ABSTRACT
In a global age the relationship between culture and technology is central to any complex analysis of power. A developed perspective on the global political economy reveals inter-related cultural and technological factors as key transnational characteristics.2 Whether we think in terms of the global threats of nuclear technology and environmental pollution (Beck 1992), the sophisticated strategic surveillance systems representing military and commercial interests (Kato 1993), or the multimedia global marketing of consumer capitalism, we confront such factors. They signal that technological developments are as important for the meanings which they sustain or introduce into global existence as for the practices which they define (see the previous chapter in this volume by Palan). This chapter contends that we have yet to realise sufficiently the challenge which this situation presents for analysis of global power relations. Indeed we are inhibited by a significant tendency to assume a particular relationship between culture and technology. This approach penetrates both spatial and temporal interpretations of global relations and makes universal claims in both these contexts. Thus it contributes directly to understandings of how these relations are mapped within or across territories, and the ways in which they change over time. The approach intrinsically identifies culture as the servant of technology.
