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The article discusses various reports published within the issue concerning design research edited by Caroline Hummels and Johan Redström.

Presents a foreward to the journal "Knowledge, Technologies & Policy."

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one by Caroline Hummels on emerging areas of design and another by Johan Redström on the ways in which the relationship of people with the environment could be addressed through design and design research.

Introduces Koen Dittrich and Tineke Mirjam Egyedi, co-guest editors of the September 2001 issue of the 'Knowledge, Technology & Policy' journal. Career background; Education; Achievements.

Ethiopian Jewish immigrants in Israel are one of the most ancient communities in the world, one that has been detached from the known Jewish world for about 2,500 years. Throughout this very long period of isolation, the Ethiopian Jewish community maintained Jewish tradition and dreamed over the centuries to unite with the rest of the Jewish world and immigrate to the Jewish state—Israel. But this transition occurred within a short time from an agrarian society in Ethiopia (traditional culture) with an oral culture to a knowledge society in Israel (modern culture) with a written culture. Most studies that examine cultural transition focus on anthropological, sociological, and cultural aspects; but there are nearly no studies that examine the technological knowledge of non-literate populations. The purpose of this study is to examine and characterize technological knowledge among this population—the case of Ethiopian non-literate immigrants in Israel. The study involved in-depth interviews to examine technological knowledge through using technological appliances in their everyday life, assembly of two simple technological systems, and a home technology profile compared to the general population in Israel. Participants included 50 non-literate Ethiopian immigrants between the ages of 40–60. The results of our study are surprising in that we have shown that non-literate immigrants adapt to a technology-rich environment at an average degree with respect to the general population in Israel. Also, comparing technological knowledge between traditional and modern cultures shows participants’ wide range of knowledge without ability to read and write. Illiteracy does not preclude the development of knowledge in general, technological knowledge particularly, and does not prevent non-literate populations from acquiring knowledge in a new environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the relation between design and local economy. The study explains the mechanisms, which lead innovative and knowledge intensive activities to concentrate in metropolises and major cities. In addition, there is a tendency that within cities, these activities concentrate to certain locations. Intensive and easy communication with deep social dimension connected to it creates positive externalities and spillover effects of knowledge. This is fruitful not only for the design business itself but also to a large extent to other innovative activities. The location of design industry is illustrated by empirical data in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Finland. Design has a great significance for brand and value creation processes of many important, global businesses, like mobile phone industry or machinery, in addition to design industries itself. Via this, link design firms together with research and education institutions are an important part of the global industrial clusters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While various strategic business issues related to product design have been explored by academicians and practitioners, one issue has largely been ignored: how do financial markets assess and evaluate companies’ product design? The purpose of this article is to examine this issue, especially when it comes to the assessments and evaluations made by the most essential actors of contemporary financial markets: investment analysts and institutional investors. I develop propositions concerning the product design-related evaluative schemes and heuristics used by the financial market actors in evaluating companies as investment opportunities. I illustrate my propositions with examples from, e.g., the mobile phone industry as well as with interview excerpts from interviews with investment analysts and institutional investors. Propositions are provided both for assessments of companies’ individual end products (‘design as the end product’ perspective) and for assessments of companies’ design capabilities (‘design as a capability’ perspective). In essence, the propositions highlight that the evaluative schemes used by financial market actors are partly rational, yet involve biases and are likely to lead to overvaluation and undervaluation of certain kinds of product designs by certain kinds of companies. Thus, even from the perspective of profit-maximization, many of the evaluative schemes of the financial market actors are, at most, quasi-rational. Moreover, the evaluative schemes of the financial market actors may motivate company managers to pursue certain kinds of product design rather than others—and may even lead to self-reinforcing (vicious or virtuous) circles of certain kinds of product designs being advocated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to focus on how the boundaries of both the private and the public domain are lived out in people's practices of taking mobile snapshots via camera phones and sharing them on the Web. From private photo-taking practices in public places to online disclosure of camera phone pictures, private/public boundaries are no longer firmly fixed. Based on qualitative interview data collected from 20 Korean camera phone users in their early twenties, this study takes a closer look at how private/public boundaries are blurred or rearranged in people's everyday camera phone usage in a public space, as well as in their sharing of camera phone photos on the Web. By examining the concrete cases of “displaced moments” captured by camera phones and their circulation on the Web as a form of self-presentation, it discusses how mobile snapshots have served as a medium that is shaping the dynamic reconfiguration of private/public boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the conducted research study on college students regarding the technologies role in practice and participation of daily contemporary culture, specifically in the Korean urban living, embodying essential characteristics of social technologies though the convergence of camera phone usage and the internet social networking site access, the Cyworld's mini-hompy. It is said that camera phone as part of the cell phone culture plays a significant part to cater daily routines among the young in the act of collecting images and sharing momentous days. It is mentioned that mini-hompy facilitates various level of activities and exchanges between the user and visitors, enabling personalized functions. However, privacy issues have arise, an indicative threat of cyber-stalking.

Increasingly, snapshots taken with mobile phone are ever more involved in intense processes of circulation and cross-media mobility. While camera phones are a well-established means for the production and display of pictures in contexts of physical copresence, the archival and exchange functions appear to have been absorbed by online communicative and social practices. This research studies three main issues: (a) the effects of the new Internet/photography merge (particularly, the new opportunities for transmission and sharing) on the social uses of personal photographs; (b) the changes in the status of mobile photography and of its audience due to the online relocation of image collections; and (c) the implications for mobile communication studies. Drawing on empirical qualitative data, I will first give an overall picture of these practices in the context of young Italians’ digital cross-media consumptions. My discussion is then contextualized in light of other recent contributions on the topic. I argue that the social uses and meanings of personal mobile photographs were already well established in the “pre-Web 2.0” Italian camera phone culture. I interpret this as underscoring both the intrinsically relational nature of these practices and their basic orientation towards microcommunity maintenance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital photography is contributing to the renegotiation of the public and private divide and to the transformation of privacy and intimacy, especially with the convergence of digital cameras, mobile phones, and web sites. This convergence contributes to the redefinition of public and private and to the transformation of their boundaries, which have always been subject to historical and geographical change. Taking pictures or filming videos of strangers in public places and showing them in webs like Flickr or YouTube, or making self-portraits available to strangers in instant messenger, social network sites, or photo blogs are becoming a current practice for a growing number of Internet users. Both are examples of the intertwining of online and offline practices, experiences, and meanings that challenge the traditional concepts of the public and the private. Uses of digital images play a role in the way people perform being a stranger and in the way they relate to strangers, online and offline. The mere claims about the privatization of the public space or the public disclosure of intimacy do not account for all these practices, situations, and attitudes, as they are not a simple translation of behaviors and codes from one realm to the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the camera phone is becoming widely used among mobile phone users, this new technology is changing the perspective from which we see the world and thus changing our thoughts and lives. In order to understand what this convergence means to us, this research makes a case study of 16 mobile phone users in Beijing urban area and attempts to analyze how the camera phone is used in both self-construction and self-identification processes. The case study illustrates that the camera phone is helping people record what they experience at any time and place and thus impacting upon how they experience the world. Consequently, this digitalized copy of life promotes the social reflectivity, which can be seen as facilitating the emerging civil society in China’s rapidly transforming technoculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By focusing on Internet application initiatives in four places in rural China, this study examines how the Internet is diffused and used in rural settings and what potential it has in helping rural people improve economic conditions and education. The results of this study show that the diffusion and usage of the Internet in rural areas are conditioned by the interplay of structural factors and individual differences. The change agencies have played a dominant role in introducing the Internet to the rural people. One of the major findings of this study is that Internet adoption and usage tend to be closely associated with local farming and business activities. The information needs, conditioned by the modes of production, influence farmers’ information seeking behaviours, which in turn affect adoption inclination and intensive usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raymond Williams’ work on television as a cultural form offers a theoretical basis for overcoming technological determinism in the study of the Internet. The Internet in China exerts social and political influences through the cultural forms it enables and then only when these forms respond to the human condition. Chinese Internet culture consists of new cultural forms that emerge out of the interactions between Internet and society and that are the products of both cultural tradition and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research projects have looked for social innovations, i.e., people creating solutions outside the mainstream patterns of production and consumption. An analysis of these innovations indicates the emergence of a particular kind of service configuration—defined here as relational services—which requires intensive interpersonal relations to operate. Based on a comparative analysis between standard and relational services, we propose to the Service Design discipline an interpretative framework able to reinforce its ability to deal with the interpersonal relational qualities in services, indicating how these qualities can be understood and favored by design activities, as well as the limits of this design intervention. Martin Buber’s conceptual framework is presented as the main interpretative basis. Buber describes two ways of interacting (“I-Thou” and “I-It”). Relational services are those most favoring “I-Thou” interpersonal encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a semiotic approach to modes of representation and organization of urban space. With point of departure in the art historian Donald Preziosi’s account of art history as episteme of modernity, the aim is to characterise codes that regulate the representations of urban space in a development from modernity towards a post- or hypermodern condition. In order to understand especially developments in aesthetic representation, Roman Jakobson’s semiotic mode of “artifice” is reintroduced. It seems that the application of this semiotic mode is highly relevant to the understanding of aesthetic representation in general but also and especially to the understanding of the aesthetics of three-dimensional artefacts. The article concludes with a tentative matrix of urban spatial trends and a perspective to the impact of changes in communications technology on the developments of urban space. Although the article has a theoretical scope, it refers to a number of examples from and observations in the urban environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in Skåde Bakker and Fedet, two well-off neighbourhoods in the outskirts of Århus, Denmark, this article focusses on how landscapes are perceived. Local residents describe and use the landscapes of Skåde Bakker and Fedet as endowed with “something special,” a feel-good, (almost spiritual) healing power (just moments away from the bustling city). In Melanesia, such a spiritual force goes by the name of “mana”. Århus’ mana landscapes are only invested with this huge, floating quality because they are near the city. Furthermore, they are seen from the point of view of the city, where order, design, planning and commerce are important cityscape qualities. The article deals with the way in which these two parts of the city, landscape and brandscape are complementary parts of the city-web. Analytical points made by Mauss, Lévi-Strauss and Greimas are discussed in connection with the empirical setting of the city of Århus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zuidas is a new city centre, which is emerging in the outskirts of Amsterdam. The ambitious project of developing a new international city centre has been carefully planned as the Netherlands has a strong and meticulous tradition for urban planning. The planning has however not only encompassed traditional urban planning aspects such as infrastructure, environmental factors and aesthetics, but has also dealt with the design of urban experiences. Through an introduction of the framework of the structure of experiences, this article examines how urban experiences can be understood and analysed, and deals with how urban experiences can be designed through careful consideration of how experiences are constituted. Taking the psychological structure of experiences into account when designing urbanity is not only interesting, but also highly relevant as Zuidas is competing with other international venues such as La Défense, the Docklands and Potsdamer Platz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the relationship between contemporary literature and the current development of the city in the French context. It first outlines the main aspects of the crisis of the city, or “ la question urbaine,” and focuses then on specific responses by four writers, François Maspéro, Jean Rolin, Georges Perec, and Jacques Jouet, to the challenge the city poses for literary representation. Given that these responses pertain both to the techniques of literary representation and to cultural interpretations of space, the analysis is carried out at the level of both literary semiotics and cultural semiotics. In the end, the article relates the authors and texts discussed to works in other fields of arts, pointing out lines for future investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with representations of one specific city, Århus, Denmark, especially its central district. The analysis is based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in Skåde Bakker and Fedet, two well-off neighborhoods. The overall purpose of the project is to study perceptions of space and the interaction of cultural, social, and spatial organizations, as seen from the point of view of people living in Skåde Bakker and Fedet. The focus is on the city dwellers’ representations of the central district of Århus with specific reference to the concept of transit space. When applied to various Århusian locations, this might highlight unforeseen meanings and paradoxes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this presentation is, first, to examine the role of aesthetics in creating the experiential effects of the attractions of Autostadt at Wolfsburg in Lower Saxony in Germany. Secondly, Autostadt will be seen in a perspective of urban and regional development which will include a reference to how Volkswagen AG has contributed to the development of the city of Dresden in Saxony by launching a production of luxury limousines at the centre of the city. In conclusion, the experiential design applied in both cases will be evaluated and put in perspective of urban environmental development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay discusses the performative interventions of the contemporary Belgian artist Francis Alÿs in Mexico City and how they create a critical focus on urban reality in the Latin American mega-cities, and outline ways of intervention and interaction in the modern disassociation of the city’s economical, social, and cultural levels, taking up the challenge to suggest their unity through imagination and art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Frederick Stjernfelt on the typology of urban spaces, one by Peter Allingham on the semiotic theory of aesthetic representation, and one by Kirsten Marie Raahauge on the life in the central district of the city of Arhus, Denmark, that has been turned into a brandscape.

In southern China, the use of mobile phones is becoming a ubiquitous part of everyday life for young migrant workers. What could be the possible relationship between mobile telephony and job mobility among migrants? A study of 655 migrant workers conducted in 2006 in the Pearl River Delta found a relationship between job change among migrant workers and the increasing use of mobile phones due to more information on jobs with better pay and working conditions being sent to them by friends, former coworkers, and clansmen. However, this portrait of migrant worker e-actors operating in a “broadband information society” can only be viewed in the context of the migrant labor shortage in southern China since 2004. Of fundamental concern are the vagrant identities of this new generation of young migrant workers who are excluded from the host society in which they work but also feel uncomfortable with their farmer status in their home towns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The characteristics of Internet communication enable political, social, and cultural participation from the grassroots not only because the platforms provided by the Internet are open to all and inherently interactive but also because users are able to maintain their anonymity. Although, in theory, Internet communication is well-suited to the purposes of non-profit organization(s) (NPO(s)), in practice, Chinese NPOs do not to take full advantages of the Internet because of their bureaucratic and elitist approach. However, many Chinese who were once passive observers have been transformed into active participants as a result of Internet communication. This is significant because a civil society in China can only be achieved by the efforts of agents, not observers. Internet users have been actively learning the goals of civil society and participating in civil and political activities on the Internet, while Chinese NPOs rarely use the medium for advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its low penetration in the vast rural areas of China, the Internet is generally perceived as a new engine for rural empowerment and quite a number of experimental projects have been initiated in recent years to test this view. This study explores the effects of Internet use on various aspects of rural development, including economic conditions and education. A qualitative approach was adopted in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the diffusion process of the Internet and its implications for rural development. The data-collection methods included in-depth interviews, participant observations, and documentation reviews. The findings suggest that the rural areas included in the study have not witnessed dramatic social and economic changes resulting from the introduction of the Internet. Though the scope and depth of the changes are not significant enough to lend support to the romanticized arguments about information and communication technologies for development, the empirical findings show that the Internet has had some positive effects on the livelihood and education of the rural people. This study examines how social structures exert their influence on Internet diffusion, adoption, and use. The findings provide strong empirical evidence in support of the view that society shapes the adoption of technology. The Internet serves as an agent of change, but the extent, duration, and intensity of its impact are primarily determined by the existing socio-economic contexts of the rural settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with houses and objects. Based on anthropological fieldwork on materiality in two well-off neighbourhoods in Denmark, the starting point are localisations of global flows in the privacy of houses. Filters and control showed out to be a major theme concerning the passages of things in and out of houses; these passages follow two rules: “something in means something else out” and “what comes in must be activated”. Openness and transparency showed out to be important themes concerning the house; there is a tendency towards large windows, few inner walls and large rooms, which are both poly-functional and poly-social. Furthermore, the filtering mechanisms for objects and the openness of the house are related to virtual flows from computers, telephones and televisions. Classical anthropological theories are used to understand this subject matter: the concept of haul (the spirit of the thing), exchange and social relations at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significance of technology as a human creation is explored through the topic of touch. Touch is variously considered as the alignment of properties of the technological artifact with human sense, as the virtuosity of the user and producer, as an aesthetic, and finally as a participation in problems of value that exceed any one person’s capacity to grasp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last decade, research in art and design in Finland has begun to explore new dimensions. Artists and designers have taken an active role in contextualising and interpreting the creative process in practice, as well as the products of this process, by looking at the process itself and the works produced through it. From this new point of view, the knowledge and the skills of a practising artist or designer form a central part of the research process, and this has produced a new way of doing research. In this new type of research project, part of the research is carried out as art or design practice. The central methodological question of this emerging field of research is: how can art or design practice interact with research in such a manner that they will together produce new knowledge, create a new point of view or form new, creative ways of doing research? In this article, the making and the products of making are seen as an essential part of research: they can be conceived both as answers to particular research questions and as artistic or designerly argumentation. As an object made by an artist–researcher, the artefact can also be seen as a method for collecting and preserving information and understanding. However, the artefacts seem unable to pass on their knowledge, which is relevant for the research context. Thus, the crucial task to be carried out is to give a voice to the artefact. This means interpreting the artefact. During the process of interpretation, furthermore, the artefact has to be placed into a suitable theoretical context. In this process, the final products (the artefacts) can be seen as revealing their stories, i.e. the knowledge they embody. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anonymous speech plays a fundamental role in America’s political history. However, that long tradition of anonymous communications faces an image problem in today’s age of spam, computer viruses, spyware, denial-of-service attacks on websites, and identity theft. The criminals and hackers who perpetrate these insults on the commercial Internet are, for the most part, anonymous; we simply do not know the identities of these bad guys. Yet, the promise of anonymous communications is vital to the preservation of political liberty across the globe. Therefore, how should we regard anonymity in a digital age? And how should we strike the right balance between security and anonymity online? To begin, we should not consider the outlawing of anonymous communications as the answer to today’s cybersecurity threats. Commercial sector “regulation” of anonymity, so to speak, can play a significant role in combating these problems. Increasingly, online authentication has become important to both personal security and to cybersecurity in general. Some recent proposals toward bolstering security have included greater authentication of the source of emails to deal with spam and the requirement that those who conduct transactions online reveal their identities – seeming violations of online culture. Policymakers also want a say in the matter, and as the process unfolds, they might feel increasingly tempted to intervene whenever issues impacting privacy and authentication emerge in debates over telecommunications, intellectual property, biometrics, cybersecurity, and more. Regardless, government should not strip us of our anonymity online. Cybersecurity concerns may instead call for the marketplace – not regulators – to deal with the fact that many threats stem from that very lack of authentication. The inclusion of greater authentication standards into online services by private vendors will lead to their working in concert in unprecedented ways that may draw attention from regulatory and antitrust authorities. But these private, experimental efforts have no implications for political liberty – nor are they anticompetitive. Private solutions are the only real hope we have for decreasing cybersecurity threats, given that previous government efforts to regulate the Internet – for example, outlawing spam in 2004 – have not lived up to expectations. Political anonymity and commercial anonymity are not the same thing, and the distinction requires better appreciation. Over the coming tumultuous period of dealing with online threats, policymakers should allow the experimentation necessary to cope with today’s lack of online authentication to proceed with minimal interference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on radio frequency identification (RFID), the benefits and issues about specific uses of the technology as well as the role of the U.S. government in supporting or limiting the development of the technology. It has been noted that RFID involves a tag capable of transmitting low-strength radio signals and identifying a specific item within a class of products. It also enables the underlying information technology systems to create large databases with the potential to accommodate detailed histories of production, distribution, and usage. The author cites a mandate from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and the Department of Defense which instructs suppliers to convert RFID systems in January 2005. However, the author and consumer groups believed that RFID invades consumer privacy.

Privacy is one good among other goods and should be weighed as such. The relationship between technology and privacy is best viewed as an arms race between advancements that diminish privacy and those that better protect it, rather than the semi-Luddite view which sees technology as one-sided development enabling those who seek to invade privacy to overrun those who seek to protect it. The merits or defects of particular technologies are not inherent to the technologies, but rather, depend on how they are used and above all, on how closely their use is monitored and accounted for by the parties involved. In order to reassure the public and to ensure accountability and oversight, a civilian review board should be created to monitor the government’s use of surveillance and related technologies. Proper accountability requires multiple layers of oversight, and should not be left solely in the hands of the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Privacy watchdog groups have criticized the privacy policies and practices of internet service providers and search engine companies like AOL, Google, and Microsoft. AOL’s decision to upload users’ search query records to the internet drew intense criticism when it was shown that minor sleuthing could decipher some users’ private identities. We draw upon this and similar incidents to demonstrate various personal borders that are crossed by such revelations. We maintain that policy discussions are enhanced by multidimensional conceptualizations of privacy. We agree that many analyses of technology and privacy overlook the upsides of technological change; however, we think it is not more valid to understate privacy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article notes ways that power is central to questions of personal information access and use. New surveillance technologies are likely to sustain and even strengthen traditional forms of social stratification. Yet power is rarely a zero-sum game. A number of factors that limit unleashing the full potential of privacy-invading technology, even in contexts of inequality, are considered: legal and moral normative constraints on power holders; the logistical and economic limits on total monitoring; the interpretive, contextual, and indeterminate nature of many human situations; system complexity and interconnectedness; human inventiveness; and the vulnerability of those engaged in surveillance to be compromised or responded to in kind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are exploring how to increase energy awareness through critical interaction design, creating objects that expose issues related to energy consumption in various ways. To draw attention to energy beyond ordinary conceptions as a technical solution in everyday life, we inquire into other ways of relating to energy in design and to uncover the properties of energy as a design material. To learn more about how energy can be made more present in product design, we have been redesigning a series of everyday objects around the theme of ‘erratic appliances’. As household energy consumption increases, these appliances start to behave strangely. The aim was to use designerly and experience-based means to make people aware of their energy consumption instead of measuring energy consumption solely with meters and numeric displays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To make technology research more effective and to deal with fierce cost competition, technology research should be more focused on radical innovation and needs to adopt a more end-user-focused approach. Product improvement is already quite often building on knowledge collected around consumers’ experiences with these products to come with a next, improved generation of products. However, in case of creating novel products from “scratch,” this will be more difficult. The user-centered research approach including insights, scenarios, and experience prototypes provides a good method to incorporate the consumer perspective in the earliest stages of the product creation process. The development of the Ambilight TV will be used as a case to illustrate this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Located between the cities of Conackry, Dubréka and Boffa, the Sangarea Bay is home to mangrove-type forests undergoing various forms of pressure. In 1992, a forest management plan was put into place in order to manage the resources. It aimed at promoting socioeconomic activities while keeping the mangrove ecosystem in balance. This plan was assessed in 1999. The results showed that even though it integrated environmental and economic objectives, it failed to include the social as well as cultural contexts and it did not involve the social actors in the decision process. Hence, the plan did not meet the expected results. Still today, the economic, environmental, social and cultural criteria and effective actor involvement in the resource management have to be taken into account to maintain the fragile balance of the Bay. This study is an attempt to include these criteria while opting for a new approach for a sustainable management of the resources of the Bay. This study is a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) based on the use of the multi-criteria decision tool in a context where there are several actors involved. Structuring objectives and issues at stake allows the criteria to be identified. Using the sociological data available simulated the value-system of each actor involved, and subsequently, they were all put into a model by giving various weights to the criteria. The SEA compares the existing plan (sector-wise approach) with alternative scenarios including an ‘integrated management plan’ scenario (holistic approach), or ‘a complete protection of the area’ scenario. The scenarios were assessed according to the quantitative and qualitative data available. The results illustrate how the multi-criteria method can be relevant as a decision tool when choosing a sustainable way to manage natural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) is a complex multi-actor issue. Staff members of Cochin University (CUSAT) from India and colleagues from the Netherlands interpreted this issue as a challenge to initiate and enhance multistakeholder dialogue and action and the idea was born to produce a Visual Problem Appraisal (VPA). VPA is a film-based learning system that aims to induce social learning, to increase problem and policy analysis competencies, to reduce self-referentiality, to increase commitment for concerned stakeholders, and to enhance intersubjective consensus. In 2003 Indian and Dutch university staff members and Indian filmmakers produced two documentaries and 23 films portraying the Keralite stakeholders in their natural environment, exposing their engagement with, and different perspectives on, ICZM. Although produced for formal education, the notion emerged that the VPA might as well work in the reality of ICZM in Kerala. It was a fascinating conversion of questioning the nature of some events and frictions that occurred during the production process. As critical incidents were attributed to various cultural disparities such as local/foreign, male/female, higher/lower status, the hypothesis was formulated that if producing the VPA had already set a deep impact; how about using it directly with involved stakeholders? This hypothesis was tested in 2004 in workshops with publics, ranging from CUSAT students to local stakeholders of the Thycattussery Panchayat. The process of producing and testing the VPA Kerala's Coast was a complex and intriguing multidisciplinary and multicultural project. We wondered what made the project a success. Framing the project as a space of cultural communication gave guidance to the questions that articulated our search to understand the process we had been immersed in. In this article we describe the events and analyze critical incidents that occurred during the production and the use of the VPA. The outcome leads to valuable recommendations for international and intercultural teams working on similar production and research projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the good governance practices in Bangladeshi villages. It is stated that the introduction of public participation is one of the means to achieve credibility. The international donors are mainly concerned with the ignorance of the voices and interests of the underprivileged, the poor, the handicapped and the women, if the dominant families, clans and tribes divide up the funds among themselves and leave little of the public purse for those who need it more. The donor countries view good governance in two main presuppositions including public participation and thorough problem analysis and rational choice.

The article discusses several reports published within the issue including one by Martin de Jong and Otto Kroesen on the implication of policy transfer on value transfer and another by Halina Szejn Brown on the influence of the rule of law and a stable civic political tradition in Poland.

Gary P. Freeman and David K. Hill argue that the U.S. system of multiple visa categories and the often distorting business interests behind these, point to a far from rational economic construction of policy. They indicate the difficulties of reform, even in the absence of strongly organized public opposition, and the degree to which path-dependence seems to determine overall outcomes in the policy process. Curiously, the authors suggest that highly skilled migration policy in the U.S. is a wholly self-contained national affair. National politics, rather than global economic pressures, drive the twists and turns of U.S. immigration policies, with key roles being played by high tech employers, professional associations, pro and anti-immigrant organizations, and even associations of immigration lawyers. There appears to be little space in their accounts for the kind of global legal/institutional influences signaled by WTO reforms or by the importance of global multinationals. Freeman and Hill offer useful analytical frameworks to differentiate between distinct forms of migration by technical workers, and the often contradictory state policies and the politics linked to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paula Chakravartty contrasts the everyday experiences of Indian entrepreneurs from Bangalore, who are very successfully developing that region as a high-tech global metropolis, with the often unhappy, mid-level educated Indian migrants to the U.S. who now come to the U.S. on H-1B visas because they were not “good enough” to break into the elite schools and best high-tech operations in India. Because of foreign status, Indian migrants often face “glass ceilings” in professional advancement not commensurate with education, experience or professional attainment, as Chakravartty points out. She maintains that due to the precariousness of the H-1B type immigration status, it can be argued skilled migrants to the U.S. have frequently been exploited by employers, having become the equivalent of “high-tech braceros.” Chakravartty also explores the evolving ties of international students in the U.S. and high-tech workers from India in Silicon Valley that have led to kinds of globally circulating currents of hi-tech labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Katalin Szelényi suggests that the less-developed a country is internationally, the more elites of such a country choose to move internationally in their educations and careers. Her research on different graduate student nationalities in the U.S. (presented here) is the basis of her suggestion. She adds that it is no surprise the North Africans and Latin Americans one meets in finance or the media in London are from relatively elite backgrounds—one has to be an elite in these countries to have the chance to move. This is not the case with nationals from the more highly developed countries, where mobility opportunities are more broadly shared and where people who move internationally have made much more marginal, risky, career decisions compared to those in nationalized careers from welfare-states with stable pay-offs at home. Szelenyi also reviews in depth the brain drain/gain/circulation question, which is the biggest single area of research on skilled migrants. This is because of its sharp policy implications in developing countries in terms of economic development and political stability. Such fears of the developmental costs of “brain drain” assume a zero-sum game in which sending countries lose as the developed world creams off the best and the brightest. Szelényi, however, questions the notion that it is always the best and the brightest who move. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Larrissa Hjorth's study of mobile phone personalisation in an Australian sample group sees the sending of text (SMS) and picture (MMS) messages as crucial to the maintenance of personal social connections. At the centre of this activity is the mobile phone itself, both as a machine for sending messages, and as an artefact that displays a message about the individual users via the personalisation choices they have made. By choosing screensavers, ringtones and faceplates for their phone, Hjorth documents how the users in her study are able to manage the display of their own identity (a fetishisation of the object). Hjorth sees this personalisation as a performative act, which proves that gender and identity are not innate, but are constantly practised, rehearsed and expressed in everyday life. In the case of the mobile phone, personalisation is therefore seen as an extension of this performative acting of gender and identity, the phone taking on the practised identity of the individual and, through its broadcast of these individual identities via faceplates and ringtones, disseminating this into the immediate social environment of the user. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genevieve Bell develops these themes of identity management further to look across Asian societies to see how the mobile phone is used to maintain individual identities and social roles within families and tight-knit social groupings. Bell documents how the technological advances of the mobile phone enable new ways of navigating the often complex social structure of Asian society. Rigid hierarchies in such cultures can be more easily deferred to when the name of the caller is displayed to the user before a call is taken. Bell also discusses how the mobile phone is used specifically to negotiate social interaction between family members, not only in maintaining hierarchies but also in providing a sense of security. Mobile phones are bought for children so that they can be used to communicate with them, but also as a sort of game that parents perform with their children, whereby the phone provides a constant umbilical link spooled out from parent to child that the parent is able to use to reassure him/herself of their child's safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Joachim Höflich's article develops an understanding of the dynamic between these private personal and public social spaces. Höflich sees the phone as an 'indiscreet' technology, one which leaks the personal into the public in a way that mirrors a growing cultural trend across all communications media. Höflich points out the conflict of this dual public/private role of the mobile phone. Social networks sustained by mobile phones are intensely private--there is no public directory of mobile phone numbers--and yet the contents of the conversations within these private social networks are often performed in very public spaces. Höflich takes a European perspective within his study. What is clear is that concepts of public and private space regarding mobile phone usage do no travel well--behaviour accepted in the Nordic countries is not in more Mediterranean countries, and vice-versa. It is clear that the mobile phone redefines the sense of personal and public space, whilst also reflecting what may perhaps be more deeply rooted national cultural and social behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lara Srivastava examines the subculture that has accompanied the exponential rise in mobile phone usage, arguing that a whole new set of mobile manners have emerged that are in use in different cultures around the world. This article examines two ways in which the mobile phone is impacting daily human existence: social etiquette and spam. The author maintains that the ubiquity of the mobile phone in everyday life has meant that the distinction between the public and the private spheres of human existence has become less pronounced. Srivastava's perspective on mobile culture allows us to approach recent industry developments from an academic standpoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]