The Rise of the Network Society

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′.

Spis treści:
List of Figures.
List of Tables.
Acknowledgments 2000.
Acknowledgments 1996.
Preface to the 2010 Edition of The Rise of the Network Society.
Prologue: the Net and the Self.
Technology, Society, and Historical Change.
Informationalism, Industrialism, Capitalism, Statism: Modes of Development and Modes of Production.
The Self in the Informational Society.
A Word on Method.
1 The Information Technology Revolution.
Which Revolution?
Lessons from the Industrial Revolution.
The Historical Sequence of the Information Technology Revolution.
Models, Actors, and Sites of the Information Technology Revolution.
The Information Technology Paradigm.
2 The New Economy: Informationalism, Globalization, Networking.
Pr oductivity, Competitiveness, and the Informational Economy.
The Global Economy: Structure, Dynamics, and Genesis.
The New Economy.
3 The Network Enterprise: the Culture, Institutions, and Organizations of the Informational Economy.
Organizational Trajectories in the Restructuring of Capitalism and in the Transition from Industrialism to Informationalism.
Information Technology and the Network Enterprise.
Culture, Institutions, and Economic Organization: East Asian Business Networks.
Japan.
Korea.
China.
Multinational Enterprises, Transnational Corporations, and International Networks.
The Spirit of Informationalism.
4 The Transformation of Work and Employment: Networkers, Jobless, and Flex–timers.
The Historical Evolution of Employment and Occupational Structure in Advanced Capitalist Countries: the G–7, 1920–2005.
The Work Process in the Informational Paradigm.
The Effects of Information Technology on Employment: Toward a Jobless Society?
Work and the Informational Divide: Flex–timers.
Information Technology and the Restructuring of Capital–Labor Relations: Social Dualism or Fragmented Societies?
Appendix A: Statistical Tables for Chapter 4.
Appendix B: Methodological Note and Statistica.
References.
5 The Culture of Real Virtuality: the Integration of Electronic Communication, the End of the Mass Audience, and the Rise of Interactive Networks.
From the Gutenberg Galaxy to the McLuhan Galaxy: the Rise of Mass Media Culture.
The New Media and the Diversification of Mass Audience.
Computer–mediated Communication, Institutional Control, Social Networks, and Virtual Communities.
The Grand Fusion: Multimedia as Symbolic Environment.
The Culture of Real Virtuality.
6 The Space of Flows.
Advanced Services, Information Flows, and the Global City.
The New Industrial Space.
Everyday Life in the Electronic Cottage: the End of Cities?
The Transformation of Urban Form: the Informational City.
The Social Theory of Space and the Theory of the Space of Flows.
The Architecture of the End of History.
Space of Flows and Space of Places.
Is There a Global Labor Force? 
7 The Edge of Forever: Timeless Time.
Time, History, and Society.
Time as the Source of Value: the Global Casino.
Flex–time and the Network Enterprise.
The Shrinking and Twisting of Life Working Time.
The Blurring of the Life–cycle: Toward Social Arrhythmia?
Death Denied.
Instant Wars.
Virtual Time.
Time, Space, and Society: the Edge of Forever.
Conclusion: the Network Society.
Summary of the Contents of Volumes II and III.
Bibliography.
Index.

Nota biograficzna:
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.

Okładka t ylna:
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′.