Barry, We've seen similar behaviour here in the rural parts of eastern England. This is true for 'catalogue' style commerce which, as you observe, is not really that different from much that has gone before but also my colleague Becky Ellis has documented how e-Bay in particular is supporting small/medium sized (SME) rural 'lifestyle' businesses (often run by ex-urbanites) and also localised exchange systems of various kinds. It may also be supporting 'buy local' trends. The distinction between consumer <-> consumer exchange (using money or otherwise) and small businesses doing the same is fuzzy although the UK tax Department will say otherwise. We haven't (yet) done systematic comparative studies which include urban areas to see if your rural/urban dimension holds here but one thing respondents told Becky was that receiving large high-value packages in urban areas was often problematic - in rural areas there tends to be somewhere to tuck them out of sight (and out of the rain - currently a major issue!) and partly in consequence they are less likely to get stolen... Her reports and papers are here: http://www.essex.ac.uk/chimera/content/pubs/allpubs.html We're currently extending this work to start looking at specifically trade-focused sites such as www.bttradespace.com with a view to understanding how these and other sites/systems mediate (or not) the various kinds of social capital. that are crucial to small businesses. Ben PS. have you tried Long Island Iced Tea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Long_Island_Iced_Tea (no tea in there). Tastes like cola, hits like a hammer - the cause of several unexplained injuries in student days :-) On 5 Jul 2007, at 02:33, Barry Wellman wrote:
A group of us have been studying Chapleau, northern Ontario. We have discovered that in addition to the I and the C of ICT, the folks there use the Internet more than urbanites to find out about -- and to order -- goods. Sorta like the Sears or the Eatons catalog of old that served rural areas. Some may even sell on eBay, etc -- we'll check on that this fall.
Altho you might argue that browsing the net for goods is "Information", it would be a real stretch to say that actually buying and selling goods is info (or comm). Hence, we propose the new acronym, ICE-T, for Information, Communication and Exchange Technologies.*
Before I/we go too far with this, what do you think?
*Not to be confused with the actor/rapper or the tilting German train, much less that heavily sweetened stuff I get in the US South. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICE-T
PS: Happy Canada Day to all.
Barry Wellman
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S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman For fun -- updating songs, movies and history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php Elvis wouldn't be singing Return to Sender these days
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