Castells, Manuel

1942–

Author and Theorist

Manuel Castells is one of the world's leading thinkers on the social and economic effects of information technology. He was one of the first scholars to recognize the profound changes associated with the information revolution.

After studies in law and economics at the University of Barcelona and the Sorbonne, Castells earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Paris. He holds a second doctorate in human sciences from the Sorbonne, and a third in sociology from the University of Madrid. Since 1979, he has been professor of sociology and professor of city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to the sociology of information, he works in urban sociology, sociology of development, and technology policy.

Castells has been studying the economic and social transformations of the global information society since 1983. Where most scholars have focused on one nation, society, culture, or social environment in its relations to the larger world, Castells has attempted to map and describe the full global network. Between the early 1980s and the late 1990s, Castells undertook systematic empirical research in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. His approach has been cross-cultural, and the worldwide reception and wide translation of his books demonstrates the value of his work to scholars in the many cultures he has examined.

While Castells' writing depends on broad knowledge and deep scholarship in many fields, reading and understanding his writing does not. Any well-educated citizen with a solid foundation of general knowledge will find Castells an approachable, informative author.

In today's information society, information technology engages and links all other resources. Economic, social, and political power now involve information technology, along with every other aspect of modern society, from military strength to cultural issues, entertainment, and social behavior. The capabilities that information gives to societies and regions and the interactions among information resources have changed the world in many ways. In some cases, information technology diminishes other resources; in some cases, it multiplies them. In some cases, it dissolves social patterns, and in others, it reinforces them.

As the hubs of information networks, cities and city regions have taken on new properties in this reshaped world. In some respects, cities may well become as powerful as nations, while nations may lose power to cities that will be redefined as communities of time and space. While it is impossible to predict all the challenges the future will bring, the fact that they are unavoidable makes Castells' work both interesting and necessary to anyone who hopes to understand the developing global society.

Castells himself believes that information policy is a matter of general concern. His highly popular course on information technology and society reflects the wide range of policy issues that shape his research concerns. The information technology revolution was shaped by historical and geographical circumstance. Industrial actors included microelectronics, computers, telecommunications, and now genetic engineering. The birth of the Internet and the Word Wide Web reinforced and increased earlier trends. Virtual communities and online societies came into existence alongside the physical communities and societies within which they were embedded, and new kinds of social movements, political conflicts, and cultural phenomena were the result.

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