This work offers an assessment of progress made towards the "information society". It begins from the premise that the construction of such a society in Europe is a dynamic process and that the journey towards a society so dependent upon digital information is far from straightforward.

"Mobilizing Resentment provides a wealth of information for anyone interested in how to refocus the energy and idealism of the progressive movement on the building of institutions that are relevant to the lives of most Americans.' --Wilma Mankiller, from the Foreword Jean Hardisty, draws a map of the political battles now being fought in America and offers lessons for progressives confronting, combating and constructively engaging the Right in more productive ways. In this provocative book, Jean Hardisty details the formation of right-wing movements in opposition to the struggle for expansion of rights for women, people of color, and lesbians and gays. Her own experiences spanning three decades as both an activist and observer undergird her analysis in riveting ways. We see her in a stadium filled with Promise Keepers, watching thousands of men pledge in unison to take control of their families, with a mixture of awe, fear, and a lucid understanding of what draws people to such charismatic events.

Information and communication technology (ICT) is central to reforming governance, innovating public services, and building inclusive information societies. Countries are learning to weave ICT into their strategies for transforming government as enterprises have learned to use ICT to innovate and transform their processes and competitive strategies. ICT-enabled transformation offers a new path to digital-era government that is responsive to the challenges of our time. It facilitates innovation, partnering, knowledge sharing, community organizing, local monitoring, accelerated learning, and participatory development. In Transforming Government and Building the Information Society, Nagy Hanna draws on multi-disciplinary research on ICT in the public sector, and on his rich experience of over 35 years at the World Bank and other aid agencies, to identify the key ingredients for the strategic integration of ICT into governance and poverty reduction strategies. The author showcases promising practices from around the world to outline the strategic options involved in using ICT to maximize developmental impact—transforming government institutions and public services, and empowering communities for inclusion and grassroots innovation. Despite the ICT promise, Hanna acknowledges that reforming governance and empowering poor communities are difficult long-term undertakings. Hanna moves beyond the imperatives and visions of e-transformation to strategic design and implementation options, and draws practical lessons for policymakers, reformers, innovators, community leaders, ICT specialists and development experts.

This book provides an overview of debates about whether we are entering into a phase of social existence without precedent - the 'information society'. Intended as a bridge between the literatures of 'social theory' and the 'social impact of technology', this study exposes the myths surrounding the creation of the information society, discussing technologies such as cable TV and robotics.

This is a volume of comparative essays on the First World War that focuses on one central feature: the political and cultural "mobilization" of the populations of the main belligerent countries in Europe behind the war. It explores how and why they supported the war for so long (as soldiers and civilians), why that support weakened in the face of the devastation of trench warfare, and why states with a stronger degree of political support and national integration (such as Britain and France) were ultimately successful.

Whether termed the 'network society', the 'knowledge society' or the 'information society', it is widely accepted that a new age has dawned, unveiled by powerful computer and communication technologies. Yet for millennia humans have been recording knowledge and culture, engaging in the dissemination and preservation of information. In `The Early Information Society', the authors argue for an earlier incarnation of the information age, focusing upon the period 1900-1960. In support of this they examine the history and traditions in Britain of two separate but related information-rich occupations - information management and information science - repositioning their origins before the age of the computer and identifying the forces driving their early development. `The Early Information Society' offers an historical account which questions the novelty of the current information society. It will be essential reading for students, researchers and practitioners in the library and information science field, and for sociologists and historians interested in the information society.

Digital cities constitutes a multidisciplinary field of research and development, where researchers, designers and developers of communityware interact and collaborate with social scientists studying the use and effects of these kinds of infrastructures and systems in their local application context. The field is rather young. After the diffusion of ICT in the world of organizations and companies, ICT entered everyday life. And this also influenced ICT research and development. The 1998 Workshop on Communityware and Social Interaction in Kyoto was an early meeting in which this emerging field was discussed. After that, two subsequent Digital Cities workshops were organized in Kyoto, and a third one in Amsterdam. This book is the result of the 3rd Workshop on Digital Cities, which took place September 18–19, 2003 in Amsterdam, in conjunction with the 1st Communities and Technologies Conference. Most of the papers were presented at this workshop, and were revised thoroughly afterwards. Also the case studies of digital cities in Asia, the US, and Europe, included in Part I, were direct offsprings of the Digital Cities Workshops. Together the papers in this volume give an interesting state-of-the-art overview of the field. In total 54 authors from the Americas, from Asia, and from Europe were contributed to this volume. The authors come from Brazil (two), the USA (eleven), China (three), Japan (fourteen), Finland (two), Germany (two), Italy (three), Portugal (two), the Netherlands (eight), and the UK (seven), indicating the international nature of the research field.

Mobilizing for Development tackles the question of how countries achieve rural development and offers a new way of thinking about East Asia's political economy that challenges the developmental state paradigm. Through a comparison of Taiwan (1950s–1970s), South Korea (1950s–1970s), and China (1980s–2000s), Kristen E. Looney shows that different types of development outcomes—improvements in agricultural production, rural living standards, and the village environment—were realized to different degrees, at different times, and in different ways. She argues that rural modernization campaigns, defined as policies demanding high levels of mobilization to effect dramatic change, played a central role in the region and that divergent development outcomes can be attributed to the interplay between campaigns and institutions. The analysis departs from common portrayals of the developmental state as wholly technocratic and demonstrates that rural development was not just a byproduct of industrialization. Looney's research is based on several years of fieldwork in Asia and makes a unique contribution by systematically comparing China's development experience with other countries. Relevant to political science, economic history, rural sociology, and Asian Studies, the book enriches our understanding of state-led development and agrarian change.

With every passing year, more and more people learn that they or their young or unborn child carries a genetic mutation. But what does this mean for the way we understand a person? Today, genetic mutations are being used to diagnose novel conditions like the XYY, Fragile X, NGLY1 mutation, and 22q11.2 Deletion syndromes, carving out rich new categories of human disease and difference. Daniel Navon calls this form of categorization “genomic designation,” and in Mobilizing Mutations he shows how mutations, and the social factors that surround them, are reshaping human classification. Drawing on a wealth of fieldwork and historical material, Navon presents a sociological account of the ways genetic mutations have been mobilized and transformed in the sixty years since it became possible to see abnormal human genomes, providing a new vista onto the myriad ways contemporary genetic testing can transform people’s lives. Taking us inside these shifting worlds of research and advocacy over the last half century, Navon reveals the ways in which knowledge about genetic mutations can redefine what it means to be ill, different, and ultimately, human.

This book examines the role of transnational advocacy networks in enabling effective participation for individual citizens in the deliberative processes of global governance. Contextualized around the international conference setting of the United Nations-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2003 and 2005, the book sees epistemic communities and information and communication technologies (ICTs) as critical to the effectiveness of this important organizational form. Historically, governments have dominated the official “conference diplomacy” surrounding these World Summits. However, reflecting the UN General Assembly resolution authorizing WSIS, transnational civil society and private sector organizations were invited to participate as official partners in a multistakeholder dialogue at the summit alongside the more traditional governments and international organizations. This book asks: are transnational advocacy networks active in the global information society influential partners in these global governance processes, or merely symbolic tokens—or pawns? Cogburn explores the factors that enabled some networks—such as the Internet Governance Caucus—to persist and thrive, while others failed, and sees linkages with epistemic communities—such as the Global Internet Governance Academic Network—and ICTs as critical to network effectiveness.