S10A-2:

2)Identities and Actions: Beyond the Global-Local Divide(Adolescent Brazilians Users of Information Technologies).
by Dwyer Tom(Associate Professor, IFCH/UNICAMP, Vice President of Brazilian Sociological Society, Brazil)

Abstract:

In their daily living and use of information and communication technologies (ITCs) middle class Brazilian youth embrace identities which hover between global and local.
The paper is built up upon the basis of two intensive three month long studies conducted in 1995 and 1999 of young people and their use of ICTs. It is a typification that is not incompatible with existing literature.
The 'global' pole is most clearly expressed by those identified most closely identified with the production of a new economic order, where computer use is seen instrumentally and designed to produce greater efficiency. A counterpoint to their global nature is their distance from, (which often consists in turning their backs to), the harsher dimensions of Brazilian social life.
The 'local' pole is most clearly expressed by a group who averse to the use of most information technologies, using them to merely subtitute typewriters or pens and paper. Many flee from harsh realities by reference to esoteric or sport, others meet the harshness through participating in volunteer organisations. Many of them belong to the category of computer users that I have elsewhere called 'secretaries'.
A third group embraces an intermediary position, although they proudly claim Brazilian identity, their musical, clothing and literary choices, show that they are also internacional, and many assume this duality. Some appear as avatars of a new esthetic, relational and communicational order. An order divorced from that of economic efficiency and utilitarian considerations. Most members of this group exhibit social sensitivity and this translates into two classical forms of action, exit and loyalty (Hirschmann), some switch off through drugs and living to avoid reality, others engage in volunteer community work (some even go so far as they to seek to put computers at the service of the poor!).
It is the harshness of Brazilian social reality in the metropolitan areas which imposes reflection and action and not escape. This harshness makes it important to rethink the local, and the place of information technologies in its reshaping, in a way that bypasses the global-local divide.
But how to ensure that the incorporation of the global does not merely signify accepting global (materialist and US) domination? The answer is to be found in creativity and a desire to break with the dominant order - and this is understood through the phenomenological perspective (Schutz) adopted.