A decade of time in the internet world.pdf

8/14/2019 A decade of time in the internet world.pdf

1/29Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1928002

A Decade of Internet Time in the Arab World:

Or: How to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet

Harris BRESLOW

Department of Mass Communication

American University of Sharjah

[email protected]

Ilhem ALLAGUI

Department of Mass CommunicationAmerican University of Sharjah

[email protected]

Contact: [email protected]+971 50 249 3291


2/29Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1928002

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Introduction

The year 2011 will be remembered, in part, as being marked by a significant shift in

the history of the Internet in the Arab world. So far, Internet users in the majority of Arab

countries have exhibited an apolitical attitude online due to the high degree of interception

exerted by their governments, as well as the policies and regulations of constraint that have

constituted impediments to Internet development in the region. One can believe that we are

witnessing an important turning point in the history of the region, a point where

communication technologies (the Internet and mobile phones) play a significant role. While

forecasting the future is tempting, understanding the past is even more important at this

moment, as is evidenced by this symposium on the decade of the Internet. The sudden use

of technology and the Internet (as media) during the events of the recent uprisings for

political change in the Arab world, a region where technology is known to be nearly

deficient, proves that the major handicaps to Internet development during the last decade are

not found in a lack of Arab knowledge or an incompatibility between culture and imported

technologies (Davidson et al. 2000) or illiteracy rates, but primarily in the restrictive policies,

government strategies, and regulations regarding Internet development that are at odds with

the development of Arab civil society and its welfare.

We begin this paper with an overview of Internet development during the last decade

(2000-2010), highlighting the regulatory policies governing the Internet in this region.

Observations: A Slow Decade of the Internet and its Evolution in the Arab World

The majority of Arab countries have experienced a very slow rate of Internet

adoption. As shown in the table below, most Arab countries were close to zero in terms of

Internet penetration rate at the beginning of the decade, except the United Arab Emirates.

In 1995, the UAE began its wired-country strategy by providing Internet access to

different actors, such as households, schools and universities, government institutions, etc.

By 2000, not only had access to the Internet among users experienced growth, the first ISP

(Internet Service Provider)had also been introduced (The Emirates Internet and Multimedia)

with a vision to be globally competitive, if not a pioneer, with regards to information

technologies. This introduction was enabled by huge investments in Internet infrastructure

and the use of state-of-the-art technologies, along with an open economy strategy that was

materialized, for instance, in the 2001 launching of Dubais free zones, which attracted

corporations and multinationals from around the world. With a seven billion dirham1


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investment, the UAE is expected to be the first nation in the world to offer 100% penetration

of fiber-to-home connectivity by the end of 2011.

Country Dec-00 Dec-10 % Growth

Algeria 0.20% 13.60% 6800%

Bahrain 5.70% 88% 1544%

Comoros 0.20% 3% 1550%

Djibouti 0.20% 7.80% 3900%

Egypt 0.70% 21.20% 3029%

Iraq 0.10% 1.10% 1100%

Jordan 2.40% 27.20% 1133%

Kuwait 5.80% 39.40% 679%

Lebanon 5.80% 24.20% 417%

Libya 0.20% 5.50% 2750%

Mauritania 0.20% 2.30% 1150%

Morocco 0.30% 33% 11000%

Oman 3.80% 41.70% 1097%

Palestine

(West Bk.) 1.10% 14.20% 1290%

Qatar 3.80% 51.80% 1363%

Saudi Arabia 0.90% 38.10% 4233%

Somalia 0% 1%

Sudan 0.10% 10% 10000%

Syria 0.20% 17.70% 8850%

Tunisia 1% 34% 3400%

United Arab

Emirates 19.60% 75.90% 387%

Yemen 0.10% 1.80% 1800%

Figure 1: Internet Penetration Growth in the Arab countries (2000-2010)2

While the majority of Arab countries have witnessed a tremendous growth of Internet

penetration rates (households and businesses), Morocco and Sudan register the highest

growth rates of 11000% and 10000%, respectively.

By the beginning of the decade - as shown in the table, below - the majority of Arab

countries had a single ISP. The number of Internet hosts has increased by the end of the

decade (an ISP computer is normally an Internet host), which corresponds to the growth of

Internet connectivity in the region.


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Country Nbr. ISP

(2000)

Nbr. Internet

hosts (2011)

Nbr. IPs/

country

(Sep. 2011)

First 100 Arab countries

ranked among the world

by IPs number

Algeria 2 572 2,625,048 56Bahrain 1 53,944 407,764 98

Egypt 50 187,197 8,449,327 35

Iraq 1 9 194,516

Jordan 5 42,412 578,139 87

Kuwait 3 2,485 1,602,609 67

Lebanon 22 51,451 467,546 96

Libya 1 12,432 308,104

Mauritania 5 34,529

Morocco 8 277,793 3,395,201 53

Oman 1 9,144 355,175 100

Palestine

Terr.

256

Qatar 1 822 657,671 86

Saudi

Arabia

42 488,598 4,441,880 51

Somalia 1 3 14,597

Sudan 1 70 288,404

Syria 1 8,114 720,607 82

Tunisia 1 490 2,729,405 55

UAE 1 379,309 2,875,992 54

Yemen 1 255 54,220

Figure 2: Internet Connectivity in Arab Countries 2000-20113

Additionally, while the growth rate in Arabic Internet users is the highest in the world

(2064% for the period 2000-2008 according to the Arab Knowledge Report 2009), the

growth of Arabic websites and pages between 2005-2010 is estimated at 80%, and the

number of web pages containing content in Arabic is estimated at 205 million, representing

just 1.5% of the total web.4

However, while one might look at the tables and admire the exhibited growth, it is

inescapable to note some negative patterns:


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The online population by language (i.e. Arabic) in 2010, is estimated at only 4% of allworld languages (it was 1% in 2000);

As of 2010 the Internet penetration rate of the Internet for all countries in the regionremains lower, 24.1% than the worldwide average, 29.7%;

In 2008, the average level of fixed broadband penetration amongst Arab states was ata level where the world was some 6 years earlier, and where Europe had been some

10 years earlier;

In 2010, the ITU estimated that the fixed broadband subscription for the Arab stateswas 2.3%, versus the European subscription rate of 23.9% and the subscription rate

for the Americas of 15.5%;

All Arab countries register an ICT index value lower than the world average, exceptfor a few wealthy countries in the Arabian Gulf;

The number of computers per person in the rest of the Arab countries is lower thanthe global average, with the exceptions of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait;

Only 40% of ISP operators offered 3G/3.5G services in 2008, by 2009 this percentagehad increased to 56%;

The network readiness index5 developed by the World Economic Forum for 2010-2011 places the UAE and Qatar in the top 10 countries in the world. However the

average for MENA countries is below the world average despite the fact that Israel,

the UAE, and Qatar lift the regions numbers upwards. It is worth mentioning that

Qatar ranks second in the world in terms of government readiness followed by the

UAE, which is ranked third. Singapore is ranked first, worldwide.

Technology and the Regulatory Environment

The dissemination of Internet access depends on government incentives and policies

that facilitate Internet adoption. This hasnt been an easy task for most Arab countries;

various mechanisms and strategies were put in place by domestic and non-domestic actors

(private and public institutions, and to a lesser degree NGOs) in order to aid in the growth of

access within the region. While these strategies and mechanisms are numerous, we will

discuss here only few of them.

To begin; with regards to infrastructure, the majority of Arab countries were late in

investing in Internet infrastructure, not only because of their poor economic conditions but

also because they were not prepared and rather forced to adapt to this technological change.

We elaborate further on this, in the next section, below. ICT development was not considered


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a priority compared to health, education, security, or growth in other social and economic

sectors. This is a rationale most Arab countries adopted regarding cultural industries, and

cultural industry products, in general. Thus, except for a few of the wealthy GCC countries

that invested in infrastructure as early as the mid-late nineties (namely the UAE, which

benefited from its pioneering position, and gained a competitive position amongst mid-higher

income countries), the rest of the Arab countries were very late in such investment, as the

graph below demonstrates.

Figure 3:ICT expenditure per capita US$ (2000-2007)

Source! #$$%!&&'''()*)+,$)$,(-*.&/01/2)$-*(),%3/01456789*4:;;4-,083

+/1;0I

26=3 >B


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Reading the Emirates Internet Project as A Lack of Flow: Distance, Blockages, and Fluids

Distance

[The] death of distance is not the end of the spatial dimension of

society.[The] space of places, based in meaningful physical proximity,

continues to be a major source of experience and function for many people inmany circumstances.

-Manuel Castells41

We begin this section with a quote by Castells because we are convinced that space

does play a role in the lack of evidence for both the online deployment of sub state politics,

and the proliferation of politicized identities and political participation across the apparatus of

flow. Indeed, we agree with Urrys assertion that the extensive and intensive deployment of

the Internet on a global scale can be understood, in part, as the deployment of social

networks. We believe that understanding the Internet as a social network, alongside its

existence as a digital information network,42

enables us to arrive at certain insights

concerning the organization and deployment of political behaviour across the Internet.

Viewing the Internet as a social network enables us to understand that, although

individuals can make and maintain social, political, and cultural ties across vast distances,

these weak ties come at a price, one that Urry has termed, the burden to mobility. 43What

gets exchanged through intense and dynamic conversational interactions are rich social

goods, of friendship, power, projects, markets, information and so on. Central to networks

then are meetings and hence traveling through time-space in order to cement the weak ties

at least for another period.44Of course, the further ones network extends, and the weaker

the ties, the more burdensome the imperative to be mobile becomes, and the more likely this

obligation will not be met, which eventually results in the severing of weak ties. Note figure

12, a chart concerning the impact of the Internet upon social relationships in the UAE:

Although we can certainly explain the lack of effect upon political relationships in terms of

the fears that individuals have of the surveillance of their political activities while online, we

believe that the burden of mobility to preserve weak ties is also crucial to understanding this

chart. Many Arab and other expatriates in the UAE, as well as across the Arab world, lack the

resources, time, or opportunity to fulfill the obligations to mobility. Indeed, given the rather

unique political economic structure found in the UAE and other GCC countries, we estimate

that almost seven in ten residents lack the resources to travel to any degree of frequency that

may be considered to be regular. Thus, although they may establish weak ties that are

founded upon common political beliefs and commitments, and although these weak ties may


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persist for some time, they will ultimately be severed as a result of one or more actors

inability to travel.

We must also be mindful of the effects of a decade of regulation - political, economic,

regulatory, and otherwise - on both the creation of, and the propensity to access, various

forms of online content. We noted, above, that the imposition of a global system of trade

regulations, infrastructure and technology financing, domain name structures and rules, and

the surveillance and sanctioning of online content, has resulted in the overwhelming access

and consumption of English language online content on the part of Arabs from the UAE and

elsewhere. The EIP has found that, the younger an Arab respondent is, the more likely he or

she is to remain solely within the English language web universe, a universe devoted to the

promulgation of Western cultural values, political ideals, and cultural products. Indeed, given

the extremely strong trend indicated by our research, we conclude that this propensity has

increased over time during this past decade of Internet use.

This propensity on the part of younger and younger respondents to increasingly live in

the English language web universe is important to us, because it points to another explanation

as to why our research points to a dearth of political behaviour while online. As we

discussed, above, conceiving of the Internet as a social network enables us to describe its

topology in terms other than those that are technological. In this respect we do not want to

discuss a topology of root servers, nodal points, and other IP-related terms. Rather, as above,

we want to discuss and describe the Internet as a social topology. In this respect, the digital

network of the Internet, and particularly the World Wide Web, does not replicate social

networks. In social networks individuals are found in a normal distribution of individuals

across the world weakly connected and a few moderately powerful nodes.45However, and

despite its global reach and the massive number of nodes that it possesses, it cannot be said

that the Web is normally distributed, in a random fashion.

The Web consists of a relatively few exceptionally well-connected hubs thatutterly dominate its networks. [Each] time the number of links doubles, the

nodes that possess that number of links reduce by around five. The Web has

thus been characterized as an aristocratic network in which the rich getricher. There is thus a hidden order lying behind the development of the

Web even though much of its historical development was unplanned,uncontrolled and amorphous.46

Although we believe that Urrys use of the small worlds thesis, and his discussion of

the Internet and the World Wide Web in terms of social network topographies, are extremely

insightful, we cannot agree with his assertion that the aristocratic character of the social


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topography of the Web is hidden or uncontrolled. For a decade or longer the development of

the World Wide Web as an aristocracy of Western commercial, informational, and cultural

sites has taken place in front of our eyes. Moreover, this has not gone on surreptitiously, or in

some unplanned and uncontrolled manner: During this past decade of Internet time we have

read of the regulatory, juridical, and political economic decisions that have shaped the

relationships that are found online. These have not been reports hidden on the shelves of

archives, nor have they been buried in the avalanche of reports produced by governments,

think tanks, or NGOs. We have, all of us, read of these developments in the mainstream press

on an almost daily basis, for the past ten years or longer. We now have to read these

decisions literally, in the relationships that have been knitted into the very fabric of the social

topology of the Web. They are there, in front of our eyes, and only a click, or five, away. Far

from enabling the proliferation of political identities, this fabric literally ensnares us in a

manner befitting a web. In this respect, the aristocratic social topology of the Web has

contributed to the dearth of politics online, in the Arab world, for it has promoted a form of

social inertia where users lose themselves in an endless number of sites driven by

preprocessed entertainment, prepackaged news, and simplified forms of expression (like, not

like).

In addition to the limits of weak ties and the burdens of mobility, one must also take

into account the relationship that transnational migrants have to their destination countries,

and the effect that this relationship has upon the propensity towards activities online, and the

proliferation of political identities and political participation across or at distance. A great

deal of recent research has found that transnational migrants do not take their identities with

them, or rather that their identities become attenuated, hyphenated, and certainly different

than they were prior to the act of migration. This process of attenuation articulates itself to

the identities, habits, and political activities that transnational migrants and transnational

migrant communities develop over time, in their destination homes, along with the digital

habits that they develop and the Web sites that they visit. Thus, although people often

presume a connection between local citizenship and the existence of transnational political

practices and processes of identification, empirical research at both levels is still scarce.47

Indeed, it would appear that the practice of local politics is far more likely to occur amongst

transnational migrants,48

and that transnational political behaviour is far more complexly

determined, requiring the conjunctural articulation of an opportunity structure of a variety of

factors, not the least of which are those that are economic, political, and social, in nature.49


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Blockages

Moreover, the effects of a decades worth of global political economy, and the heavy-

handed regulation and surveillance of the Internet and the World Wide Web in the Arab

world have, have functioned as blockages to online political behaviour and the proliferation

of political identities as a result of the stifling political opportunity structure within Arab

countries. Whether one wants to use the term political opportunity structure, or political

relational fields,50 there are ultimately several factors that either mitigate or encourage the

tendencies towards the proliferation of politicized and localized identities, on the one hand,

and the deployment of sub-state politics and political participation over distance, on the other.

A political opportunity structure [POS] is general described as more or less open, where a

more open structure facilitates the emergence of certain movements and makes it easier for a

social movement to influence the political system.51Amongst the factors that contribute

to an open POS are 1) the relative openness or closure of the institutionalized political

system; 2) the stability of that broad set of elite alignments that typically undergird a polity;

3) the presence of elite allies; 4) the states capacity for repression.52

Its almost as if many of the countries in the Arab world had a checklist that they

followed when building out their Internet infrastructure and regulating its use, for we can

safely say that the majority of Arab countries - in particular those countries that have

undergone the sudden and profound changes during the recent Arab Spring - were anything

but open. The regulations, economic costs, lack of widespread access, relative regime

stability, and the enormous capacity for repression, worked to stifle online expression of all

but the most banal content, prevented the development of an online public sphere, and served

to block the politicization of identities and political action. Indeed, it took a very dramatic

and unfortunate use of very low technology to set the events of the Arab Spring in motion,

and it is only now that both identities and participation are beginning to proliferate across thecountries that have gone through the Arab spring.

Fluids

We conclude this paper with a meditation on the nature of subjectivity a decade on

into the time of the Internet. Here we want to make a single assertion; subjectivity occupies a

fluid space. This is not meant to be trite, nor is it meant to be a simplistic assertion of post-

structural subjectivity that somehow trumps Appadurais assumptions, allowing us all to go

home early. Rather, we see subjectivity as occupying a fluid space that is itself enabled,

perhaps provoked, by the Internet and the apparatus of flow. Mol and Law identify three


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forms of space; regions, networks and fluids. Regions consist of clusters of objects that are

maintained over time and in space through the existence of boundaries. Networks are

relational spaces that are able to cross boundaries, and that exist relationally amongst the

elements or objects within a network across distances. The difference and relative value

amongst the elements and objects within a network are a function of the relational variety

inherent to the network.53These terms should be familiar to us all, by now, for they

correspond to the topology of the Internet.

Fluid spaces, however, are a different story. To begin with, fluid space does not exist

independently. Rather, its existence is a function of networks, and the ability of things -

objects, ideas, subjects, for instance - to move freely, to flow, across these networks.54

In this

respect there is an inherent dialectic to the apparatus of flow, one in which the nature of

subjectivity is freed from any structural determination, either by the topology inherent to the

network, or the boundary conditions imposed upon the subject by the region in which he or

she exists. Instead; the intensity of the Internet and the apparatus of flow provokes a space in

which its not possible to determine identities nice and neatly, once and for all. Or to

distinguish inside from outside, this place from somewhere else. Similarity and difference

arent like identity and non-identity. They come, as it were, in varying shades and colours.55

Much like information, global brands, and automobility,56 subjectivity is fluid, and

exhibits a propensity to mutate as the subject travels across the apparatus of flow, whether

physically through transportation networks, or digitally across the Internet. There is no

guarantee that the subject who was politically motivated in one region of the network, will be

similarly so, in another. Indeed, this goes a long way towards explaining why transnational

migrants cling close to their new home when they surf the web, and why they tend to

prioritize the local politics and polities of their destination location. Like anything else, the

subject is comprised of a variety of heterogeneous elements, some of which are more active

than others at one place than they are at another,57or while surfing one website, instead of

another. Our sense of self is robust,58but it is articulated in varying shades and colours. There

is no guarantee, as we move from place to place, or site to site, across the Internet and the

apparatus of flow, that we will be political or that we will engage in politics whether they be

near to us or across vast distances made close by the Internet and the apparatus of flow, or

that we will even remain whom we have been. We believe that this is precisely what leads

respondents to our surveys, more than four in five of whom are transnational migrants, to

indicate that they by and large dont read of news from home, or use the Internet in the


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preservation of their national identities. There is only the contingency and immediacy of this

place, this region, this node, this site.

Perhaps this is the most important lesson of all to learn, after a decade of Internet

time.

1http://www.telecoms.com/31352/ericsson-joins-dus-ftth-project/.

2Source: Internet World Stats3 CIA World Fact Book, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-

factbook/fields/2184.html); Domain tools, http://www.domaintools.com/internet-

statistics/country-ip-counts.html; World Facts and Figures,

http://www.worldfactsandfigures.com/internet_isps.php.4The National, interview with Mohammad Gawdat, the managing director for southern and

eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Google available athttp://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/industry-insights/media/tally-of-arabic-

pages-exceeds-google-expectations.5 The network readiness index considers the following variables: market environment,

political and regulatory environment, infrastructure environment, individual readiness,business readiness, government readiness, individual usage, business usage and government

usage. http://reports.weforum.org/global-information-technology-report/6 The infrastructure index is developed by the UN and measures the performance of

governments in telecommunication connectivity.7 International Telecommunication Union (2010) Measuring the Information Society, ITU,

Geneva, p. xi.8

ITU (2000) Arab Region Internet Issues, online at www.itu.int/ITU-

D/ict/papers/egypt2000/Arab-States-Internet-Issues.ppt9AKR, 2009, p.16110http://www.arabstats.org/indicator.asp?ind=317&gid=4&sgid=3511AKR, 2009, p.16112World Economic Forum website at www.weforum.ord/pdf/gitr/2009/rankings/pdf13201014p. 21015I Allagui and H Breslow, The Internet and the Evolving UAE: The Emirates Internet

Project, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, American University of Sharjah, 2010, 2011, 2012(forthcoming).16

See M Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, The Information Age: Economy, Society

and Culture, Volume I, Second Edition, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2010 (1996), p. 417; MCastells, Toward a Sociology of the Network Society. Contemporary Sociology, vol. 29, no.5, 2000, pp. 694-696; A Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of

Globalization, The University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1996, pp. 29-37; P Howard,

Castells and the Media, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2011, p. 58, and pp. 79-82; J Urry, Global

Complexity, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2003, pp. 8-12; J Urry, Small Worlds and the New

Social Physics. Global Networks, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 112-113.17M Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, p. 411, and pp. 443-444; Toward a Sociology

of the Network Society, p. 696; A Appadurai, Modernity at Large, p. 31; J Urry, Global

Complexity, p. 30-31, and pp. 51-56; J Urry, Small Worlds and the New Social Physics, pp.

114-116.18

Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, p. 443.


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19J Urry, Global Complexity, p. 125, M Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, pp. 32-33,

70, 127-128; Castells, Toward a Sociology of the Network Society, pp. 693-694; P Howard,

Castells and the Media, pp. 3-6, and p. 19.20Appadurai,Modernity at Large, p. 33; J Urry, Global Complexity, p. 65.21

Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, p. 442.22 L Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an

Investigation, in L Althusser, On Ideology, Verso, London, 2008 (1971), pp. 1-60.23 In acknowledgement of Castells argument, we will refrain from using the term nation-

state, in acknowledgement of the fact that flow disrupts the relationship between the nation

and the state, and that the two are no longer inseparable. See M Castells, The Power of

Identity, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume II, Second Edition,

Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2010 (1997), pp. 356-358.24M Castells, Global Governance and Global Politics. Political Science and Politics, vol.

38, no. 1, 2005, p. 9.25M Castells, The Power of Identity, p. 361.26ibid., p. 363.27M Castells, Global Governance and Global Politics, p. 10.28

ibid., p. 10; M Castells, The Power of Identity, pp. 69-70, and pp. 420-422.29Castells, Toward a Sociology of the Network Society, p. 694.30

ibid., p. 697.31A Appadurai,Modernity at Large, p. 31, pp. 179-180, pp. 190-19132ibid., pp. 9-11, p. 42, p. 178, p. 190.33

See A N Panagaos and H A Horst, Return to Cyberia: Technology and the Social Worlds

of Transnational Migrants. Global Networks, vol. 6, no. 2, 2006, pp. 109-124; M van

Bochove, K Rusinovic and G Engbersen, The Multiplicity of Citizenship: Transnational and

Local Practices and the Identifications of Middle-Class Migrants. Global Networks, vol. 10,

no. 3, 2010, pp. 344-364.34 See B Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of

Nationalism, Verso, London, 1991;J Prodnik, Post Fordist Communities and Cyberspace: A

Critical Approach, in Virtual Space: Mediations of the Self, Community and Polity, H

Breslow and A Mousoutzanis (eds), Inter-Disciplinary Press, Oxford, Forthcoming; H

Breslow and I Allagui, The Internet, Fixity and Flow: Challenges to the Articulation of an

Imagined Community, in H Breslow and A Mousoutzanis, Virtual Space: Mediations of the

Self, Community and Polity.35See H Breslow, The Changing Space of the Arab City: The Case of Dubai, paper

presented to Global Conference on Urban Pop Cultures, Prague, May 2011, pp. 1-2.36

I Allagui and H Breslow, The Internet and the Evolving UAE: The Emirates InternetProject, Year II, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, American University of Sharjah, 2011, p.29.37ibid.,p. 29.38ibid., p. 30.39ibid., pp. 27-28.40

I Allagui and H Breslow, The Internet and the Evolving UAE: The Emirates Internet

Project, Year I, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, American University of Sharjah, 2010, p. 29.41

M Castells, Toward a Sociology of the Network Society, p. 696.42See, for instance, J Urry, Small Worlds and the New Social Physics. Global Networks,

vol. 4, no. 2, 2004, pp. 110-130.43

ibid., p. 118.44ibid., p. 117.


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45ibid., p. 114.46ibid., pp. 114-115.47

M van Bochove, K Rusinovic and G Engbersen, The Multiplicity of Citizenship:

Transnational and Local Practices and Identifications of Middle-Class Migrants. Global

Networks, vol. 10, no. 3, 2010, p. 347.48 ibid., p. 350; M van den Bos and L Nell, Territorial Bounds to Virtual Space:

Transnational Online and Offline Networks of Iranian and Turkish-Kurdish Immigrants in the

Netherlands. Global Networks, vol. 6, no. 2, 2006, pp. 205; C Voigt-Graf, Towards a

Geography of Transnational Spaces: Indian Transnational Communities in Australia. Global

Networks, vol. 4, no. 1, 2004, p. 25-26.49See, for instance, M Wahlstrm and A Peterson, Between the State and the Market:

Expanding the Concept of Political Opportunity Structure. Acta Sociologica, vol. 49, no. 4,

2006; M Schulz, Collective Action Across Borders: Opportunity Structures, Network

Capacities and Communicative Praxis in the Age of Advanced Globalization. SociologicalPerspectives, vol. 41, no. 3, 1998, pp. 585-616; M Skefeld, Mobilizing in Transnational

Space: A Social Movement Approach to the Formation of Diaspora. Global Networks, vol.6, no. 3, pp. 265-284.50

See J A Goldstone, More Social Movements or Fewer? Beyond Political Opportunity

Structures to Relational Fields. Theory and Society, vol. 33, no. 3/4, 2004, pp. 356-359.51M Wahlstrm and A Peterson, Between the State and the Market, p. 364.52D McAdam, Conceptual Origins, Current Problems, Future Directions, in Comparative

Perspectives on Social Movements, Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures andCultural Framing, D McAdam, J D McCarthy and M N Zald (eds), Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge, 1996, quoted in M Wahlstrm and A Peterson, Between the State and theMarket, p. 364.53

A Mol and J Law, Regions, Networks and Fluids: Anaemia and Social Topology. SocialStudies of Science, vol. 24, no. 4, 1994, p. 643, and pp. 648-650.54ibid., p. 659; J Urry, Global Complexity, pp. 56-59.55

A Mol and J Law, Regions, Networks and Fluids, p. 660.56See J Urry, Global Complexity, pp. 64-74, for an analysis of various global fluids.57

M Callon and J Law, After the Individual in Society: Lessons on Collectivity from

Science, Technology and Society. The Canadian Journal of Sociology, vol. 22, no. 2, pp.

168-169.58On robustness, see A Mol and J Law, Regions, Networks and Fluids, p. 662.

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A decade of time in the internet world.pdf