The Rise of the Network Society - Paperback

by Manuel Castells (Author)

This first book in Castells' groundbreaking trilogy, with a substantial new preface, highlights the economic and social dynamics of the information age and shows how the network society has now fully risen on a global scale.

• Groundbreaking volume on the impact of the age of information on all aspects of society
• Includes coverage of the influence of the internet and the net-economy
• Describes the accelerating pace of innovation and social transformation
• Based on research in the USA, Asia, Latin America, and Europe

Back Jacket

A little over a decade since its first publication, the hypotheses set out in Manuel Castells' groundbreaking trilogy have largely been verified. In a substantial new preface to the first volume in the series, Castells demonstrates, in the light of major world trends, how the network society has now fully risen on a global scale.

The book discusses how the global economy is now characterized by the almost instantaneous flow and exchange of information, capital, and cultural communication. These flows order and condition both consumption and production. The networks themselves reflect and create distinctive cultures. Both they and the traffic they carry are largely outside national regulation. Our dependence on the new modes of informational flow gives enormous power to those in a position to control them to control us. The main political arena is now the media, and the media are not politically answerable.

Based on research in the USA, Asia, Latin America, and Europe, Castells, formulates a systematic theory of the information society and details the new social and economic developments brought by the Internet and the 'new economy'.

Author Biography

Manuel Castells is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and Research Professor at the Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona. He is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Technology and Society at M.I.T., and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Internet Studies at Oxford University. He is the recipient of numerous academic awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, C. Wright Mills Award, the Robert and Helen Lynd Award from the American Sociological Association, and the Ithiel de Sola Pool Award from the American Political Science Association. He is a Fellow of the European Academy, a Fellow of the Spanish Royal Academy of Economics, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He has received 14 honorary doctorates from universities around the world. He has authored 22 books, among which is the trilogy The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture, first published by Blackwell in 1996-8, and translated into 20 languages.