After the course, the students should be able to:

• Account for different definitions of IT, globalization and culture.

In addition the students should be able to:

• Identify and analyze examples of the role of culture and technology in global organizations and work places.

• Identify and analyze examples of social, political and practical issues pertaining to technological, global and cultural change.

• Identify and critically assess problem areas and possibilities for knowing and knowledge generation in globally distributed organizational and technological settings.

• Design a media-based campaign in a global cultural context. 

The course provides students with an understanding of collaborative and mediated practices within the overarching framework of IT, globalization and culture. Concretely students get to experience and analyze the role of cultural issues in organizations in the context of mediated collaboration and global processes of change. Theoretically, this will allow the students to work with the following themes:
- What is globalization?
- What is culture?
- What is the internet?
- What is the role of culture and technology in global processes and organizations? 

The course is organized around lectures, group work, virtual team-work and written assignments that are to become a portfolio. Virtual teams will be formed with students at Syracuse University, New York. This teamwork will be part of students’ practical experience with distributed collaboration and communication. The portfolio will reflect the design of the case-based campaign, which the students will organize during the semester in collaboration with Syracuse-students.

Preparation for each time: Readings, writing of portfolio-assignments and commenting on the portfolios of other students. 

The students are evaluated on the basis of a portfolio that each student builds up during the course of the semester. Toward the end of the course the portfolio is turned into a written exam to be handed in on December 16.  

PRELIMINARY CONTENT

Metcalf, Peter 2005. “Culture and Nature” and “Culture and the Individual”. In Anthropology: The Basics. Routledge, pp. 115-38 and 163-81.

Dalsgaard, Steffen 2007. ‘I do it for the chocolate’. Distinktion 14, pp. 101-17.

Bjornø, Anja 2011. Orchestrating an Exceptional Death. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen.

Geertz, Clifford 1973. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture”. In The Interpretation of Cultures. Fontana Press, pp. 3-30.

Keesing, Roger 1994. “Theories of Culture Revisited”. In Assessing Cultural Anthropology, Borofsky (ed.). University of Hawaii Press, pp. 301-310.

Ortner, Sherry, 1998. Generation X. Cultural Anthropology 13, 3, pp. 414-40.

Billig, Michael 1995. “Flagging the Homeland Daily”. In Banal Nationalism. SAGE, chapter 5, pp. 93-127.

Hofstede, Geert and Fink, Gerhard 2007. Culture: Organisations, Personalities and Nations. European Journal of International Management 1, 1-2, pp. 14-22.

Collier, Stephen and Aihwa Ong 2005. Global Assemblages: Anthropological Problems. In Global Assemblages, Ong and Collier (eds.). Blackwell Publishing, pp. 3-21.

Ho, Karen 2005. Situating Global Capitalisms. Cultural Anthropology 20, 1, pp. 68-96.

Wesch, Michael 2009. From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-able. The Academic Commons Magazine, January 2009, (http://academiccommons.org/).

Barth, Fredrik 2002. An Anthropology of Knowledge. Current Anthropology 43, 1, pp. 1-18.

McLuhan, Marshall 1964. “Introduction” and “The Medium is the Message”. In Understanding Media, The MIT Press, pp. 3-21.

Miller, Danny 2011. Tales from Facebook. Polity Press.

Dalsgaard, Steffen 2008. Facework on Facebook. Anthropology Today 24, 6, pp. 8-12.

Zeitlyn, David 2003. Gift Economies in the Development of Open Source Software. Research Policy 32, pp. 1287-91.

Harrison, Simon 1995. Anthropological Perspectives: On the Management of Knowledge. Anthropology Today 11, 5, pp. 10-14.

Newell, Sue, Maxine Robertson, Harry Scarbrough and Jacky Swan 2002. “New Organizational Forms that Support Knowledge Work”. In Managing Knowledge Work. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 54-77.

Hutchins, Edwin 1995. Cognition in the Wild. The MIT Press. Introduction, chapters 1 and 9, pp. xi-xviii, 1-48, and 353-74.

Lezaun, Javier 2011. Offshore democracy. Economy & Society 40, 4, pp. 553-81.

Law, John 1997. The Manager and his Powers. (www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/sociology/papers/law-manager-and-his-powers.pdf).

du Gay, Paul 2000. In Praise of Bureaucracy.SAGE, chapters 3 and 4, pp. 61-95.

Howcroft D and Richardson H 2012. The back office goes global: Exploring Connections and Contradictions in Shared Service Centres. Work, Employment and Society 26, 1, pp. 111-127.

Taylor P and Bain P 2005. India calling to the far away towns: the call centre labour process and globalisation. Work, Employment and Society 19, 2, pp. 261-282.

Appel, Hannah 2012. Offshore work. American Ethnologist 39, 4, pp. 692-709.

Haukelid, Knut 2006. Theories of (Safety) Culture Revisited – an Anthropological Approach. Safety Science 46, pp. 413-26.

Morozov, Evgeny 2011. “Introduction” and “The Google Doctrine”. In The Net Delusion. Allen Lane, pp. ix-xvii and 1-31.

Alterman, Jon 2011. The Revolution will not be Tweeted. Washington Quarterly 34, pp. 103-106.

Main, Linda 2001. The Global Information Infrastructure: Empowerment or Imperialism? Third World Quarterly 22, pp. 83-97.

Abbott, Jason 2001. Democracy@internet.asia? The challenges to the emancipator potential of the net. Third World Quarterly 22, pp. 99-114.

Strathern, Marilyn 1995. The Nice Thing About Culture Is That Everyone Has It. In Shifting Contexts, Strathern (ed.). Routledge, pp. 153-176.

Rose, Chris 2010. How to Win Campaigns: Communications for Change. Routledge. Chp 1, 4 and 6.