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The Network Paradigm: Social Formations in the Age of Information
by Felix Stalder
The Rise of the Network Society, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture,
Vol. I. M. Castells (1996). Cambridge, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 556 pp., ISBN
1-55786-617-1
The Power of Identity, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol.
II. M. Castells (1997). Cambridge, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 461 pp., ISBN 1-55786-874-3
The End of the Millennium, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture,
Vol. III. M. Castells (1997). Cambridge, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 418 pp., ISBN
1-55786-872-7
Manuel Castells’ The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (1996, 1997 and
1998) is unrivaled in ambition: to make sense of the global social dynamics as they arise
out of a myriad of changes around the world. It is a cross-cultural analysis of the major
social, economic and political transformations at the end of this century. It is presented
through interrelated empirical case studies whose number and variety are truly
enormous–the bibliography alone fills 120 pages–and threatens to overwhelm the
reader at times. Nevertheless, the trilogy is prodigious and sets a new standard against
which all future meta-accounts of the Information Society will be measured. It will be
indispensable reading for anyone interested in a grand narrative of the present.
Castells’ main argument is that a new form of capitalism has emerged at the end of
this century: global in its character, hardened in its goals and much more flexible than
any of its predecessors. It is challenged around the globe by a multitude of social
movements on behalf of cultural singularity and people’s control over their own lives
and environment. This tension provides the central dynamic of the Information Age, as
"our societies are increasingly structured around the bipolar opposition of the Net
and the Self" (1996, p. 3). The Net stands for the new organizational formations
based on the pervasive use of networked communication media. Network patterns are
characteristic for the most advanced economic sectors, highly competitive corporations as
well as for communities and social movements. The Self symbolizes the activities through
which people try to reaffirm their identities under the conditions of structural change
and instability that go along with the organization of core social and economic activities
into dynamic networks. New social formations emerge around primary identities, which may
be sexual, religious, ethnic, territorial or national in focus. These identities are often
seen as biologically or socially unchangeable, contrasting with the fast-paced change of
social landscapes. In the interplay of the Net and the Self the conditions of human life
and experience around the world are deeply reconfigured.
The trilogy concludes more than a decade of research, spanning from new social
movements and urban change (Castells, 1983; 1989) to development of the high-tech
industries and their organization into technopoles, clusters of high-tech firms and
institutions of higher education, such as the Silicon Valley (Castells and Hall, 1994), to
comparative analysis of the fastest developing countries in the Asian Pacific Rim
(Castells, 1992), to research conducted in Russia before and after the 1991 revolution and
the demise of the Soviet Union.
It details the diversity of social change interlinked around the globe which created
the Information Age and integrates the often seemingly contradictory trends into a
comprehensive analytical framework. The theoretical abstractions are developed through a
broad and detailed empirical analysis "as a method of disciplining my theoretical
discourse, of making it difficult, if not impossible, to say something that observed
collective action rejects in practice" (1997, p. 3). This makes his account highly
accessible and richly textured.
Castells’ analysis is driven by the hypothesis of a new society: "A new
society emerges when and if a structural transformation can be observed in the
relationships of production, in the relationships of power, and in the relationships of
experience" (1998, p. 340). The observation of those transformations informs the
central structure of the trilogy. The first volume focusses primarily on the changing
relationships of production: the global economy, the network enterprise and the changing
patterns of labor. The second focusses on the relationships of power and experience,
framed as a crisis of the nation-state vis-ˆ-vis global institutions and the related
crisis of the political democracy vis-ˆ-vis newly articulated identities. The third
volume ties together a number of "loose ends". They are themselves important
features of the Information Age, but more as effects of, rather than actors in the
analyzed transformations: the demise of the Soviet Union, the growth of the fourth world
of excluded regions and social groups and the emergence of a global criminal economy.
Castells’ Theoretical Assumptions
The central hypothesis of the dialectical opposition between the Net and the Self is
based on an original and powerful combination of two theoretical assumptions. The first
assumption structures Castells’ account of the rise of the Net: the dialectical
interaction of social relations and technological innovation, or, in Castells’
terminology, modes of production and modes of development. The second assumption underlies
the importance of the Self: the way social groups define their identity shapes the
institutions of society. As Castells notes "each type of identity-building process
leads to a different outcome in constituting society" (1997, p. 8). To appreciate the
trilogy it is useful to look at these theoretical assumptions in some detail because their
pervasiveness shapes the selection of phenomena covered and their specific analysis.
Social development is inseparable from the changes in the technological infrastructure
through which many of the activities are carried out, "since technology is society
and society cannot be understood or represented without its technological tools"
(1996, p. 5). Social changes and technological changes are intimately related. Castells
theorizes their interaction in the following way: A society produces its goods and
services in specific social relationships–the modes of production. Since the
industrial revolution, the prevalent mode of production in Western societies has been
capitalism, embodied in a wide range of historically and geographically specific
institutions to create and distribute profit. The modes of development, on the other hand,
"are the technological arrangements through which labor acts upon matter to generate
the product, ultimately determining the level and the quality of the surplus" (1996,
p. 16).
The evolution of the capitalist modes of production is driven by private capital’s
competitive pressures. Modes of development, however, evolve according to their own logic;
they do not respond mechanically to economic necessities. Technological innovations emerge
from the interaction between scientific and technological discovery and the organizational
integration of such discoveries in the process of production and management. The
evolutionary model of two separate modes bears some resemblance to Marxist theory
formulated by Louis Althusser who introduced a similar distinction between the relations
of production (classes) and the forces of production (technique) (Webster 1995, p. 196).
In the present volumes Marxist theory has been toned down to a point where the remnants
can hardly be called Marxist anymore. However, they enable Castells to avoid the
conceptual traps which fuel the debate over whether technology determines social
development or whether social actors use technology merely as a tool (Smith and Marx,
1994). He argues that technological development does not completely mirror the economic
process because the former is also influenced by other factors, for example, inventiveness
and experiments with non-economic goals. The results of technological innovation open up
new possibilities which may or may not be realized by social actors using them. There is a
strong interaction between the two processes of invention and application, but they cannot
be conflated into a linear dependence of one determining the other. The accusation of
technological determinism (Webster, 1995, pp. 193-214) is therefore unjustified.
The second assumption which guides his research concerns the role of identity in
societal development. Rather than seeing it as an effect, as a traditional Marxist would,
he argues the opposite: identity-building itself is a dynamic motor in forming society.
Identity is defined as "the process of construction of meaning on the basis of a
cultural attribute, or related set of cultural attributes, that is/are given priority over
other sources of meaning" (1997, p. 6). He formulates a hypothesis that
"who[ever] constructs collective identity, and for what, largely determines the
symbolic content of this identity, and its meaning for those identifying with it or
placing themselves outside of it" (1997, p. 7). Influenced by the French sociologist
of social movements, Alain Touraine, Castells identifies three types of identity which are
related to different social associations:
1. Legitimizing identity: introduced by the dominant institutions of society to extend
and rationalize their domination over social actors. Legitimizing identities generate
civil societies and their institutions, which reproduce what Max Weber called
"rationale Herrschaft" (rational power).
2. Resistance identity: produced by those actors who are in a position/condition of
being excluded by the logic of domination. Identity for resistance leads to the formation
of communes or communities as a way of coping with otherwise unbearable conditions of
oppression.
3. Project identity: proactive movements which aim at transforming society as a whole,
rather than merely establishing the conditions for their own survival in opposition to the
dominant actors. Feminism and environmentalism fall under this category (1997, pp. 10-12).
Castells’ particular achievement is in combining two theoretical perspectives
which in their more radical form are often mutually exclusive. While Castells’ theory
is distinct and original, the Information Age is not about theory but about
"communicating theory by analyzing practice" (1997, p. 3). This method enables
him to cover coherently an impressive range: from the high-tech laboratories in Silicon
Valley to the low-tech laboratories in the Colombian jungle, from the global capital
markets to the psychology of a terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway system, and beyond.
His analysis is strongest when he can bring both perspectives to bear.
The Network Society
In the first volume, Castells covers the structural aspects of the Information Age
which have created the Network Society: the new formations into which core economic
activities have been organized and the new spatial and temporal conditions they have
effected. At the base of this reorganization is the pervasive implementation of
technological innovation since the 1970s, clustering around the convergence of computing
and telecommunication. After analyzing the history of the technology since the late 1940s
and comparing it to patterns of development in the Industrial Revolution, Castells
concludes that information technology evolves in a distinctively different pattern than
previous technologies, thus constituting the "informational mode of
development": a flexible, pervasive, integrated and reflexive, rather than additive
evolution. The reflexivity of the technologies, the fact that any product is also raw
material because both are information, has permitted the speeding up of the process of
innovation.
This self-accelerating process has created in about twenty years a new economic
condition, the informational and global economy. This new economy is informational because
the competitiveness of its central actors (firms, regions, or nations) depends on their
ability to generate and process electronic information. It is global because its most
important aspects, from financing to production, are organized on a global scale, directly
through multinational corporations and/or indirectly through networks of associations.
This new global economy is more than just another layer of economic activity on top of the
existing production process. Rather, it restructures all economic activities based on
goals and values introduced by the aggressive exploitation of new productivity potentials
of advanced information technology. Existing processes become either reorganized into new
patterns, for example from national to transnational production, or repositioned
vis-ˆ-vis the new highly productive sectors. What differentiates the new global
economy from the world economy of previous ages is that "it is an economy with the
capacity to work as a unit in real time on a planetary scale" (1996, p. 92).
Castells’ analysis of the global economy is exceptional for the depth with which he
describes how it is played out between and within various social and regional contexts,
including Latin America, Africa and Russia. Rather than creating the same conditions
everywhere, the global economy is characterized "by its interdependence, its
asymmetry, its regionalization, the increased diversification within each region, its
selective inclusiveness, its exclusionary segmentation, and, as a result of all those
features, an extraordinarily variable geometry that tends to dissolve historical, economic
geography" (1996, p. 106). The global economy has been created under the drive of
restructuring the capitalist enterprise since the 1970s and, with increasing pace, in the
1980s.
The new network enterprise is a phenomenon comprising not only shifting internal
hierarchies, but also changing patterns of competition and cooperation across
institutions. The network enterprise is "that specific form of enterprise whose
system of means is constituted by the intersection of autonomous systems of goals"
(1996, p. 171). Castells examines in comparison different types of business networks in
Japan, Korea and China whose networked organizations have been better suited than the
conventional western corporations to adopt to some of the flexible features of the spirit
of informationalism: "a culture of the ephemeral, a culture of each strategic
decision, a patchwork of experiences and interests, rather than a charter of rights and
obligations" (1996, p. 199).
The restructuring of western corporations into more networked businesses created new
work and employment conditions: the networker and flextimer replaced the full-time
employee. Here Castells argues against common oversimplifications of theories of
"Post-Industrialism" which have been "biased by an American ethnocentrism
that did not fully represent even the American experience" (1996, p. 221). It is the
specific quality of Castells’ analysis that by acknowledging differences–between
a "Service Economy Model" (USA, England, Canada) and an "Industrial
Production Model" (Japan, Germany), for example–he is able to work out the
pervasiveness of the common trends towards individualization of work and flexible and
unstable patterns of employment. These new working conditions have been developed first in
Western corporations to compete with the East-Asian business networks. In the environment
of stepped up global competition, however, the latter will be increasingly incapable of
maintaining their traditionally very stable, long-term employment structure in which the
average worker has been bonded loyally to the firm for a life-time. This, as Castells
argues for Japan, is likely to produce major social problems and difficulties of
adjustment (1998, pp. 229-236). The current troubles of the East-Asian economies seem to
underscore this analysis.
The common theme underlying the diversity of regional and sectorial patterns of
economic change is the incorporation of similar information technology into historically
very different businesses. Its most distinct result is the emergence of what Castells
calls the space of flows: the integrated global network. It comprises several connected
elements: private networks, company Intranets; semi-public, closed and proprietary
networks such as the financial networks; and public, open networks, the Internet. Social
organizations reconstitute themselves according to this space of flows.
In Castells conception, the space of flows is made up of three aspects:
Technology: the infrastructure of the network.
Places: the topology of the space formed by its nodes and hubs. Hubs are defined by the
network but link it to specific places with specific social and cultural conditions. Nodes
are the "location[s] of strategically important functions that build a series of
locality-based activities and organizations around the key functions of the network"
(1996, p. 413). The importance of hubs to produce the strategic functions of the network
and of nodes to concentrate decision-making are at the core of the dynamic of global
cities.
People: the (relatively) secluded space of the managerial elite commanding the
networks, such as gated communities, exclusive social clubs, VIP lounges at airports and
hotels that are almost identical around the world. Together these dispersed and
interconnected spaces build the physical base for the social cohesion of the new elite.
The space of flows has introduced a culture of real virtuality which is characterized
by timeless time and placeless space. "Timeless time...the dominant temporality in
our society, occurs when the characteristics of a given context, namely, the informational
paradigm and the network society, induce systemic perturbation in the sequential order of
phenomena performed in that context" (1996, p. 464). Examples of such perturbations
are the effects of global financial turmoil on local communities or reorganization of a
global corporation on any of its local branches. "The space of flows...dissolves time
by disordering the sequence of events and making them simultaneous, thus installing
society in an eternal ephemerality" (1996, p. 467). In short, anything can happen at
any time, it can happen very rapidly, and its sequence is independent from what goes on in
the places where the effects are felt.
Castells remains somewhat vague in his theorization of the space of flows. Developing
his argument further one might say that the distinguishing characteristic of the space of
flows is binary time and binary space. Binary time expresses no sequence but knows only
two states: either presence or absence, either now or never. Within the space of flows
everything that is the case is now, and everything that is not must be introduced from the
outside: that is, it springs suddenly into existence. Sequence is arbitrary in the space
of flows and disorders events which in the physical context are connected by a
chronological sequence. Binary space, then, is a space where the distance can only be
measured as two states: zero distance (inside the network) or infinite distance (outside
the network), here or nowhere. For example, when seeking information on the Internet, the
crucial distinction is whether this information is on-line or not. The continent in which
the information resides within the network is largely irrelevant. Everything that is
on-line is (immediately) accessible: it is here, without distance. Everything that is
outside the network is infinitely far away, completely inaccessible no matter where the
network is entered; when someone puts it on-line, then it is suddenly here.
Castells’ focus is on the dynamic intersection between the space of flows and
physical space. The global economy is concentrated in relatively few places, such as the
Silicon Valley, Wall Street or the development zones in southern China, as its core
activities become centered around the processing of immaterial, placeless information.
Nevertheless, their logics are less and less determined by their history. In The
Informational City (1989) he states this relationship most distinctly: "While
organizations are located in places, and their components are place-dependent, the
organizational logic is placeless, being fundamentally dependent on the space of flows
that characterizes information networks. But such flows are structured, not undetermined.
They possess directionality, conferred both by the hierarchical logic of the organization
as reflected in instructions given, and by the material characteristics of the information
systems infrastructure....The more organizations depend, ultimately, upon flows and
networks, the less they are influenced by the social context associated with the places of
their location. From this follows a growing independence of the organizational logic from
the societal logic" (1989, pp. 169-170).
Increasingly, power is concentrated in the intricate space of flows, to the extent that
"the power of flows takes precedence over the flows of power" (1996, p. 469).
The space of flows expresses the dominant social logic in the Network Society. Financial
markets, for example, have turned into the central event of the new economy to such an
extent that "all other [economic] activities (except those of the dwindling public
sector) are primarily the basis to generate the necessary surplus to invest in the global
flows, or the result of investment originated in these financial flows" (1996, p.
472).
While the dominant social logic is shaped by the real virtuality of the space of flows,
people live in the physical world, the space of places. This "condition of structural
schizophrenia", where two different spatial and temporal logics clash, introduces
massive perturbation in cultures around the globe. People lose their sense of Self and
attempt to reclaim their identity in new forms.
The Power of Identity
The tension between social institutions supported by traditional, waning, and new,
rising identities is the topic of the second volume. The increasingly vigorous
articulation of resistance against and projects alternative to the logic of the space of
flows empties out the legitimacy of the institutions of the political democracy. Three
examples of resistance identity are examined in detail, chosen for their radical
differences in context and goals: Mexico’s Zapatistas, the American Militia groups,
and Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo ( the group which released poison gas in Tokyo’s
subway system on March 20, 1995). While each movement reflects the historical differences
of its constituency and the threats it perceives in the transformation of its specific
social landscape, "they all challenge current processes of globalization, on behalf
of their constructed identities, in some instances claiming to represent the interest of
their country [US Militia], or of humankind [Japan’s Aum], as well" (1997, p.
109).
Project identity is formulated by major pro-active movements: environmentalism,
feminism, gay and lesbian movements. The latter three are jointly framed along the lines
of the end of patriarchalism. They represent the conflictual and interrelated character of
identity building. The possible end of patriarchalism not only opens up new possibilities
of self-determination, but at the same time provokes very vehement reactions to preserve
what is perceived as threatened. Castells stresses that "there is no predetermined
directionality in history....A fundamentalist restoration, bringing patriarchalism back
under the protection of divine law, may well reverse the process of undermining the
patriarchal family, unwillingly induced by informational capitalism, and willingly pursued
by cultural social movements" (1997, p. 242).
The classic embodiment of legitimizing identity, the nation state, is losing its power,
"although, and this is essential, not its influence" (1997, p. 243). The loss of
power stems from a loss of sovereignty, effected by the globalization of core economic
activities, of media, of communication and, very importantly, the globalization of crime
and law enforcement. The most obvious example of the loss of sovereignty can be found in
the currency exchange markets, which have, since the late 1980s, outgrown the capacities
of the central banks to control them. They now link up national currencies. This enforces
financial coordination undermining the possibilities of national governments to formulate
independent economic policy. As the former CEO of CitiBank, Walter Wriston,
enthusiastically hails: "The global market has produced what amounts to a giant
vote-counting machine that conducts a running tally of what the world thinks of a
government’s diplomatic, fiscal, and monetary policy. That opinion is immediately
reflected in the value a market places on a country’s currency" (Wriston, 1992,
p. 9). Manuel Castells, more soberly, calls this "commodified democracy of profit
making" (1996, p. 472).
Globalization has put the welfare state under double stress. Not only are national
budgets tighter under the coercion of global financial markets, but also global firms can
take advantage of cost differentials in social benefits and standards. As a result,
"welfare states are being downsized to the lowest common denominator that keeps
spiraling downwards" (1997, p. 254). Nevertheless, the nation state remains crucially
important because it is still the only legitimized entity from which multilateralism can
be built to address increasingly pressing global problems. However, this proves to be a
dilemma. On the one hand, it increases the pressure on the nation state to effect
decisions in the international arena and, on the other, it diminishes its credibility in
the area of domestic policy by constraining it in an ever more restrictive network of
global agreements.
The result is a crisis of political liberal democracy. The nation state loses its
ability to integrate its own constituency, an integration which has been achieved through
locally built instruments of the welfare state. At the same time, the policy process
disappears into an increasingly abstract arena of international organizations. The
traditional institutions of democracy are caught in a fundamental contradiction. "The
more the states emphasize communalism, the less effective they become as co-agents in the
global system of shared power. The more they triumph on a planetary scene, the less they
represent their national constituencies" (1997, p. 308). The more the nation state
withdraws from its citizens, the greater grows the need to find alternative sources of
identity. Trapped between the increased articulation of diverse, often conflicting
identities and the need to act on a global scene, the traditional democratic
institutions–the civil society–are being voided of meaning and legitimacy: they
lose their identity. The power of the political democracy, ironically at the moment when
it reaches almost global acceptance, seems to be inevitably waning. Castells puts much
hope in social movements to develop new forms of identity and democracy which could break
the connection between the nation–the entity of identification–and the
state–the entity of decision making–two concepts which have merged only in the
modern age.
The End of the Millennium
The phenomena presented in the final book are less integrated than those in the
previous volumes. They are a somewhat eclectic mix of major events or trends which do not
fit easily under the two main headers presented at the outset of the trilogy: the Net and
the Self.
The demise of the Soviet Union sits somewhat uncomfortably in an account which is
focussed on the beginning of a new era, rather than the end of the old. The fall of the
Soviet Union serves as a case study of an unsuccessful restructuring after the twin crises
of capitalism and statism which became manifest in the early 1970s.
"‘Something’ happened during the 1970s that induced technological
retardation in the USSR. But this ‘something’ happened not in the Soviet Union,
but in the advanced capitalist countries" (1998, p. 28). The West, particularly the
US, due to its flexible social geometry, has been able to exploit the potential of new
information technologies, thus moving rapidly from an industrial to an informational mode
of production (Castells, 1996). The Soviet Union, on the other hand, with an institutional
separation between research and production, a negative attitude towards innovation, and a
tight control over communication media was unable to take advantage of the potential of
its own research and technology, or of the imported technology on which it increasingly
relied. Once communication was allowed to flow more freely under Gorbachev’s reforms,
the extent of the silent withdrawal from the dominant identity-building institutions and
their ideology became apparent. Suddenly, people found themselves in a vacuum looking for
new orientation. Castells concludes, "while the inability of Soviet statism to adapt
to the technological and economic conditions of an information society was the most
powerful underlying cause of the crisis of the Soviet system, it was the resurgence of
national identity, either historically rooted or politically reinvented, that first
challenged and ultimately destroyed the Soviet state" (1998, p. 38). As a result of
that process, large parts of what was once a military and industrial superpower entered
the growing ranks of the fourth world.
"The rise of informationalism in this end of millennium is intertwined with rising
inequality and social exclusion throughout the world" (1998, p. 70). Castells traces
the phenomenon of exclusion across different social and geographic contexts and concludes
"the evolution of intra-country inequality varies, what appears to be a global
phenomenon is the growth of poverty, and particularly of extreme poverty" (1998, p.
81). Social exclusion is flexibly defined as the systematic inability of individuals or
groups to access the means for meaningful survival. This enables him to connect the
heritage of the colonial history of Africa with the exploitation of children around the
world and the exclusion of minority groups and geographic areas in the United States.
While the historic causes for their exclusion vary from case to case, they nevertheless
form an entity, the fourth world, because they all entered the Information Age in
positions in which their exclusion is reinforced by the structural dynamic of
informationalism. In the United States, for example, "the emergence of the space of
flows, using telecommunications and transportation to link valuable places in a
non-contingent pattern, has allowed the reconfiguration of metropolitan areas around
selective connection of strategically located activities, bypassing undesirable areas,
left to themselves" (1998, p. 144). This development started long before the rise of
the network society. However, it is the new ability to effectively switch off areas which
are viewed as non-valuable from the perspective of the dominant social logic, embedded in
the space of flows, which has created black holes of informational capitalism: regions
from where there is, statistically speaking, no escape from suffering and depravation.
However, not all actors in the fourth world are simply switched off from the centers of
prosperity. Some of them have established, with a vengeance, a perverse connection through
the global criminal economy. Crime is as old as humanity, but its global character is a
new phenomenon. Traditional, locally-rooted criminal organization, such as the Sicilian
Mafia or the Chinese Triads have taken advantage of the technological and organizational
opportunities provided by the new communication technologies. They have set up global
networks. Joined by newcomers, such as the cartels of Colombia or the Russian Mafiyas,
they now interconnect. Around the globe, they flexibly traffic illegal goods–drugs,
weapons, nuclear material, illegal immigrants, women and children, and body parts–as
well as providing illegal services such as contract killing, blackmailing, extortion, and
kidnapping. It all comes together in the $ 750 billion which are laundered in the global
financial markets (estimate for 1994, Castells, 1997, p. 260). It is not so much the
existence of a shadow economy but rather the penetration of all aspects of legal economy
and state institutions which is a new phenomenon. The global financial markets have been
fueled by adventurous money seeking investment opportunities outside existing legal
controls. Castells concludes "because of its volatility, and its willingness to take
high risks, the criminal capital follows, and amplifies, speculative turbulences in
financial markets. Thus, it has become an important source of destabilization of
international finance and capital markets" (1998, p. 201). The societies of Japan,
Russia, Italy and Colombia, among others, have been penetrated to their core by organized
crime. The political processes are influenced through sheer violence, for example the
killing of special investigators in Italy, or through more subtle forms, like corruption.
The global criminal economy is the phenomenon which has most successfully combined the two
central aspects of the Information Age: the Net and the Self. Based on strong local
identities, violently established and maintained, they have created a flexible global
network of fast changing strategic alliances to exploit whatever opportunity arises.
Castells concludes that "criminal networks are probably in advance of multinational
corporations in their decisive ability to combine cultural identity and global
business" (1998, p. 204).
Another, albeit unrelated aspect of the shift away from global dominance by the centers
of Western culture is the emergence of leading informational economies in the Pacific Rim.
After a detailed examination of the differences among the fastest developing
countries–Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong–Castells presents his concept of
the "developmental state": a state that "establishes as its principle of
legitimacy its ability to promote and sustain development" (1998, p. 270). This
follows the lines previously proposed (Castells, 1992) and seems only tangentially related
to the overall theme of the dynamic between the Net and the Self. In the case of Japan,
however, Castells works out this dynamic. The institutions of the state, and societies at
large, face a crisis for the same reasons as those of the Western democracies. After World
War II the Japanese state nurtured forms of industrial development that were globally
competitive and supported the particularities of its traditional values: stability,
homogeneity and cultural isolation, and strong patriarchalism. This system has come under
double stress since the late 1980s. To the extent that the Japanese multinationals have
become truly global corporations, they have been disassociated from the Japanese national
economy and the values expressed in it. Increasingly, the long-term stability of
employment is not guaranteed. From below, a cultural change is in the making, generally
more critical of traditional authorities and in particular of the repressed position of
women in Japanese society. Together, the pervasive logic of the network society and the
more pronounced articulation of new identities puts the system at large under increased
stress. While the manifestations of the transformation are decidedly Japanese, many of its
characteristics are related, not so much to Japanese history, but to the general tensions
of the Information Age.
I was disappointed by Castells’ analysis of the European integration. He
accurately characterizes the unification process as a defensive project that is organized
around a limited set of common interests, mainly economic, among the participating
nation-states. Castells labels the novel institutional arrangements of the European Union
as the network state. Unfortunately, he defines it as "a state characterized by the
sharing of authority (that is, in the last resort, the capacity to impose legitimized
violence) along a network" (1998, p. 332). This definition is circular and it also
contradicts empirical observation. Throughout its history the European Union has never
been able to mobilize legitimate violence. This fact was most dramatically evident in the
recent failure to act effectively during the civil war in former Yugoslavia. That is why
the Yugoslavian peace agreement was signed in Dayton, Ohio, not in Brussels.
Conclusion
Castells argues that "two macro-trends...characterize the Information Age: The
globalization of economy, technology, and communication; and the parallel affirmation of
identity as the source of meaning" (1998, p. 311). He scans the globe to follow these
trends. The resulting analysis is exceptional for two reasons. First, he shows the
pervasive influence of those trends across a staggeringly large variety of social,
cultural and geographic contexts. Out of the detailed analysis of localized phenomena
emerges the fabric of the truly planetary character of the present. It is precisely
because a common theme emerges out of seemingly contradictory phenomena that his
Information Age is more than just another label. It is a convincingly argued historical
reality. The depth and cultural sensitivity with which Castells develops the facets of
each trend is in itself a major accomplishment. Second, it is Castells’ particular
achievement to focus on both trends at the same time. His analysis is most interesting and
most original where he works out how their interaction frames a particular set of events.
His analysis of the crisis of political democracy, of the global criminal economy, of
Japan, and to a lesser extent, the demise of the Soviet Union, are instant classics and
open up new avenues for theoretical and empirical research. These chapters also provide
the best entry-points into the gargantuan trilogy because they exemplify the effects of
the interplay of trends which are elaborated in great detail in other chapters.
His method of communicating theory by analyzing practice has some drawbacks. The
treatment of phenomena which fit less easily into these macro-trends is not always
convincing. His political analysis of the mass media is particularly uncritical. He sees
only their structural influence, stating "outside the media sphere there is only
political marginality. What happens in this media-dominated political space is not
determined by the media: it is an open social and political process" (1997, p. 312).
Castells argues that the business interests of the news media guarantee a certain distance
from the political process. Given the homogeneity of political views expressed in the mass
media and the almost exclusive framing of politics as partisan politics, his analysis is
surprisingly wanting. The analysis would have benefited from some references to Noam
Chomsky, whose work is totally ignored.
The Information Age trilogy belongs, at least in aspiration, to the class of
sociological grand theory, in the line of Daniel Bell, Alain Touraine and Anthony Giddens,
whom Castells cites repeatedly as his intellectual reference points. However, he does not
really abstract his findings into stringent theory comparable to, for example,
Giddens’ Modernity and Self-Identity (1991), which he uses as a springboard for his
own development of the concept of identity. Castells develops several fragments of a grand
theory such as informational capitalism, the constitutive role of social movements in the
construction of meaning, or the developmental state. However, these elements are not
easily compatible and the coherence of the theory is sometimes lost in favor of expanding
its scope. The theoretical sections of the book are sometimes convoluted with a language
sociologists are notorious for, in contrast to the lucidity of the empirical sections.
Castells excels in tracing trends across apparent differences, analyzing the patterns in
which they are manifest, and pointing at their conflictual interplay which defines the
possibility and the need for political and social action. What the course of action should
be, however, can not be deduced from the analysis. After close to 1500 pages, he concludes
his journey with: "Each time an intellectual has tried to answer this question, and
seriously implement the answer, catastrophe was ensured....In the twentieth century,
philosophers have been trying to change the world. In the twenty-first century, it is time
to interpret it differently. Hence my circumspection, which is not indifference, about a
world troubled by its own promise" (1998, pp. 358-359).
References:
Castells, M. 1983. The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-cultural Theory of Urban Social
Movements. Berkeley: University of California Press
–––––. 1989 The Informational City: Information Technology,
Economic Restructuring, and the Urban Regional Process. Oxford, UK; Cambridge, MA:
Blackwell
–––––. 1992. Four Asian Tigers With a Dragon Head: A
Comparative Analysis of the State, Economy, and Society in the Asian Pacific Rim. pp.
33-70 in Appelbaum, Richard; Henderson, Jeffrey (eds.) States and Development in the Asian
Pacific Rim. Newbury Park, London, New Delhi: Sage
–––––. & Hall, P. 1994. Technopoles of the World: The
Makings of 21st Century Industrial Complexes. London: Routledge
Giddens, A. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
Smith, M.R & Marx, L. 1994. Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of
Technological Determinism. Cambridge, MA; London: MIT Press
Webster, F. 1995 Theories of the Information Society. London; New York: Routledge
Wriston, W. 1992. The Twilight of Sovereignty. How the Information Revolution is
Transforming Our World. New York, Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan
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