capital, knowledge and ownership: the ‘information society’ and intellectual property
TRANSCRIPT
This article was downloaded by: [University of Arizona]On: 30 July 2012, At: 01:44Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK
Information, Communication & SocietyPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rics20
Capital, knowledge and ownership: The ‘information society’ and intellectualpropertyChristopher May aa Faculty of Economics and Social Science, University of the West of England, Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol, BS16 1QY, UK E-mail:
Version of record first published: 25 Feb 2009
To cite this article: Christopher May (1998): Capital, knowledge and ownership: The ‘information society’ and intellectual property, Information, Communication & Society,1:3, 246-269
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691189809358969
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. Theaccuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for anyloss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arisingout of the use of this material.
CAPITAL, KNOWLEDGEAND OWNERSHIP
The ' informat ion society ' andintel lectual property
Christopher May
University of the West of England, Bristol, UK
AbstractThe argument that the information society represents 'something new' is pred-icated on the claim that its use of a new resource — knowledge/information —fundamentally differentiates it from previous systems of capitalism. Howeverthe actual organization of the posited information society constructs a wide-spread recognition of the legitimacy of intellectual property. The articleexamines the two central claims for transformation made in the informationsociety discourse: that information is a new resource, and that increasingly it istheoretical or symbolic knowledge that is valued. However, neither shift hasproduced a change in the relations of production, and much that is claimed asnew in information society is actually the fragmentation of the social divisionof labour. Though there have been changes in the forms of production, therelations of production remain organized on the basis of property, thoughoften now intellectual property. This reveals the discourse of informationsociety as a justification for the intensification of capitalism, not an account ofits transformation.
KeywordsCapitalism, division of labour, information society, intellectual
property rights
Gardening, for instance, may be uncomputerisable.
Lawyers and accountants [however] could be today's counterparts of early- 19th-
century weavers, whose incomes soared after the mechanisation of spinning only to
crash when the technological revolution reached their own craft.
(The Economist 1995: 26)
Certain people may make a pretence of believing that the information economy has
replaced the goods economy, but it is enough to remind them that information has
become a good...
(Durand 1997: 148)
Information, Communication & Society 1:3/Autumn 1998 246-269 1369-118X © Routledge 1998
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CAPITAL, KNOWLEDGE AND OWNERSHIP
INTRODUCTION
The argument that the information society represents 'something new' is pred-
icated on the claim that its use of a new resource — knowledge/information —
fundamentally differentiates it from previous systems of capitalism. However
even as this claim is made, the actual economic and social organization of the
posited information society is working to construct a widespread recognition
of the legitimacy of intellectual property. The intent (explicit or implicit) is to
reign knowledge into a set of property relations which are an adjunct to those
found in 'already existing' capitalism. Thus the claim that the new uses of
knowledge within capitalism have produced a fundamental transformation are
undercut by capital's clear, and in the main successful, project of increasing the
commodification of knowledge through its characterization as property. If the
claim for the disjuncture between industrial capitalism and information capi-
talism is based on the differences between the central social relations of
resource use, that knowledge is a different sort of input from material
resources, then this claim is fatally compromised by capitalism's ability to treat
both in the same way — as property.
While I recognize that the information society and claims made for it
concern more than the restructuring of economic relations, many of the
claimed changes in social relations are related to changes in economic rela-
tions. Though the issue of intellectual property in the first instance seems to be
an economic issue, if access to information is increasingly patterned by prop-
erty relations, then claims regarding the social effects of information society,
the quality of (information) life and the empowerment that stems from the
access to knowledge, will be tied up with the information economy. Therefore,
though in one sense the information society and the information economy are
analytically separable, they are also intertwined, particularly in the issue of
ownership of knowledge and informational resources. Currently it may be
easier to make property from information than knowledge, especially where
knowledge is tacit. But the codification of best practice, the protection of orga-
nizational knowledge as trade secrets (through employment contract law using
'inevitable disclosure' discussed below), and the development of increasingly
powerful intelligent tools, suggest that the continuing dynamic is towards the
capture of (tacit) knowledge from individuals, and its commodification in one
way or another as property.
Thus, much of the celebration of the arrival of the 'information society'
(sometimes referred to as the 'Third Wave' (Toffler 1980), the 'Third
Revolution' (Perkin 1996), or other epochal characterization of a 'new' era)
247
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CHRISTOPHER MAY
leaves one alternative either obscured or forgotten: might this only be an
intensification or extension along the lines capitalism has been developing for
quite some time? At the same time, the discourse of information society is
often used to organize and shape actor behaviour, not least of all by
governments who seek to support specific policies: promotion of flexible
labour markets, the encouragement of certain types of training, and the re-
orientation of educational priorities (a PC for every student in every school
rather than increased pay for teachers or increased book budgets, for
example). Certain developments are presented as inevitable and of a particular
character, requiring specific political economic actions and responses. These
proclamations of the emergence of a post-industrial society are not a particu-
larly recent phenomena (Webster 1995; Kumar 1995), though they seem to
have reached something of a fever pitch in the last few years.
At one extreme there has been optimism: an expansion of leisure time and
general freedom from drudgery, empowerment through information tech-
nology and the transformation of work into something approaching the
experience of the 'professions'. At the opposite pole, there is a pessimistic
view: an information rich and poor hermetically sealed off from one another,
with the excluded masses unable to enjoy the fruits of knowledge-work
(the Bladerunner thesis, perhaps). In this bleak vision as Curtis suggests,
inequality will be entrenched through the mobilization of information to
segment society into a 'computer generated caste system' (Curtis 1988).1
Opinions range between these two positions, but all are based on the
presumption that the emergence of the information society will change the
nature and logic of global capitalism. There is some form of break with the
past, a new age.
Despite the persuasiveness of this literature of transformation, I contend
that while the superficial appearance of the information society may be
different from what has gone before, far from changing the nature of capi-
talism, this new period leaves important elements firmly in place. While the
information society may be changing the outward appearance (or form) of the
global political economy, there is a remarkable continuity in the underlying
power relations (or substance) of the system. Indeed if anything it has enabled
power relations to be reproduced at a higher level of intensity while differenti-
ating their form. In this sense the posited new age is not post-capitalist, but
rather the intensification of capitalism.
248
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CAPITAL, KNOWLEDGE AND OWNERSHIP
THE 'INFORMATION SOCIETY' AND THENEW AGE
The idea of the information society lies behind much of the presumption for
the revolutionary potential of information technology. One of the key driving
forces in many views of globalization is the development of the 'knowledge
industries' (especially in the communications and financial sectors). This is a
wider concept than the expansion of a globalized services sector: it attempts
to capture both the value-added increasingly accorded to non-material inputs
into products and the importance of global flows of knowledge to wealth
creation.2 The movement of material goods accordingly seems less important
than flows of information and knowledge. The move to a 'weightless
economy' is a recurrent motif in writings on the new age, leading Quah to
conclude that 'the term "industrialized countries" no longer carries any reso-
nance: now, no advanced and growing country is dependent on production
industries' (Quah 1997: 55).
Indeed, Anthony Smith has gone as far as to argue that the early writings on
post-industrialism
had more of a Hegelian ring about them. Information technology was penetrated by the
historic spirit.. .[and] the very act of formulating this idea of an information and communi-
cation society has exercised much of the transforming power, or at least has provided the
political acceleration
(Smith 1996: 72)
The arguments for the emergence of the information society reinforced the
observed dynamic, and have contributed to the reorganization of socio-
economic relations they purported to 'recognize'. Thus the post-industrial
position may itself have contributed to the emergence of a new socio-
economic settlement: the information society.
Rather than explore the nuances of different writers' ideas about what the
information society might look like, I shall present a thumbnail sketch of the
two central issues that it seems to me bind transformational accounts
together. Two linked claims are made about the emergence of the informa-o o
tion society, from which all other claims flow: that knowledge has emerged
as a new and valuable economic resource (or input), and that economically
valued knowledge has shifted in itself from a technical, 'information'-based
notion to something more akin to 'knowledge-as-complex-symbology'. While
there are other elements to most writing on the information society, all are
predicated on these two basic transformations in the use and character of
knowledge.
249
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CHRISTOPHER MAY
A different type of resource
The first of these defining movements from industrial to information society is
the increasing centrality of information and/or knowledge resources to the
economic organization of societies. Thus, taking Drucker as exemplary, the
expansion of knowledge as a basic economic resource will lead to a division
between 'intellectuals' and 'managers', which will be the key political chal-
lenge of this new period (Drucker 1993: 8—9). The key refrain in Drucker's
vision of the post-capitalist society is one of disjuncture. However, Drucker
also recognizes a continuity of capitalist institutions, though 'looks are decep-
tive'.While the
world economy will remain a market economy and retain the market institutions, its every
substance has been radically changed. If it is still 'capitalist' it is now dominated by 'informa-
tion capitalism'.. .there is less and less return on the traditional resources: labour, land and
(money) capital.The main producers of wealth have become information and knowledge...
(Drucker 1993: 181-3)
The emergence of this new resource has transformed the nature of capitalism.
Though it still revolves around markets and profit, economic organization has
been fundamentally changed. And the key transformation is in the process of
resource capture and use — the move from mainly material inputs for produc-
tion of material outputs to the manipulation of ideas or knowledge inputs
producing more valuable knowledge 'products'.
Therefore a central dynamic of the shift to post-industrial organization is
the move from the centrality of material resources to a process that accords
more importance to the securing of knowledge and ideational resources (Lash
and Urry 1994; Masuda 1980; Morris-Suzuki 1988). But also, value-added is
increasingly seen by entrepreneurs not to stem from the good's materiality but
to be based on its ideational elements. Which is to say that though goods may
still have some material value related to their various inputs, the knowledge-
related inputs (such as design, marketing, 'quality' and technological novelty)
are becoming the key aspects of competition as understood by market actors.
Thus, it is proposed that knowledge-based capitalism breaks with previous
capitalist models by virtue of its raw materials and the uses it makes of them,
the sorts of products that it produces.
The information society, by virtue of the changes required in social and
economic organization brought about by the new role and use of knowledge
will be different from the previous, materially based, industrial society. While
this transformation may not happen instantaneously, like the industrial revolu-
tion it will transform the social landscape over which human activities are
25O
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CAPITAL, KNOWLEDGE AND OWNERSHIP
enacted. This third wave, following the agrarian and the industrial waves, will
profoundly alter human society (Toffler 1980).
A new type of knowledge
But in this new information society it is not only that knowledge inputs are
increasingly being utilized, the character of the knowledge used itself is
changing. Proposing the category of 'intellectual technology' Daniel Bell
recognized that methods of organizing activities can be regarded as technolo-
gies themselves which will spread and have distinct impacts on the adopting
sectors, organizations or societies. Successful adoptions of new organizational
techniques will be copied by other actors when such innovations seem to
contribute to success (however conceived). Interestingly, Bell notes that what
is 'distinctive about the new intellectual technology is its effort to define
rational action and to identify the means of achieving it' (Bell 1974: 30).
Indeed he argues that 'the major source of structural change in society.. .is the
change in the character of knowledge', a change which will substitute 'a tech-
nical order for the natural order' (Bell 1974: 44—5) — the appliance of science,
perhaps. This new knowledge order will increasingly set the agendas from
which problems are addressed, it will define the acceptable and unacceptable
through the technological assumption of discoverable rationality, the presump-
tion that there is an optimal and 'objective' answer to problems. Therefore, the
services which indicate the emergence of the post-industrial society are those
which prompt the 'expansion of a new intelligentsia — in the universities,
research organizations, professions and government' (Bell 1974: 15).
Bell recognizes that
knowledge has of course been necessary in the functioning of any society. What is distinctive
about the post-industrial society is the change in the character of knowledge itself. What has
become decisive for the organization of decisions and the direction of change is the
centrality of theoretical knowledge — the primacy of theory over empiricism and the codifi-
cation of knowledge into abstract systems of symbols that.. .can be used to illuminate many
different and varied areas of experience.
(Bell 1974: 21)
This claim has been taken up more recently by Robert Reich in his discussion
of the rise of 'symbolic analysts' and their increasing importance. Though
Reich (following the 'spirit of the age') accords more weight to private institu-
tions, he too sees these sectors of the workforce as holding a pivotal role in
contemporary (and future) society (Reich 1991: 177 ff.). Indeed, if the
concern with information and knowledge has been a major issue during the
251
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CHRISTOPHER MAY
last twenty-five years, one of the shifts within the discourse has been a move
from collective provision of knowledge resource development to a more indi-
vidualized responsibility. But a distinction between information and knowledge
has also opened up.
Whereas there has always been value in information in the sense that it is a
passive resource which can be easily transferred between parties, the proposed
shift to the information society has involved a greater emphasis on knowledge.
This might seem a false distinction, and indeed the terms information and
knowledge are often used interchangeably. What this distinction does capture is
the difference between the transfer of data, and the theoretical or intellectual
tools that are needed to produce further knowledge-related resources from
such data. Information has become (or perhaps always was) a commodity,
whereas knowledge is more akin to skill and expertise, the higher order intel-
lectual abilities needed to produce new knowledge from knowledge itself.3
The increasing social and economic importance put upon the mobilization and
possibilities for control of knowledge (in addition to information) is the
second element to the emergence of the information society (Masuda 1980;
Stehrl994:63ff.).
Interestingly Bell explicitly limits his account of knowledge to that which is
circumscribed by the concept of intellectual property (Bell 1974: 176). While
this is clearly not meant as a final definition but as an instrumental analytical
device, this does limit the discussion that might follow from his identification
of the importance of knowledge in a putative post-industrial society. And by
appealing to a set of ideas about property in a market society his analysis
implicitly maintains that post-industrial society while different from industrial
society retains similar property relations (May 1998). This stands in stark
contrast to his claim that the 'emerging post-industrial society is
communal.. .insofar as the criteria of individual utility and profit maximization
become subordinated to broader conceptions of social welfare and community
interest' (Bell 1974: 481). If knowledge is held as property in a market orga-
nized society (and neither Bell, nor most other writers on information society,
seem to suggest that this new era will be anything but market organized), then
it is difficult to see how such a subordination might proceed.4 Despite such
shortcomings this remains a highly influential analysis (Webster 1995: 38—9,
49-51).
The issues that seem important in light of this brief discussion of the
posited shift to a (potentially global) information society are two-fold: What is
the organizational character of this 'new' information society? and is a global
information society fundamentally different from what has gone before? If the
252
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CAPITAL, KNOWLEDGE AND OWNERSHIP
answer to the second question is negative, then this has profound implications
for the mobilization of political efforts on behalf of (and importantly by) the
disadvantaged in this 'new' global society.
TECHNOLOGY, KNOWLEDGE AND PROPERTY
A key element in debates regarding the growing importance of knowledge and
information has been that this shift is a direct result of the development of
powerful information technologies. As Webster has noted, though this techno-
logical determinism is not often as crude asToffler's'techno-boosterism', it is an
element in a wide range of characterizations of the new information age
(Webster 1995: 218; 1997: 108—9). Discussions of the information society have
been tied up with the ability of companies and individuals to utilize information
and knowledge for profit. And the key tool for such utilization has been the
computer (in its myriad forms — from desktop to mainframe).
Castells argues that the information society will be a network society: it
will be open, and though 'the price to pay for inclusion in the system is to
adapt to its logic, to its language, to its points of entry, to its encoding and
decoding', it will allow diverse cultural and political identities to flourish
(Castells 1996: 374; 1997 passim). But as he has previously made clear, this
potential needs to be positively developed by its potential subjects, it will not
necessarily be benign (Castells 1989: 350—3). It is prescient to emphasize that
'technology neither dictates features of the manufacturing process nor has
effects independent of the human actors involved, [its] effects are anything but
self-evident' (Grint andWoolgar 1997: 138, emphasis added). Analysis of the
information society needs to be sensitive to the socio-economic relations in
which new technologies appear, and to recognize that the impact of technolo-
gies is mediated through the actors deploying them. Technologies do not
necessarily bring with them specific social relations antagonistic or co-opera-
tive. It is the use to which technologies are put that develops their social
relations, and though this may be partly implied by the technology's design, its
social effects are not given.
Such a concern has led Castells to contribute to the 'high-level expert
group' report 'Building the European Information Society for Us All'. The
report, while retaining the patina of dirigiste European economic policy, is
concerned with supply-side issues of training and education, as well as the
promotion of competition, It suggests that the requisite powers for the regula-
tion of the information society should be transferred by states to the European
level. The report then argues that:
253
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CHRISTOPHER MAY
it is essential that people, and excluded groups in particular, should not be forced to adjust
to the new technologies. Rather, the technologies must become better geared to human
needs. The Information Society should not create new categories of exclusion; [it] should
improve social integration and quality of life.
(European Commission 1997a: 43)
Underlying this, and other aspects of the report is the expectation that infor-
mation technology will transform the socio-economic relations of the
European population (and by extension, the global population). This, as I
pointed out above, is a central refrain of the information society literature
(academic and popular).
This raises the proposed emancipatory potential of information technology:
have information technologies changed the socio-economic basis of productive
activity? and does access to the globalized flow of information (and knowl-
edge) transform the political—economic experiences of the user? A recent
report produced by the IBM-sponsored National Working Party on Social
Inclusion concluded that:
[it] would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of communication and information-
handling skills in the Information Society. Too much attention paid to the technology draws
attention away from the need for people to be able to exploit information once they have
it...
but argues on the next page that:
Gaining access to the communication facilities can be the hardest step in the processes of
participating in a creative communication environment. Once there, most groups will know
exactly how to exploit the technology.
(IBM/CDF 1997:64-5)
This encapsulates the technological issue. Once they have access to communi-
cation and information technologies will 'most groups know exactly how to
exploit it'?The study warns that access is not the only issue, but is confident
that access can be sufficient, given the extant skills of groups (and individuals).
Though the report seems in the first instance to be aware of the technological
determinism in suggesting that access is necessary but not sufficient for
'empowerment', a page later this conclusion is reversed.
The debate regarding the policies and actions required by the shift to an
information society is often expressed in terms of access to knowledge.
Especially within Internet discussion groups, it is expected that the informa-
tion society will be a naturally democratic global public sphere, where it is
argued 'information wants to be free' to flow throughout the world. However,
given the information society's overtly market character, the 'irony is that
254
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CAPITAL, KNOWLEDGE AND OWNERSHIP
those who might most benefit from the net's democratic and informational
potential are least likely to either have access to it, the tools to use it, or the
educational background to take advantage' of the knowledge resources on
offer (Barber 1997: 224).The intellectual and technological resources to take
advantage of the opportunities of the information society are not distributed
equally. Given the costs of obtaining education (increasingly market-driven
throughout the global system), alongside the purchase of computer hardware
and line rental, the distribution of informational benefits is likely to follow
patterns of wealth distribution. The issue of the market leads me to return to
the distinction between the information society which includes wide claims
regarding the social worth of information networks and the more limited
term, the information economy.
That there is slippage between the concept of an information society and an
information economy is admirably exhibited in the (British) Department of
Trade and Industry's recent report Development of the Information Society:
An International Analysis. In this report the 'term is used to mean a society
where individuals — whether they be consumers or employees — use informa-
tion intensively', a characterization which regards individuals as only acting in
markets, be they 'consumers or employees' (HMSO 1996: 4). And the report
notes 'the most important driver of uptake of the information society is the
enhanced utility that products and services will deliver to consumers and the
extent to which the supply side is able to develop to deliver these enhanced
benefits' (HMSO 1996: 7).The information society is thus a transformation of
the nature of market activity. Throughout the report the information society is
conceptualized as a competitive economic strategy, which should be supported
by the state. The emergence of the information society is no longer a social
transformation, which impacts on the economy, here it has become an
economic transformation that impacts on society. So, though earlier writers
stressed the social impact and transformation that would be wrought by the
emergence of the information society, in this report at least there is a move to
think of the information society as a developmental strategy to enhance
'national competitiveness'.
The crucial aspect of the rise of the information society, particularly in its
guise as the information economy, is the increasing importance of owning
knowledge and information — intellectual property. Reich suggests that:
[the] issues of old capitalism — law on property [and so on].. .are no longer really appro-
priate. The key assets of new capitalism are not defined as physical property but intellectual
assets, many embedded in people.
(Lloyd 1997: 36)
255
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CHRISTOPHER MAY
It is my contention that this view is completely mistaken, the interest and
importance given to intellectual property actually reinforces the issues of'old
capitalism', centred on property relations, and does not indicate a new capi-
talism (and thus a new politics). This confusion lies in the emphasis on the new
resources of the information society (what they are, how they function, what
will be produced) at the expense of any consideration of the social relations (of
production) of this emergent 'new' era. The property relations which underlie
the information economy, based on intellectual property, need to be brought
into the analysis.
I have argued elsewhere that the incidence of justificatory schema based on
the similarity between property and intellectual property is the result of the
structural power of particular groups over knowledge (May 1998). Without
the protection of property rights over their products it is hard to imagine capi-
talists in particular coming to market with knowledge-based products.5
Alongside moves toward a global information society, the intellectual property
rights regime has been increasingly globalized through the World Intellectual
Property Organization (WIPO). Most recently, and supporting the further
expansion of the global information society's property regime, the knowledge
industries played a major role in ensuring that a very specific (and broadly
successful) position was taken by the US negotiating team in the recent Trade
Related Intellectual Property agreement (TRIPs) under the auspices of the
World Trade Organization (WTO) (Sell 1995; 1998). The requirements (and
interests) of intellectual property owners (which is by no means necessarily
the same group that originates such intellectual property) were those that
were foregrounded. This resulted in the rationale of protection and the
support for particular ownership rights taking precedence over the need for
transfer (especially to developing states) of useful knowledge outside
economic channels.
If'information wants to be free' this was not reflected in the TRIPs agree-
ment, nor more recent European proposals. These new proposals reinforce the
right of copyright holders to control the reproduction of their works especially
'in view of the development of new forms of reproduction' (European
Commission 1997b: 2). Perhaps the most important proposed extension to
copyright is the Communication to the Public Right, which suggests legislation
to allow rights to be recognized for 'on demand' services, and unlike previous
reproduction law which has only covered the actual reproduction, these
proposals 'apply irrespective of the number of times the work or other subject
matter is actually transmitted on-line on demand — it is the act of offering the
service to the public which will require authorization' (European Commission
256
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CAPITAL, KNOWLEDGE AND OWNERSHIP
1997b:3).This shift allows rights holders significantly tighter rights of control
than has hitherto been the case vis-a-vis Internet-related technologies. The
development of European policy has been driven by powerful multinational
companies in the knowledge industries, alongside representatives of smaller
specialized rights-holding firms. As Doern notes it 'is these business interests
that more than any other factor [have] forced changes in trade related intellec-
tual property law in the larger global setting' and continue to do so in Europe
(Doern 1997: 397). It is not the users, nor the question of public (that is, free)
access that is uppermost in the minds of policy-makers, even though informa-
tion society will be organized around the access to knowledge arid
informational resources.
As I have briefly noted above, this issue of access has pervaded much of the
literature but without a full appreciation of two crucial problems: the ability to
actually access a particular informational resource for a specific use may well
be curtailed (or costly) due to the incidence of intellectual property; and the
requirement for the user to have the requisite intellectual tools to manipulate
and gain sustenance from information may limit access along the lines of the
distribution of educational resources and attainment. If the information society
is as dependent on the institution of intellectual property as previous forms of
capitalism have been on the institution of property, then wide or open access
to the conduits of information remains a necessary but not sufficient condition
for the claims made on behalf of information society.
Even accepting the argument that with access and the provision of educa-
tion the problems of social exclusion can be lessened, if the question of
property rights remains central to the socio-economic relations of this new
knowledge or information-dominated era, then the change may not be as
significant (or seismic) as the claims for post-capitalist or post-industrialist
society suppose. Indeed it is even possible that the demand for education
(while in itself fully legitimate and supportable) represents merely a supply-
side measure, regarding the skills required in the workforce by knowledge
capitalists, that will do little to alleviate inequality (both national and interna-
tional) within the global information society. However, here I want to
concentrate on the first of these two issues, the incidence of intellectual prop-
erty (rights). If the social relations indicated by the incidence of property in
the information society are examined, as opposed to the shifts in technologies,
(if the relations of production are included in an analysis alongside the forms of
production) then it is my contention that there is considerable continuity
between the information society and industrial society, rather than extensive
disjuncture.
257
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CHRISTOPHER MAY
THE FRAGMENTATION OF LABOUR
The relations between the holders of knowledge relative to the companies and
other actors who profit from it, as well as the way such knowledge is
deployed, based on intellectual property, indicate that the framework or
substance of the information society is characterized by continuity. Indeed
labour relations within the knowledge industries remain remarkably familiar
even if their actual organization has changed (Sayer and Walker 1992;Tomaney
1994). And, though the knowledge industries are presented as the paradigmic
new employers, the substantial expansion of employment in the era of the
information society may actually be in the 'personal services' sector (Handy
1984; Sayer and Walker 1992). Thus knowledge-based (white-collar) employ-
ment needs to be recognized as only a partial characterization of employment
in the emerging 'new age'. Indeed, as Kumar has pointed out, much of the
claim for the increasingly professionalized workforce (the rise of the knowl-
edge workers) has been predicated on a statistical sleight of hand (Kumar
1995: 25—6). Only by accepting that the renaming of employees with more
professional sounding titles is evidence of an actual functional change, as well
as supposing all those involved in the putative knowledge sector are profes-
sionals, could claims for a substantive change in employment patterns be
supported. This is not a robust proposition.
For Kumar, the claims for transformation are completely unwarranted.
Though it is clear that there has been an information revolution, in that the supply
and use of information goods has both widened and accelerated, this is not the
same thing as information society. Kumar sees no reason to accept the claims of
theorists of information society that we have entered a new phase of social evolution,
comparable to the 'great transformation' ushered in by the industrial revolution. That revo-
lution achieved a new relationship between town and country, home and work, men and
women, parents and children. It brought in a new ethic and new social philosophies. There is
no evidence that the spread of information technology has caused any such major changes.
On the contrary, the bulk of the evidence indicates that what it has mainly done is to enable
industrial societies to do more comprehensively what they have already been doing.
(Kumar 1995: 162)
Though there is little evidence of the transformation of society which is
continually asserted by the information society ideologues, this has not
compromised its usefulness as a justification for (re)introducing certain
employment practices. And it is here that the continuity with previous forms
of capitalism is most marked.
Castells, like Reich, suggests that transformation in the labour force is not a
258
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CAPITAL, KNOWLEDGE AND OWNERSHIP
move to the widespread incidence of 'knowledge working', but rather a
'decline of the middle'. While there are still highly paid (relatively) secure jobs
available, 'the bulk of new jobs pay lower wages and enjoy less social protec-
tion than in recent historical experience' (Castells 1989: 202; Gallie 1996).
This move to organizational cores and outsourced employment (not limited to
the local districts but stretching out across borders) has become the mantra of
the new flexibility. This has been emphasized by the moves to project-based
knowledge utilization and production — such as the decline of the studio
system in Hollywood (Lash and Urry 1994), or contract-working in any
number of industries, from software programming to textiles. Castells has
referred to this trend as the 'individualization of labour in the labour process',
which he suggests is the 'reversal of the historical trend of salarization of work
and socialization of production' that characterized the industrial era (Castells
1996: 265). Again, this would seem to argue for an intensification of capitalism
(a return to previously successful practices) rather than its replacement.
Additionally, as Sayer and Walker suggest:
the economy can still be characterized in classical terms as a system dominated by industrial
production, whose outputs come mostly as tangible goods: goods circulating primarily as
commodities, accompanied by the circulation of money; produced by human beings with the
help of machines, technical knowledge, and rational organization.. .[and] the proliferation of
so-called service sectors and service occupations can be explained in terms of burgeoning
social and technical divisions of labour throughout the industrial system.
(Sayer and Walker 1992: 104)
Which is to say, the emerging knowledge industries are not so much the result
of new types of enterprise (though the commodities they produce may be
novel in the form in which they are presented) or of a new form of society, but
are the result of the continuing fragmentation of the social division of labour.
And the management of the division of labour in the economy (local, regional
and global) is not a process that is neutral, rather it flows from the power of
capital to configure the process of production and exchange (Rueschemeyer
1986). The forms of this division may be new, tasks may emerge and be subdi-
vided or aggregated with the aid of new technologies, however the underlying
power relations of capitalism remain remarkably familiar.
The transformation of work in the information society may therefore be
less than has been proposed by its 'boosters'. By devolving certain manage-
ment functions to project groups, but retaining overall strategic control, new
organizational strategies have given the appearance of a partial transfer of
control to the workforce (a quasi-empowerment). However, such empower-
ment is strictly limited to the parameters set by management (Tomaney 1994).
259
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CHRISTOPHER MAY
As Carchedi points out, the use of information technologies limits the choice
of working practices through the need to work with already supplied, complex
software which channels both effort and output. Despite the seemingly more
powerful and 'open' nature of these tools they actually set quite limited para-
meters to the possible methods of knowledge work. And with such technology
the monitoring of work (and 'down time') can be carried out continually and,
more importantly, unobtrusively (Carchedi 1990). Recent research into the
work practices of call centres suggests that far from being the empowered
knowledge workers of the information society paradigm, they are subject to
high levels of control and surveillance, and work at such intensity that they are
often 'burned out' after eighteen months (Fernie 1998). So there is a dichoto-
mous movement towards a further social division of labour alongside the
enhanced possibility for centralized control through surveillance represented
by information technology.
This centralization of control alongside a fragmentation of the social division
of labour is also evident on a global scale. It is a commonplace that while devel-
oping states continue to export material goods and industrialize on the basis of
producing material goods, the developed or core states are moving towards
service economies, with less and less of the working population involved in the
production of material goods (for instance, Quah 1997). In a sense these states
are becoming post-industrial on the back of a continuing agricultural and indus-
trial periphery. But as Castells has explored at some empirical length, even this
is not the full picture. While there is certainly a rise in those sectors of the
economy which may be seen as knowledge dependent, this will not be a move to
a comprehensive information society. As important as knowledge resources may
be, even within the manipulation of physical/material resources, there will
always be vast sectors of industrialized production alongside the knowledge-
centred sectors, and large amounts of service employment that can be seen as
knowledge work only with a heightened disregard for the actualities of service
sector employment (Castells 1996: 210—310).
And though these 'outlying' sectors (in an organizational rather than
geographic sense) are not informational, they are controlled (their production
of goods and services manipulated) by the use of information that has itself
become centralized in vast multinationals. This takes place in a direct sense
through economic organization and technical transfer, or in an indirect sense
through the use of the derivatives markets to develop 'futures' and related
financial instruments. Thus beneath the fragmentation of labour which is
evident in the claims for an information society, there is the increasing poten-
tial for control that such information flows represent.
26O
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CAPITAL, KNOWLEDGE AND OWNERSHIP
My argument therefore is that the post-industrial view of capitalism as an
emerging globalized information society fundamentally misreads the nature of
the capitalist process. While there is a freedom for some, the introduction of
increasingly sophisticated information technologies permits increased control
over the many. This may be control in the workplace, control of information
that impacts on the markets for material goods, or the control of information
flows in the knowledge industries themselves. Though there are new forms of
economic organization, this does not mean that the substance of relations
between those who own capital and those who have only their labour (physical
or mental) to sell have dramatically altered. At the centre of this control is the
use and ownership of knowledge and information — intellectual property. The
resources of information society, when they exist as property, are increasingly
only free in the sense that we all have the freedom to own a Rolls Royce: that
is, there may be some economic impediments to benefiting from them.
THE INTENSIFICATION OF CAPITALISM
The information society literature may correctly reflect a change in the way
the relations of production within the modern global political economy are
managed. But while the organizational forms of these relations may be
changing, when the underlying reliance on property relations and surplus
accumulation is revealed, the relationship between actors has remained
remarkably similar. This is not to argue that capitalism is unchanging, only that
there is a need to identify what is changing and what is not. Much has been
written on what has changed, and this has over-emphasized disjuncture, so
here I make no apology for concentrating on continuity.
While accepting that capitalism has widened itself geographically (usually
discussed under the rubric of globalization) Wood argues that it has also deep-
ened its penetration into previously non-commodified social relations.
The notion of universalization rather then transformation flows from her
emphasis on
the logic of capitalism, not some particular technology or labour process but the logic of
specific social property relations. There certainly have been constant technological changes
and changes in marketing strategies. But these changes do not constitute a major epochal
shift in capitalism's laws of motion.
(Wood 1997: 550)
Thus, Wood makes clear the distinction between the forms of production
under capitalism (the technologies or processes) and the continuing character
of the relations of production. So though the techniques and technologies that
261
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CHRISTOPHER MAY
are being utilized have changed, the ownership of the key resources has not.
If knowledge is the key resource as has been suggested above, the strength and
widespread reliance on intellectual property is of major import. A change in
the regime for the ownership of knowledge which enabled substantial change
in the ownership of the means of production would certainly be potentially
transformatory, however, given the current globalized settlement of intellec-
tual property law co-ordinated through WIPO and more recently the WTO
and the EU, such a shift is not apparent, nor likely in the near future.
To reinforce this argument for continuity it is also useful to recall the
distinction between the economy (the market) and capitalism itself, between
the 'economic life' and the activities of capitalism, suggested by Braudel.
Though this distinction is an analytical one only, as 'it is very difficult to draw a
line indicating what...is the crucial distinction between capitalism and the
economy', it is nonetheless useful (Braudel 1982: 455). For Braudel, a form of
economy is operating 'when prices in the markets of a given area fluctuate in
unison.. .[and] in this sense, there was a market economy well before the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries' (Braudel 1982: 226). An economy is a device,
embedded within society, for the co-ordination of demand and supply which
produces prices which enable exchange mediated by money of goods that have
been socially produced. This contrasts with capitalism, which intervenes in the
economy by producing goods or services specifically for profit, speculatively.
The capitalist earns a socially recognized (and legitimated) return on invest-
ment (enabling capital to be reproduced and accumulated) when items are
brought to market and successfully sold (Braudel 1982: 400 ff.). Market
economies can exist without capitalism, but capitalism cannot exist outside a
market economy.
A separation of the notion of market from capitalism enables the analysis of
changes in the form of market relations (most specifically the sorts of commodi-
ties and services brought to market) to be distinguished from the driving
organizational logic of capitalists acting in the market itself. Thus, changes in
the social division of labour do not necessarily constitute epochal changes in
economic organization. If we accept that markets pre-exist capitalism
(capitalism is arguably predicated on the marketization of labour6), then while
they are interrelated, changes in the market's character do not indicate neces-
sary changes in the 'laws of motion' of capitalism, though both must be socially
legitimated to survive. The character of the economy may change due to
technological or social changes, and this may expand or contract the possibili-
ties for capitalistic intervention, but it does not change the substantive
conditions required for the reproduction of capital itself.
262
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CAPITAL, KNOWLEDGE AND OWNERSHIP
This suggests that while the technologies and practices of capitalism in the
market have changed in form, their underlying property relations — those
between labour-owning and capital-owning groups — could remain in
substance unaltered, though obscured through the presentation of new 'ideas'
about economic organization. Indeed, it is this continuity of the capitalist logic
required for successful intervention in the economy that seems to be wilfully
hidden by much of the legitimizing discourse regarding the emergence of the
information society. Thus, while it is
entirely possible that the origin of surplus in the era of capitalism has gradually
moved.. .[w]hat is significant is that the allocation of this surplus to the capital-owning class
has not been affected by the alteration in its sources.
(Heilbronner 1985:75-6)
New technologies do not seem to indicate a profound change in the under-
lying relations of production or their property-based organization. The crucial
issue is: to whom do the fruits of accumulation flow in the information
society? In most cases the intellectual property that is the key resource is not
owned socially or by public institutions, it is owned privately. And in the main
this does not mean by the individuals who have developed new knowledge, it is
owned by their employers, or has been transferred to the current owners by
the originators, because only the knowledge industries' firms have sufficient
resources to successfully mobilize these ideas for profit, given the structure of
the market and its barriers to entry.
While dependent on the construction of alienable property (to separate
labour from its product and to allow products to be exchanged in a market)
the forms of property are not limited except for their legal existence qua
property (Heilbronner 1985: 57 ff.).7The process is driven by the need to
earn a profit, for capital to be reproduced, and not by particular forms of prop-
erty. To be specific, the relations between knowledge capital and the
knowledge worker remain essentially the same as under 'modern' capitalism.
This is to say that capital controls and deploys the knowledge outputs in a
similar way to the products of its more materially oriented workers.
Employment contracts routinely assign the intellectual property rights of
workers' knowledge outputs to the employer, much as they would for materi-
alized production. Innovations belong (in most instances) not to the
knowledge workers but to their employers. Service contracts may forbid (for a
period of time) the transfer of internalized personal 'skills' to competing firms
(through the taking of a new post).
Companies may also define the knowledge of important workers, not as the
263
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CHRISTOPHER MAY
workers' skills and abilities, but as the trade secrets of the employer. Presented
as the danger of'inevitable disclosure', the problem of employees revealing
organizational trade secrets of their previous employer to their new employer
(which might have previously been coded as 'transferable skills') has become
an important concern for multinationals (Di Fronzo 1996; Spanner 1996).
Most interestingly, this issue was at the centre of the recent dispute between
General Motors and Volkswagen over the employment of a high-level manager
by the latter, who was using an approach to cost-cutting developed while
employed by the former. But it would be a mistake to regard this merely as an
issue at executive level, as the tightening of many standard employment
contracts' intellectual property clauses indicates. Thus, work practices may
have changed, as have working conditions for the 'symbolic analysts', but the
ownership of their outputs is still allocated through the capital/labour
relation. Even where individuals contrive to own their own intellectual prop-
erty, in most cases the structure of the knowledge industries are such that to
profit from their creations in any way they must at least license (or rent) them
to knowledge capitalists.
THE IDEA OF THE 'INFORMATION SOCIETY'
The information society may represent a new form of capitalism, inasmuch as
the appearances that the relations of production take may change and be
concerned with differing sorts of resources. However, this is not the same as a
substantive new era. Far from being new, the emergence of the knowledge
industries, and the information society as an idea of economic organization,
indicates an intensification of capitalist social relations. This is not to argue that
there is no possibility of changes in the forms of production affecting the rela-
tions of production or vice-versa. But neither is it the case that they necessarily
do (McLennan 1989: 63—9). And to my mind the case for changes in the forms
of production in an information society bringing about changes in the relations
of production has not been made. As I have tried to show above, though there
has been considerable change in the organizational forms of contemporary
capitalism, this has not had a major impact on the relations of production,
which are still based on property, albeit increasingly intellectual property. The
'information society' is not so much an analytical construct as a discourse of
disciplinary intent, which alongside 'globalization' has produced quite specific
policy requirements to favour certain areas of the economy — those sectors
grouped together under the rubric of the knowledge industries.
However, as Kumar correctly points out
264
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CAPITAL, KNOWLEDGE AND OWNERSHIP
To call the information society an ideology and to relate that ideology to the contemporary
needs of capitalism is to begin, not end the analysis. Capitalism has had many ideologies over
the past two-hundred years — laissez-faire, managerialism, welfarism Each has had its own
kind of relation to capitalist society; each has contained its own distinctive contradic-
tions The 'information society' may be a partial and one-sided way of expressing the
contemporary social reality, but for many people it is now inescapably part of that reality.
(Kumar 199S: 34)
Following Kumar, I too stress that this ideology needs to be explored: in its
origins and reproduction, and in its partiality. Though it obscures much, the
notion of information society is not completely without foundation, and thus
the contradictions that can be explored within its discourse can reveal sites of
potentially successful contestation. This critique of the information society is
the project for which this article is a first cut.
If capitalism is socially embedded though it can be distinguished from the
market, as Braudel suggests, then it requires some form of legitimization to
continue to intervene in socially existing markets. What I suggest is that the
discourse of information society is one way that the current changes in the
organization of capitalism are being presented, in an attempt to re-establish its
legitimacy. Capitalism has changed it is claimed, old criticisms are misplaced
and no longer relevant. But while the tactics for confronting capitalism's
trends of uneven development, exploitation, promotion of inequality and
pauperization may need to be changed, the underlying strategic thinking from
which such tactics flow remains valid, useful and apposite. Claims to the
contrary are not disinterested nor merely technocratic accounts of shifts in the
global political economy. There is a need to resist the discourse of naturaliza-
tion which suggests the globalization of the information society is an
exogenous process.
Given the paradigmatic character of the knowledge industries in globaliza-
tion discourse, their political economy becomes of central import. But, as I
have argued, the presumptions about information society and the knowledge
industries, on which many writers rely, significantly misunderstand the nature
of knowledge or information capitalism. They disregard the central impor-
tance of the reproduction of property relations as intellectual property
relations. If we are to be concerned with the inequalities in the global system,
as I believe we should, then we need to recognize that continuance of property
rights as the foundation on which capitalism is based. This would require us
not to forget or dismiss the politics of property which have a long and violent
history. There is a continuity between the need for capitalism to make material
resources property and the need to make ideational resources property. This
265
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CHRISTOPHER MAY
does not suggest the emerging globalized knowledge economy is no longer
subject to the same questions put to capitalism in the past. If knowledge is the
resource of the future, then knowledge inequality and its alleviation must be
the political concern of the next millennium. We should not throw away the
analytical tools we may need at the beginning of such a struggle.Christopher May
Faculty of Economics and Social ScienceFrenchay Campus, University of the West of England
Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QYChristopher. May@uwe. ac. uk
NOTESThis article originated in a discussion piece for the British International Studies
Association Globalisation Working Group workshop in April 1997. More developed
versions were presented at the 1997 BISA Annual Conference, in the Corporate and
Global Governance Research Group lecture series at UWE, and at the 1998
International Studies Association Annual Conference. I would like to thank everyone
who has commented on previous versions, especially Mark Brawley, Robin Brown,
Randall Germain, Stella Maile, Tim Sinclair and Frank Webster, as well as the referees
for iCS who helped refine the final version. The shortcomings of this article remain the
author's own.
1 This theme is also taken up with less pessimism by Lash and Urry (1994), and is married to a
call for social policy action by Aronowitz and DiFazio (1996), who conclude that displace-
ment by technology is slowly but surely moving up through the knowledge-worker hierarchy
and thus may engender more calls for intervention as middle-class professionals are increas-
ingly replaced by computers. This is also broadly the view of Paul Krugman, cited in
The Economist article referred to above.
2 Beniger (1986) suggests that the emergence of information society is predicated on the
'control revolution', which was itself a response to the forces unleashed by the Industrial
Revolution.
3 For Giddens this is the character of late-modernity. In this sense, while recognizing the sorts
of shifts that writers concerned with information society have identified, Giddens implicitly
does not accept their periodization of a root and branch transformation (Giddens 1990).
4 Five years later Bell seems to have recognized this problem and suggests that the collective
nature of knowledge production indicates that it should in the main be the responsibility of
public bodies, as the market is unable to provide a 'socially optimal policy of investment in
knowledge' even with an intellectual property regime in place (Bell 1979: 174).
5 If in the short term some software companies have accepted pirated copies of software as a
way of increasing market penetration, this should be seen as something similar to 'loss-
leaders', a marketing strategy rather than a dismissal of their property rights.
6 See Polanyi (1957), whose views on what constitutes a 'market', however, are different to
Braudel's (1982: 225-6).
7 The issue of the parallels between the possibility of materialized property and intellectual
property are central (see May 1998) but here it is sufficient that it is recognized that there is
a substantial legal sanction behind the acceptance of intellectual property qua property.
266
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CAPITAL, KNOWLEDGE AND OWNERSHIP
REFERENCESAronowitz, S. and DiFazio,W. (1996) 'High Technology and Work Tomorrow',
Annals of the American Academy of Politics and Social Sciences 544, March:52-67.
Barber, B.R. (1997) 'The New Telecommunications Technology: EndlessFrontier or the End of Democracy?' Constellations 4, 2: 208—28.
Bell, D. (1974) The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, London: HeinemannEducational.
(1979) 'The Social Framework of the Information Society', in M.L.Dertouzos and J. Moses (eds) The Computer Age: A Twenty-Year View,Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 163-211.
Beniger, J.R. (1986) The Control Revolution:Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Braudel, F. (1982) TheWheels of Commerce (Civilisation and Capitalism. 15th—18thCentury: 2), London: William Collins & Sons.
Carchedi, G. (1990) 'Between Class Analysis and Organization Theory: MentalLabour', in S.R. Clegg (ed.) Organizational Theory and Class Analysis, Berlin:Walter de Gruyter, pp. 429-48.
Castells, M. (1989) The Informational City: Information Technology, EconomicRestructuring and the Urban-Regional Process, Oxford: Blackwell.
(1996) The Rise of Network Society (The Information Age. Economy, Society andCulture: 1), Oxford: Blackwell.
(1997) The Power of Identity (The Information Age. Economy, Society andCulture: 2), Oxford: Blackwell.
Curtis, T. (1988) 'The Information Society: A Computer-Generated CasteSystem?', in V. Mosco and J. Wasko (eds) The Political Economy of Information,Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 95—107.
Di Fronzo, P. W. (1996) 'A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing', IntellectualProperty Magazine, http: / /www. ipmag.com/ difronzo.html (15 March 1998).
Doern, G.B. (1997) 'The European Patent Office and the Political Economy ofEuropean Intellectual Property Policy', Journal of European Public Policy 4,3 (September): 388-403.
Drucker, P. (1993) Post-Capitalist Society, New York: HarperBusiness.Durand, J.-P. (1997) 'Can We Make Our Own History? The Significance of the
Dialectic Today', Capital and Class 62 (Summer): 143—58.The Economist (1995) 'Technology and Unemployment: A World Without
Jobs?', 11 February: 23—6.European Commission (1997a) 'Building the European Information Society for
Us All', final policy report of the high-level expert group, April 1997,submitted to the European Commission's Directorate-General foremployment, industrial relations and social affairs, Unit V/B/4 , http://www.ispo.cec.be (12 November).
(1997b) 'Copyright and Related Rights in the Information Society:Proposalfor Directive/Background', Directorate-General 15 ,http: / /europa.eu. int / comm / dg 15 / en / inteprop / intprop /1100. htm (2 April).
267
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CHRISTOPHER MAY
Fernie, S. (1998) 'Hanging on the Telephone', CentrePiece 3, 1 (Spring): 6—11.Gallie, D. (1996) 'New Technology and the Class Structure: The Blue-
collar/White-collar Divide Revisited', British Journal of Sociology 47,3 (September): 447-73.
Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press.Grint, K. and Woolgar, S. (1997) The Machine at Work: Technology, Work and
Organization, Cambridge: Polity Press.Handy, C. (1984) The Future of Work: A Guide to our Changing Society, Oxford:
Blackwell.Heilbronner, R.L. (1985) The Nature and Logic of Capitalism, New York: W.W.
Norton.HMSO (1996) Development of the Information Society: An International Analysis (A
Report by Spectrum Strategy Consultants), London: HMSO.IBM/CDF (1997) The Net Result: Social Inclusion in the Information Society
(Report of the National Working Party on Social Inclusion), London:IBM/Community Development Foundation.
Kumar, K. (1995) From Post-Industrial to Post-Modern Society: New Theories of theContemporary World, Oxford: Blackwell.
Lash, S. and Urry, J. (1994) Economies of Signs and Space, London: Sage.Lloyd, J. (1997) 'Interview: Robert Reich', New Statesman, 14 November:
36-8.McCarthy,T. (1984) The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas, Cambridge: Polity
Press.McLennan,G. (1989) Marxism, Pluralism and Beyond, Cambridge: Polity
Press.Masuda, Y. (1980) The Information Society as Post-Industrial Society, Tokyo:
Institute for Information Society; repr. as Managing in the Information Society:Releasing Synergy Japanese Style (with a foreword by R. Lessem), Oxford:Blackwell, 1990.
May, C. (1998) 'Thinking, Buying, Selling: Intellectual Property Rights inPolitical Economy', New Political Economy 3 , 1 : 59—78.
Morris-Suzuki, T. (1988) Beyond Computopia: Information, Automation andDemocracy in Japan, London: Kegan Paul International.
Perkin, H. (1996) The Third Revolution: Professional Elites in the Modern World,London: Routledge.
Polanyi, K. (1944) [1957] The Great Transformation: The Political and EconomicOrigins of Our Time, Boston, MA: Beacon Hill.
Quah, D.T. (1997) 'Increasingly Weightless Economies', Bank of EnglandQuarterly Bulletin, February: 49—56.
Reich, R.B. (1991) The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st CenturyCapitalism, London: Simon & Schuster.
Rueschemeyer, D. (1986) Power and the Division of Labour, Stanford, CA:Stanford University Press.
Sayer, A. and Walker, R. (1992) The New Social Economy: Reworking the Division ofLabour, Oxford: Blackwell.
268
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2
CAPITAL, KNOWLEDGE AND OWNERSHIP
Sell, S.K. (1995) 'The Origins of a Trade-Based Approach to IntellectualProperty Protection: The Role of Industry Organizations', ScienceCommunication 17, 2: 163—85.
(1998) 'Multinational Corporations as Agents of Change: TheGlobalisation of Intellectual Property Rights', in A.C. Cutler, V. Haufler andT. Porter (eds) Private Authority and International Affairs, Albany, NY: StateUniversity of New York Press.
Smith, A. (1996) Software for the Self: Technology and Culture, London: Faber &Faber.
Spanner, R.A. (1996) 'Beyond Secrets', Intellectual Property Magazine,http://www.ipmag.com/span.html (15 March 1998).
Stehr, N. (1994) Knowledge Societies, London: Sage.Toffler, A. (1980) The Third Wave, London: Collins.Tomaney, J. (1994) 'A New Paradigm of Work Organization and Technology',
in A. Amin (ed.) Post-Fordism: A Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 157—94.Webster, F. (1995) Theories of Information Society, London: Routledge.
(1997) 'Information, Urbanism and Identity: Perspectives on theCurrent Work of Manuel Castells', City 7 (May): 105—21.
Wood, E.M. (1997) 'Modernity, Postmodernity or Capitalism?', Review ofInternational Political Economy 4, 3 (Autumn): 539—60.
269
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f A
rizo
na]
at 0
1:44
30
July
201
2