Manuel Castells

Manuel Castells Oliván (Hellín, Albacete, February 9, 1942) is a Spanish sociologist and university professor, who served as Minister of Universities between January 2020 and December 2021.

He is a member of the Royal Academy of Economic and Financial Sciences, the British Academy, the United States Academy of Political and Social Sciences, the Mexican Academy of Sciences, and the European Academy. According to the Social Sciences Citation Index 2000-2017, he is the world's sixth most cited social science scholar and the world's most cited communication scholar.

He was awarded the 2012 Holberg Prize for having "shaped our understanding of the political dynamics of urban and global economies in the network society." In 2013 he was awarded the Balzan Prize for Sociology. He is especially associated with research on the information society, communication and globalization.

Biography

He was born in Hellín (Albacete), where his parents were Treasury officials, on February 9, 1942. He is married, has a daughter and two grandchildren. He studied Law and Economics at the University of Barcelona from 1958 until, due to his disagreements with the Francisco Franco dictatorship, he went into exile in 1962, settling in Paris, where he studied sociology with Alain Touraine. At 24 he became the youngest professor at the University of Paris. It was in his classes that Daniel Cohn-Bendit and other students supported the protests of May 1968, for which the University fired him. He later moved to the United States, where he focused on the development of information technologies and their social impact.

He was coordinator of the Internet Catalunya Project (2001 to 2007).

He is a professor of Sociology at the Open University of Catalonia, in Barcelona. He is also University Professor and Wallis Annenberg Chair of Communication Technology and Society at the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California, Los Angeles; He is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley, where he taught for 24 years; Fellow of St. John's College at the University of Cambridge and holder of the Network Society Chair at the Collège d'Études Mondiales, Paris.

He has been a visiting professor at numerous universities around the world and a visiting professor at hundreds of academic and professional institutions in 45 countries. Among them at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2004-2009), at the University of Oxford (2007-2010), at the University of Santa Clara (2008-2010) and at the University of Cambridge (2012-2014). Since 2011 he has been a permanent visiting fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in South Africa.

He has received honorary doctorates from universities in Europe, North America, Latin America, and Asia, as well as several honorary professorships and university medals. He is a Full Member of the Royal Academy of Economic and Financial Sciences, a member of the European Academy, the British Academy, the Mexican Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. Since its foundation, he has been president of the Academic Council of Next International Business School, a business school based in Madrid. In 2015, the College of Economists of Catalonia distinguished him as an honorary member.

Theory

In the 1970s, Castells played a leading role in the development of a Marxist urban sociology. He emphasized the role of social movements in the conflictive transformation of the urban landscape. He introduced the concept of «collective consumption» (public transport, public housing, etc…) as a framework for a wide range of social struggles, transferred from the economic field to the political one due to the intervention of the State. Abandoning the rigidities of Marxism in the early 1980s, he began to focus on the role of new technologies in restructuring the economy. In 1989 he introduced the concept of the "space of flows," the material and immaterial components of global information networks through which the economy was increasingly coordinated, in real time, across distances.

In the 1990s, he combined both lines of his research in a voluminous study, The Information Age, which was published as a trilogy between 1996 and 1998. In response to criticism reception of this work in a large number of multitudinous seminars held in universities around the world, a second edition of the work was published in the year 2000.

Castells' analysis unfolds along three basic dimensions: production, power, and experience. With this, he emphasizes that the organization of the economy, the State and its institutions, the forms of meaning in their lives that people create through collective action, are irreducible sources of social dynamics. They are to be understood on their own terms, as well as in relation to each other. Applying such analysis to the development of the Internet, Castells emphasizes the roles of the state (military and academic), social movements (hackers and social activists), and business in shaping the infrastructure in relation to their (conflicting) agendas.

Globalization and the Information Age

In the last thirty years he has carried out research in which he relates economic evolution and political, social and cultural transformations within the framework of an integral theory of information. The results of his work are collected in the trilogy The Information Age , translated into several languages, as well as a succession of subsequent investigations and publications.

In the words of Manuel Castells, The information age is our age:

It is a historical period characterized by a technological revolution focused on digital information and communication technologies, concomitant, but not causative, with the emergence of a social network structure, in all areas of human activity, and with the global interdependence of such activity. It is a process of multidimensional transformation that is both inclusive and exclusive based on the dominant values and interests in each process, in each country and in every social organization. Like any process of historical transformation, the era of information does not determine a unique course in human history. Their consequences, their characteristics depend on the power of those who benefit in each of the multiple options presented to human will.

The sociologist draws an analytical distinction between notions of "information society" and "informational society", with similar implications for the informational/informational economy. The term information society highlights the role of the latter in society. But he maintains that information, understood as the communication of knowledge, has always been essential for any society, including medieval Europe, which was culturally organized and to some extent unified around scholasticism, that is, an intellectual framework.

In contrast, the term informational denotes the attribute of a specific form of social organization in which generation, processing and transmission of information become the fundamental sources of productivity and power, thanks to the new conditions technologies that arise between the 20th and 21st centuries. Castells's terminology tries to establish a parallelism with the distinction between industry and industrialist. An industrial society (as a common notion in the sociological tradition) is not just a society in which there is industry, but one in which the social and technological forms of industrial organization permeate all spheres of activity, beginning with the dominant and reaching the objects and habits of daily life. The use that Castells makes of the terms informational society and informational economy tries to characterize the current transformations in a more precise way, beyond the mere observation that information and knowledge are essential for our current societies. To determine the real content of "informational society" observation and analysis must be used.

Understanding the modes of technological development as the mechanisms through which work acts on matter to generate a product, each mode of development is defined according to the element that is essential to foster productivity in the production process. Thus, in the agrarian development mode, the source of the increase in surplus is the result of the quantitative increase in labor and natural resources (especially arable land) in the production process, as well as the natural endowment of these resources. In the industrial production mode, the main source of productivity is the introduction of new energy sources and their availability to be used in production and circulation processes.

In the new mode of informational development, the source of productivity lies in the technology of knowledge generation, information processing, and symbol communication. Undoubtedly, knowledge and information are decisive elements in all modes of development, since the production process is always based on a certain degree of knowledge and information processing. However, what is specific to the informational development mode is the action of knowledge on itself as the main source of productivity. In the new mode of informational development, the source of productivity lies in knowledge technology, information processing, and symbol communication.

The information society and the welfare state

Together with Pekka Himanen, Castells has published a case analysis of his theories in the book «The information society and the welfare state». The case of Finland is presented as a successful example of insertion in a globalized world hand in hand with the development of the information society, maintaining the social contract between the state and society with its population and a fairly homogeneous distribution of these benefits.. Thus, they demonstrate how, in contrast to the United States, the globalization of its economy does not translate into social inequality that is reflected in the increase in the marginality of the most unprotected individuals by the state. In the Finnish metamorphosis, the following are shown as key elements: the Finnish citizen identity reinforced by informationalism, the state's ability to combine the development of that identity through the promotion of the information society and its synergies with the private and public sectors as well as among the latter. In a world of global flows of health, power, and images, the search for collective or individual identity, assigned or constructed, becomes the fundamental source of social meaning, she writes. As a consequence of the current prevalence of information technology, the world is opening a gap between a globally connected techno-elite and locally entrenched community identities. Castells highlights the importance of the modern localization process along with globalization. Castells envisions a XXI century in which identities will be absorbed into the network, or excluded from it, as has been done with some indigenous tribes on reservations. Those will be, he maintains, the cultural battles of the XXI century.

Informationalism and the network society

Informationalism is a technological paradigm. It concerns technology, not social organization or institutions. Informationalism provides the basis for a certain type of social structure that it calls the network society. Without informationalism, the network society could not exist, but this new social structure is not the product of informationalism, but of a broader pattern of social evolution.

The information society and its contradictions

In 1995, the meeting of the Group of Seven (G-7) was held in Brussels, focusing on a single theme: the information society. On the agenda, the main issues revolved around the technological and legal conditions for the construction of the so-called information highways; the establishment of security mechanisms in electronic circuits; the evaluation of the possible effects on employment; international regulation of new media; the problems posed by the new technologies for the privacy of citizens, and international cooperation in technological matters, among others. Then, Castells said the following:

The diffusion and development of that technological system has changed the material basis of our lives, therefore life itself, in all its aspects: in how we produce, how and in what we work, how and what we consume, how we educate, how we report-train, how we sell, how we ruin, how we govern, how we do war and peace, how we are born and how we die, and who commands, who enriches, exploits, exploits, New information technologies do not determine what is happening in society, but they change so deeply the rules of the game that we must learn again, collectively, what is our new reality, or we will suffer, individually, the control of the few (country or people) who know the codes of access to the sources of knowledge and power.

When referring to the economic and global connotations —and their contradictions with the local— Castells affirmed:

The economy of the information society is global. But not everything is global, but strategically decisive activities: the capital that circulates continuously in electronic circuits, commercial information, the most advanced technologies, the competitive goods in world markets, and the high executives and technologists. At the same time, most people remain local, in their country, in their neighborhood, and this fundamental difference between the globality of wealth and power and the locality of personal experience creates an abyss of understanding between people, businesses and institutions.

Castells highlighted, on the one hand, the changes introduced -inexorably, linked to the advancement of information and communication technologies- as well as the enormous potential for transformation of the new socio-economic paradigm that was beginning to be appreciated more clearly. At the aforementioned meeting of the G-7 —the countries with the most advanced economies in the world— that was taking place in those days, the sociologist wrote critically:

That is why it is at the same time the society of technological and medical feats and the marginalization of broad sectors of the population, irrelevant to the new system, [...] therefore we cannot develop its creative dimension and escape to its potentially devastating effects without collectively confronting who we are and what we want. What the Group of Seven might consider is how to rebalance our technological overdevelopment and our social underdevelopment.

Political activity

Manuel Castells collaborates with the Information Society Commission of Independent Citizen Experts of Partido X.

He has become more deeply involved in Spanish political life, being appointed Minister of Universities of the coalition government led by Pedro Sánchez, on January 14, 2020. He was chosen by Unidas Podemos to be one of the five representatives of this party within the PSOE-Unidas Podemos coalition, which has governed Spain since it was sworn in on January 7, 2020.

Among the most ambitious plans as university minister was the so-called "Unidigital" which, with a budget of 142 million euros, promotes the digitization of Spanish public universities.

On December 16, 2021, he announced his intention to leave the Government. He resigned on December 20, being replaced by Joan Subirats Humet.

Catalan identity

Despite being born in present-day Castilla-La Mancha, Castells considers himself Catalan having spent critical years of his adolescence in Barcelona, and because the original parentage of his father's family hails from Barcelona. In 2003 he refers to himself as a Catalan nationalist, although not a separatist, and does not support nationalist parties; Instead, he supported the Catalan Socialist Party, which is federalist, and later aligned himself with En Comú Podem, whom he represents in the Government of Spain, chaired by Sánchez.

Distinctions and awards

• 1982: Guggenheim Fellowship.
• 1983: Award C. Wright Mills of the American Society for the Study of Social Problems.
• 1988: Robert and Helen Lynd Award from the American Sociological Association.
• 2002: Order of the Lion of Finland.
• 2002: Order of Arts and Letters of the French Government.
• 2004: Ithiel Award of Sola Pool of the American Association of Political Science.
• 2006: Order of Santiago of the president of Portugal.
• 2006: Cruz de Sant Jordi del Gobierno de Cataluña.
• 2005: Order Gabriela Mistral of the president of Chile.
• 2007: Compostela Group Award.
• 2008: Spanish National Sociology and Political Science Award.
• 2011: Medalla Erasmus of the Europæa Academy.
• 2012: Holberg Award of the Norwegian government.
• 2012: Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Guadalajara.
• 2013: Balzan Prize for Sociology.
• 2014: Eulalio Ferrer Award.
• 2014: International Prize CGLU-Mexico City-Culture 21.
• 2015: Distinction of honorary school of the Col·legi d'Economistes de Catalunya.
• 2017: Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Cambridge.
• 2021: Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Charles III
• 2022: Doctor Honoris Causa by the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Works

Manuel Castells is the author of 26 books, including the trilogy The information age: economy, society and culture, 1996-2003, translated into 23 languages.

Books

The books of which Manuel Castells is the main author are:

• Research problems in urban sociology. Madrid-Mexico: 21st Century. 1971.
• The urban issue. 20th Century of Spain Editors, S.A. Originally published in French in 1972 (The Question Urbaine). First edition in Spanish, 1974.
• Castells, Manuel et al. (1973). Imperialism and Urbanization in Latin America. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili.
• Monopolville. L'entreprise, l'etat, l'urbain. Paris: Mouton. 1974.
• New Critical Perspectives in Education. Barcelona: Paidós. 1994.
• The informational city. Information technologies, economic restructuring and the urban-regional process. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. 1995.
• Local and global. City management in the information age. Madrid: Taurus. 1997. (in collaboration with J. Borja).
• The Transformation of Work. Barcelona: The Books of Factory. 1999.
• The Information Age. Vol. I: The Red Society. Mexico, Federal District: 21st Century Editors. 2002.
• The Information Age. Vol. II: The Power of Identity. Mexico, Federal District: 21st Century Editors. 2001.
• The Information Age. Vol. III: Millennium End. Mexico, Federal District: 21st Century Editors. 2001.
• The Internet Galaxy. Reflections on the Internet, Company and Society. Madrid: Areté. 2001.
• The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Vol. I: The Rise of the Network Society. Second Edition. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing. 2002.
• The welfare state and the information society. The Finnish model. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. (in collaboration with P. Himanen).
• War and Peace in the 21st Century. A European perspective'. Barcelona: Tusquets. 2003. (in collaboration with N. Serra).
• Conversations with Manuel Castells. Cambridge, UK: Polity. 2003. (in collaboration with M. Ince).
• The Red Society. Editorial Alliance, 2006.
• Communication and Power. Editorial Alliance, 2009.
• Networks of indignation and hope. Social movements in the Internet era. Editorial Alliance, 2012.
• Reconceptualizing Development in the Global Information Age. Oxford University Press, 2014.
• Break. The Crisis of Liberal Democracy. Editorial Alliance, 2018.

Articles

• 2021 Our university. Press review.