The Network Society - University of Massachusetts Amherst

Chapter 2
Societies in Transition to the
Network Society
Gustavo Cardoso
Several analysts have put forward the idea that societies are currently
experiencing significant change characterized by two parallel
trends that frame social behaviour: individualism and communalism
(Castells, 2003b).
Individualism, in this context, denotes the construction of meaning
around the realization of individual projects. Communalism, in turn,
can be defined as the construction of meaning around a set of values
defined by a restricted collective group and internalized by the group’s
members.
Various observers have looked at these two trends as potential
sources of disintegration of current societies, as the institutions on
which they are based lose their integrating capacity, i.e. they become
increasingly incapable to giving meaning to the citizens: the patriarchal
family model, the civic associations, companies and, above all,
representative democracy and the nation state. These institutions have
been, to some extent, fundamental pillars of the relationship between
society and the citizens throughout the 20th century (Castells 2003;
2004, Giddens 2000).
However, another hypothesis is possible. Perhaps what we are witnessing
is not the disintegration and fractioning of society, but the
reconstruction of the social institutions and, indeed, of the structure
of society itself, proceeding from autonomous projects carried out by
society members. This independence (i.e. independence from society’s
institutions and organizations) can be regarded as individual or collective,
in the latter case in relation to a specific social group defined by
its autonomous culture.
In this perspective, the autonomization of individuals and groups is
followed by the attempt to reconstruct meaning in a new social struc-