International Studies Association Convention

Blayne Haggart, Natasha Tusikov, and I have edited a new book, Shifting Power Structures: Information, Technology, and Control in a Changing World, which is in press. We are offering a preview at the 2019 International Studies Association Convention, with a panel that features some of the contributors to the collection.

Knowledge and Power in the Global Political Economy: A Multidisciplinary Perspective

8:15 AM – 10:00 AM, Thursday, March 28, 2019 at City Hall, Sheraton Centre Toronto

Chairs and Discussants

• Chair: Madeline M. Carr, University College London
• Discussant: Randall Germain, Carleton University

Papers

Redefining Ownership: Data Governance and the Internet of Things

• Author: Natasha Tusikov, York University

Incorporating the Study of Knowledge into the IPE Mainstream, or, When Does a Trade Agreement Stop Being a Trade Agreement?

• Author: Blayne Haggart, Brock University

Surveillance as Governance: Making Social Assistance Recipients Transparent

• Author: Kathryn Henne, University of Waterloo/Australian National University

A Strange Approach to Information, Network, Sharing, and Platform Societies

• Authors: Sara Bannerman and Angela Orasch, McMaster University

A Declining Superpower? The Internet Infrastructure’s Changing Balance of Power

• Author: Dwayne Winseck, Carleton University

Abstract and Keywords

The regulation of knowledge – how it is created, legitimized, commodified, and used – has become an increasingly central issue in a global society. This can be seen most concretely in the commodification of knowledge, the dominant role that intellectual property rights now play in international economic agreements, and the ways in which these factors, facilitated by digital communication technologies, are changing norms of privacy, including as they relate to population governance and the surveillance possibilities embodied in the internet. To date, however, these phenomena have been largely studied with academic silos. Somewhat paradoxically, this fractured scholarship situation has resulted in an underestimation by policymakers of the systemic, foundational changes the rising dominance of knowledge as the dominant driver of power in the global political economy. In order to address this situation, this multidisciplinary panel presents chapters from an edited volume, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in mid-2019, that examines the fundamental, systemic effects these changes are having on everything from wealth creation and innovation (via intellectual property rights) to the stability of the liberal-democratic state (via ubiquitous state and commercial surveillance).