The increasing penetration of information and communication technologies in the economy enabled the emergence of digital business practices in a wide range of industries. The digitization of information products, service processes, product information, and pricing altered the functioning of the markets. Once products and processes are digital, communication technologies facilitate the instantaneous exchange of the information. This immediate availability of product and service information and pricing enhances competition: digital networks can accelerate and even automate product and price comparison, making consumers more powerful in the marketplace. This chapter focuses on the economics of digital information products and implications for strategy.

Focussing on elephants and oxen to uncover how they came to be fostered, mobilized, and employed as vital workers in Myanmar’s two major industries of timber extraction and rice cultivation, this chapter explores how both became framed as particular types of resources.

In this chapter I explore how the colonial regime in Myanmar attempted to regulate the killing of animals, first in schemes to encourage the slaughter of vermin and second in regimes for limiting and controlling animal death. In both of these areas of colonial governance, fraud was an unintended consequence of imperial policies, in part because of the perverse incentives produced through giving animal death a state-sanctioned monetary value.

This chapter provides an overview of the concept of “mediatization” and its different applications. It distinguishes “institutional,” “social constructionist” and “linguistic-anthropological” understandings of the concept. After defining and discussing each understanding, the chapter draws attention to how the linguistic-anthropological approach may be employed in discourse-analytical research. Specifically, the approach is argued to be highly amenable with a focus on metapragmatics. Much like a focus on metapragmatics reflects language users’ awareness of language use, mediatization may reflect their understanding of the nature of the communication they are engaged in. After providing several examples, the chapter discusses how discourse-analytic methods may further complement the development of mediatization frameworks. Looking ahead, these developments will need to take into account a surge in multimodal content, the increasingly global reach of communications, and ever-shifting social media potentials.

In Early Bronze II some of the central traits of Near Eastern urbanism were adopted across the southern Levant, including aggregations in fortified centers, the adoption of corporate governance, the creation of standardized commodities and the concentration of staple goods. It is followed by a far less balanced system (EB III), characterized by massive fortification, the disappearance of villages, and the arrival of “Khirbet Kerak” migrants.

In Early Bronze II some of the central traits of Near Eastern urbanism were adopted across the southern Levant, including aggregations in fortified centers, the adoption of corporate governance, the creation of standardized commodities and the concentration of staple goods. It is followed by a far less balanced system (EB III), characterized by massive fortification, the disappearance of villages, and the arrival of “Khirbet Kerak” migrants.