Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

NETWORK SOCIETY
cheapest labour supply, the national economy is exceedingly difficult to control
in an era of real-time and continuous trading in the yen, the dollar and the euro,
and political democracy is irreversibly altered by the growth of ‘informational
politics’ which is mediated by information and communications media that are
global, irreverent and drawn to focus on scandal. The labour movement, traditionally
concerned with nationally based issues, finds itself profoundly weakened
in a world of global competition and instant movement of capital.
Castells reckons that the nation state cannot even harness the new technologies
to surveille its populations effectively, since states are themselves subverted
by the emergence of semi-autonomous regions (and even by cities), citizens
connect with others thousands of miles away with ease, and a global, but highly
differentiated, media is constantly prying and exposing the machinations of politicians
(consider the rise and fall of Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi during the 1990s as a
case in point, and then his astonishing return to office in 2001 – yet this, too, was
accompanied by threats of further legal action against him – and otherwise reflect
on the continuous exposure of politicians’ corruption and sexual misdemeanours).
Those who have fears about an Orwellian state coming into being, with everything
seen by ‘Big Brother’, ought perhaps to fear more Castells’s prognosis: ‘Our
societies are not orderly prisons, but disorderly jungles’ (p. 300). Everything here
is rootless and uncertain, traditions broken apart, former sureties lost for ever.
Against this nightmare, Castells reasons that identities are forged in actions,
thus the ‘network society’ induces movements of resistance and even of project
identities. We are then launched into an analysis of resistance movements of
various kinds (from Mexican zapatistas to the neo-fascist Patriots in the United
States, from Japanese fanatics in the Aum Shinrikyo to religious fundamentalism
in versions of Islam, from ethnic nationalism in the former Soviet Union to territorial
struggles in places like Catalonia). Castells offers neither approval nor
disapproval of these reactive movements, but sees in them evidence of the formation
of collective identities in face of enormous new and heightened pressures.
Illustratively Castells details the project-orientated movements of environmentalism
and feminism, the influence of which has already been enormous but
will surely continue to tell. Note, too, that these movements cannot be considered
as simply reactions to the stresses and strains of the ‘information age’, since
all themselves adopt and take advantage of the facilities available in the ‘network
society’, to aid organisation and the dissemination of their views. They campaign
locally, but such social movements are adept at use of ICTs and are transnational
in their outlook, orientation and connections.
Castells’s analysis on feminism demonstrates that patriarchy, for centuries
the norm in all human society, is ineluctably on the wane, for at least four reasons.
First, there is the fact of women’s increasing participation in the labour force,
something closely connected to the spread of information work and the emphasis
the ‘network society’ places on ‘flexibility’. Second, there is the increasing control
over their biologies that is most evident in genetic engineering of one sort or
another, freeing women from the restrictions of reproduction. Third, of course,
is the feminist movement in all its diverse forms. And fourth is the spread of ICTs
which enable the construction of a ‘hyperquilt of women’s voices throughout
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