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Informational Capitalism and U.S. Economic Hegemony: Resistance and Adaptations in East Asia.

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>09/2003
<mark>Journal</mark>Critical Asian Studies
Issue number3
Volume35
Number of pages26
Pages (from-to)373-398
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

It promotes a 'cultural international political economy' approach to globalization in East Asia in the so-called information age. It emphasizes the inherently discursive as well as material character of economic relations and their embedding in a complex web of different scales of action from local to global. Thus it introduced the policy discourses related to major components in recent effort to renew US hegemony: promotion of the Global Information Infrastructure and the global expansion of intellectual property rights through the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights agreement. This initiative has enabled the emergence of a hegemonic GII-IPR-TRIPs complex supported by transnational informational capital, trade-related committees and state agencies. This complex has triggered several forms of resistance and adaptation in East Asia. Targets of this resistance have been the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and the GII-IPR-TRIPs complex itself. Modes of counterhegemonic resistance have included state strategic support for the Linux movement as well as everyday tactics of software piracy. In addition, subhegemonic forces (e.g., APEC and national governments) have been acting as translating centres that help shape responses to efforts to consolidate the hegemony of the GII-IPR-TRIPs complex at regional levels.

Bibliographic note

The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Critical Asian Studies, 35 (3), 2003, © Informa Plc