Manuel Castells theory of The Network Society

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Manuel Castells theory of The Network Society

• Giovanni Navarria
• 27/03/2007
• The Human Sciences
• Perspectives and Methods

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(No Transcript)
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Stock Market Networks

• On October 19, 1987, the Dow Jones Industrials
  Average in Walls Street plummeted 508 points,
  losing 22.6 of its value in one day.
• The 1987 Crash was a worldwide phenomena. The
  FTSE 100 Index lost 10.8 on that Monday and a
  further 12.2 the following day.
• 27 Feb. 2007 In just one day the stock exchange
  index in Shanghai fell 9 of its value, within
  hours it cost between 1.5-3 loss in every other
  stock market in the world.
• The same day the U.S. stock market lost a measure
  of trust with traders after computer malfunctions
  sent the Dow Jones industrial average plummeting
  178 points in one minute.

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Stock Market Networks

• By the time he looked up again, the losses had
  almost doubled. "When the dam broke, that's when
  we saw the market go from down 250 to down 550
  literally in a couple of seconds," The sudden
  plunge fueled a wave of orders that overwhelmed
  systems at stock exchanges in the final hour of
  trading. Warren Meyers, a managing director at
  NYSE brokerage Walter J. Dowd, started scribbling
  trades on paper after delays made it impossible
  to know the fate of an electronic order. He ended
  up with more shares than he wanted. The debacle
  reminded many traders how captive the market has
  become to computers. "I noticed some problems
  early in the day, but after 3pm it was
  floor-wide," Meyers says. "People want speed and
  they want the anonymity of electronic trading,
  but when the markets get roiled they look to
  humans to handle trades efficiently and we
  weren't able to do that. It's frightening when
  you're in the New York Stock Exchange and you
  can't trade."

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A framework

• Castellss theory of the Network Society provides
  a rather wide framework through which to connect,
  in an integrated analysis, very diverse
  phenomena, ranging from demonstrations of gay
  activists in Taipei to money laundering in the
  financial network, from the globalization of
  production to the renewal of democracy at the
  local level.

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Central claim

• In all sectors of society we are witnessing a
  transformation in how their constitutive
  processes are organized, we are witnessing a
  shift from hierarchies to networks.
• This transformation is as much organizational as
  a cultural question.

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3 trends Network Society

• This process of transformation says Castells
  started in the 1970s through the interaction of
  three independent trends
• the invention of microelectronics and the IT
  revolution
• the crisis of industrialism in both capitalist
  and statist societies,
• the profound cultural challenge mounted by the
  rise of social movements in the late 1960s

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Castells definition

• A network society is a society whose social
  structure is made of networks powered by
  microelectronics-based information and
  communication technologies.
• Social structure the org. arrangements of
  humans in relations of production, consumption,
  reproduction, experience and power expressed in
  meaningful communication coded by culture.
• A network is a set of interconnected nodes. A
  network has no center, just nodes
• Castells (2004) in The Network Society. A
  Cross-cultural perspective, (p. 3)

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Clarifying

• The network society is made of what Barry Wellman
  calls complex social networks. The
  infrastructure of this Social Network is made of
  computer networks that connect people and
  organizations. Just as a computer network is a
  set of machines connected by a set of wires, a
  social network is a set of people (or
  organizations or other social entities) connected
  by a set of socially meaningful relationships.
  (Barry Wellman, 2004)

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Technological paradigm Informationalism

• Technological systems evolve incrementally, but
  this evolution is punctuated by major
  discontinuities. These discontinuities are marked
  by technological revolutions that usher in a new
  technological paradigm. A paradigm (as in Kuhn)
  is a conceptual pattern that sets the standards
  for performance. A technological paradigm
  organizes a series of technological discoveries
  around a nucleus, and a system of relationships
  that enhance the performance of each specific
  technology.
• Informationalism is the technological paradigm
  that constitutes the material basis of early 21st
  century societies.

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Characteristics of networks (Castells)

• Networks work on a binary logic inclusion/
  exclusion
• Sharing protocols of communication make it
  possible to connect to the entire network and
  communicated networks from any node
• Networks are self-reconfigurable, complex
  structures of communication that ensures, at the
  same time,
• unity of purpose, and
• flexibility of its execution
• by the capacity to adapt to the operating
  environment.
• Digital networks are global, as they know no
  capacity to reconfigure themselves.

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Self expanding

• The capacity of these technologies to self-expand
  their processing power because of their
  recurrent, communicative ability. This is because
  of the continuous feedback effect on
  technological innovation produced by the
  knowledge generated with the help of these
  technologies.

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The Net and the Self

• Castells "our societies are increasingly
  structured around the bipolar opposition of the
  Net and the Self" (1996, p. 3).
• The Net means the new, networked forms of
  organization which are replacing vertically
  integrated hierarchies as the dominant form of
  social organization.
• The Self, on the other hand, relates to the
  multiple practices through which people try to
  reaffirm identity and meaning in a landscape of
  rapid change.

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Power and Control

• Two basic mechanisms
• the ability to program/reprogram the network (s)
  in terms of the goals assigned to the network
  (The Programmers)
• the ability to connect different networks to
  ensure their cooperation by sharing common goals
  and increasing resources. (the Switchers)

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Time and Space

• Two emergent social forms of time and space
  characterize the network society, while
  coexisting with prior forms. There are
• the space of flows and
• timeless time.

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Space of flows

• The development of communication technologies can
  be understood as the gradual decoupling of
  contiguity and time sharing. The space of flows
  refers to the technological and organizational
  possibility of practicing simultaneity (or chosen
  time in time sharing) without contiguity.
• The space of the network society is made of the
  articulation between three elements the places
  where activities (and people enacting them) are
  located, the material communication networks
  linking these activities, and the content and
  geometry of the flows of information that perform
  the activities in terms of function and meaning.
  This is the space of flows.

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Timeless time

• Castells argues that In the industrial society,
  organized around the idea of progress and
  development of productive forces, becoming
  structured being, time conformed space.
• In the network society, the space of flows
  dissolves time by disordering the sequence of
  events and making them simultaneous being
  cancels becoming.

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So what?