The new network enterprise is a phenomenon comprising not onlyshifting internal hierarchies, but also changing patterns of competitionand cooperation across institutions. The network enterprise is "thatspecific form of enterprise whose system of means is constituted by theintersection of autonomous systems of goals" (1996, p. 171). Castellsexamines in comparison different types of business networks in Japan,Korea and China whose networked organizations have been better suitedthan the conventional western corporations to adopt to some of theflexible features of the spirit of informationalism: "a cultureof the ephemeral, a culture of each strategic decision, a patchwork ofexperiences and interests, rather than a charter of rights andobligations" (1996, p. 199).
M Castells The Rise of the Network Society, With a New Preface vol I The Information Age Economy, So
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The common theme underlying the diversity of regional andsectorial patterns of economic change is the incorporation of similarinformation technology into historically very different businesses. Itsmost distinct result is the emergence of what Castells calls thespace of flows: the integrated global network. It comprises severalconnected elements: private networks, company Intranets; semi-public,closed and proprietary networks such as the financial networks; andpublic, open networks, the Internet. Social organizations reconstitutethemselves according to this space of flows.
Castells remains somewhat vague in his theorization of the spaceof flows. Developing his argument further one might say that thedistinguishing characteristic of the space of flows is binary timeand binary space. Binary time expresses no sequence but knows onlytwo states: either presence or absence, either now or never. Within thespace of flows everything that is the case is now, and everything thatis not must be introduced from the outside: that is, it springssuddenly into existence. Sequence is arbitrary in the space of flows anddisorders events which in the physical context are connected by achronological sequence. Binary space, then, is a space where thedistance can only be measured as two states: zero distance (inside thenetwork) or infinite distance (outside the network), here or nowhere.For example, when seeking information on the Internet, the crucialdistinction is whether this information is on-line or not. The continentin which the information resides within the network is largelyirrelevant. Everything that is on-line is (immediately) accessible: itis here, without distance. Everything that is outside the networkis infinitely far away, completely inaccessible no matter where thenetwork is entered; when someone puts it on-line, then it is suddenlyhere.
"The rise of informationalism in this end of millennium isintertwined with rising inequality and social exclusion throughout theworld" (1998, p. 70). Castells traces the phenomenon of exclusion acrossdifferent social and geographic contexts and concludes "the evolution ofintra-country inequality varies, what appears to be a global phenomenonis the growth of poverty, and particularly of extreme poverty" (1998,p. 81). Social exclusion is flexibly defined as the systematicinability of individuals or groups to access the means for meaningfulsurvival. This enables him to connect the heritage of the colonialhistory of Africa with the exploitation of children around the worldand the exclusion of minority groups and geographic areas in the UnitedStates. While the historic causes for their exclusion vary from case tocase, they nevertheless form an entity, the fourth world, because theyall entered the Information Age in positions in which their exclusionis reinforced by the structural dynamic of informationalism. In theUnited States, for example, "the emergence of the space of flows, usingtelecommunications and transportation to link valuable places in anon-contingent pattern, has allowed the reconfiguration of metropolitanareas around selective connection of strategically located activities,bypassing undesirable areas, left to themselves" (1998, p. 144). Thisdevelopment started long before the rise of the network society.However, it is the new ability to effectively switch off areas whichare viewed as non-valuable from the perspective of the dominant sociallogic, embedded in the space of flows, which has created blackholes of informational capitalism: regions from where there is,statistically speaking, no escape from suffering and depravation.
To classify my position from the start, I do think that Castells' Magnum Opus is a brilliant achievement. I know of no other work that is able to give a better insight into the interrelationships of so many large-scale trends in current affairs world-wide. Rarely, I have read such concise, deep and well-documented analyses of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the advent of a Pacific era and the rise of a global criminal economy and of all kinds of fundamentalism and social exclusion world-wide. The same goes for the crisis of patriarchy and the nation state and more specific current affairs like the crisis in Mexico at the beginning of the nineties. Castells is able to weave the treads between these apparently different trends. He manages to do this with a particular theory of what he calls 'the information age' or 'the network society' in particular. But is this really the long-waited theory of the information society? Is it better than the theory of Daniel Bell and Alain Touraine, acclaimed as precursors by the author himself? Does it uncover the 'logic' of change in contemporary civilisations?
2. The 'logic' of the information ageIt is impossible to give an overview of the elaborate cases of contemporary history Castells gives in the 1200 pages plain text (annexes and references excluded). His conclusions can be summarised. In his trilogy the author traces the effects of three independent processes appearing between the end of the 1960s and the middle of the 1970s and coming together to produce a 'new society': the information technology revolution, the economic crisis of capitalism and statism (communism) and the blooming of new social movements like environmentalism and feminism. According to Castells the IT-revolution is partly responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union together with other statisms, and for the rejuvenation of a more effective, flexible and hardened capitalism. The rise of new social movements is a response to the crisis of the nation, democracy, the traditional institutions of civil society and patriarchy in large parts of the world. Together these three processes are causing a new social structure ( a network society), a new economy (a global informational economy) and a new culture (a culture of 'real virtuality'). Let me explain these three effects successively.
A self-expanding network logic pervades and transforms all domains of social and economic life. Gradually it absorbs and subdues pre-existing forms, without discarding them altogether, just like industrial societies did not exclude many pre-industrial forms for a long time to come. This pervasion goes for networks of production, distribution, financial circulation, power, information, communication, images and experience, both considered apart and taken together. The first domain for Castells as a (former?) neo-marxist is the domain of the economy and the enterprise, both adopting a network structure in the process of globalization.
Here a new technical-economic paradigm develops: the information-technology paradigm. It has five features: 1. information as the raw material to act on; 2. the pervasiveness of information technologies used; 3. the networking logic of any system using them; 4. flexibility and 5. convergence of technologies. It leads to a new mode of development called informationalism. This is 'the attribute of a specific form of social organization in which information generation, processing and transmission become the fundamental resources of productivity and power' (I: 21). In a large part of Volume I Castells demonstrates with lots of empirical data that this mode of development in general and networks within and between firms in particular come to dominate the world economy.
The third related thesis follows: these dichotomies lead to the social inclusion and exclusion of people, communities, economies and countries, appearing as rising social and informational inequalities in the whole world. This is a systematic feature of networks: they both connect and disconnect. In Volume III Castells analyses both the collapse of the Soviet Union as a mode of production which was not able to enter the information and network society, and the rise of the Pacific region which clearly was. He describes the exclusion of the 'Fourth World', that is large parts of the Third World in Africa, Asia and South America who's development stagnates and the poorest parts of the developed world forming underclasses. These parts have become completely irrelevant to the global world economy. Instead they contribute more than average to a global criminal economy of drug traffic, smuggling, illegal arms deals, money laundering and prostitution. The criminal economy is a heavy user of information technology building a 'perverse connection'.
Finally a new culture is formed by networks: a culture of 'real virtuality'. Here the author brings on concepts he developed in his earlier work on cities and social geography (Castells, 1985,1988,1989). The most important one is the concept of a space of flows transcending a space of places. Flows of capital, information, technology, organizational interaction, images, sounds and symbols go from one disjoint position to another and gradually replace a space of locales 'whose form, function and meaning are self-contained within the boundaries of physical contiguity' (I: 423).
Castells admits that not all dimensions and institutions of society follow the logic of the network society, in the same way that industrial societies included for a long time many pre-industrial forms (III: 350). So, the equation is a historical tendency as well. Still, it will produce a lot of dispute among people who think that structures are (re)produced in communicative action. I doubt whether Anthony Giddens, presented as a fan at the covers, will be happy with 'the pre-eminence of social morphology over social action'. This breaks with his structuration theory starting from the duality of structure and action. In fact, it is a remnant of the Althusserian structuralism which inspired the author in the seventies and eighties. This current in French neo-marxist philosophy was known as well for its formalism and substantiation of structures. 2ff7e9595c
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