This article takes the political engagement of hackers as a prism for examining the relations between technological determinist thinking and collective action. The concept ‘collective action framing’ is borrowed from social movement theory to describe how hackers have appropriated notions of a post-industrial, information society in their struggles against intellectual property laws and state c...

Using data compiled from a variety of different sources, we seek to answer questions about the emergence and outcomes of women’s collective action in the United States between 1956 and 1979. In particular, we examine hypotheses derived from political opportunity and resource mobilization theories about the emergence of women’s protest. We also examine the consequence of women’s collective actio...

Do corporations owned largely by other firms participate in politics more aggressively? Assuming that political action generates externality to others, this chapter theoretically and empirically investigates how a firm’s political behavior is affected by its financial structure. I first derive the optimal political expenditure under two behavioral assumptions: shareholder-value and firm-value m...

The biosphere is increasingly dominated by human action. Consequently, ecology must incorporate human behavior. Political ecology, as long as it includes ecology, is a powerful framework for integrating natural and social dynamics. In this paper I present a resilience-oriented approach to political ecology that integrates system dynamics, scale, and cross-scale interactions in both human and na...

It is our contention that information technology is a cultural commodity whose influence is spread through economic and political action of institutions such as the government and corporations. Informed by Bourdieu’s sociology of language, we conduct a content analysis of political speeches regarding “digital opportunities” delivered by U. S. government officials. In this analysis we demonstrat...