The Geopolitics of InformationSeries Editors:Dan Schiller, Pradip Thomas, and Yuezhi Zhao "The Geopolitics of Information" is a new book series published by the University of Illinois Press. The Series Editors are Professors Dan Schiller, (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Pradip Thomas (University of Queensland), and Yuezhi Zhao (Simon Fraser University). We are now soliciting book manuscripts in the 60,000 word range -- short, well-documented, critical studies of topical issues and trends. As the "unipolar" moment of the 1990s and early 2000s went into eclipse, geopolitics acquired sharply increased importance. From the dispensation of energy resources, to contests for strategic influence in and offshore of East Asia, to the race to develop and exploit new lead-edge industries, geopolitical conflicts today are omnipresent. Who will shape the global political economy, and along which lines? The geopolitics of information has moved to the center of this encompassing and increasingly conflicted question. Not only have information systems and services formed an overarching aspect of the recent rapid transnationalization of the market system. Not only is information a central element in the endless contest between states for political advantage and international power, as well as a vital domain of contemporary military strategy. Information markets also constitute a much-coveted pole of economic growth, encompassing everything from media entertainment, telecommunications and specialized business and professional data services, to education, biotechnology and the mass digitization of cultural heritage records and traditional knowledge. Information systems and services, in short, lie at the heart of the conflicted developmental impulse of today's transnational capitalism. That the global political economy has fallen into a new period of stagnation only accentuates this trend. The importance of the geopolitics of information is, broadly, twofold. The dispensation of the world's communication systems and information resources constitutes both a domain of political-economic rivalry conducted by states and corporations, and a complex field of social contestation involving a wider set of social actors. If, on one hand, the status of the United States as the world's dominant power in information thus faces renewed opposition by other states, then, on the other hand, social and political struggles also are breaking out over the control of information and communication between social groups and within countries across the globe -- from China to Ecuador and from India to South Africa and, indeed, to the United States. "The Geopolitics of Information" is broadly demarcated, to foreground both political-economic rivalries within the interstate system, and struggles within and across societies. The Series encompasses both emergent pressure points and environing social-historical dynamics; and both states' efforts to project power extraterritorially and the wider, more multifaceted, political-economic processes to which state policies contribute. A Call For Book Manuscripts |