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Dr. Nivien Saleh’s New Book set for Release in November
9/15/2010
 Dr. Nivien Saleh, an assistant professor of International studies at the University of St. Thomas, has written a new book titled, Third World Citizens and the Information Technology Revolution. The book is being published by Palgrave Macmillan Press and will be available in November 2010.
This book challenges the widely held view that the information technology (IT) revolution has empowered people in the Third World. Tracing the making of the global IT regime, it shows that governments and corporations of the wealthy countries dominated the process, systematically excluding representatives of low-income countries, who might have embraced alternative visions of the global information society.
“Once the IT regime was in place,” the Macmillan Press website said, ”these same actors pressured Third World countries into conforming to it. In the case of Egypt, these pressures resulted in a new ministry for IT, which helped integrate the country into a world economy governed by the rules of the halves. Ordinary Egyptians were, of course, not asked for their opinions.”
 Saleh’s book has been read and endorsed by numerous scholars and policy practitioners.
“Nivien Saleh’s book is a welcome addition to the stream of literature on private market-oriented globalization,” Heikki Patomak, professor of International relations at the University of Helsinki said. “In a fresh manner, Third World Citizens and the Information Technology Revolution looks at the rise and transformation of global telecom-industry not only from the angle of Egypt and its disenfranchised citizens, but also through various international and transnational enforcement mechanisms. By doing so it makes a compelling case for re-thinking economic development and citizens’ empowerment and autonomy in cosmopolitan-democratic terms.”
Peter Bridges, former executive secretary of the U. S. Treasury Department and ambassador to Somalia, was also impressed with this book.
“Professor Saleh has written an important, well-documented, and very readable book that contests the prevalent assumption that globalization is all to the good,” Bridges wrote. “Her focus sweeps from a Houston televangelist whose books sell in 25 languages, to the people of Egypt and other poor countries whom the information technology revolution has not brought the ‘empowerment’ that many authors proclaim. One may question what motives lie behind globalization, but Saleh’s description of the often negative consequences is grounded in hard fact.”
Saleh was born in Germany. She earned a master’s degree from Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg and a doctorate from American University in Washington, DC. Before coming to the University of St. Thomas, Dr. Saleh was appointed as a visiting professor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. She now teaches Middle East politics, international organizations, and research methods at the UST Center for International Studies. In her research, she focuses on methodology, the ways in which globalization shapes the relations between wealthy and poor economies, and the relations between the European Union and the Middle East.
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