Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

NETWORK SOCIETY
have become, if anything, more closed in recent decades as regards the social
origins of candidates. Thus, while only 7 per cent of the relevant age group benefit
from private education in the UK, half of all students at Oxford and Cambridge
come from such schools (Adonis and Pollard, 1997), whereas this figure stood at
one-third a generation earlier. The association of high-reputation universities with
disproportionately privileged student origins is hard to miss. In all of the top ten
or so British universities one finds proportions of the privately educated ranging
from 25–50 per cent, though they are a tiny element of the age group at school.
This is not, moreover, a reflection of prejudice on the part of universities. Rather
it expresses the capacity of private schools to ensure their pupils perform disproportionately
well in the public examinations that most influence university
entrance. This raises a crucial issue that is under-examined by Castells: whether
avowedly meritocratic social systems may still favour certain socio-economic
groups.
The persistence of a propertied class
Though it is undeniable that globalised capitalism is an unsettling and uncertain
phenomenon for all concerned, including capitalist corporations themselves,
there is good evidence to suggest that the main stakeholders are constituted by
a propertied class that enjoys concentrated ownership of corporate stock. The
work of John Scott (1982, 1986, 1991, 1996) is a crucial source in this regard
since, while it does not directly address the question of the significance of informational
labour, it scotches many of the key claims of Castells with the evidence
it presents. For instance, Scott reminds us that an important change in capitalism
has been the shift from personal to impersonal forms of control. That is, outright
individual ownership of firms has declined, to be replaced more commonly by
those with dispersed share ownership. Thus nowadays various institutions such
as banks and insurance companies typically own corporations, with individual
shareholders usually accounting for small percentages of total shares.
Castells acknowledges this, too, but then claims, drawing on a long tradition
of ‘managerial’ sociology, that a ‘managerial class’ runs these corporations and,
there because of its managerial abilities, ‘constitute[s] the heart of capitalism
under informationalism’ (1997a, p. 342). However, Scott demonstrates that the
growth of the joint-stock corporation has not meant a loss of control by capitalist
classes, since networks of relationships, based on intertwined shareholdings, link
them and ensure their position is maintained through a ‘constellation of interests’
(Scott, 1997, p. 73).
Contrary to Castells, it appears still that there is a capitalist class at the helm
of the capitalist system (Sklair, 2001). It is a good deal less anonymous than he
believes, though this propertied class may not direct capitalism in any straightforward
sense. Castells is surely correct to draw attention to capitalism’s
instability and unpredictability at all times, but perhaps especially today. One
need only reflect on news from the Far East and Latin America or the morass
of contemporary Russia to appreciate the volatility, even uncontrollability, of
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