Page 59 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

Politics in a Small World 45

American regions; the poorest countries, in sub - Saharan Africa in par-
ticular, now receive less foreign investment than in the early twentieth
century. Indeed, they argue that it is important to understand how much
control states still have over economic processes within national terri-
tories (Hirst and Thompson, 1996 ). Nevertheless, the neo - liberal project
of lifting restrictions on investment, promoting the fl exibility of labor
markets, and creating markets for state services and the management of
public goods wherever possible is now built into international economic
governance in the policies of the IMF and World Bank. In this respect,
economic globalization is global (Keane, 2003 : 65 – 74; Harvey, 2005 ;
Tonkiss, 2005 ).
All processes of globalization are linked to the development of new
information technologies. In the case of economic globalization, they are
closely linked to advances in data - processing and information technology
that allow instantaneous communication across vast distances, enabling

the formation of a transnational financial system and facilitating the
operations of multinational corporations. The same is true of the coordi-

nation of the actions of state officials across territorial borders in inter-
national organizations and networks. The rapid communications that new
information technologies make possible provide the conditions for a
certain kind of dispersion of state activities in globalization, as bureau-
crats, politicians, and members of the judiciary exchange knowledge and
experiences with their counterparts from other states on a regular basis,
as well as engaging in policy and law - making in Inter - Governmental
Organizations. In terms of the diffusion of ideas and images, new infor-
mation technologies create apparently endless new possibilities for medi-
ated interaction (through social networking sites, blogging, Twittering,
exchanging photos and fi lms, and so on), as well as the rapid spread of
media products like TV news, fi lms, and music across borders, illegally
as well as through offi cially sanctioned channels. New information tech-
nology is crucial to global social movements, too, as it enables the coor-
dination of collective action across borders, as well as interventions online
(in e - petitions, for example, or just sharing images and ideas or discussing
political disagreements) and organizing off - line (where mobile phones are
as important as use of the Internet). The capacity of such mediated inter-
actions to evade state censorship is especially signifi cant. It is not that
information technology is determining social change: the change that
information technology makes possible takes place within the limits that
are imagined by its use. But, providing the infrastructure for very rapid
communication of large amounts of information across huge distances,