9781444318241_sample_415229

The Power of IdentitySecond editionWith a new prefaceManuel CastellsA John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication

The Information AgeEconomy, Society, and CultureVolume IIThe Power of IdentityOriginally published in 1997, The Power of Identity, the secondvolume in The Information Age trilogy, saw the writing on the globalwall – recognizing identity as a defining principle of social organizationand analyzing the importance of cultural, religious, and nationalidentities as sources of meaning for people, and the implications ofthese identities for social movements.Now with an extensive new preface following the recent globaleconomic crisis, this second edition analyzes the major social andpolitical events directly derived from the diagnosis of the book: AlQaeda and fundamentalist terror networks; the Iraq War; the geopoliticsof fear under the Bush Administration; and the Internet-basednetworking of global social movements fighting for global justice.Studying grassroots mobilizations against the unfettered globalizationof wealth and power, and the formation of alternative projects ofsocial organization, this book charts the transformation of the nationstateinto a network state, and the submission of political representationto the dictates of media politics.

Table of Contents for Volumes I and III of Manuel Castells’ TheInformation Age: Economy, Society, and CultureVolume I: The Rise of the Network SocietyPrologue: The Net and the Self1 The Information Technology Revolution2 The New Economy: Informationalism, Globalization, Networking3 The Network Enterprise: The Culture, Institutions, and Organizationsof the Informational Economy4 The Transformation of Work and Employment: Networkers, Jobless,and Flex-timers5 The Culture of Real Virtuality: The Integration of ElectronicCommunication, the End of the Mass Audience, and the Rise ofInteractive Networks6 The Space of Flows7 The Edge of Forever: Timeless TimeConclusion: The Network SocietyA Time of ChangeVolume III: End of Millennium1 The Crisis of Industrial Statism and the Collapse of the SovietUnion2 The Rise of the Fourth World: Informational Captalism, Poverty,and Social Exclusion3 The Perverse Connection: The Global Criminal Economy4 Development and Crisis in the Asian Pacific: Globalization andthe State5 The Unification of Europe: Globalization, Identity, and the NetworkStateConclusion: Making Sense of our World

The Power of IdentitySecond editionWith a new prefaceManuel CastellsA John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication

Para Irene Castells Oliván,historiadora de utopías

xCONTENTSFamily, Sexuality, and Personality in the Crisis ofPatriarchalism 280The incredibly shrinking family 280The reproduction of mothering under thenon-reproduction of patriarchalism 288Body identity: the (re)construction of sexuality 294Flexible personalities in a post-patriarchal world 299The End of Patriarchalism? 3015 Globalization, Identification, and the State:A Powerless State or a Network State? 303Globalization and the State 304The transnational core of national economies 305A statistical appraisal of the new fiscal crisisof the state in the global economy 307Globalization and the welfare state 312Global communication networks, localaudiences, uncertain regulators 316A lawless world? 321The Nation-state in the Age of Multilateralism 323Global Governance and Networks of Nation-states 328Identities, Local Governments, and theDeconstruction of the Nation-state 332The Identification of the State 337The Return of the State 340The state, violence, and surveillance: fromBig Brother to little sisters 340American unilateralism and the new geopolitics 344The Iraq War and its aftermath 349The consequences of American unilateralism 353The Crisis of the Nation-state, the Network State,and the Theory of the State 356Conclusion: The King of the Universe, Sun Tzu,and the Crisis of Democracy 3646 Informational Politics and the Crisis of Democracy 367Introduction: The Politics of Society 367Media as the Space of Politics in the Information Age 371Politics and the media: the citizens’ connection 371Show politics and political marketing: theAmerican model 375Is European politics being ‘‘Americanized’’? 381

CONTENTSBolivia’s electronic populism: compadrePalenque and the coming of Jach’a Uru 386Informational Politics in Action: The Politicsof Scandal 391The Crisis of Democracy 402Conclusion: Reconstructing Democracy? 414xiConclusion: Social Change in the Network Society 419Methodological Appendix 429Appendix for Tables 5.1 and 5.2 429Appendix for Figure 6.9: Level of Support forMainstream Parties in National Elections,1980–2002 456Summary of Contents of Volumes I and III 464References 466Index 512

Figures2.1 Geographical distribution of Patriot groups in theUS by number of groups and paramilitary trainingsites in each state, 1996 924.1 Marriage survival curves for Italy, West Germany,and Sweden: mothers born in 1934–38 and 1949–53 2004.2 Evolution of first marriage in countries of theEuropean Union since 1960 2024.3 Crude marriage rates in selected countries 2034.4 Percentage of women (15–34 years) with firstbirth occurring before first marriage, by race andethnic origin, in US, 1960–89 2074.5 Synthetic index of fertility in European countriessince 1960 2124.6 Total fertility rate and number of births in US,1920–90 2134.7 Growth in service sector employment and infemale participation rates, 1980–90 2214.8a Women as a percentage of the labor force bytype of employment 2224.8b Married couple families with wives in the laborforce, in US, 1960–90 2234.9 Women in part-time employment by family statusin European Community member states, 1991 2334.10 Interrelation of different aspects of same-gendersexuality 2654.11 Gay residential areas in San Francisco 275

FIGURESxiii4.12a Household composition in US, 1960–90 2824.12b Household composition in US, 1970–95 2834.13 Living arrangements of children under the age of18, by presence of parent, in US, 1960–90 2844.14 Lifetime occurrence of oral sex, by cohort: menand women 2975.1 General government gross financial liabilities 3125.2 Labor costs in manufacturing, 1994 3136.1 Credibility of news source in US, 1959–91 3726.2 Average number of corruption stories perperiodical in US, 1890–1992 3946.3 Percentage of citizens expressing not very muchor no confidence in government in selected countries 4056.4 Percentage of citizens expressing not very much orno confidence in political parties for selected countries 4066.5 Percentage of people in selected countries expressingthe view that their country is run by a few biginterests looking out for themselves 4076.6 Perception of government by citizens of60 countries (1999) 4086.7 Percentage of citizens in 47 countries expressingthe view that their country is governed by the willof the people (2002) 4086.8 Trust in institutions to operate in society’s bestinterest (2002) 4096.9 Level of support for the mainstream parties innational elections, 1980–2002 412

Tables4.1 Rate of change in crude divorce rate in selectedcountries, 1971–90 1994.2 Trends in divorce rates per 100 marriages indeveloped countries 1994.3 Percentage of first marriages dissolved throughseparation, divorce, or death among women aged40–49 in less-developed countries 2014.4 Trends in percentage of women aged 20–24who have never been married 2044.5 Non-marital births as a percentage of all birthsby region (country averages) 2064.6 Trends in single-parent households as a percentageof all households with dependent children and at leastone resident parent in developed countries 2084.7 Trends in percentage of households headed bywomen de jure 2084.8 Indicators of recent changes in family andhousehold formation: selected Westerncountries, 1975–90 2104.9 Percentage of one-person households overtotal number of households for selectedcountries, 1990–93 2114.10 Total fertility rate by main regions of the world 2144.11 Labor force participation rates by sex (%) 2164.12 Total employment by sex (% average annualgrowth rates) 217

TABLES4.13 Economic activity rates, 1970–90 2194.14 Growth of women’s economic activity rate, 1970–90 2204.15 Female service employment by activities andrank of information intensity of totalemployment (%), 1973–93 2244.16 Rates of growth for each category of femaleservice employment as a percentage of totalfemale employment, 1973–93 2254.17 Distribution of female employment byoccupation, 1980 and 1989 (%) 2264.18 Size and composition of part-time employment,1973–94 (%) 2294.19 Share of self-employment in total employment,by sex and activity (%) 2315.1 Internationalization of the economy and publicfinance: rates of change, 1980–93 (and 1993 ratios,unless otherwise indicated) 3085.2 Government role in the economy and publicfinance: rates of change, 1980–92 (and 1992 ratios,unless otherwise indicated) 3096.1 Sources of news in the US, 1993–2002 (%) 3716.2 Sources of political information of residentsof Cochabamba, Bolivia, 1996 3726.3 Opinion of Bolivian citizens on whichinstitutions represent their interests 3906.4 Turnout in national elections: recent figurescompared to rates for the 1970s and 1980s (%) 410xv

Charts2.1 Structure of values and beliefs of insurgentmovements against globalization 1633.1 Typology of environmental movements 1714.1 Analytical typology of feminist movements 254

Preface to the 2010Edition of The Powerof IdentityThis volume explores the construction of collective identities as theyrelate to social movements and power struggles in the networksociety. It also deals with the transformation of the state, politics,and democracy under the conditions of globalization and new communicationtechnologies. The understanding of these processes aimsto provide new perspectives for the study of social change in theInformation Age. In this preface I use the vantage point offered by anew publication of this book in 2010 to assess social and politicaldevelopments in the early twenty-first century by using the analyticalframework proposed in 1997 and updated in 2004 in the first andsecond editions of The Power of Identity.The most dramatic social conflicts we have witnessed since thepublication of the first edition of this volume have been induced bythe confrontation between opposing identities. Having detected theconstruction and assertion of identity as being a fundamental lever ofsocial change, regardless of the content of such change, the theoreticalinterpretation I proposed in my trilogy on The Information Age wasanchored on the dynamic contradiction between the Net and the Selfas an organizing principle of the new historical landscape. The rise ofthe network society and the growing power of identity are the intertwinedsocial processes that jointly define globalization, geopolitics,and social transformation in the early twenty-first century. In fact,I updated the 1997 analysis of identity in the 2004 edition of this

xviiiPREFACE TO THE 2010 EDITION OF THE POWER OF IDENTITYbook to document the explosion of fundamentalism and its impact onworld affairs without modifying the original argument, as the observationof Al Qaeda and other expressions of religious fundamentalismcame to confirm (unfortunately) the main hypotheses I had formulatedearlier while abstaining from any prediction, as is customary inmy approach. Furthermore, the revolt of oppressed nations aroundthe world, the conquest of governments by indigenous movementsin Latin America, the growing importance of religious movements assources of social challenge and social change, the grassrooting ofdemocracy in territorial identity, the affirmation of the specificity ofwomen’s values, the critique of patriarchalism by the gay and lesbianmovement, and the constitution of new forms of individual andcollective identity, often using electronic communication networks,have shown the prevalence of cultural values over structurally determinedeconomic interests in constructing the meaning of humanaction. After the relentless rationalist effort of the last two centuriesto proclaim the death of God and the disenchantment of the world,we are again in – if we ever left – an enchanted world, where the waywe feel determines what we believe and how we act, in coherencewith recent discoveries in neuroscience and behavioral psychology.A summary overview of social trends in the last decade as theyrelate to the construction and expression of identity may provide ameasure of the accuracy or inadequacy of the analysis presented inthis volume, as the only criterion to judge the interest of any socialtheory is its capacity to make sense of the observed human experience.I will not re-state my theory of identity and power in this Preface,instead inviting the interested reader to make the effort to turn a fewpages to find the passages that are relevant to the issues discussedhere.God’s PlanetThe news about God’s death has been greatly exaggerated. She is aliveand well, as she inhabits our hearts and thus shapes our minds. She isnot everywhere and is not for everybody, but she is present for mosthuman beings, in growing numbers, and with greater intensity everyday. Only about 15 percent of people on the planet are non-religiousor atheists, while between 1990 and 2000 the number of Christiansincreased worldwide at an average annual rate of 1.36 percent,accounting in 2000 for about 33 percent of the world’s totalpopulation. Muslims increased at an annual rate of 2.13 percent toreach 19.6 percent of the total population. Figures for Hindus are

PREFACE TO THE 2010 EDITION OF THE POWER OF IDENTITYxix1.69 percent annual growth rate and 13.4 percent of the population,and for Buddhists, 1.09 percent annual growth rate and 5.9 percent ofthe population (Barrett et al., 2001). This simple observation oftensurprises the intellectuals of a very small but still highly influentialarea of the world: Western Europe. With the exception of Ireland, inmost Western European countries religious observance has dwindledand religious beliefs are lukewarm at best for the large majority of theusually Christianized population, in spite of the continuing influenceof the Church as a political institution. Even in Italy, Spain, andPortugal, the mainstays of Catholicism throughout history, only afraction of the population attends mass on Sundays and the vastmajority of the youth feel disaffected from religion in general. Itwould be interesting to explore the causes of such historical reversalbut it would distract us from the main thrust of my argument.Furthermore, even in these lands of religious indifference there is arevival of beliefs and practice among a small but very vocal segmentof young people, although not enough to refill the overwhelminglyabandoned convents and seminaries or the empty coffers of what usedto be the wealthiest institution in the world. Significantly enough, theactive presence of God in Western Europe is mainly due to the growingMuslim community (4.3 percent of Europeans in 2000), whosesubmission to God in everyday life clashes with the secular characterof public institutions, including the school.Eastern Europe is becoming increasingly religious as the remainingashes from the historical communist drive to subdue alternative idolshave been reignited while, of course, Poland has maintained its identityas a beacon of unreconstructed Catholicism. Turkey, one of themost populous European countries, has accentuated its Muslim identity,placing its democracy on a collision course with the intransigentsecularism embodied in the armed forces modeled by Ataturk.Beyond the European shores, East Asia was never committed toGod, as Buddhism and its derivatives oscillated between a collectionof spiritual practices (mainly Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism)and philosophical guidelines (Confucianism, Taoism) and a series ofrituals legitimizing the power of the state (explicitly in the case ofShintoism). The most important act of worship for Chinese, Japanese,or Korean families concerns the cult of the ancestors, in the form ofhousehold gods for domestic consumption (the so-called ethnoreligionand folk religion). Yet, this noncommittal form of religiositydoes not preclude the appearance of religious fundamentalism inEast Asia, as exemplified by Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese Buddhistbasedcult that I analyzed in this volume. This is an indication thatfundamentalism is not necessarily an exacerbation of religiosity but

xxPREFACE TO THE 2010 EDITION OF THE POWER OF IDENTITYan expression of radicalized resistance identity that nests in anycultural form that fits its development.Elsewhere in Asia, there is strong religious influence in India,Pakistan and Bangladesh, among Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs alikewith growing fundamentalist tendencies in all religions. Christianitydominates in the Philippines (in spite of a strong Muslim minority inMindanao), and is growing in South Korea and Vietnam. Of course,Indonesia and Malaysia are largely devout Muslim countries,although Malaysia has considerably reduced the impact of fundamentalistIslam, another interesting lesson to follow. The Central Asianrepublics have very large Muslim populations, even if the state keepsreligion in the service of its political interests.Naturally, the endless crises of the Middle East are constructed onthe basis of conflicting religious identities. Islamic fundamentalism inall its versions is the dominant cultural and political trend, as theproject of a secular Arab nationalist state (Nasser, Sadat, SaddamHussein, Assad, Khadafi) collapsed in all countries, and its successors(e.g. Mubarak, Khadafi in its new incarnation, Assad’s son) had torepress God on behalf of God in order to survive. As for Israel,religious identity, ethnic identity (the Jewish people), and territorialidentity in support of historical identity combine to make any negotiationbased on a non-identity principle practically impossible toachieve success. The Jewish people were prosecuted throughout historybecause of who they were and so their survival, in their view,depends on the existence of a land-based state, constructed aroundtheir identity. This is why there is a strong current of Jewish fundamentalism(remember the assassination of Yizhak Rabin) that issymmetrically opposed to the Islamic fundamentalism of the mostpopular component of the Palestinian movement (Hamas). And this iswhy peaceful coexistence between Jews and Palestinians will have todeal not just with coexisting states but with coexisting identities, asexemplified by the thorny issue of sharing Jerusalem.Africa is also a continent of religion, based on the juxtaposition ofChristianity, Islam and animism. Yet, identity politics in sub-SaharanAfrica is mainly constructed around ethnicity and territoriality ratherthan religion, as I will review later. It is important to remember thatthis continent largely forgotten by the outside world has not forgottenGod, who is usually most welcome among the distressed people whoseek refuge from despair.Latin America continues to be God’s territory, with the particularitythat where the powerful Catholic Church became too obviouslyuninterested in the plight of its huddled masses in order to indulge inthe favors of the rich and powerful, new cults arose, usually under the

PREFACE TO THE 2010 EDITION OF THE POWER OF IDENTITYxxiform of Pentecostalism often imported from the United States –perhaps the most successful American influence in a subcontinentobviously fatigued from Yankee imperialism. Indeed, Pentecostalismis the fastest growing religion worldwide, expanding from 155 millionto 588.5 million global adherents between 2000 and 2005.The United States, the harbinger of representative democracy andthe leading scientific power in the world, is one of the most religiouscountries on Earth, with over 85 percent declaring themselves religious(76 percent of Americans are Christians) 50 percent of peoplebelieving that the Bible is the source of truth, and 70 percent believingin a personal god. In 2008, 34 percent of Americans consideredthemselves ‘‘Born Again or Evangelical Christian’’ (ARIS, 2008).Thus, in spite of a recent growth of atheists and agnostics (from 8.2percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008), churches, in their diversity,remain the main form of social organization for ethnic minorities;evangelicals play a decisive role in American politics; and Christianfundamentalism, as documented in this book, is a major force inshaping the values and social practices of American society. Thestrength of religion in America shows that scientific and technologicaldevelopment, supposedly the harvest of rationalism, can expand in ahighly religious context. There are many ways to scientific discoverybased on the deployment of reason, but more often than not theyshare the path with God’s way, in spite of obvious contradictions, asexemplified by the religious opposition to stem cell research. Why andhow the United States is both the land of science and the kingdom ofGod is one the themes addressed in this volume.However, the analysis presented here does not refer to the continuingpresence of religion as a basic feature of societies around theworld in the twenty-first century, but to its decisive role in nurturingthe construction of resistance identities against the dominance ofmarket values and the so-called Western culture in the process ofglobalization. Large segments of people that are economically, culturally,and politically disenfranchised around the world do not recognizethemselves in the triumphant values of cosmopolitan conquerors(not even in the depressed lands of old industrial and rural America),and so they turn to their religion as a source of meaning and communalfeeling in opposition to the new order. A new order that not onlyfails to benefit most of the poor on the planet but also deprives themof their own values, as they are invited to sing the glory of ourglobalized, technological condition without the possibility of relatingto the new lyrics. What follows is not only marginalization but somethingdeeper: humiliation. In this volume, I show how the terroristleaders of the global Muslim jihad are often intellectuals, some of

xxiiPREFACE TO THE 2010 EDITION OF THE POWER OF IDENTITYthem members of wealthy families, whose revolt is not againsteconomic oppression but against the disrespect of their culture andtraditions, as symbolized in the Quran.And so, since my early writing on religious fundamentalism in themid-1990s, we have witnessed a global uprising, spearheaded byAl Qaeda, whose actions, together with our often misguided reactions,have transformed the political and geopolitical landscape aswell as our everyday lives, marked by fear and the rituals of securitymeasures. Al Qaeda is a loose global network of networks of activistswho follow their own impulses and strategies while alluding to themythical command of Osama bin Laden. It is an extraordinary exampleof the effectiveness of networking as an organizing form, but it isalso an expression of a relentless revolt among the Muslim youth ofthe world, with an increasing influence among the Muslim minoritiesof Western Europe, who are often submitted to discrimination andabuse. Significantly, fundamentalism can hardly be found among therelatively affluent communities of Arab Americans in the UnitedStates. The rare cases of Muslim militants suspected of terroristinclinations in America are usually poor African-Americans or Muslimimmigrants.But the growing influence of Muslim fundamentalism, whose rootsand characteristics are studied in this volume, goes beyond al-Qaedaand terrorist networks. It is also behind the process of destabilizationin Pakistan, a nuclear power, as an influential group of its armedforces and intelligence services supports the Taliban and similargroups in Afghanistan, in Kashmir, and in Pakistan itself, where thearmed revolt of fundamentalists has been growing over the last decade.Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines are submitted to pressuresfrom radical Islamic groups with a growing presence in themosques, the universities, and among the impoverished publicbureaucracy. The connection between radical Islam and warlords isfeeding war and banditism in Africa.Even more significant is the emergence of fundamentalist Iran as adominant power in the Middle East, playing the nuclear card as abargaining chip to obtain an international guarantee of its safety.Furthermore, because of the extraordinary blunder of the Bush–Cheney administration, which is also analyzed in this volume, theUS has established a Shiite-dominated regime in Iraq, paving the wayfor a future strategic alliance between the two mainstays of the Shiiteminority in the world: Iran and Iraq. Such an alliance is conducive toconfrontation not only with Israel, but also the opposing Sunni fundamentalismrepresented by the House of Saud. The economic andpolitical interests of different actors in the Middle East are at play in

PREFACE TO THE 2010 EDITION OF THE POWER OF IDENTITYxxiiithis chain of potential conflicts. But religious fundamentalism is morethan a pretext; it is the value system that binds together differentsocial groups and political actors: the Iranian Ayatollahs, the sectarianShiite leaders of Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine,and, on the opposite side, the network of Sunni fundamentalist groupsthroughout the Middle East, from the Muslim Brothers in Egypt tothe radical religious opposition in the Arabian Peninsula, Syria, andbeyond.Religious militancy, in its different forms, is playing a growing rolein the political and cultural dynamics of a variety of countries. Onethirdof American voters are Christian fundamentalists, ready tomobilize on behalf of their cause, with no particular allegiance toany leader or party other than their God. Falun Gong (a spiritualistcult rather than a religion) has been the most feared source of politicalopposition in China in the last decade, prompting the Communistparty to unleash all its repressive power to prevent a sort of modernTaiping rebellion against the process of globalization in China. Insum, the crisis of political legitimacy analyzed in this volume hascreated a vacuum in the mechanisms of political representation andsocial mobilization that is being filled with identity-based movements,the most important of which are the religious movements. Whatappeared as embryos of an emerging social dynamics a decade agoare now at the forefront of the social struggles and political dramas ofour world. The analysis contained in this volume explains why andhow.My People, My Home, My NationData show time and again that the more the world becomes global,the more people feel local. The proportion of ‘‘cosmopolitans,’’ peoplewho feel they are ‘‘citizens of the world,’’ remains at barely 13 percentof people surveyed worldwide, as documented in this volume. Morerecent surveys show a continuation of this trend. People identifythemselves primarily with their locality. Territorial identity is a fundamentalanchor of belonging that is not even lost in the rapid process ofgeneralized urbanization we are now experiencing. The village is notleft behind; it is transported with its communal ties. And new urbanvillages are constructed, shrinking the size of the human experience toa dimension that can be managed and defended by people feeling lostin the whirlwind of a destructured world. When people need toexpand their community, they refer to their nations, their islands inthe global ocean of flows of capital, technology, and communication.

xxivPREFACE TO THE 2010 EDITION OF THE POWER OF IDENTITYSometimes these nations coincide with the historically constructednation-state, but not always; and then we abet the process of affirmingnations without states, as well as opposing the nation to the state.In the first case, nations as cultural communities have becometrenches of mobilization and resistance against secular repression oftheir rights and identities. A nation-state as historical as Spain continuesto be shaken by the unresolved conflict of the integration ofCatalunya, Euskadi, and Galicia into the democratic Spanish state, inspite of the considerable effort of administrative decentralizationconducted by Madrid in the last 30 years. Belgium is on the edge ofdisintegration at the time of this writing, as Wallonie and Flanders,two national communities, cannot resolve the differences resultingfrom their historical marriage of convenience. The quiet Scots, thefiery Irish, and the nostalgic Welsh are in the gradual but relentlessprocess of reminding England that they are not the same nation;not only for historical reasons or economic grievances, but becausemany of them feel this way, as the national community is constructedprimarily in the minds of its members. In less institutionalized contexts,nationalist struggles have been a fundamental componentof social dynamics and political confrontation in the decade sinceI called attention to the preeminence of modern nationalism in thefirst edition of this volume. Serbian, Croatian, Eslovenian, Bosnianand Albanian nationalism have made the Balkans explode in a processthat is far from resolution. Chechnya, Abkhazia, and Osetia continueto be the key sources of conflict for Russia, and the brief war provokedby Georgia almost induced a new cold war, which was ultimatelydeactivated by the pacifist standing of President Obama.Furthermore, the reconstruction of state power in Russia underPutin has operated on the basis of the recovery of Russian nationalpride, including the strengthening of military power as the ultimateattribute of the state.In Latin America, after the collapse of the neoliberal discourse,nationalism has recovered its dominant role as the ideological rallyingbanner for countries around the continent, with Hugo Chavez engagingin latter-day socialism on behalf of the Venezuelan nation, inspite of his claims to the pan-continental Bolivarian revolution. InAsia, nationalism has replaced communism as the most effectiveideology of the Chinese regime, as it has the support of the majorityof the population, who cheer for the rise of Chinese power in thecontext of the historical humiliation they have suffered from the West.Both Japan and South Korea have accentuated their nationalist stand,often in opposition to each other, so that Japan remains the object ofnationalist ire for both China and South Korea while the Japanese

PREFACE TO THE 2010 EDITION OF THE POWER OF IDENTITYxxvelites affirm themselves against the world in spite of the massiveAmericanization of their powerless youth.This is a world of nations increasingly at odds with the nationstatesthat have engaged in networks of global governance to managethe global dimension of everything, at the expense of representing thenations’ interests. This is a process that I identified in the first editionof this volume and it is now in full swing around the world, withsocial movements and political actors challenging the globalizingstate on behalf of the national interests betrayed by the nation-state.This has been the case in most Latin American countries, with theexception of Chile and Colombia, leading to a reversal of the globalizationprocess in Latin America, while the Washington consensushas become a bad memory and a political liability. But this is also thecase in the United States, as shown by the depth of the opposition tothe NAFTA treaty among large segments of the working class, to thepoint that political candidates must be careful with their support offree trade, as the winds of protectionism are fueled by the crisis of theglobal economy.Ethnicity has always been a basic attribute of self-identification.Not only because of shared historical practice, but because ‘‘theothers’’ remind people everyday that they are ‘‘others’’ themselves.This generalized ‘‘otherness,’’ be it defined by skin color, language, orany other external attribute, characterizes the reality of our multiculturalworld. It is precisely because people from different cultureslive side by side that they differentiate themselves in terms of ethnicityin order to find solidarity in the in-group as a refuge and a defenseagainst uncontrollable market forces and the prejudice of the dominantethnic groups in each context. When oppression and repressioninduce revolts, ethnicity often provides the material basis that constructsthe commune of resistance. Thus, the crises resulting in LatinAmerica from the failed process of integration of local and nationalsocieties into the global economy have intensified the strength andreach of indigenous social movements, spearheaded some time ago bythe Mexican Zapatistas, a group that I analyzed in this volume. InBolivia, in one of the most fascinating, albeit dramatic, laboratories ofsocial transformation in the world, the indigenous people, led by EvoMorales, have not only secured access to the parliament and thegovernment, but have also restructured the country under a newconstitution that enshrines the principle of a plurality of ethnicnations as a foundational component of the nation-state. Throughoutthe Andean region, with the exception of Chile, indigenous movementshave become a defining social actor, either in government or inopposition, so that the voices of the original inhabitants can no longer

xxviPREFACE TO THE 2010 EDITION OF THE POWER OF IDENTITYbe ignored. Elsewhere on the planet, ethnicity has become a majorsource of self-organization, confrontation and, often, hatred andviolence. Ethnicity continues to be the dominant factor in the politicsof sub-Saharan Africa, as the nation-states constructed on the boundariesof colonialism have never coincided with the cultural roots oftheir people. Furthermore, ethnicity has been used by most Africanpolitical elites as a key mechanism to build their networks of patronage,and to make sure that their constituents hate each other, thusweakening their autonomy as political subjects.And while the United States has learned throughout its history as animmigrant nation to cope with ethnicity (to the point that ethnicpolitics is fully acknowledged in political practices), Europe is painfullydiscovering that the abstract principle of individual citizenship isdirectly challenged by the multiculturalism of an increasingly multiethniccontinent. The more Europe integrates new nations and themore it globalizes its labor force, the more ethnicity becomes a majorcomponent of social dynamics and power struggles. Paradoxically, formost people in this global Information Age, who they are mattersmore than what they do.Project IdentitiesA key conceptual component of the analysis presented in this volumeis the distinction between three major forms of collective identities:legitimizing identity, resistance identity, and project identity. I referthe reader to the elaboration of these concepts as presented inchapter 1 of this volume. I have commented above on how resistanceidentities, usually constructed by using the materials inherited fromhistory (god, nation, ethnicity, locality), have intensified their significancein the social conflicts and social organization of our world inthe last decade. In a parallel trend, we have also witnessed a majordevelopment of project identities aiming to change society by introducingnew sets of values. In my view, a project identity emerges whensocial actors, on the basis of whatever cultural materials are availableto them, build a new identity that redefines their position in societyand, in so doing, seek the transformation of overall social structure.This has been the case of major proactive social movements throughouthistory. And this was the case of what I consider to be two of themost significant such social movements in our context: feminism andenvironmentalism. In both cases, the last decade has been the timewhen the values that both movements have projected on to societyhave become either dominant or at least very influential in most

PREFACE TO THE 2010 EDITION OF THE POWER OF IDENTITYxxviicountries around the world, paving the way for their institutionalizationin the state and their broadcasting in the media.This is the case for environmentalism. In the first decade of thetwenty-first century the awareness of global warming, and its potentiallycatastrophic consequences, became universal. While scientificknowledge on the process has existed for a long time, at least since the1950s, it took the increasing influence of a multifaceted environmentalmovement in the media and in society at large to bring the issue tothe attention of a majority of the population, and not only in developedcountries. Today, most people consider global warming a threatto humankind that should be counteracted with decisive policy measures.Indeed, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change heldin Paris in February 2007 represented a watershed of information,awareness, and public commitment from governments and internationalinstitutions to act on the matter. While politics as usual oftenlags on solemn promises, in this case there has actually been a significantfollow-up in terms of public policies, partly thanks to theelection of Barack Obama to the presidency of the most pollutingcountry in the world. The process by which an issue that was largelyignored until the 1980s, both in public opinion and in public policies,came to the forefront of policy making, was long and complex. It wasthe result of weaving together the practices of scientists and environmentalactivists with those of mainstream media and, later, globalInternet networks, so they could be heard by a small group of daringpoliticians (such as Al Gore or Margot Wallström) who became theconveyors of the movement’s warnings in the hallways of power. Itwas amplified by the mobilization of celebrities from the world ofmusic and cinema who took the opportunity to use their fame for agood cause while increasing their own celebrity. Finally, it mobilizedcitizens to put pressure on their political representatives so that,barring an increasingly discredited group of reactionary politicians,such as the Bush–Cheney clique and their friends around the world,the majority of political campaigns included a ‘‘green platform’’ intheir programs, with an emphasis on policies to counter the process ofclimate change. It followed a flurry of meetings, conventions, agreements,and treaties that slowly but surely trickled down into nationallegislations. To provide a rough measure of the extent of mobilizationachieved by the global environmental movement, let me remind thereader that Earth Day, the symbolic annual celebration that started inthe United States, was celebrated by 20 million people in its first year(1970), a stunning success at the time. It was celebrated by 1 billionpeople around the world in 2008. If the grandchildren of our grandchildrencan still live on this planet one day, it will be because of what

xxviii PREFACE TO THE 2010 EDITION OF THE POWER OF IDENTITYthe environmental movement has accomplished in the last fourdecades. The movement acted on behalf of our collective identity asa human species searching for our harmonious coexistence with theblue planet, after millennia of being submitted to the forces of natureand our catastrophic attempt during the last two centuries to use ourenvironment for its consumable resources rather than preserve it asour irreplaceable home.The crisis of patriarchalism, largely induced by feminism and by thegay and lesbian movement, has intensified in the first decade of thiscentury, although in specific forms depending on cultural and socialcontexts in each area of the world. The most important revolutionhas already occurred: the transformation of the way in which womenthink about themselves and the way in which gays and lesbians thinkabout themselves. Because domination is primarily based on the constructionof reality in the human mind, along the lines suggested byMichel Foucault and demonstrated by contemporary neuroscience,if patriarchalism is not internalized by the subjects under patriarchalism,its demise is only a matter of time, struggle, and suffering, withmuch suffering still to come. Occasional backlash periodicallyinvokes the forces of religious fundamentalism to re-state the sanctityof the patriarchal family, even in the midst of its disintegration as away of life in many countries. Yet, in a growing number of countries,women have conquered legal parity in the work place, in spite ofpersistent, yet diminishing discrimination; the political system isgradually opening up to female leadership; and the majority of collegegraduates are women, even in fundamentalist countries, such asIran.Gays and lesbians continue to be imprisoned and executed aroundthe world, yet in a number of countries, including the historicallyhomophobic United States, they have won battle after battle (thoughlosing some as well), in the streets, in the courts, in the media, and inthe political system, so that they have undoubtedly torn down thewalls of the closet to live out in the open, thus transforming the waysociety thinks about sexuality, and therefore personality as a whole.As suggested in chapter 4 of this volume, written in 1997, thekey battleground has been the transformation of the family. Regardlessof what the laws say or what the state tries to enforce, if peopleform different kinds of families, the cornerstone of patriarchalism iscalled into question. The heterosexual, nuclear, patriarchal familybuilt around a long-lasting marriage is today the exception ratherthan the rule in the United States and in the majority of WesternEurope. Interestingly enough, the gay and lesbian movement hasfocused its efforts during the last years on obtaining legal recognition

PREFACE TO THE 2010 EDITION OF THE POWER OF IDENTITYxxixof their right to marry, form families, and have children. This is amajor example of what an identity project is. By asserting their equalrights as humans, they transform the most basic institution of humanorganization throughout history.The more women have conquered their autonomy, and the morenew generations of women can no longer relate to the conditionsunder which their mothers and grandmothers used to live, the morefeminism diversifies and transforms gender relations by shifting fromemancipation to liberation, ultimately dissolving gender as a culturalcategory and a material institution that uses biological differences toconstruct the sexual division of labor. The old battles between thefeminism of equality and the feminism of difference (see chapter 4)have been largely superseded by the new frontier of feminism: thede-gendering of society that implies the transformation of men.The ‘‘new masculinities,’’ as analyzed by Marina Subirats, are basedon the deployment of a new project identity, this time enacted by menin strategic alliance with the most innovative feminists: to find newperspectives of meaningful existence by liberating themselves fromthe burden of their responsibility as patriarchs (Castells and Subirats,2007). Sharing life without defining roles could be a win–win situationfor post-patriarchal men and women. Granted, only a tiny minority ofmen and women recognize themselves in this discourse. But the veryfact that it exists in observable practices, in actual men’s groups,beyond the writings of feminists, is an indication of how far thefeminist movement has reached. By mobilizing women against theinstitutions of patriarchalism, feminism has reached a stage of transformationin which the new project is to cancel the distinctionbetween men and women as a cultural category. Neither men norwomen, but individuals with specific biological attributes searching toshare life under a variety of organizational forms, is the historicalhorizon that has emerged in the twenty-first century on the basis ofthe liberation struggles of the last half century.The Network StateThe analysis of globalization has been dominated for a long time bythe debate about the fate of the nation-state in a world in which thekey processes at the source of wealth, technology, information, andpower have been globalized.Some observers predicted or even argued for the demise of thenation-state and its replacement by new institutions of global governance.Most social scientists however emphasized the obvious fact of

xxxPREFACE TO THE 2010 EDITION OF THE POWER OF IDENTITYthe continuity of nation-states that were, and still are, the primarysubjects in the exercise of power and government. In this volume,however, I formulated a different hypothesis, on the basis of theobservation of new trends in political systems around the world. Icould observe simultaneously the persistence of nation-states andtheir transformation as components of a different form of state ableto operate in the new historical context by managing the challenges tothe traditional nation-state by the opposing processes of globalizationand identification: globalization of wealth and power, identificationof culture and representation.My theorization, as has always been the case in my work, wasinspired by the observation of a concrete process: the creation anddeployment of the European Union. European nation-states becameincreasingly aware of the difficulty in managing the economic andtechnological transformation induced by globalization within theboundaries of their sovereign territories. So, they traded some degreeof sovereignty for a greater capacity to intervene jointly in the shapingof the world economy. It followed the increasing integration of economicinstitutions, which paved the way for joint action on some ofthe key issues that required global governance, such as environmentalpolicy and national and international security. At the same time, theyresponded to increasing pressures from their citizenry’s claims ofidentity in terms of their territorial and cultural specificity by engagingin a process of devolution of power that decentralized mostEuropean states, and even permitted, in certain cases, the participationof nongovernmental organizations in policy deliberations. Thus,over time, a new form of state emerged in practice: a state made of adhoc networking in the practice of government between nation-states,European institutions, global institutions of governance, regional andlocal governments, and civil society organizations. While the core ofpolitical power remained in the nation-states, their actual decisionmakingprocess became characterized by a variable geometry of cosovereignty,involving a plurality of actors and institutions dependingon the issue and the context of each decision to be made.While in the rest of the world the level of co-national and transnationalpolitical integration was considerably less institutionalized, theprocess of governance became increasingly characterized by the networksof cooperation (not exempt from competition) between nationstatesand international institutions. The emergence of an objectivelymultilateral order induced the gradual rise of a multilateral institutionalsystem of co-governance. In this sense, there was indeed asupersession of the classic nation-state of the Modern Age throughthe resumption of the existing nation-states in a different form of

PREFACE TO THE 2010 EDITION OF THE POWER OF IDENTITYxxxistate. In order to survive in the new context of global governance,the nation-states morphed into a different form. Not a global government,as some have prophesied, but a network of national andinternational political actors jointly exercising global governance(Castells, 2007).Then, 9/11 happened and the world changed. Or so it appeared. Asanalyzed in this volume, the United States, governed at the time byBush–Cheney (a bicephalous entity), felt directly threatened by fanaticviolence and mobilized in self-defense by using military power, theonly dimension in which the US was, and remains, an autonomoussuperpower. In the first stage of the counter-offensive, Americareceived the solidarity and, to a lesser extent, the support of theinternational community. But the neo-conservative clique that hadcaptured an inexperienced president decided to seize the opportunityto use military might to go beyond Afghanistan and to remodel thegeopolitical order according to the interests of the United States,aligned, in their view, with the interests of the civilized world atlarge (Kagan, 2004). Thus the invasion of Iraq, and the attempt torestore unilateralism in the conduct of international affairs; not onlyin the geopolitical arena, but in the management of all global issues,from environmentalism to human rights, international security, andfinancial regulation (or the lack thereof). The Iraq invasion was thereturn of the state in its most traditional form of exercising its monopolyof violence, and it followed a major crisis of internationalgovernance institutions, starting with the United Nations, marginalizedby the United States, and the apparent triumph of unilateralismin spite of an objectively multilateral world. The dynamics of agency(in this case, the American state asserting its superpower status)seemed to prevail over the logic of the structure. It was an illusionthat only a few years later had to reckon with the harsh reality of thelimits to military power in a globally interdependent world. Not onlywas the United States drawn into protracted, draining wars in Iraqand Afghanistan, as al-Qaeda wanted, but its inability to build aglobal governance system led to a multidimensional, global crisis ofwhich the financial collapse of 2008 was only its most damagingexpression. The election of Barack Obama to the presidency of theUnited States signaled a return to the acceptance of the fundamentalreality of the interdependence of our world, and America’s involvementin a more determined practice of global expansion of the networkstate: the London consensus has come to substitute the nowdiscredited Washington consensus. This is to say that in the long termthe trends that characterized the social structure ultimately imposedtheir logic, but in the short term the autonomy of the political agency

xxxiiPREFACE TO THE 2010 EDITION OF THE POWER OF IDENTITYcould oppose such logic because of the interests and values of theactors occupying the commanding heights of the agency. When such isthe case, as during the Bush–Cheney administration period, the discrepancybetween structure and agency induces systemic chaos, andultimately destructive processes that add to the difficulties of managingthe adaptation of the nation-state to the global conditions of thenetwork society.Informational Politics and the Crisis of DemocracyPower struggles have always been decided by the battle over people’sminds; this is to say, by the management of processes of informationand communication that shape the human mind. Because the InformationAge is precisely characterized by the revolution in information andcommunication technologies, a new form of politics has emerged in thelast two decades, a form that I conceptualized in the first edition of thisvolume as informational politics. In fact, all politics since the beginningof time have been, to some extent, informational. But the centrality ofmass media in our society, and the technological transformation ofinformation processing and mass communication have placed informationalpolitics at the heart of the processes by which power is allocatedand exercised in our society. As I proposed years ago in this volume,politics in the network society is primarily media politics.The predominant role of media politics has two major consequences.First, while the media are not the power-holders becausethey are diverse and subjected to business and political influences,they constitute the space of power. Therefore, the understanding ofpower in our society requires a comprehension of the structure anddynamics of mass media, a structure characterized by their organizationaround a core of global multimedia business networks (Arsenaultand Castells, 2008). Second, the characteristics of the political messagein the mass communication context induce the personalization ofpolitics. Political leaders are the face of politics. Media politics isbased on personality politics everywhere in the world. The directconsequence of this observation is that the most potent politicalweapon is the discrediting of the opponent’s persona. Character assassinationis the most effective way to conquer power. This opens thedoor to scandal politics as the key strategy for power-making in oursociety (Thompson, 2000). While political scandals are as old as theknown history of humankind, the technology of their fabrication andcommunication has been perfected in recent times. And because anyparty or leader must be ready to retaliate against the damaging tactics

PREFACE TO THE 2010 EDITION OF THE POWER OF IDENTITYxxxiiiof the opponent, everybody stockpiles ammunition, and ultimatelyeverybody fires. In the years after the original publication of thisvolume, scandal politics has wrecked governments, parties, leaders,and political systems almost everywhere in the world. Leaking informationto the media, or diffusing it over the Internet, has supplantedinvestigative reporting and has become both a political strategy and afreelance business, with public opinion as the target of the strategy. InMay 2009, dozens of British MPs saw their political reputationsdestroyed (and probably their careers as well) when informationwas leaked regarding their use of taxpayers’ money to cater to theirdaily needs, even for modest expenses associated to their personalcomfort. More than the amount of money involved, what provokedpublic outrage was the reality of the reckless behavior of electedrepresentatives in the context of the daily pain experienced by peoplein the midst of an economic crisis. Studies on the political effects ofthe generalized practice of scandal politics show the variability of itsdamaging impact on politicians. For instance, public opinion of BillClinton was not diminished by his lies regarding the MonicaLewinsky affair. The reason for this is that most citizens consider allpoliticians equally immoral, and so they use other criteria than moralityto decide their preferences. However, available evidence pointsto the fact that what suffers as a result of repeated scandals is thecredibility of political parties, politicians, and government institutionsas a whole. This is tantamount to saying that there is a direct linkbetween media politics, scandal politics, and the crisis of democracy,not as an ideal, but as it is practiced in actuality in most of the world.The data of the crisis of political legitimacy as presented in thisvolume have been followed by new data in recent years showing theaggravation of such a crisis. The large majority of citizens around theworld despise their representatives and do not trust their politicalinstitutions (Castells, 2009).The widespread diffusion of the Internet and of wireless communicationnetworks has increased people’s awareness about the wrongdoingof their leaders. Any citizen with a mobile phone may be able tocatch such a wrongdoing in the act and instantly upload damagingimages on the Internet, to expose the politician to the shame of theworld. The only way for the powerful to escape the surveillance of thepowerless is to remain invisible in their secluded spaces. The Internethas multiplied the chances for the distribution of damaging politicalinformation, thus contributing to the exposure of corruption andimmorality, and ultimately to the crisis of political legitimacy.Meanwhile, access to the Internet, which bypasses the controlledworld of the mass media, has democratized information, making it

xxxivPREFACE TO THE 2010 EDITION OF THE POWER OF IDENTITYless dependent on money and political bureaucracies. Thus, whilethere is a growing crisis of politics-as-usual, there is simultaneouslya process of transformation of democracy by offering political avenuesto grassroots expression and to political leaders who are notafraid of confronting scandal politics because they have little to hide.For the time being, this is the exception rather than the rule, but itoffers the possibility of regenerating the processes of democraticrepresentation. This is what appears to have been at work in thepresidential electoral campaign of Barack Obama, which I studiedin 2008 (Castells, 2009), in which the use of the Internet was decisivein mobilizing millions of citizens and ultimately electing as president amost unlikely candidate. Thus, there is no historical inevitability ofthe demise of democracy under the new forms of informationalpolitics. Instead, what seems to be emerging is the simple fact thatwithout acting on the means of communication and by the means ofcommunication (including the Internet) there is no possibility ofenacting power or, for that matter, counter-power. Therefore, thedemocratic institutions of the Information Age are confronted withthe dilemma of how to overcome their current enclosure in theinstitutional system to democratize the means of mass communication,including the networks of mass communication organizedaround the Internet.The World is Not FlatFor a brief moment in our recent history the rise of the global networksociety was interpreted by some influential ideologues as the comingof a flat world; a world following common institutional rules andslowly adopting a similar set of values modeled on the Western (e.g.Anglo Saxon) culture. Globalization would ultimately lead to a largelyhomogeneous global society whose logic would only be resistedby the obscure forces of traditionalists and fanatics who should besuppressed with the utmost energy so as to reach the superior state ofcapitalism: the achievement of world peace by enshrining the twinrules of unfettered markets and liberal democracy. The popularity ofthis view of the world did not come from the partial reading of thediagnostic I had formulated much earlier concerning the emergence ofa global social structure (the network society), diversified in its practiceby a diversity of cultures and institutions. It resulted, as with allother attempts in history to propose a unified form of civilization(naturally defined by the ‘‘civilized’’ for the ‘‘uncivilized’’), from thelast hurrah of the American empire, when it felt alone at last in its

xxxviPREFACE TO THE 2010 EDITION OF THE POWER OF IDENTITYInternet, and with English accounting for only 29 percent of globalInternet interaction (Castells, Tubella, Sancho, Roca, 2007). There isindeed a globalization of the production and distribution of culturalproducts, including movies, television programs, and music. But mosttelevision programming is local and national, not global, and globalproducts are not synonymous with Hollywood production, as LatinAmerican tele-novelas, Bollywood (India), Nollywood (Nigeria), andmultiple other sources of global cultural production increase theirmarket share in the global multimedia networks. In other words,the networks are global, but the narratives, values, and interests arediverse, and globally produced and distributed, albeit asymmetrically,around the world.The world is not flat, unless a superpower flattens it by force (be itmilitary or economic) to shape it in its image. This was in factattempted in the first years of the twenty-first century, and it failed.From a devastating, multidimensional crisis, the United States isemerging to face its reality: a wrecked empire whose military poweris an increasingly unsustainable tool without a clear purpose or functionin a world of networks and multilateral interdependency. This isnot a purely academic debate. Because only by realizing the diversityand complexity of our world, the contradictory dynamics betweenglobal markets and local identities, and the tension between a commontechnological paradigm and diverse institutional uses of technology,can we accept the need for cooperation in jointly steering anincreasingly dangerous world.We are not sharing a global culture. Rather, we are learning theculture of sharing our global diversity.Manuel CastellsBarcelonaMay 2009

Preface andAcknowledgments 2003This is the second volume of the trilogy The Information Age: Economy,Society, and Culture. The theme of the analysis presented in thetrilogy is the contradictory relationship between a new global socialstructure – the network society – and resistance to the forms ofdomination implicit in this social structure. In my observation ofsocial trends in the 1990s it appeared that cultural identity, in itsdifferent manifestations, was one of the main anchors of the oppositionto the values and interests that had programmed the global networksof wealth, information, and power. Between global networksand cultural identities, the institutions of society, and particularly thenation-state, were shaken in their foundations and challenged in theirlegitimacy.I was very careful not to make any predictions, since this is beyondthe task of the researcher. Yet, from the vantage point of 2003, itseems that the framework proposed for the understanding of ourworld at the dawn of the information age may be useful to makesense of some of our current dramas: the rise of religious fundamentalismand of global terror networks; the role of national identity inanchoring societies in a global world; the surge of resistance againstunchecked, global capitalism in a multidimensional movement forglobal justice; the restructuring of states to manage global complexity,evolving toward a new institutional form, the network state, inthe age of multilateralism; the efforts by some states to reassertthemselves as sovereign actors in spite of living in an interdependentworld.

xxxviii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 2003The Power of Identity was finished in November 1996, and publishedin October 1997. This new edition, completed in April 2003,updates and elaborates the analysis presented years earlier, whilekeeping the essence of the argument. However, at the time of writingthe first edition, the techno-economic transformation of society –which I conceptualized as the rise of the network society – wasmore apparent than the projects of resistance to this specific form ofglobal network society. Because, in my theoretical approach, societiesare always understood in their contradictory and conflictive dynamics,I did identify the embryos of alternative social movements, andthe harbingers of the crisis of the nation-state. Yet, equally importantin my work is the methodological principle to resist speculation andsocial forecasting, building theory from observation, within the limitsof my knowledge and competence. Thus, although I analyzed religiousfundamentalism (particularly Islamic fundamentalism), nationalism,ethnic mobilizations, and anti-globalization movements (suchas the Mexican Zapatistas) in their opposition to the new globaldisorder, it was too early to identify fully the profile of some ofthese social movements, and to draw consequences for the transformationof state institutions in the new international public space.Nowadays we have evidence to hand that shows the emergence ofsocial movements and political challenges opposed to the one-dimensionallogic that dominates the network society in the first stage of itsconstitution. Here lies the potential usefulness of this new edition: tointegrate more fully the analysis of the conflictive processes of resistanceand alternative projects of social organization, on the basis of thedocumented observation of these processes, as they have developedaround the turn of the millennium. Accordingly, I have not updateddata and references throughout the whole volume. The purpose of thetrilogy, and of this volume, is analytical, not documentary. Therefore,there is no point in running after the events for the rest of my life, afterhaving spent 15 years researching and writing this trilogy. Since, forthe time being, I have not much to add to my analysis of the crisis ofpatriarchalism, and to the emergence of the environmental movement,I have kept these two chapters unchanged in this edition. ButI have done new research, and furthered my analysis, in those areasthat either decisively confirm the analysis presented earlier or requirerectification of a key point of the argument. To the first categorybelong the analysis of social movements against globalization andthe study of the crisis of democracy under the conditions of informationalpolitics. Thus, I have added specific analyses of al-Qaeda,as a social movement based on religious identity, and of the antiglobalizationmovement, as a collective social actor that brings

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 2003xxxixtogether different sources of resistance and aims at proposing alternativeprojects of social organization; in its own words: another world ispossible. Indeed, the network society does not escape the general lawof societies throughout history: where there is domination, there isresistance to domination, and contested views and projects of how toorganize social life. I have also refined my discussion of the crisis ofpolitical legitimacy, which deepened in the last years of the twentiethcentury in all areas of the world, usually following the lines identifiedin my analysis, relating this crisis to media politics, to scandal politics,and to the growing contradiction between the globality of issues to bemanaged and the nation-bounded character of the institutions incharge of their management.To the second category – that is, the need to re-think the proposedanalytical framework – belongs the study of the state in the networksociety. In the original version of my trilogy I proposed the concept ofthe network state to designate the adaptive forms that political institutionswere taking to respond to the challenges of globalization. Itwas already clear that nation-states were not about to disappear, andthat the role of the state was as central in our world as it has beenthroughout human history. Yet, it is not the same kind of state as thenation-state built during the modern age, in the same way that thisstate was also different from other forms of state developed in previoushistorical periods. I theorized the new form of the state (understoodas the set of political institutions) as the network state, made upof a complex network of interactions between nation-states, conationaland supranational institutions, regional and local governments,and even NGOs, as local and global civil society was quicklybecoming both a challenger and a partner to the nation-state. In thisvolume, I go further in the analysis of the global interdependence ofpolitical management, domination, and representation, and I try topropose a tentative theoretical construction to think the new historicalrealities of the state.As all intellectual products, the second edition of this volume ismarked by the social context in which it was conceived and written.This is the context of the open conflict between identity-based challenges,such as Islamic fundamentalism and global networks of terror,and the institutions of uncompromising capitalist globalization, relyingon the military might of the last and only superpower. This is alsothe context in which, in spite of the objective multilateral character ofthe issues emerging in the global network society, the only relativelyautonomous nation-state, the United States, decided to try a last runtoward unilateral world domination, wrapped in different ideologicalarguments, and seasoned with British consent, yet rooted in sheer

xl PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 2003panic and insecurity when confronted with a truly dangerous, newworld that was never on the cards of the strategists and thinkers of theworld’s dominant elites.Instead of understanding the new world, and finding new ways ofdealing with its issues, the US decided to use its military superiority,based on technological excellence, thus on its advance in the technologicalrevolution, to adapt the world to itself, to its interests, to itsways of thinking and being, rather than the other way round. Thiswas not present in my analysis in the first edition (unlike the violentchallenge from fundamentalist terror networks, which was in directline with my argument as presented in 1996, although I refused topredict anything). In theoretical terms, I studied the deployment of thenew social structure, but I paid insufficient attention to the autonomyof agency. Yet, we know in social theory that analysis must bringtogether the logic of structure and the logic of agency in the formationof social practices. I put this principle at the forefront of my theory,and I tried to implement it by referring to the contradictory logicbetween the net and the self, between the power of capitalist networksand the power of identity, between corporate globalization and alternativeglobal movements. Yet I underestimated the capacity of thestate, and particularly of the last sovereign nation-state, to ignore thesignals of history and go back to asserting the monopoly of violenceas its raison d’être, sacrificing international legitimacy to a domesticlegitimacy built on its role as protector of its citizens and clients. Howa unilateral logic can proceed in a multilateral world is a fundamentalmatter that only experience, and analytical observation of experience,will tell us in the years to come. But, to help the conduct of such ananalysis, I have proposed in this volume some theoretical reflectionsinspired by the observation of the first stages of this fundamentalcontradiction between the logic of structure and the logic of agencyin the construction of our world.In conducting the revision of this volume, I have continued tobenefit from the support of students, colleagues, and academic institutions,whose contribution must be acknowledged as my way ofthanking all of them publicly. First of all, my gratitude goes to theresearch assistants who have helped me with the collection and analysisof new data, all of them my doctoral students: Jeff Juris andRana Tomaira, at the University of California, Berkeley, and EsteveOllé at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona.A number of colleagues have helped with their comments, information,and suggestions on topics covered in this volume, particularlyAlain Touraine, Anthony Giddens, Fernando Calderon, Ruth Cardoso,Vilmar Faria, Emilio de Ipola, Nico Cloete, Johan Muller,

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 2003Martin Carnoy, You-tien Hsing, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, UlrichBeck, Mary Kaldor, Imma Tubella, Peter Evans, Harley Shaiken,Nezar al-Sayyad, Ronald Inglehart, Guy Benveniste, Wayne Baker,John Thompson, Pekka Himanen, Magaly Sanchez, Bish Sanyal,William Mitchell, Douglas Massey, Erkki Tuomioja, Ovsey Shkaratan,and Narcis Serra.I am also grateful to the following universities, institutions, andfoundations which, by their invitation, have provided the opportunityto discuss the ideas presented in this volume in the period of theirrevision: Center for Higher Education Transformation, South Africa;United Nations Development Programme in Bolivia; United NationsDevelopment Programme in Chile; Oxford University; Institute forContemporary Arts, London; Ord&Bild Journal, Goteborg andStockholm; Balie Cultural Center, Amsterdam; Fundacion MarcelinoBotin, Madrid; Escuela Superior de Administracion de Empresas(ESADE), Barcelona; Institut Europeu de la Mediterrania, Barcelona;University Humboldt, Berlin; University of Munich; Institute forSocial Research, University of Frankfurt; University Bocconi, Milan;Higher School of Economics, Moscow; Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology; Queen’s University, Ontario; University of Michigan;Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California,Los Angeles.I would also like to emphasize the contribution to my research ofmy new intellectual environment, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya(UOC) in Barcelona. My arrival here in 2001, recovering theroots of my own identity, constitutes a personal stimulus, and a verygood vantage point to develop my analysis of the cultural and politicaldimensions of the network society. I particularly thank VicerectorImma Tubella and Rector Gabriel Ferrate for providing excellentintellectual, material, and personal conditions for this new stageof my research.I want to reiterate my personal debt to Emma Kiselyova-Castells,who has put up with this endless work on my trilogy for the pastdecade. To her, I promise this: no more trilogies!Finally, my doctors, Peter Carroll and James Davis, of the Universityof California San Francisco Medical Center, deserve a new roundof recognition, having cleared me from the grave illness that we allfought together.I very much hope that the analysis presented in this substantiallyrevised volume will contribute to the understanding of a very troubledworld.xliApril 2003Barcelona, Spain

xlii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 2003The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge the following forpermission to reproduce copyright material:Figure 2.1 ‘‘Geographical distribution of Patriot groups in the US bynumber of groups and paramilitary training sites in each state, 1996,’’from Southern Poverty Law Center, Klanwatch/Militia Task Force1996. Reprinted with permission.Figure 4.1 H-P. Blossfield, ‘‘Marriage survival curves for Italy, WestGermany, and Sweden: mothers born in 1934–38 and 1949–53,’’from H-P. Blossfield, The New Role of Women: Family Formationin Modern Societies (Westview Press, 1995).Figure 4.2 I. Alberdi, ‘‘Evolution of first marriage in countries of theEuropean Union since 1960,’’ from I. Alberdi (ed.), Informe sobre lasituacion de la familia en España (Ministerio de Asuntos Sociales,Madrid, 1995).Figure 4.5 I. Alberdi, ‘‘Synthetic index of fertility in European countriessince 1960,’’ from I. Alberdi (ed.), Informe sobre la situacion dela familia en España (Ministerio de Asuntos Sociales, Madrid, 1995).Figure 4.10 E. Laumann et al., ‘‘Interrelation of different aspects ofsame-gender sexuality. . . ,’’ from E. Laumann et al., The Social Organizationof Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States (Universityof Chicago Press, 1994). Reprinted with permission.Figure 4.14 E. Laumann et al., ‘‘Lifetime occurrence of oral sex, bycohort: men and women,’’ from E. Laumann et al., The Social Organizationof Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States (Universityof Chicago Press, 1994).Figure 5.1 ‘‘General government gross financial liabilities (% ofGDP),’’ from The Economist Newspaper Limited, London, January20, 1996. Reprinted with permission.Figure 5.2 ‘‘Labour costs in manufacturing, 1994 ($ per hour),’’from The Economist Newspaper Limited, London, January 27,1996. Reprinted with permission.Figure 6.2 T. Fackler and T-M. Lin, ‘‘Average number of corruptionstories per periodical in US, 1890–1992,’’ from T. Fackler andT-M. Lin, ‘‘Political corruption and presidential elections, 1929–1992,’’ from The Journal of Politics, 57 (4): 971–93 (1995).Reprinted with permission.Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders, but ifany has been inadvertently overlooked, the publisher will be pleasedto make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.

Acknowledgments1996The ideas and analyses presented in this volume have grown out of 25years of study which I have conducted on social movements andpolitical processes in various areas of the world, although they arenow re-elaborated and integrated in a broader theory of the informationage, as presented in the three volumes of this book. A number ofacademic institutions were essential environments for the developmentof my work in this specific area of inquiry. Foremost amongthem was the Centre d’Étude des Mouvements Sociaux, École desHautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, founded and directed byAlain Touraine, where I was a researcher between 1965 and 1979.Other research institutions that helped my work on social movementsand politics were: Centro Interdisciplinario de Desarrollo Urbano,Universidad Catolica de Chile; Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales,Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico; Center for Urban Studies,University of Hong Kong; Instituto de Sociologia de NuevasTecnologias, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid; Faculty of SocialSciences, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo.The final elaboration and writing of the material presented heretook place in the 1990s in what has been, since 1979, my intellectualhome, the University of California at Berkeley. Many of the ideaswere discussed and refined in my graduate seminar on ‘‘Sociology ofthe Information Society.’’ For this, I thank my students, a constantsource of inspiration for and criticism of my work. This volume hasbenefited from exceptional research assistance by Sandra Moog, asociology graduate student at Berkeley, and a future outstandingscholar. Additional valuable research assistance was provided by

xliv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 1996Lan-chih Po, a doctoral student in city and regional planning, also atBerkeley. As with the other volumes of this book, Emma Kiselyovaconsiderably helped my research by facilitating access to languagesthat I do not know, as well as by assessing and commenting on varioussections of the volume.Several colleagues read drafts of the whole volume, or of specificchapters, and commented extensively, helping me to correct somemistakes and to tighten up the analysis, although I obviously takefull responsibility for the final interpretation. My gratitude goes to:Ira Katznelson, Ida Susser, Alain Touraine, Anthony Giddens, MartinCarnoy, Stephen Cohen, Alejandra Moreno Toscano, Roberto Laserna,Fernando Calderon, Rula Sadik, You-tien Hsing, Shujiro Yazawa,Chu-joe Hsia, Nancy Whittier, Barbara Epstein, David Hooson,Irene Castells, Eva Serra, Tim Duane, and Elsie Harper-Anderson.I wish to express my special thanks to John Davey, Blackwell’s editorialdirector, who provided his expert insight, as well as careful suggestionson substance in several key sections of the volume.This is to say that, as with the other volumes of this book, theprocess of thinking and writing is largely a collective endeavor, albeitultimately assumed in the solitude of authorship.November 1996Berkeley, California

Our World, our LivesLift up your faces, you have a piercing needFor this bright morning dawning for you.History, despite its wrenching pain,Cannot be unlived, and if facedWith courage, need not be lived again.Lift up your eyes uponThis day breaking for you.Give birth againTo the dream.Maya Angelou, ‘‘On the Pulse of Morning’’ 1Our world, and our lives, are being shaped by the conflicting trends ofglobalization and identity. The information technology revolution,and the restructuring of capitalism, have induced a new form ofsociety, the network society. It is characterized by the globalizationof strategically decisive economic activities. By the networking formof organization. By the flexibility and instability of work, and theindividualization of labor. By a culture of real virtuality constructedby a pervasive, interconnected, and diversified media system. And bythe transformation of the material foundations of life, space and time,through the constitution of a space of flows and of timeless time, asexpressions of dominant activities and controlling elites. This new1 Poem on the inauguration of the US President, January 22, 1993.

2 OUR WORLD, OUR LIVESform of social organization, in its pervasive globality, is diffusingthroughout the world, as industrial capitalism and its twin enemy,industrial statism, did in the twentieth century, shaking institutions,transforming cultures, creating wealth and inducing poverty, spurringgreed, innovation, and hope, while simultaneously imposing hardshipand instilling despair. It is indeed, brave or not, a new world.But this is not the whole story. Along with the technological revolution,the transformation of capitalism, and the demise of statism, wehave experienced, in the past twenty-five years, the widespread surgeof powerful expressions of collective identity that challenge globalizationand cosmopolitanism on behalf of cultural singularity andpeople’s control over their lives and environment. These expressionsare multiple, highly diversified, following the contours of each culture,and of historical sources of formation of each identity. Theyinclude proactive movements, aiming at transforming human relationshipsat their most fundamental level, such as feminism andenvironmentalism. But they also include a whole array of reactivemovements that build trenches of resistance on behalf of God, nation,ethnicity, family, locality, that is, the fundamental categories of millennialexistence now threatened under the combined, contradictoryassault of techno-economic forces and transformative social movements.Caught between these opposing trends, the nation-state iscalled into question, drawing into its crisis the very notion of politicaldemocracy, predicated upon the historical construction of a sovereign,representative nation-state. More often than not, new, powerfultechnological media, such as worldwide, interactive telecommunicationnetworks, are used by various contenders, amplifying andsharpening their struggle, as, for instance, when the Internet becomesan instrument for international environmentalists, Mexican Zapatistas,or American militia, responding in kind to computerized globalizationof financial markets and information processing.This is the world explored in this volume, focusing primarily onsocial movements and politics, as they result from the interplay betweentechnology-induced globalization, the power of identity (gender,religious, national, ethnic, territorial, socio-biological), and the institutionsof the state. In inviting the reader to this intellectual journeythrough the landscapes of contemporary social struggles and politicalconflicts, I will start with a few remarks that may help the voyage.This is not a book about books. Thus, I will not discuss existingtheories on each topic, or cite every possible source on the issuespresented here. Indeed, it would be pretentious to attempt setting,even superficially, the scholarly record on the whole realm of themescovered in this book. The sources and authors that I do use for each

OUR WORLD, OUR LIVES 3topic are materials that I consider relevant to construct the hypothesesI am proposing on each theme, as well as on the meaning of theseanalyses for a broader theory of social change in the network society.Readers interested in bibliography, and in critical evaluations of sucha bibliography, should consult the many available good textbooks oneach matter.The method I have followed aims at communicating theory byanalyzing practice, in successive waves of observation of social movementsin various cultural and institutional contexts. Thus, empiricalanalysis is mainly used as a communication device, and as a methodof disciplining my theoretical discourse, of making it difficult, if notimpossible, to say something that observed collective action rejects inpractice. However, I have tried to provide a few empirical elements,within the space constraints of this volume, to make my interpretationplausible, and to allow the reader to judge for her/himself.There is in this book a deliberate obsession with multiculturalism,with scanning the planet, in its diverse social and political manifestations.This approach stems from my view that the process of technoeconomicglobalization shaping our world is being challenged, andwill eventually be transformed, from a multiplicity of sources,according to different cultures, histories, and geographies. Thus,moving thematically between the United States, Western Europe,Russia, Mexico, Bolivia, the Islamic world, China and Japan, as Ido in this volume, has the specific purpose of using the same analyticalframework to understand very different social processes that are,nonetheless, interrelated in their meaning. I would also like, withinthe obvious limits of my knowledge and experience, to break theethnocentric approach still dominating much social science at thevery moment when our societies have become globally interconnectedand culturally intertwined.One word about theory. The sociological theory informing thisbook is diluted for your convenience in the presentation of themesin each chapter. It is also blended with empirical analysis as far as itcould be done. Only when it is unavoidable will I submit the reader toa brief theoretical excursus, since for me social theory is a tool tounderstand the world, not an end for intellectual self-enjoyment.I shall try, in the conclusion to this volume, to tighten up the analysisin a more formal, systematic manner, bringing together the variousthreads woven in each chapter. However, since the book focuses onsocial movements, and since there is a great deal of disagreement onthe meaning of the concept, I advance my definition of social movementsas being: purposive collective actions whose outcome, in victoryas in defeat, transforms the values and institutions of society.

4 OUR WORLD, OUR LIVESSince there is no sense of history other than the history we sense, froman analytical perspective there are no ‘‘good’’ and ‘‘bad,’’ progressiveand regressive social movements. They are all symptoms of who weare, and avenues of our transformation, since transformation mayequally lead to a whole range of heavens, hells, or heavenly hells. Thisis not an incidental remark, since processes of social change in ourworld often take forms of fanaticism and violence that we do notusually associate with positive social change. And yet, this is ourworld, this is us, in our contradictory plurality, and this is what wehave to understand, if necessarily to face it, and to overcome it. As forthe meaning of this and us, please dare to read on.

1Communal Heavens:Identity and Meaningin the Network SocietyThe capital is established near Zhong Mountain;The palaces and thresholds are brilliant and shining;The forests and gardens are fragrant and flourishing;Epidendrums and cassia complement each other in beauty.The forbidden palace is magnificent;Buildings and pavilions a hundred stories high.Halls and gates are beautiful and lustrous;Bells and chimes sound musically.The towers reach up to the sky;Upon altars sacrificial animals are burned.Cleansed and purified,We fast and bathe.We are respectful and devout in worship,Dignified and serene in prayer.Supplicating with fervor,Each seeks happiness and joy.The uncivilized and border people offer tribute,And all the barbarians are submissive.No matter how vast the territory,All will be eventually under our rule.Hong XiuquanSuch were the words of the ‘‘Imperially Written Tale of a ThousandWords,’’composedbyHongXiuquan,theguideandprophetoftheTaipingRebellion, after establishing his heavenly kingdom in Nanjing in 1853. 11 Cited by Spence (1996: 190–1).

6 IDENTITY AND MEANING IN THE NETWORK SOCIETYThe insurgency of Taiping Tao (Way of Great Peace) aimed at creating acommunal, neo-Christian fundamentalist kingdom in China. The kingdomwas organized, for more than a decade, in conformity with therevelation of the Bible that, by his own account, Hong Xiuquan receivedfromhiselderbrother,JesusChrist,afterbeinginitiatedintoChristianitybyevangelical missionaries. Between 1845 and 1864, Hong’s prayers, teachings,and armies shook up China, and the world, as they interfered withthe growing foreign controlof the Middle Kingdom. The Taiping Kingdomperished, as it lived, in blood and fire, taking the lives of 20 million Chinese.It longed to establish an earthly paradise by fighting the demonsthathadtakenoverChina,sothat‘‘allpeoplemaylivetogetherinperpetualjoy, until at last they are raised to Heaven to greet their Father.’’ 2 It was atime of crisis for state bureaucracies and moral traditions, of globalizationof trade, of profitable drug traffic, of rapid industrialization spreading inthe world, of religious missions, of impoverished peasants, of the shakingof families and communities, of local bandits and international armies, ofthe diffusion of printing and mass illiteracy, a time of uncertainty andhopelessness, of identity crisis. It was another time. Or was it?The Construction of IdentityIdentity is people’s source of meaning and experience. As Calhounwrites:We know of no people without names, no languages or cultures inwhich some manner of distinctions between self and other, we and they,are not made . . . Self-knowledge – always a construction no matter howmuch it feels like a discovery – is never altogether separable fromclaims to be known in specific ways by others. 3By identity, as it refers to social actors, I understand the process ofconstruction of meaning on the basis of a cultural attribute, or arelated set of cultural attributes, that is given priority over othersources of meaning. For a given individual, or for a collective actor,there may be a plurality of identities. Yet, such a plurality is a sourceof stress and contradiction in both self-representation and socialaction. This is because identity must be distinguished from what,traditionally, sociologists have called roles, and role-sets. Roles (forexample, to be a worker, a mother, a neighbor, a socialist militant, aunion member, a basketball player, a churchgoer, and a smoker, at the2 Spence (1996: 172).3 Calhoun (1994: 9–10).

IDENTITY AND MEANING IN THE NETWORK SOCIETY 7same time) are defined by norms structured by the institutions andorganizations of society. Their relative weight in influencing people’sbehavior depends upon negotiations and arrangements between individualsand these institutions and organizations. Identities are sourcesof meaning for the actors themselves, and by themselves, constructedthrough a process of individuation. 4Although, as I will argue below, identities can also be originated fromdominant institutions, they become identities only when and if socialactors internalize them, and construct their meaning around this internalization.To be sure, some self-definitions can also coincide with socialroles, for instance when to be a father is the most important self-definitionfrom the point of view of the actor. Yet, identities are strongersources of meaning than roles because of the process of self-constructionand individuation that they involve. In simple terms, identities organizethe meaning, while roles organize the functions. I define meaning asthe symbolic identification by a social actor of the purpose of her/hisaction. I also propose the idea that, in the network society, for reasonsthat I will develop below, for most social actors, meaning is organizedaround a primary identity (that is an identity that frames the others),which is self-sustaining across time and space. While this approach isclose to Erikson’s formulation of identity, my focus here will be primarilyon collective, rather than on individual, identity. However, individualism(different from individual identity) may also be a form of‘‘collective identity,’’ as analyzed in Lasch’s ‘‘culture of narcissism.’’ 5It is easy to agree on the fact that, from a sociological perspective,all identities are constructed. The real issue is how, from what, bywhom, and for what. The construction of identities uses buildingmaterials from history, from geography, from biology, from productiveand reproductive institutions, from collective memory and frompersonal fantasies, from power apparatuses and religious revelations.But individuals, social groups, and societies process all these materials,and rearrange their meaning, according to social determinationsand cultural projects that are rooted in their social structure, and intheir space/time framework. I propose, as a hypothesis, that, in generalterms, who constructs collective identity, and for what, largelydetermines the symbolic content of this identity, and its meaning forthose identifying with it or placing themselves outside of it. Since thesocial construction of identity always takes place in a context markedby power relationships, I propose a distinction between three formsand origins of identity building:4 Giddens (1991).5 Lasch (1980).

8 IDENTITY AND MEANING IN THE NETWORK SOCIETY. Legitimizing identity: introduced by the dominant institutions ofsociety to extend and rationalize their domination vis à vis socialactors, a theme that is at the heart of Sennett’s theory of authorityand domination, 6 but also fits with various theories of nationalism.7. Resistance identity: generated by those actors who are in positions/conditionsdevalued and/or stigmatized by the logic of domination,thus building trenches of resistance and survival on thebasis of principles different from, or opposed to, those permeatingthe institutions of society, as Calhoun proposes when explainingthe emergence of identity politics. 8. Project identity: when social actors, on the basis of whatevercultural materials are available to them, build a new identitythat redefines their position in society and, by so doing, seek thetransformation of overall social structure. This is the case, forinstance, when feminism moves out of the trenches of resistanceof women’s identity and women’s rights, to challenge patriarchalism,thus the patriarchal family, and thus the entire structure ofproduction, reproduction, sexuality, and personality on whichsocieties have been historically based.Naturally, identities that start as resistance may induce projects,and may also, along the course of history, become dominant in theinstitutions of society, thus becoming legitimizing identities to rationalizetheir domination. Indeed, the dynamics of identities along thissequence shows that, from the point of view of social theory, noidentity can be an essence, and no identity has, per se, progressiveor regressive value outside its historical context. A different, and veryimportant matter, is the benefits of each identity for the people whobelong.In my view, each type of identity-building process leads to a differentoutcome in constituting society. Legitimizing identity generates acivil society; that is, a set of organizations and institutions, as well as aseries of structured and organized social actors, which reproduce,albeit sometimes in a conflictive manner, the identity that rationalizesthe sources of structural domination. This statement may come as asurprise to some readers, since civil society generally suggests a positiveconnotation of democratic social change. However, this is in factthe original conception of civil society, as formulated by Gramsci, theintellectual father of this ambiguous concept. Indeed, in Gramsci’s6 Sennett (1980).7 Anderson (1983); Gellner (1983).8 Calhoun (1994: 17).

IDENTITY AND MEANING IN THE NETWORK SOCIETY 9conception, civil society is formed by a series of ‘‘apparatuses,’’ suchas the Church(es), unions, parties, cooperatives, civic associations,and so on, which, on the one hand, prolong the dynamics of the state,but, on the other hand, are deeply rooted among people. 9 It is preciselythis dual character of civil society that makes it a privilegedterrain of political change by making it possible to seize the statewithout launching a direct, violent assault. The conquest of thestate by the forces of change (let’s say the forces of socialism, inGramsci’s ideology) present in civil society is made possible exactlybecause of the continuity between civil society’s institutions and thepower apparatuses of the state, organized around a similar identity(citizenship, democracy, the politicization of social change, the confinementof power to the state and its ramifications, and the like).Where Gramsci and de Tocqueville see democracy and civility, Foucaultand Sennett, and before them Horkheimer and Marcuse, seeinternalized domination and legitimation of an over-imposed, undifferentiated,normalizing identity.The second type of identity-building, identity for resistance, leadsto the formation of communes, orcommunities, in Etzioni’s formulation.10 This may be the most important type of identity-building inour society. It constructs forms of collective resistance against otherwiseunbearable oppression, usually on the basis of identities thatwere, apparently, clearly defined by history, geography, or biology,making it easier to essentialize the boundaries of resistance. Forinstance, ethnically based nationalism, as Scheff proposes, often‘‘arises out of a sense of alienation, on the one hand, and resentmentagainst unfair exclusion, whether political, economic or social.’’ 11Religious fundamentalism, territorial communities, nationalist selfaffirmation,or even the pride of self-denigration, inverting the termsof oppressive discourse (as in the ‘‘queer culture’’ of some tendenciesin the gay movement), are all expressions of what I name the exclusionof the excluders by the excluded. That is, the building of defensiveidentity in the terms of dominant institutions/ideologies,reversing the value judgment while reinforcing the boundary. Insuch a case, the issue arises of the reciprocal communicability betweenthese excluded/exclusionary identities. The answer to this question,which can only be empirical and historical, determines whethersocieties remain as societies or else fragment into a constellation oftribes, sometimes euphemistically renamed communities.9 Buci-Glucksman (1978).10 Etzioni (1993).11 Scheff (1994: 281).

10 IDENTITY AND MEANING IN THE NETWORK SOCIETYThe third process of constructing identity, that is project identity,produces subjects, as defined by Alain Touraine:I name subject the desire of being an individual, of creating a personalhistory, of giving meaning to the whole realm of experiences of individuallife . . . The transformation of individuals into subjects resultsfrom the necessary combination of two affirmations: that of individualsagainst communities, and that of individuals against the market. 12Subjects are not individuals, even if they are made by and in individuals.They are the collective social actor through which individualsreach holistic meaning in their experience. 13 In this case, the buildingof identity is a project of a different life, perhaps on the basis of anoppressed identity, but expanding toward the transformation of societyas the prolongation of this project of identity, as in the abovementionedexample of a post-patriarchal society, liberating women,men, and children, through the realization of women’s identity. Or, ina very different perspective, the final reconciliation of all humanbeings as believers, brothers and sisters, under the guidance of God’slaw, be it Allah or Jesus, as a result of the religious conversion ofgodless, anti-family, materialist societies, otherwise unable to fufillhuman needs and God’s design.How, and by whom, different types of identities are constructed,and with what outcomes, cannot be addressed in general, abstractterms: it is a matter of social context. Identity politics, as Zaretskywrites, ‘‘must be situated historically.’’ 14 Thus, our discussion mustrefer to a specific context, the rise of the network society. The dynamicsof identity in this context can be better understood by contrastingit with Giddens’s characterization of identity in ‘‘late modernity,’’ ahistorical period which, I believe, is an era reaching its end – by whichI do not mean to suggest that we are in some way reaching the ‘‘end ofhistory’’ as posited in some postmodern vagaries. In a powerfultheorization, whose main lines I share, Giddens states that ‘‘selfidentityis not a distinctive trait possessed by the individual. It is theself as reflexively understood by the person in terms of her/his biography.’’Indeed, ‘‘to be a human being is to know. . . both what one isdoing and why one is doing it . . . In the context of post-traditionalorder, the self becomes a reflexive project.’’ 1512 Touraine (1995a: 29–30); my translation.13 Touraine (1992).14 Zaretsky (1994: 198).15 Giddens (1991: 53, 35, 32).

How does ‘‘late modernity’’ impact this reflexive project? In Giddens’sterms,one of the distinctive features of modernity is an increasing interconnectionbetween the two extremes of extensionality and intentionality:globalising influences on the one hand and personal dispositions on theother. . . The more tradition loses its hold, and the more daily life isreconstituted in terms of the dialectical interplay of the local and theglobal, the more individuals are forced to negotiate lifestyle choicesamong a diversity of options . . . Reflexively organized life-planning . . .becomes a central feature of the structuring of self-identity.’’ 16While agreeing with Giddens’s theoretical characterization of identity-buildingin the period of ‘‘late modernity,’’ I argue, on the basis ofanalyses presented in volume I of this trilogy, that the rise of thenetwork society calls into question the processes of the constructionof identity during that period, thus inducing new forms of socialchange. This is because the network society is based on the systemicdisjunction between the local and the global for most individuals andsocial groups. And, I will add, by the separation in different time–space frames between power and experience (volume I, chapters 6 and7). Therefore, reflexive life-planning becomes impossible, except forthe elite inhabiting the timeless space of flows of global networks andtheir ancillary locales. And the building of intimacy on the basis oftrust requires a redefinition of identity fully autonomous vis à vis thenetworking logic of dominant institutions and organizations.Under such new conditions, civil societies shrink and disarticulatebecause there is no longer continuity between the logic of powermakingin the global network and the logic of association and representationin specific societies and cultures. The search for meaningtakes place then in the reconstruction of defensive identities aroundcommunal principles. Most of social action becomes organized in theopposition between unidentified flows and secluded identities. As forthe emergence of project identities, it still happens, or may happen,depending on societies. But, I propose the hypothesis that the constitutionof subjects, at the heart of the process of social change, takes adifferent route to the one we knew during modernity, and late modernity:namely, subjects, if and when constructed, are not built anylonger on the basis of civil societies, which are in the process ofdisintegration, but as prolongation of communal resistance. Whilein modernity (early or late) project identity was constituted fromcivil society (as in the case of socialism on the basis of the labor16 Giddens (1991: 1, 5).IDENTITY AND MEANING IN THE NETWORK SOCIETY 11

12 IDENTITY AND MEANING IN THE NETWORK SOCIETYmovement), in the network society, project identity, if it develops atall, grows from communal resistance. This is the actual meaning ofthe new primacy of identity politics in the network society. Theanalysis of processes, conditions, and outcomes of the transformationof communal resistance into transformative subjects is the preciserealm for a theory of social change in the information age.Having reached a tentative formulation of my hypotheses, it wouldbe against the methodological principles of this book to go any furtherdown the path of abstract theorizing that could quickly divert intobibliographical commentary. I shall try to suggest the precise implicationsof my analysis by focusing on a number of key processes in theconstruction of collective identity selected by their particular relevanceto the process of social change in the network society. I will start withreligious fundamentalism, both in its Islamic and Christian versions,although this does not imply that other religions (for example, Hinduism,Buddhism, Judaism) are less important or less prone to fundamentalism.I shall continue with nationalism, considering, after someoverview of the issue, two very different, but significant processes: therole of nationalism in the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and inpost-Soviet republics; and the formation and re-emergence of Catalannationalism. I will then turn to ethnic identity, focusing on contemporaryAfrican American identity. And I will end by considering, briefly,territorial identity, on the basis of my observation of urban movementsand local communities around the world. In conclusion, I shall try asuccinct synthesis of major lines of inquiry that will emerge fromexamining various contemporary processes of the (re)construction ofidentity on the basis of communal resistance.God’s Heavens: Religious Fundamentalism and CulturalIdentityIt is an attribute of society, and I would dare to say of human nature ifsuch an entity were to exist, to find solace and refuge in religion. Thefear of death, the pain of life, need God, and faith in God, whicheverof God’s manifestations, for people just to go on. Indeed, outside usGod would become homeless.Religious fundamentalism is something else. And I contend that this‘‘something else’’ is a most important source of constructing identityin the network society for reasons that will become clearer, I hope, inthe following pages. As for its actual content, experiences, opinions,history, and theories are so diverse as to defy synthesis. Fortunately,the American Academy of Arts and Sciences undertook, in the late

IDENTITY AND MEANING IN THE NETWORK SOCIETY 131980s, a major comparative project aimed at observing fundamentalismsin various social and institutional contexts. 17 Thus, we knowthat ‘‘fundamentalists are always reactive, reactionary,’’ 18 and that:fundamentalists are selective. They may well consider that they areadopting the whole of the pure past, but their energies go into employingthose features which will best reinforce their identity, keep their movementtogether, build defenses around its boundaries, and keep others at adistance . . . Fundamentalists fight under God – in the case of theisticreligion – or under the signs of some transcendent reference. 19To be more precise, I believe, to be consistent with the collection ofessays gathered in the ‘‘Fundamentalism Observed’’ Project, in definingfundamentalism, in my own understanding, as the construction ofcollective identity under the identification of individual behavior andsociety’s institutions to the norms derived from God’s law, interpretedby a definite authority that intermediates between God and humanity.Thus, as Marty writes, ‘‘It is impossible for fundamentalists to argueor settle anything with people who do not share their commitment toan authority, whether it be an inerrant Bible, an infallible Pope, theShari’a codes in Islam, or the implications of halacha in Judaism.’’ 20Religious fundamentalism has, of course, existed throughout thewhole of human history, but it appears to be surprisingly strong andinfluential as a source of identity in this new millennium. Why so? Myanalyses of Islamic fundamentalism, and of Christian fundamentalism,in this section, will try to propose some clues to understand oneof the most defining trends in the making of our historical epoch. 21Umma versus Jahiliya: Islamic fundamentalismThe only way to accede to modernity is by our own path, that whichhas been traced for us by our religion, our history and our civilization.Rached Gannouchi 22The 1970s, the birthdate of the information technology revolution inSilicon Valley, and the starting-point of global capitalist restructuring,had a different meaning for the Muslim world: it marked the begin-17 Marty and Appleby (1991).18 Marty (1988: 20).19 Marty and Appleby (1991: ix–x).20 Marty (1988: 22).21 See also Misztal and Shupe (1992a).22 Rached Gannouchi, interview with Jeune Afrique, July 1990. Gannouchi is a leadingintellectual in the Tunisian Islamist movement.