The decisions we make along with the outcomes are influenced
The decisions we make along with the outcomes are influenced and shaped by the situations we find ourselves in, the values we have and the behaviors of people around us. The resulting effect of these decisions and actions have an impact on the society, and the study of sociology has given us an edge of understanding as to why things happen the way they do. In this essay, I will use the sociological imagination according to C. Wright Mills, to illustrate how the use of sociological perspective has been depicted on the impact of digital society on global economy.
The foundation of the following assertion is basically based on the fact that a functioning society comprises of a people and individuals whose digital footprints determine the scale of the global economy.
The role of commercial activities in China’s diversity and transformation highlights the aspect of human autonomy in this modern age. In as much as this is true, the makers of China’s e-commerce and digital economy have been critically discussed, and their role and agency has been seen as negotiating a complicated network of power and knowledge in order to create a politics of difference in people’s daily lives.
The articles by Huang redefine the digital economy’s stakeholders as an unlikely collection of unimagined and underrepresented groups. This shows sociological imagination in play from a social and cultural impact rather than volumes of business and transaction of digital economy. In turn this translates to the implication of the digital economy on these grassroot players’ strategies for survival.
At a larger scale, there is also a sense of urgency in China’s aspiration to be a world leader in the digital economy. Chinese government plays a very big role in fostering a sophisticated communication ecosystem. With such scrutiny we can see Chinese agenda of national rejuvenation from a sociological perspective because it has a state centered approach to economic development and restructuring through the use of digital media, technology, and telecommunication. They have been using this model as the new epicenter for economic growth and market reforms since the 2000s because the mainstream discourse holds that China missed the best opportunities in the first and second industrial revolutions. Despite being a latecomer to the new playing field of digital technology, China is now poised to lead in digital productivity and innovation at a global scale.
The global spread of the internet has liberated most workers from place bound labor. Work end-product users like clients and bosses can now be located in varied corners of the planet. The spatial unfixing of work in global economic margins has given rise to new digital regimes of work. The author talks of major social trends of unemployment or underemployment for people with jobs and those looking for jobs. The need for jobs in the places they don’t exist has brought along the spreading of digital connectivity across most of the world’s population. Today millions of people have gained ground to outsource digital mediated work as a way to scale above some of the constraints of the labor markets within their locality.
The rate at which business process outsourcing has been growing is commendable. There were very few locations that could offer a sufficient amount of connectivity to support transnational flows in the past. Since more people in low income countries can now connect to the internet, the advent of digital labor platforms has diverted a large stream of people to fundamentally outsource for jobs where clients post jobs and workers bid on them. Even though the digital labor is growing rapidly, there is also the aspect of social conflict since not everyone can equally compete in digital platforms. The author argues that non-western workers could be poorly rewarded on such sites.
The fact that Canada has been developing federal policy and programs to increase citizens’ internet access draws the aspect of social conflict since the aim was to promote online gender equity. The author outlines a retreat from the public interest by the conservative led federal government. They had been on the forefront to diminish this progressive agenda, and concern with gender equity. Therefore, a withering public interest in social welfare has been the case as seen by the gradual yet crucial disinterest in funding for programs for internet access. Programs like the Community Access Program (CAP) provided for community’s economic and cultural development. Its termination costed Canada the reputation as an international innovator in broadband access. The rise and fall of CAP and the contempt for equality issues are examples of discursive and material shifts in social and digital policy, shifts from promoting internet access that would foster and nurture participatory citizenship to a discourse whose mere advantage is consumers’ access to goods and services.
