The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

Manuel Castells (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 4, 2004

Manuel Castells - one of the world's pre-eminent social scientists - has drawn together a stellar group of contributors to explore the patterns and dynamics of the network society in its cultural and institutional diversity. The book analyzes the technological, cultural and institutional transformation of societies around the world in terms of the critical role of electronic communication networks in business, everyday life, public services, social interaction and politics. The contributors demonstrate that the network society is the new form of social organization in the Information age, replacing the Industrial society. The book analyzes processes of technological transformation in interaction with social culture in different cultural and institutional contexts: the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Finland, Russia, China, India, Canada, and Catalonia. The topics examined include business productivity, global financial markets, cultural identity, the uses of the Internet in education and health, the anti-globalization movement, political processes, media and identity, and public policies to guide technological development. Taken together these studies show that the network society adopts very different forms, depending on the cultural and institutional environments in which it evolves. The Network Society is an outstanding and original volume of direct interest in academia - particularly in the fields of social sciences, communication studies, and business schools - as well as for policymakers engaged in technological policy and economic development. Business and management experts will also discover much of value to them within this book.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Edited by Manuel Castells, Wallis Annenberg Chair Professor of Communication Technology and Society, University of Southern California, Los Angeles and Research Professor, Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Edward Elgar Pub; illustrated edition edition (November 4, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1843765055
• ISBN-13: 978-1843765059
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,953,473 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beginning to Form a Theory of the Internet, March 4, 2005

By 

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (Hardcover)

I remember reading a book by Edmund Burke which was a collection of letters written about the French Revolution in the late 1700's. The whole book consisted of just a few letters. In those days the mail moved slowly. With a lot of time being used in the communications channel, Burke could and did take the time to write long, well thought out letters that were really more like essays than simple letters.

With the advent of faster communications in the form of trains and then airplanes, letter got more frequent and shorter.

The latest changes are of course the internet and e-mail. Now communications with people across the office or across the world are all but instantaneous regardless of the distance. In turn this the length of the "documents" has gotten shorter. Today I exchanged e-mails with a person somewhere (I really don't know where) about a movie. We sent each other about three messages in only a few minutes.

This book is a series of essays on the Networked Society. It is written by a networked series of sociologists and other specialists at universities from Moscow to Barcelona to New York. They explore the impact of computer networking in terms of our society as it is developing. The essays include the development of the Internet in China where strong censorship is in place to the defacto split between the haves and have nots in regard to acces to information.

This book explores the overall implications of the evolving world.