A Strange Approach to Information, Network, Sharing, and Platform Societies

Susan Strange’s framework for international political economic analysis emphasises the importance of the interrelationships between what she saw as four interlinked structures and sources of power in the global economy: security, production, finance, and knowledge. As change occurs in one structure, it is important to systematically consider the implications of such changes in the other four structures. This chapter provides an overview of how the knowledge structure interacts with the other three structures of power. Second, it assesses the extent to which four major works related to transformations in the knowledge structure—Daniel Bell’s The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society (1976), Manuel Castells’ trilogy The Network Society (first published 1996–1998), Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks (2006), and Nick Srnicek’s Platform Capitalism (2017)—examine the interrelationships between Strange’s four structures, and the consequences for their overall conclusions.