Transaction Space Research Articles

Re‐mixing multimodal resources: multiliteracies and digital production in Norwegian media education

Youngsters are increasingly using digital technologies through participation in informal settings. Schools, however, seem to be struggling with implementing digital technologies into formal school activities. With the impact of digital technologies, media education can be seen as an increasingly important ‘transactional learning space’ between school‐based education and leisure activities among youth. Our analysis in this article is grounded in the framework of media learning and multiliteracies, focusing particularly on the re‐mixing of available semiotic resources downloaded from the Internet. We are interested in media production as a key defining component of the Norwegian media curriculum, especially how digital media and the Internet create new affordances that affect how students work on creative media production. We analyse interactional data from two school settings and discuss some of the implications of the main findings for broader current issues in Norwegian education, with an emphasis on digital literacy.

Claiming and Sustaining Space? Sure Start and the Auto/Biographical Imagination

We focus, in this paper, using in-depth auto/biographical research, on a Sure Start project in a marginalized community, seeking to understand its impact and meaning through the stories of families. Programmes like Sure Start represent contested space: they may be seen as an exercise in social control in relation to the marginal other. But diverse objectives, values and people shape such programmes and the resources they offer can be experienced in different ways. We provide three narratives from parents who were initially deeply suspicious ‐ in a community where public interventions tend to be treated with caution ‐ and yet found meaningful support with difficult problems. The narratives also reveal the potential of Sure Start to create transactional space for popular involvement in planning and running public services. We interviewed diverse professionals about these processes and suggest that an auto/biological imagination lies at the heart of effective professional practice as well as research. We are reminded, in the process, of a shared and fundamental human need to be loved and cared for, particularly at times of distress. There is much to learn from such a project, but progress remains fragile and the lessons, for public policy, are easily lost. The sociological imagination enables its possessor to grasp the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals . . . It is the capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self ‐ and to see the relations between the two.

Transaction Costs, Agglomeration Economies, and Industrial Location: A Comment

ABSTRACT This article comments on a recent contribution by Wood and Parr to Growth and Change. Wood and Parr apply the institutional–economic approach to agglomeration issues. After a sketch of the conceptual background, the present article discusses some concepts introduced by Wood and Parr, such as “transaction space” and the alleged relationship between space homogeneity and transaction cost. This is followed by critical remarks from the very same institutional–economic point of view. In the article, the conclusion is drawn that some limitations should be taken into account when applying the institutional perspective to agglomeration economics.

The sacred and the profane: subject sub‐culture, pedagogical practice and teachers' perceptions of the classroom uses of ICT

Drawing on extensive interview data with 37 participants across six subject areas (maths, science, English, music, modern foreign languages and geography) this paper explores and explains the extent to which subject teachers and their various epistemic communities or subject sub‐cultures negotiate the relationship between ICT and learning in their subject contexts. The study uses Bernstein's (1996) conception of ‘the sacred and the profane’ as a heuristic to guide the dynamics of the process. Using a content analysis based on grounded themes, the findings show that with extended and supported use ‘transaction spaces’ emerge where subject teachers begin to negotiate with new technologies thus creating new meanings and accommodations. These changes are evolutionary rather than transformatory with the evidence pointing to a ‘new’ blend of technology and subject taking place; a trend that highlights the centrality of pragmatic pedagogy and the importance of the ‘pedagogic dependent ICT resource’.

Transaction Costs, Agglomeration Economies, and Industrial Location*

ABSTRACT Following an outline of the different types of agglomeration economy, consideration is given to transaction costs. Transaction costs may have a definite spatial dimension because institutional, commercial, cultural, and language characteristics are differentiated across the geographic space separating market agents. The concept of transaction space is introduced to represent the spatial differentiation of these characteristics, and this concept is used to cast light on how space can contribute to coordination and agency problems that raise transaction costs. Contractual agreements that are rearranged, so as to span a less heterogeneous transaction space, permit the reduction of transaction costs. Agglomeration can then be interpreted as an alternative to hierarchical structures within firms in economizing on transaction costs. The paper concludes with illustrations of how this framework may help to understand the spatial implications of corporate restructuring and new information technologies.

Radio Content on the World Wide Web: Comparing Streaming Radio Stations in the United States

This study explores the Web content of the Internet-based radio stations and the terrestrial radio stations streaming online. It also compares the different strategies adopted by these two groups of Internet radio stations as reflected by their online contents. The websites of 176 stations were analyzed to examine two broad interactive dimensions-audience-oriented and source- oriented-and six strategic patterns (2) virtual information space, (2) virtual promotion space, (3) virtual distribution space, (4) virtual communication space, (5) virtual sponsorship space, and (6) virtual transaction space. The findings indicate that the online presence of information, promotion, and communication was highly visible for both the terrestrial and Internet-based radio stations. However, the terrestrial and Internet-based radio stations had very different means of structuring these functions online. Strategically, the terrestrial radio stations have acted more as information providers, while the Internet-based stations have acted more as the communication facilitators.

“The Power of Place”: Another Look at the Environment

The profession of social work has long claimed its niche as that space where the traffic between the environment and individuals, families, and groups occurs. Person-environment is a code for this transactional space. The reign of the ecological/systems model of understanding and practice, and that staple of curriculum, human behavior and the social environment, all stake out in one way or another this conceptual and practical habitat for the profession. It is, in fact, one of the distinguishing marks of the helping that social workers do—that we always and ever must understand human problems, suffering, possibility, capacities, and need in terms of their context; we must understand how the environment promotes challenges and offers resources; and we must understand how the individual or family interacts with those factors. But there is a sense of the environment that social work has, to a significant degree, ignored—that is, the immediate, proximal, often small environment where people play out much of t...

Consumer Perceptions of Price (Un)Fairness

A series of studies demonstrates that consumers are inclined to believe that the selling price of a good or service is substantially higher than its fair price. Consumers appear sensitive to several reference points—including past prices, competitor prices, and cost of goods sold—but underestimate the effects of inflation, overattribute price differences to profit, and fail to take into account the full range of vendor costs. Potential corrective interventions—such as providing historical price information, explaining price differences, and cueing costs—were only modestly effective. These results are considered in the context of a four‐dimensional transaction space that illustrates sources of perceived unfairness for both individual and multiple transactions.

Community without Flesh

Community without Flesh

Online services and ‘transactional space’. Emerging strategies for power and control in the new media

Abstract Structural changes in the media are leading to the development of media systems where limited channel capacity is giving way to information, entertainment and channel abundance. In future media and communications environments, control over ‘channel space’ and, to a lesser extent, control over ‘program content’ will lose their strategic importance. It is argued that another aspect of the new media environment, described as ‘transactional space”, will become the strategic resource of the future. According to this analysis, the creation of transactional spaces and the control of the transactions which occur in those electronic spaces will lead to a radical reworking of the political economy of media and telecommunications systems.

On-Line Services

We are all familiar with conventional transactional spaces in our everyday lives. Shops are where merchants display goods, shoppers make purchasing decisions and where funds and goods are exchanged. We are used to the idea that transactions occur in specialised, often purpose-built physical spaces. But the new media and communications systems are leading to the development of equivalent electronic transactional spaces. This article looks at the financial and strategic reasons why companies are so keen to control such spaces.

TRANSPORTATION AND TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE SINGAPORE EXTENDED METROPOLITAN REGION

This paper examines the interface between port cities, urban regions and their transportation systems with respect to Singapore. The development of the regional Singaporean transactional space incorporates the province of Johor in Malaysia and the Riau islands in Indonesia, with the resulting spatial pattern and linkages forming an Extended Metropolitan Region (EMR). An EMR spatial model is presented in which transportation is a key factor. This model explains four processes of territorial development — densification, dissemination, extension and contraction. Densification is a process of spatial accumulation of economic activities within an area and aims at higher levels of productivity. Dissemination is a spatial relocation of unproductive economic activity towards productive areas. Extension is a space/time collapse enabling economic activities to extend over a large territory while maintaining low distribution costs. Contraction is a rationalisation of distribution systems facing growing transportation costs and competition from other systems. Based on the framework provided by the spatial model and available evidence, an assessment of transportation and territorial development in the Singapore EMR is undertaken. The analysis underlines the role of Singapore as a regional transhipment centre and its maritimefland interface function.

The Contractual Architecture of Public Policy: A Critical Reconstruction of Lowi's Typology

We outline a theory of public policy using our transaction space model of contractual analysis. This approach is based on transaction cost economics, game theory, and the contractual paradigm. It treats government activities, including statutes and the organizations that administer them, as long-term contracts negotiated to economize on the costs of decision making. We return to Theodore Lowi's typology of public policies--although our construction departs from its underlying assumptions in numerous ways--to answer two questions. First, how does government come to be involved in some coercive activities and not others? Second, why does Lowi's typology appear to fit some policies so well and to be inadequate for others? According to our theory, demand for government intervention arises when people cannot resolve private problems of coordination, division, and defection, each a distinct dimension of transaction space. Lowi's typology fits unidimensional problems best. Multidimensional problems are more complex but consistent with the model.

The small business: as a transaction space

The development of the new small firm during the last ten years raises the problem of the conditions for becoming competitive. Competitiveness is achieved not by seeking to increase the size of the enterprise, but by increasing the number of internal and external transactions in an auto-setting environment, especially with the increasing importance of services with goods and in production. The change in style of entrepreneurship is fundamental in this process. The resulting new relationships with the environment lead researchers to reflect on the concept of ‘personal’ or controlled network. But they cause new problems of vulnerability and new transaction space for these small firms.