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

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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Last updated 10 April 2000 The journal has now ceased publication (2003)