，阐述上述一些论点，其中两篇我将在社会科学的大型会议上提交，以确保这项研究产生最大影响。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。

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.