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Unit-2-The-network-society.pdf
Global Society

1º Global Society

Grado en Global Studies

Facultad de Derecho
Universidad de Salamanca

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UNIT 2 – THE NETWORK SOCIETY

Introduction
 The information technology revolution changed the world with the emergence of a new
technological paradigm
 Technology does not determine society: it is society that shapes tech. From the basic
needs of the user, we are shaping technology.
 Network society (according to Castells) is the social structure resulting from the
interaction between the new technological paradigm and social organization at large.
 This society has been called information society or knowledge society but according to
Castells that’s no totally true. Not because knowledge and information are not central in

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our society but because they have always been so, in all historically known societies. What
is new is the microelectronics-based, networking technologies that provide new
capabilities to an old form of social organization: networks.
 Though history networks had a major problem and a major advantage towards other social
organizations:
o Advantage: The most adaptable and flexible organizational forms
o Problem: They couldn’t reach high levels of complexity: it was impossible to
maintain a complex structure.
o Digital networking allows it to overcome historical limits: it can now be flexible and
adaptable (decentralize task; organizations, institutions, associations… working in
different space and time towards the same goal)
o Digital communication networks are the backbone of the network society
 The network society manifests itself in many different forms; it depends on the culture of
each society, institutions, historical trajectory…
 Network society is global, pervasive throughout the planet, but it does not include all
people. It excludes most of humankind (elders, non-educated people, certain countries),
but at the same time affects all.
 Network society is another way to call globalization.
 Castells defines the network society as a social structure based on networks operated by
information and communication technologies, based in microelectronics and digital
computer networks that generate, process and distribute information on the basis of the
knowledge accumulated in the nodes of the networks. Information is the instrument and
the object at the same time.
o A network is a complex system of nodes that are connected by channels of
communication, interaction, etc.
o Networks are open structures that evolve by adding or removing nodes. We can’t
describe a network if we don’t study it. Part of our society has to be studied in
order to understand the network society.
 People (politicians, etc.) say network society is coming  Castells says we are already
living in the network society: our society is a network society now.

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THE ECONOMY in the network society.

 The network economy (“the new economy”) is a new efficient form of organization of
production, distribution and management that is at the source of the substantial
increase in the rate of productivity growth in the US, and other economies that
adopted this new forms of economic organization.
 Production, distribution and management boosted the new economy. Empirical
evidence: the exponential growth of production; production doubled in the last
quarter of the 20th century.
 The countries that grew the most had articulated themselves into the new economy.
2.1. What made productivity grow?
o The generation and diffusion of new tech of info and com
o Transformation of labor: “creative workers” A.K.A. autonomous work,

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entrepreneur work. The high skilled creative worker was the basis of this new
economical paradigm  that’s why being an entrepreneur is seen as the best
way to find a job.

2.2. What about organizations?

 Large(multinational) corporations decentralized in a network of semiautonomous units.
 Small and medium firms created business networks to be competitive on the market; they
teamed up and shared resources.
 Small and medium business networks became providers and subcontractors to a variety of
large corporations. (Inditex, Versace, etc.)
 Large corporations engaged in strategic partnerships focused in different projects 
network enterprise.
 All in order to survive in this new economy.
 Economic activity is performed by networks of networks built around specific business
project: the operational unit is the network, even though the legal unit is the firm (Nestle
 firm; its subcontracts, the producers around the network, etc  operational units)
 Connection between the network of production and the network around global finance.
 These networks hire and fire workers in a global scale.

2.3. The labor market:

 This new network economy created instability in the labor market  production process is
distributed around the world, labor is conceived in a different way, and processes are
different. There is high requirement of flexibility, mobility and re-skilling of workforce.
Many people have to change fields and skills to be in the network because of its constant
changes.
 Another problem with flexibility: which country controls or looks for workers rights?
How can we force a firm to respect our legislation if its production processes are carried
out in other part of the world?
 The market of labor is changing: the notion of stable predictable professional career is
eroded.
 The relations between capital and labor are now individualized contracts and labor
conditions are out of collective bargaining. Market needs creative autonomous workers 
individuals negotiate contracts, wages, conditions, etc.

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 The last 40 yrs we’ve seen a growth in the access of women to the labor market  switch
from the “organization man” to the “flexible woman”.
 All this DOESN’T mean long term contracts and stable jobs disappear.
 Key developments in the transformation of labor and work according to Castells:
o Technological changes don’t include unemployment in the aggregate labor market.
Jobs disappear and new jobs are created. Correlation between technological

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innovation and employment.
o Ability to work autonomously and be an active component of a network becomes
paramount in the new economy  self-programmable labor.
 According to Castells highly developed countries can manage to keep their human capital
because they don’t need to reduce costs for production (i.e., Germany). That has side-
effects also: those countries not competitive in a technological way have to decrease the
condition of workers in order to compete.
 Dark side of the new labor market: most workers are still not employed at the best of
their capacity, but as mere executants along the lines of traditional industrial discipline
o Not only unskilled workers, but also highly educated workers don’t have the
chance to be stable workers (long-term contracts)
o Labor unions are not capable anymore to negotiate to keep their working
conditions
o Creative workers are high paid and they negotiated they conditions  other
workers can be replaced by a machine are losing their jobs/conditions.
o Some cities have become creative/Global cities: San Francisco, Madrid… and the
price of living in those places have drastically increased.
 Growing contradiction:
o The autonomy and innovation capacity required to work in a network enterprise
vs. the system of management/labor relations rooted in the institutions of the
industrial age
 Castells states companies take advantage of the new situations: high competition  fake
autonomous work and bad conditions have to be accepted in order to have a job.
 Labor unions can only fight for the classic working class or pensionists. With no formal
contract  no right of representation by labor unions.

NETWORK SOCIETY AND SOCIABILITY

 Castells: people engage in interaction through new communication technology. According
to research people who engage digital interaction have more face-to-face interaction.
 The network society is a hypersocial society, not a society of isolation.
o People, by and large, do not fake their identity in the internet.
o People fold the technology into their lives, link up virtual reality and real virtuality
o They live in various technological forms of communication, articulating them as
they need it.
 However, there is a major change in sociability  this is the emergence of networked
individualism. Castells thinks this is critical  there are no more big groups sharing x
example ideology because of individualities.
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NETWORK SOCIETY AND MASS MEDIA

 Mass media also changed because of network society
 The public space according to Castells: the cognitive space where minds receive
information and form their view by processing signals from society at large.
 The relation between organizations and people. Mass media doesn’t focus on individuals
but on a collectivity. On the other hand, each person processes the information provided
individually.
 Many trends that define communication system:
o Media business conglomerates: they are global and local at the same time.
Television, radio, the print.
o The communication system is increasingly digitalized and gradually interactive:
people participate in mass media (twitter hashtags, etc.)

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o There is an explosion of horizontal networks of communication: users of
communication media are at the same time producers of information.
 All this has an impact in politics, political opinions and behavior are formed in mass media:
o Presence/absence of a message in media space
o Few people know the actual programs of political parties. Television is a popular
communication place. Political competition is based on TV, politicians are moving
according what polls say and political marketing is a matter of images  Trust and
character are constructed around the image of a person.
o Giving a negative image of other political candidates to create a polarized public
opinion has become a popular strategy.

NETWORK SOCIETY AND POLITICS

 There is an even deeper transformation of political institutions in the network society: the
rise of a new form of state that gradually replaces the nation-states of the industrial era.
 Because the network society is global, the state of the network society cannot operate
only or primarily in the national context.
 Until the last century the center of politics was the nation-state but right now there is a
problem of governance (national law doesn’t apply on countries where national companies
produce or work). National states are creating a net of governance, transforming their
processes and structure and adapting them to a global scale (i.e., The EU). Characteristics
of this new network of institutions:
o shares sovereignty in various degrees
o Re-configures itself in a variable geopolitical geometry the network state.
o It is a response to the structural contradiction between a global system and a
national state.
 Concept: multilevel constitution.
 The transition from the nation-state to the network state is an organizational and
political process prompted by the transformation of political management, representation
and domination in the conditions of the network society.

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