The Rise of The Network Society (Information Age Series) - Softcover

Castells, Manuel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1557866171 ISBN 13: 9781557866172

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 1996

Synopsis

This book is an account of the economic and social dynamics of the new age of information. Based on research in USA, Asia, Latin America, and Europe, it aims to formulate a systematic theory of the information society which takes account of the fundamental effects of information technology on the contemporary world.

The global economy is now characterized by the almost instantaneous flow and exchange of information, capital and cultural communication. These flows order and condition both consumption and production. The networks themselves reflect and create distinctive cultures. Both they and the traffic they carry are largely outside national regulation. Our dependence on the new modes of informational flow gives enormous power to those in a position to control them to control us. The main political arena is now the media, and the media are not politically answerable.

Manuel Castells describes the accelerating pace of innovation and application. He examines the processes of globalization that have marginalized and now threaten to make redundant whole countries and peoples excluded from informational networks. He investigates the culture, institutions and organizations of the network enterprise and the concomitant transformation of work and employment. He shows that in the advanced economies production is now concentrated on an educated section of the population aged between 25 and 40: many economies can do without a third or more of their people. He suggests that the effect of this accelerating trend may not be mass unemployment but the extreme flexibilization of work and individualization of labor, and, in consequence, a highly segmented social structure.

About this title

Review

The Rise of the Network Society, the first volume in a trilogy collectively known as the Information Age, has earned Manuel Castells comparisons to such illustrious social critics as Max Weber and Karl Marx. Just as they worked to make sense of industrial capitalism, so does Castells put forth a systemic analysis of the global informational capitalism that emerged in the last half of the 20th century. While many books have considered the development of increasingly sophisticated information technology, the shifting conditions of employment and responsibility within corporations, or the rise of corporations whose domains are spread out over several nation-states, Castells unites these topics in a comprehensive thesis, negotiating the tightrope between academic sociology and mainstream business analysis.

About the Author

Manuel Castells is Professor of Sociology and of Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was appointed in 1979, after teaching for 12 years at the University of Paris. He has also taught and researched at the Universities of Madrid, Chile, Montreal, Campinas, Caracas, Mexico, Geneva, Copenhagen, Wisconsin, Boston, Southern California, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Amsterdam, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Hitotsubashi and Barcelona. He is the author of 20 books, including The Informational City (Blackwell, 1989). He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and a recipient of the C Wright Mills Award and of the Robert and Helen Lynd Award. He is a member of the European Academy. The Information Age is being translated into 10 languages.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1557866171
• ISBN 13: 9781557866172
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 481