The Global Context of Standardization

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to situate this study in a global economic and social context, and to review the literature and discourses that inform this study and identify its objects of analysis. The discourse on enclosure, including its key concepts, is examined in some detail. The study is couched in an immediate discursive context and then in a greater economic, social, and historical context. The discourse on standards and standardization is briefly surveyed here, but a detailed analysis is left for later discussion in Chapter VII. The key relevant discourses are examined. Related and useful discourses on social construction of technology and on institutionalization are also examined.