NTHS Vol 11(2) pp
19-20
Bob Sapey is a lecturer
in Social Work and Community Studies at the University of Lancaster and
can be contacted at:
Dept of Applied Social
Studies
University of Lancaster Lancaster, LA1 4YL, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1524 594863 Email: b.sapey@lancaster.ac.uk
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The information age: economy,
society and culture: volume 1- the rise of the network society
Book review by Bob
Sapey
Castell, M (1996)
The information age: society and culture: volume1 - the rise of the network
society Blackwell Publishers Inc., Massachusetts ISBN 1-55786-617-1 Paperback
£16.99, pp. 556
Manuel Castells, Professor
of Sociology and Planning and Chair of the Center for Western European
Studies at the University of California, describes himself as a dinosaur
- a social democrat in a world where it no longer has any real relevance.
This is an important point to make at the beginning of this review as
the subject matter of his three volume work - economy, society and culture
in the informational age - is one that can and has been approached from
different perspectives. Castells' perspective is both critical and rigorous
while retaining a genuine feel for the position of individuals in the
new global economy and society he describes. From the very start of this
book I felt that I was reading something that had meaning for people in
the field of human services and Castells' early rejection of postmodernism
as an indulgence 'in celebrating the end of history, and, to some extent,
the end of Reason, giving up on our capacity to understand and make sense,
even of nonsense' (p. 4) was refreshing to say the least. Rather, what
he does within these three volumes is to bring together a vast array of
empirical data from around the planet to examine and explain the changes
that have been brought about by the technological and informational revolution.
Castells makes an
analytical distinction between an 'information' and an 'informational'
society. While information has always played a part in social and economic
developments, he argues that 'the term informational indicates the attribute
of a specific form of social organization in which information generation,
processing, and transmission become the fundamental sources of productivity
and power, because of new technological conditions emerging in this historical
period' (p. 21). This sets the scene for his analysis of an informational
revolution which is having as significant an impact on the world as the
industrial revolutions had in the past. In this, the first of his three
volumes, he concentrates on an examination of the impact of informationalization
on the organizational aspects of a globalized capitalism and on the transformation
of employment patterns for people throughout the planet. He also explores
some of the more direct social implications of the technological changes
that have been taking place.
As the title of this
book indicates, what Castells identifies as significant throughout the
global economy, is the importance of networks as part of organizational
structures. Weber's analysis of industrial capitalist organizations brought
forward the notion of bureaucracies and to some extent it has been assumed
within modern organizational theory, that the multi-national corporations
which dominate our economy today, can be explained in terms of hierarchical
organizations that have simply grown to span many countries or continents.
However, as Castells points out, Weber's notion of bureaucracy was in
fact quite anglocentric and did not take account of the different structures
that emerged from the family, rather than individual based society in
Japan, China and Korea. What he does is to acknowledge and explore these
differences, but to then look for the similarities that exist with western
organizations in order to develop an understanding of what features are
important on a global scale.
The networking that
Castells identifies occurs at a number of levels and for a range of different
purposes. What they appear to have in common is that they provide a structure
that is both temporary and flexible, enabling organizations to work together
and cooperate when it benefits them but not constraining them after their
usefulness has passed. Networking was integral to the development of new
technology in Silicon Valley where under the sponsorship of Stanford University,
numbers of people were brought together in ways that helped them to share
and develop their ideas and then move on into more individual enterprises
when the value of that network was passed. The networks of producers and
suppliers that surround many Japanese corporations continue to exist for
as long as their cooperation is of value. In Europe we see networking
in industries such as Airbus which provide opportunities beyond the capabilities
of any particular member. However, the development of productive and powerful
global networks does have implications for individuals, communities and
countries throughout the world.
One of the most significant
implications of this globalization is that it is not inclusive. There
are countries that are at the core of these networks, notably in North
America, Europe and the Far East, while others in Asia and, South and
Central America fulfil supportive roles based on their cheaper labour
costs, but as we continue to witness through the reports of famine and
strife, most of sub-Saharan Africa is socially excluded from the global
economy. In a particularly poignant quote from a study by Fernando Henrique
Cardoso in Brazil and Mexico, Castells refers to people who are excluded
as having reached the status of 'not even considered worth the trouble
of exploitation; they will become inconsequential, of no interest to the
developing globalized economy' (p. 133). I feel there are some interesting
parallels to be drawn between the concept of social exclusion as an economic
process with the consequent creation of an underclass and, the materialist
analysis of the construction of disability in western industrial societies.
For those who are
included within the network society, work patterns are changing. As technology
has made it possible for large corporations to shift and distribute their
production around the world, labour organizations in the west have had
to to become more flexible and adaptable. As we have ourselves experienced,
it is necessary to be prepared to work longer hours with less security
in order to remain included. While reading this aspect of the book was
often a case of making me think about my own employment experiences, because
like many other, I have been living through this period of history, it
also made me want to make comparisons with labour relationships in early
industrialization. While in absolute terms the position of professional
workers today bears no relation to the industrial employees at that time,
they may be going through a similar process in terms of being at the centre
of an economic revolution and it may be several decades before we can
expect the patterns of employment to take on a concern for their social
and health needs.
Castells' analysis
extends to trying to understand the social impact of technology, beyond
the world of work. In the fifth chapter of this book he discusses the
concept of 'real virtuality'. He argues that while historically all reality
has been virtually received through the symbols of language, the use of
technology for communication purposes and in particular the current development
of multimedia, brings together the real and virtual worlds in such a way
that the experiences are difficult to separate. I am left wondering after
reading this whether the preoccupation with information in social services
departments might lead to a time, if it hasn't already, where the impairments
of disabled people are thought of as virtual, as merely characters in
a database alongside the service deficiency reports that become the dominant
business of an impoverished welfare provision.
This first volume
concludes with a discussion of the social meaning of time and space and
how this is changing within the network society. Castells refers to the
'space of flows' to describe a new dimension that is added to our understanding
of space which he opposes to the 'space of places'. While it is possible
to conceptualize that spatial meanings are changed by electronic communications,
I found this aspect of his hypothesis less convincing, or maybe just more
intellectually challenging. What did interest me in this discussion however
was the analysis of the changes to the space of places. With regards time,
Castells proposes that technology with its instantaneous processing of
financial transactions and the speeding up of actions such as war, takes
us into an era of timeless time. He contrasts this to glacial time, that
associated with the ecological formation and development of the planet,
and with clock time that became important within industrial production.
There are aspects
of this book which appear to enter the realms of fantasy, yet are supported
with evidence of changes that are taking place in the world today and
of trends which suggest quite clearly that the fantastical is real. Castells
provides us with a sociological analysis of global capitalism which will
be as significant in our understanding of its impact on people as the
work of others such as Weber and Marx in the past. In social work we are
concerned with the welfare of those who are, for a range of reasons, unable
to provide for themselves within the current economic and social conditions
and for this reason we need to include sociology with the social work
curriculum. This book provides us with a constructive alternative to much
of the postmodern analyses that have been gaining dominance in the recent
past, to develop our understanding of those conditions, while not falling
into the trap of uncritical worship of the micro-chip.
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