Social and territorial structures form intricate relations that transcend a social stratification or spatial focus. Territorial features and geographic displacements are structuring principles for society, as societal features and social change effect the structure and use of territory. Based on our examination of the conceptual and theoretical links between spatial and social mobility, we propose a concept that represents a new form of inequality. Termed 'motility', this construct describes the potential and actual capacity of goods, information or people to be mobile both geographically and socially. Three major features of motility - access, competence and appropriation - are introduced. In this article, we focus on conceptual and theoretical contributions of motility. In addition, we suggest a number of possible empirical investigations. Motility presents us with an innovative perspective on societal changes without prematurely committing researchers to work within structuralist or postmodern perspectives. More generally, we propose to revisit the fluidification debate in the social sciences with a battery of questions that do not begin and end with whether or not society is in flux. Instead, we introduce a field of research that takes advantage of the insights from competing paradigms in order to reveal the social dynamics and consequences of displacements in geographic and social space.

Motility: Mobility as capital

A concept of the user is fundamental to much of the research and practice of information systems design, development, and evaluation. User-centered information studies have relied on individualistic cognitive models to carefully examine the criteria that influence the selection of information and communication technologies (ICTs) that people make. In many ways, these studies have improved our understanding of how a good information resource fits the people who use it. However, research approaches based on an individualistic user concept are limited.

In this paper, we examine the theoretical constructs that shape this user concept and contrast these with alternative views that help to reconceptualize the user as a social actor. Despite pervasive ICT use, social actors are not primarily users of ICTs. Most people who use ICT applications utilize multiple applications, in various roles, and as part of their efforts to produce goods and services while interacting with a variety of other people, and often in multiple social contexts. Moreover, the socially thin user construct limits our understanding of information selection, manipulation, communication, and exchange within complex social contexts. Using analyses from a recent study of online information service use, we develop an institutionalist concept of a social actor whose everyday interactions are infused with ICT use. We then encourage a shift from the user concept to a concept of the social actor in IS research. We suggest that such a shift will sharpen perceptions of how organizational contexts shape ICT-related practices, and at the same time will help researchers more accurately portray the complex and multiple roles that people fulfill while adopting, adapting, and using information systems.

Reconceptualizing users as social actors in information systems research

Part I. Theoretical Framing: 1. Questions, approaches, and cases 2. Citizenship regimes, the state, and ethnic cleavages 3. The argument: indigenous mobilization in Latin America Part II. The Cases: 4. Ecuador: Latin America's strongest indigenous movement 5. The Ecuadorian Andes and ECUARUNARI 6. The Ecuadorian Amazon and CONFENAIE 7. Forming the National Confederation, CONAIE 8. Bolivia: strong regional movements 9. The Bolivian Andes: the Kataristas and their legacy 10. The Bolivian Amazon 11. Peru: weak national movements and subnational variation 12. Peru. Ecuador, and Bolivia: most similar cases 13. No national indigenous movement: explaining the Peruvian anomaly 14. Explaining subnational variation 15. Conclusion: 16. Democracy and the postliberal challenge in Latin America.

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Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Postliberal Challenge

Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences

Abbreviations Preface and acknowledgements Introduction Part I. International Law, Development and Third World Resistance: 1. Writing Third World resistance into international law 2. International law and the development encounter Part II. International Law, Third World Resistance and the Institutionalization of Development: the Invention of the Apparatus: 3. Laying the groundwork: the Mandate system 4. Radicalizing institutions and/or institutionalizing radicalism? UNCTAD and the NIEO debate 5. From resistance to renewal: Bretton Woods institutions and the emergence of the 'new' development agenda 6. Completing a full circle: democracy and the discontent of development Part III. Decolonizing Resistance: Human Rights and the Challenge of Social Movements: 7. Human rights and the Third World: constituting the discourse of resistance 8. Recoding resistance: social movements and the challenge to international law 9. Markets, gender and identity: a case study of the Working Women's Forum as a social movement Part IV. Epilogue References Index.

Myrna Godzich

Papers

Return of the Actor: Social Theory in Postindustrial Society