Abstract
Manuel Castells will be well known to readers of this journal as an influential sociologist whose inter-disciplinary work has been used by critical researchers interested in globalization, electronic enterprises and information communication technologies (ICT), especially in the fields of geography and political economy. He has popularized terms in our everyday lexicon like ‘collective consumption’, ‘space of flows’ and ‘The Fourth World’ (those excluded from benefits of globalization), and has added considerably to our understanding of the role of social movements in understanding conflict in contemporary conditions of networks and information. He has previously published ambitious works on these topics in The Rise of the Network Society (1996), The Power of Identity (1997) and the End of the Millennium (2000).
Thus when Castells wants to say something about the internet, as he does very much in Communication Power, then he really deserves a hearing. His previous work means that his credibility is high and he builds on this work in his latest offering (in hardback since 2009). Even though Communication Power builds on his previous work, it can be read independently of it. Anyone with an interest (arguably everyone) in current attempts to regulate content distribution on the internet, i.e. the US government’s SOPA (Stop Online Piracy) initiative and the ensuing protests and blackouts by Google, Wikipedia and other proponents of ‘sharing values’, needs to read this book. Even after four years (assuming most of the book was written in 2008) Castells provides prescient observations about forces playing out now. In New Zealand the US government is trying to extradite Kim Dotcom of Mega-Upload to face charges related to his internet distribution practices. His arrest almost immediately on the back of the SOPA blackouts was symbolically violent, involving a black-ops type raid on his mansion. The legality of his operations will be dealt with in due course, but in the meantime the mediation of his predicament is a fascinating case study of the processes that Castells discusses so eruditely. This incident in New Zealand probably has its parallels throughout the world.
In his previous work Castells was centrally concerned to understand the relationship between the Net and the Self articulated through concepts of structure and agency. The structures of interest to Castells are the networks of organizations that are rapidly replacing vertically integrated hierarchies (because of ICTs) and agency denotes those practices that people use in creating meaning and sustaining their social identities in continually changing cultural landscapes under conditions of flowing globalization. Castells continues in this vein in Communication Power but he delves into political communication, especially into neuroscience and cognitive science, and political media practices to explain these two inter-related processes.
Castells proposes that power affects the mind and consequently the way people think and feel about things. The primary mode of power is coercion and so he focuses on coercion processes and consequently political processes. Coercion involves the building of consent within populations, which is often done through instilling fear and/or resignation. These processes of control are central to institutional governments and so he focuses very specifically in this book on political communication. Chapter One outlines his pragmatic approach to research and his aims in re-contextualizing his previous work. Chapter Two examines the mass media and horizontal networks of communication and draws connections for the reader between business, media conglomerates and political institutions. Useful diagrams are presented illustrating these relationships. Chapter Three moves from structure to agency examining neuroscience and cognitive science and also draws on recent research on political communication examining emotion, cognition and political decision-making. He also examines political communication processes like agenda setting, framing and priming of the news. A main case study is the ‘War on Terror’ and its programme of misinformation. Chapter Four looks at the politics of scandal and the crisis of moral legitimacy faced by political institutions. Chapter Five returns to agency and new social movements, new values being promoted through horizontal networking and his fervent hope that through ICT there is an opening-up space for political dissidence and political change.
Castells admits his ambitious project is probably a little frayed around the edges but says his hypotheses should be tested and refined by further research. Castells’s theoretical tools about cultural and social phenomena are probably not sophisticated enough to make sense of the internet and its implications in the longer term. He does not adequately reflect on the dialectical opposition he assumes about the Net and the Self. There are also problems with the over-use of neuroscience to talk about social and cultural processes. It is not the neuroscience itself, which is no doubt scientifically sound, but how biological essentialist arguments are mobilized in discourse that is of concern. These are minor reservations; Castells provokes and he is still out in front in pushing understanding about where critical attention should go. Clearly as the new adage goes, ‘The map is more complicated than the terrain’. Map-readers like Castells assist orientation and help clear away the mind-clutter of techno-lust. His feet are firmly on the ground and the book draws a grounded (in empirical research) big picture of what it is we are caught between (the map and the territory) and why we need to be actively and politically engaged in ensuring the internet’s future as a democratic, autonomous space for social life.