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Untitled - socium.ge

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24 Manuel Castellswork in society; and, third, as the result of a second-order interaction betweenthese dominant networks and the <strong>ge</strong>ometry and <strong>ge</strong>ography of disconnection ofsocial forms left outside the global networking logic.Two theoretical comments are necessary to complete this analysis. First,structures do not live by themselves; they always express, in a contradictoryand conflictive pattern, the interests, values, and projects of the actors whoproduce the structure while being conditioned by it. Second, inclusion/exclusionin the network society cannot be assimilated to the so-called “digitaldivide” as the use of the Internet and connection to telecommunicationnetworks do not guarantee actual incorporation into the dominant networks orcounter-domination networks that shape society. Yet, exclusion from the operativeinfrastructure of the network society is a good indicator of deeper structuralsubordination and irrelevance.What is Value in the Network Society?What constitutes value in this kind of social structure? What moves theproduction system? What motivates the appropriators of value and controllersof society? No chan<strong>ge</strong> here: value is what the dominant institutions of societydecide is value. So, if capitalism still dominates the world, and capital accumulationis the supreme value, then this will be value in every instance, as,under capitalism, money can ultimately buy everything else. The critical factis that, in a social structure organized in global networks, whatever is the hierarchybetween the networks will become the rule in the entire grid of networksorganizing/dominating the planet. If, for instance, we say that capital accumulationis what moves the system, and the return on capital is fundamentallyrealized in the global financial market, the global financial market will assignvalue to every act in every country, as no economy is independent of financialvaluation decided in the global financial markets. But if we consider that thesupreme value is military power, the technological and organizational capacityof powerful military machines will structure, through their global networksof domination, their surrogate power in armed forces of different kinds, operatingin every social setting. Block the transmission of technology, information,and knowled<strong>ge</strong> to a particular armed organization, and it becomesirrelevant in the world context. To give another illustration: we may say thatthe most important influence in today’s world is the transformation of people’sminds. If so, then, the media are the key networks, as the media, organized inglobal oligopolies and their distributive networks, are the primary source ofmessa<strong>ge</strong>s and ima<strong>ge</strong>s that reach people’s minds.Thus, given the variety of the potential origins of network domination, thenetwork society is a multidimensional social structure in which networks ofdifferent kinds have different logics of value making. The definition of what

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