Introduction

Abstract

This book originated in an international conference organized by the Work, Culture and Society research centre at Paris-Sorbonne University in May 2013 on the theme of the dissemination of what Dan Schiller (1999) has called ``digital capitalism''. We were interested in the economic and sociological foundations of the expansion into the work sphere of information and communication technologies (ICTs). How did ICTs interact, in synergy and conflict, with other social facts? What new types of labour, at work and at home, did ICTs help generate? The globalization of these ICTs and their accompanying practices and discourses also raised the issue of interculturality, as various cultures have become involved in a process of appropriation and modification of the globalized US culture, and we were keen to explore critiques of American exceptionalism in this field.