The Global Icon of the Indian IT-Professional. Contact Zones in the Age of New Media, Globalisation and World Society

Abstract

It is argued that the image of the Indian IT-Professional opens up a contact zone throughout the whole world and that it is a striking example for the structure and implications of a contact zone in the age of new media and world society. Based on the theoretical assumptions of world society (Luhmann, Stichweh), the emergence of the Indian IT-Professional as a national hero and transnational, worldwide icon of globalisation will be analysed through an indigenous perspective focussing on the Indian context itself and from a 'Western′ standpoint including observations from Germany and the U.S. The case of the contact zone established through the Indian IT-Professional shows that more than ever before in the globalised world society contact zones are established without the necessity for humans who participate in one of the involved different meaning systems to actually meet in the 'real′ world and yet that they react remarkably emotionally.