In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

1 Global Worlds of Practice This book aims to understand the nature of globalization, and in particular the nature of the globalization of software work. In my approach to globalization , I start with two premises. The first premise is that globalization is a real phenomenon, and quite likely one of the most important dimensions of the set of transformations taking place in today’s world. The second is that we cannot understand globalization just as a matter of space ceasing to matter. Contrary to pundits’ pronouncements over the last decade (Cairncross 1997; Friedman 2006), distance is not dead and the world is not “flat.” In fact, as many authors have argued, place might be becoming more important than ever before. (See, e.g., Sassen [1994] 2006; Florida 2008.) Understanding globalization therefore requires close attention to local place. Yet, we cannot understand it by looking at individual places in isolation. Globalization means a growing importance of global contexts that cut across local places. The system of relationships that comprise global software development represents one such context. To make sense of globalization , we must look at such global contexts in their relationships to local places. We must note, in particular, how global contexts get connected to each place and how they penetrate (or are drawn into) local processes. For understanding the globalization of technical work and knowledge, a particular kind of global context is crucial: I call it global worlds of practice. This chapter develops this notion as a theoretical counterweight to the idea of place. I use the term worlds of practice to refer to systems of activities comprised of people, ideas, and material objects, linked (and defined) simultaneously by shared meanings and joint actions. Each of such systems represents, to quote Schatzki (1996), a “temporally unfolding and spatially dispersed nexus of doings and sayings” (89). In other words, a world of practice involves a system comprised of material actions (“doings”), as well as meanings and signification (“sayings”), that maintains its regularity across 22 Chapter 1 time and space. Of course, as we talk of “doings and sayings,” we need to remember that the “doings” connect people and material objects, while the “sayings” connect people, objects, and often documents. In other words, the doings and sayings are not the sole elements of a world of practice, but rather the relations that define it. How such systems of doings and sayings are reproduced in time is an instance of a larger question that has occupied social theory from its early days: the problem of social order—the question of why social systems maintain continuity over time. I believe this question is best answered by drawing on a body of sociological thought known as “theories of practice,” as I explain later in this chapter. How such systems are replicated and synchronized across space is a problem that has attracted less attention, though it relates closely to a cluster of theoretical challenges that is emerging as central to twenty-first-century social science and concerns the nature and mechanisms of globalization. After introducing the concept of worlds of practice, I focus the later parts of this chapter (and the rest of the book) on this second question, the problem of space. Worlds of practice vary in the scale of their spatial dispersion. Some of them can be confined to specific places. Many of them, however, are global, connecting places spread far and wide. Being global, however, does not mean being omnipresent or homogeneous. It also does not mean being disconnected from local places. Rather, it means being connected in concrete (and often very different) ways to many places dispersed around the world. Each place must be connected one by one, often through a long process that requires much work on the ground. To borrow an analogy from Latour (1987), a global world of practice can be likened to a railroad network. Once the tracks reach a particular place, people who reside in this place may become members of the radically different context created by the railroad network. Some will gain access to new resources that they can “mail-order” from far away. Some will have new resources used against them. But before all of this can happen, the tracks must first be laid. And they cannot be laid without substantial local work. Establishing a connection between a local place and a world of practice is not a trivial process, and the railroad metaphor does not quite do justice to its complexity. A practice is...

Share