ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to identify the main elements of an analytic framework for research on the role of information-communication technologies in the restructuring of the inherited social formation. Dissatisfaction with existing frameworks and theories motivates this endeavor. Four schools of thought that can contribute to the task are distilled from the literature: postindustrialists, industrialists, long-wave theorists, and power theorists. To varying degrees, these perspectives shed light on the dynamics of changes associated with information-communication technologies. Separating the wheat from the chaff in these perspectives and integrating their contributions with the insights of Giddens, Mouzelis, and others, we argue that an adequate understanding of the dynamics and implications of social change associated with information-communication technologies is based on (a) grasping the historical interplay between the irreducible “institutional clusters” of capitalism, industrialism, and the state; and (b) broadening the concept of technology to refer not only to the forces of production but to the “forces of distribution,” “forces of consumption,” and “forces of domination.”
