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- Title
Manuel Castells's Technocultural Epoch in "The Information Age."
- Authors
Harding, Robert
- Abstract
This article reviews Manuel Castells's contribution to the theory of high-tech globalization in his sociological trilogy "The Information Age." I examine Castells's claim that so-called Network Society is a discrete period in history, an epoch that incorporated the liberal individualism of the 1960s with a structural reorganization of labor. I then investigate informational network in terms of their capacity to transform our social being, assessing the political implications of Castells's thesis through reference to a range of social theorists. Specifically, I consider how Castells's evaluation of the political and cultural resistance to global homogenization leads him to advocate systems of advanced self-management, radical self-fashioning, and individual adaptability to accelerating technoscientific change. I conclude with an analysis of the science-fictional nature of Castells's futurology and its potential utility as a theoretical framework for sf critics.
- Subjects
CASTELLS, Manuel, 1942-; HIGH technology; GLOBALIZATION; INFORMATION networks; SOCIAL theory; FORECASTING; SCIENCE fiction
- Publication
Science Fiction Studies, 2006, Vol 33, Issue 1, p18
- ISSN
0091-7729
- Publication type
Article