Saskia Sassen: University of Chicago Chicago, USA . IMPACTS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES ON URBAN ECONOMIES AND POLITICS (Page 3) B. A POLITICS OF PLACES ON GLOBAL CIRCUITS. Digital networks are also contributing to the production of countergeographies of globalization. As is the case with global corporate firms, these countergeographies can be constituted at multiple scales. Digital networks can be used by political activists for global or non-local transactions and they can be used for strengthening local communications and transactions inside a city. Recovering how the new digital technology can serve to support local initiatives and alliances across a city's neighborhoods is extremely important in an age where the notion of the local is often seen as losing ground to global dynamics and actors.(See e.g. Lovink and Riemens 2001; Eade 1996). I conceptualize these "alternative" networks as countergeographies of globalization because they are deeply imbricated with some of the major dynamics constitutive of globalization yet are not part of the formal apparatus or of the objectives of this apparatus: the formation of global markets, the intensifying of transnational and trans-local networks, the development of communication technologies which easily escape conventional surveillance practices. The strengthening and, in some of these cases, the formation of new global circuits are embedded or made possible by the existence of a global economic system and its associated development of various institutional supports for cross-border money flows and markets. These counter-geographies are dynamic and changing in their locational features. And they include a very broad range of activities, including a proliferation of criminal activities. Through the Internet local initiatives become part of a global network of activism without losing the focus on specific local struggles. It enables a new type of cross-border political activism, one centered in multiple localities yet intensely connected digitally. Activists can develop networks for circulating not only information (about environmental, housing, political issues etc.) but also political work and strategies. There are many examples of such a new type of cross-border political work. For instance SPARC, started by and centered on women, began as an effort to organize slumdwellers in Bombay to get housing. Now it has a network of such groups throughout Asia, and some cities in Latin America and Africa. This is one of the key forms of critical politics that the Internet can make possible: A politics of the local with a big difference--these are localities that are connected with each other across a region, a country or the world. Because the network is global does not mean that it all has to happen at the global level. Current uses of digital media in this new type of cross-border political activism, suggest very broadly two types of digital activism: one that consists of actual city centered--or rural community centered, for that matter-- activist groups who connect with other such groups around the world. The second type of digital network centered politics is one that does most of its work in the digital network and then may or may not converge on an actual terrain for activism as was the case of Seattle with the WTO meeting. Much of the work and the political effort is centered on the transactions in the digital network. Organizing against the Multilateral Agreement on Investmnet was largely a digital event. But when these digital political actions hit the gound, they can do so very effectively especially in the concentrated places that cities are. Current uses of digital media in this new type of cross-border political activism, suggest very broadly two types of digital activism: one that consists of actual city centered--or rural community centered, for that matter-- activist groups who connect with other such groups around the world. The second type of digital network centered politics is one that does most of its work in the digital network and then may or may not converge on an actual terrain for activism as was the case of Seattle with the WTO meeting. Much of the work and the political effort is centered on the transactions in the digital network. Organizing against the Multilateral Agreement on Investmnet was largely a digital event. But when these digital political actions hit the gound, they can do so very effectively especially in the concentrated places that cities are. The cross-border network of global cities is a space where we are seeing the formation of new types of "global" politics of place which contests corporate globalization. The demonstrations by the anti-globalization network have signaled the potential for developing a politics centered on places understood as locations on global networks. This is a place-specific politics with global span. It is a type of political work deeply embedded in people's actions and activities but made possible partly by the existence of global digital linkages. Further, it is a form of political and institution-building work centered in cities and networks of cities and in non-formal political actors. We see here the potential transformation of a whole range of "local" conditions or institutional domains (such as the household, the community, the neighborhood, the local school and health care entities) where women "confined" to domestic roles, for instance, remain the key actors. From being lived or experienced as non-political, or domestic, these places are tranformed into "microenvironments with global span." What I mean by this term is that technical connectivity will create a variety of links with other similar local entities in other neighborhoods in the same city, in other cities, in neighborhoods and cities in other countries. A community of practice can emerge that creates multiple lateral, horizontal communications, collaborations, solidarities, supports. This can enable local political or non-political actors to enter into cross-border politics. The space of the city is a far more concrete space for politics than that of the nation. It becomes a place where non-formal political actors can be part of the political scene in a way that is much more difficult at the national level. Nationally politics needs to run through existing formal systems: whether the electoral political system or the judiciary (taking state agencies to court). Non-formal political actors are rendered invisible in the space of national politics. The space of the city acommodates a broad range of political activities --squatting, demonstrations against police brutality, fighting for the rights of immigrants and the homeless, the politics of culture and identity, gay and lesbian and queer politics. Much of this becomes visible on the street. Much of urban politics is concrete, enacted by people rather than dependent on massive media technologies. Street-level politics make possible the formation of new types of political subjects that do not have to go through the formal political system. It is in this sense that those who lack power, those who are disadvantaged, outsiders, discriminated minorities, can gain presence in global cities, presence vis a vis power and presence vis a vis each other (Sassen 1998: chapter 1). This signals, for me, the possibility of a new type of politics centered in new types of political actors. It is not simply a matter of having or not having power. These are new hybrid bases from which to act. In this broader and richer context, the political uses of digital technologies can become embedded in the local. As a politics this is clearly partial, but could be an important building block of the politics for global justice and for demanding accountability from global corporate power. We are seeing the emergence of a de-nationalized politics centered on cities and operating in global networks of cities. This is a kind of politics of the global that does not need to go through some sort of world state or the supranational level. On the contrary, it runs through places yet engages the global. It would construct a countergeography of globalization. We may be just at the beginning of this process. more