[OPE-L] (new book) A. Aneesh, _Virtual Migration: The Programming of Globalization_

From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Mon Oct 30 2006 - 06:41:59 EST


via the 'Capital and Class' list. / In solidarity, Jerry


Virtual Migration: The Programming of Globalization
A. Aneesh

"Virtual Migration is an exciting, innovative, and brilliant examination
of how software flows replace people flows. It joins the urgent effort now
under way in the social sciences to map a new field of inquiry."-Saskia
Sassen, coeditor of _Digital Formations: IT and New Architectures in the
Global Realm_

"Virtual Migration is a phenomenal book on a very important topic. A.
Aneesh not only describes, explains, and interprets the phenomena of 'body
shopping' and virtual migration in the global software industry, with
especial emphasis on India and the United States; he also provides a
series of suggestions to improve policymaking in these rapidly changing
areas of the global economy."-Mauro F. Guillén, Dr. Felix Zandman
Professor in International Management, Wharton School, University of
Pennsylvania

"This is a brilliant and innovative intervention in the study of
globalization that demonstrates how much the specific forms taken by
global institutional arrangements and processes depend on the structure
and design of computer code. Virtual Migration will be invaluable not only
to students in science and technology studies but to scholars in all
fields interested in the troubled politics of the global movement of
capital, technology, and people."-Akhil Gupta, author of _Postcolonial
Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India_

Workers in India program software applications, transcribe medical
dictation online, chase credit card debtors, and sell mobile phones, diet
pills, and mortgages for companies based in other countries around the
world. While their skills and labor migrate abroad, these workers remain
Indian citizens, living and working in India. A. Aneesh calls this
phenomenon "virtual migration," and in this groundbreaking study he
examines the emerging "transnational virtual space" where labor and vast
quantities of code and data cross national boundaries, but the workers
themselves do not. Through an analysis of the work of computer programmers
in India working for the American software industry, Aneesh argues that
the programming code connecting globally dispersed workers through data
servers and computer screens is the key organizing structure behind the
growing phenomenon of virtual migration. This "rule of code," he contends,
is a crucial and underexplored aspect of globalization.

Aneesh draws on the sociology of science, social theory, and research on
migration to illuminate the practical and theoretical ramifications of
virtual migration. He combines these insights with his extensive
ethnographic research in offices in three locations in India-in Delhi,
Gurgaon, and Noida-and one in New Jersey. Aneesh contrasts virtual
migration with "body shopping," the more familiar practice of physically
bringing programmers from other countries to work on site, in this case,
bringing them from India to New Jersey. A significant contribution to the
social theory of globalization, Virtual Migration maps the expanding
transnational space where globalization is enacted via computer
programming code.

A. Aneesh is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Global Studies at the
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Table of Contents
1. Of Code and Capital 1
2. Programming Globalization: Visions and Revisions 14
3. Body Shopping 37
4. Virtual Migration 67
5. Actions Scripts: Rule of the Code 100
6. Code as Money 133
7. Migrations: Nations, Capital, and the State 153
Appendix A: A Note on Method 165
Appendix B: Tables 171
Notes 175
Bibliography 179
Index 191


DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS
208 pages (March 2006)
2 b&w photos, 4 tables, 4 figures
ISBN 0-8223-3669-3 Paperback - £13.95

SPECIAL DISCOUNTED PRICE OF £9.75 to CAPITAL-AND-CLASS Subscribers

Postage and Packing £2.75

To order a copy please contact Marston on 44(0)1235 465500 or email
direct.orders@marston.co.uk  or visit our website
www.combinedacademic.co.uk

(PLEASE QUOTE REF NUMBER: CC1006VM for discount)

Julia Monk
Marketing Manager
Combined Academic Publishers
48 Baldslow Road
Hastings
East Sussex
TN34 2EY
Tel/Fax: 44 (0)1424 436533
Email: juliamonk@combinedacademic.demon.co.uk


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Oct 31 2006 - 00:00:03 EST