Читать книгу The New Latin America - Manuel Castells - Страница 21

Essentially, “informational extractivism” is a new capitalist dynamic sustained by a techno-economy that operates both on the web and in global centers for the production, marketing, and management of extracted products. We can therefore give these new products metaphorical names: informational copper, informational gas, informational soy, and even informational coca, since these products depend on multiple chains of value. Beyond the exploration and exploitation of natural resources, they incorporate advances in science and technology, dynamic and distinctive forms of specialization, and global corporate and financial networks.

A crucial feature of these new corporations is that, because of the international competition that they face, they are necessarily integrated into systems of innovation that depend on scientific and technological research and that rely on strategic networks and centers. In this sense, considering the scientific and technical capacities of a country, or a region, is crucial to understanding the dynamics and the power of negotiation and integration with these new corporations. As we will show below, the Grobocopatel group, based in the Humid Pampas of Argentina, represents one paradigmatic case, not least because of its links to the university system, which nurtures local systems of production.

Much of the power of these kinds of corporations derives from the dynamism of the market for their products and the international financial system, which also depends on informational networks, chains, and centers. Profits from computerized natural resources are thus the result of a combination of the natural resources themselves with technologies introduced at various stages in the production process to increase profits at greater scales.

In general, informational corporations extract, process, and generate assemblages of products. They are interconnected, moreover, with other corporations that allow them to refine and outsource their activities. From these corporations, they also receive the specialized goods and services necessary to maintain dynamism in business. This dynamism is indispensable to financing, especially external financing, and thus to the expansion of markets that ensures extraordinary rates of profitability. All of this means that corporations require networks and chains of productive, business, and financial exchange that are connected to systems of scientific and technological research, which in turn facilitate productive interaction and success in the market. In this way, extractive informational corporations are gradually positioned in, and integrated into, the global market. For its part, this market is increasingly constituted by competition and various systems of corporate power.

Finally, a crucial element in the functioning of this informational economy is its relationship to politics and communication, especially as a consequence of its environmental effects. Responding to these presupposes the construction of a complex matrix of strategies for negotiation both with nation-states and local governments and with the territorial organizations affected by economic activities. Hence the crucial importance of so-called “governance” for these corporations.