Wednesday, April 22, 2009

ch 31-A new society- manuel castells

Manuel Castells begins by saying that in order for a new society to emerge, transformations must be visible in the relationships of production, power, and experience. Castells splits the production, power, and experience into categories to better understand what is expected in each.


Relationships of Production (pg 315): productivity and competitiveness are the commanding processes of the informational/global economy. In order to maximize production, companies must be flexible, innovative, and competitive. Labor is the main function for production. Labor is used in order to produce. There are 2 kinds of labor: 1) generic, 2)self-programmable. Labor stems from education and skills. Going above and beyond have skills, education gives people the ability to relearn ways of their tasks. It allows them to gain new skills since production is always changing and improving. This is self-programmable labor. On the other hand, generic labor does not require workers to gain additional knowledge about what they are doing. They learn their task, and stick to it. Which is why much of the generic labor has been replaced by machines.
The informational/global economy is considered capitalist. This is because production and profit are key. There are 3 different levels talking about who the capitalists are.
1. The holders of property rights: these are shareholders of companies, family owners, and individual entrepreneurs.
2. Managerial class: these people control capital assets on behalf of shareholders.
3. Global Financial Markets: profits from these markets turn into a search for higher profits. People are always in search of bigger and better and more money profiting investments. By having wins and losses in the market, it keeps a dynamic equilibrium. All capitalists are dependent on their investments. Castells says: “Global financial markets, and their networks of management, are the actual collective capitalist, the mother of all accumulations.” (pg. 317). “..global financial networks are the nerve center of informational capitalism.” The network movements determine pretty much everything in relation to it, such as stocks, bonds, and currency. By other factors impact the market, such as computer-enacted strategic maneuvers, crowd psychology, and unexpected turbulences.
There are consequences on the social class relationships, which will be defined into four sections.
1. tendency to increased social inequality and polarization: this is the simultaneous growth of both the top and bottom of the social scale. Three features impact this growth:
a. a differentiation between self-programmable and generic labor.
b. individualization of labor—this gets rid of the weakest people in the work force because people are not working collectively, but competitively.
c. the gradual demise of the welfare state- this removes the safety net for people who are not well off.
2. Social exclusion: by this Castells means “..the de-linking between people-as-people and people-as-workers/consumers in the dynamics of informational capitalism on a global scale. He goes on to say that there are many occasional and temporary jobs created for production, but are often discontinued. Because of this, people frequently go from having a job one day, to not having one the next. This can have many negative consequences on the individual and their family since their employment is not stable. Many people begin to fall behind and are no longer qualified for many job positions. So, those people who are constantly trying to avoid being poor and needing welfare cannot seem to get ahead.
3. Who are the producers and who appropriates the products of their labor?:
4. Truly fundamental social cleavages of the Information Age:
a. Internal fragmentation of labor between informational producers and replaceable generic labor
b. Social exclusion of a significant segment of society
c. The separation between the market logic of global networks and the human experience of workers’ lives.

Power Relations (pg 319): I have no clue what half of this stuff he talked about means but—“The main transformation concerns the crisis of the nation-state as a sovereign entity, and the related crisis of political democracy..” (pg. 319). “The new structure of power is dominated by a network geometry, in which power relationships are always specific to a given configuration of actors and institutions.” Power relationships are always changing. Power is very fundamental in an informational society. Power lies in the networks of information exchange and symbol manipulation. Apparently, in the long run it does not matter who has the power because the role of holding power becomes so widespread and rotating. Places will hold the power for some time, and then another place will be the most powerful. Culture and material resources fuel the desire of power.

Relationships of Experience (pg 321): Patriarchy is the root of relationships of experience. The family is a main issue for this category. There are many women as single parents and their struggles have spanned across the world, even though men have started to become more involved in their children’s lives. Castells says that men are now more willing than ever to make the sacrifices needed in order to support and assist their family. Castells believes that rebuilding families is the key ingredient for building society. The author calls the new society “ the network society” since it is made up of networks of production, power, and experience. Not all places follow the ways of the network society, but all are influenced in some way or another by it.

• The new Avenues of social change (ph. 323): “it appears that our societies are constituted by the interaction between the “net” and the “self,” between the network society and the power of identity.

• So basically, there are many factors influencing the new/network society. People are excluded if they do not have the skills and education to keep up with the ever quickly changing work force. By production, power emerges. Power is transferred from place to place depending on how they profit and succeed economically. Production and Power influence families and those people who are trying to move up in the world.

2 comments:

Brittany Krieger said...

Manuel Castells writes this particular reading in regards to Globalization. I really like how he divides the three main topics of this chapter; it really helps you understand exactly what he is talking about throughout the reading. Even better is the fact that the response is also set up that way and seems to break it down a little better helping me understand what it is that is being discussed.
Castells talks about how there is a relationship between production and the economy. This idea reminds me of what Marx was talking about when discussing the divisions of Labor and wages. He was talking about the economy and production as well. I agree when they say that in order to have the maximum production that the company must be flexible, you need to be flexible in every aspect of the company so you are prepared to handle things that may occur such as problems that may arise and situations that the company may not otherwise have been prepared for. If you aren’t flexible and do not allow your company that extra time you can often fall behind in your production quota or even need to shut down shop to handle the issues. The writer did a great job of elaborating on each different subgroup of this topic, it really help the reader get a better grasp on what the author was saying about production.
The next topic is the relationship of power. When I seen that this was one of the topics of Castrells chapter I immediately thought about Michel Foucault and his chapter about power and knowledge. What I got from what the writer was quoting is that power is really important and it is fundamentally what our society is made up of. It also seems like what is being said is that power always moves throughout society, allowing others to have a turn in holding the “power”. That is really all I got about what this topic was about, I maybe completely off though.
This category seems to be talking about families, from what I picked up. Men in today’s society and time are starting to become more involved in a sense. Men now are becoming stay at home dads and they are letting the women go out and get jobs, which is totally flip flopped from times of the 1950’s and before. This shows how the family structure is constantly changing and the “power” from the men are merging or sharing with the women.
Overall I think I got a good idea of what was being said in this chapter. I think the writer did a good job at breaking it down and explaining it to the best of their ability.

Morto2cr said...

I ended up really enjoying this article by Manuel Castells about a new society. Nacar1tm starts off in the opening paragraph pointing out that for a new society to emerge, “transformations must be visible in the relationships of production, power, and experience,” I find this to be truthful and interesting. In the first explanation about the relationships of production, it is vital for companies to be flexible, innovative, and competitive. If companies were not able to be flexible, innovative, or competitive they would greatly suffer against others. For example, American motor companies, this is a problem they are facing because of the lack of the principles stated above. I found the part about labor to be important when trying to understand the dynamics of production. Generic labor is the labor that does not require much skill for. Once the individual has mastered the skill, there is no more learning involved. On the other hand compared to self-programmable, education and high skills are needed. I believe that nacar1tm made a good point when providing the example of generic labor and how those jobs are slowly disappearing. The note is made production and profits are key. Without one of the other, companies cannot run efficiently and make money. When discussing the consequences on the social class relationships, I feel as if individualization of labor is one of the more important parts. As stated by nacar1tm, “individualization of labor—this gets rid of the weakest people in the work force because people are not working collectively, but competitively” The reason why I find this part to be vital is because if production did not have this completion between others, people would not work hard and the quality of their work would not be as good if their job was not on the line. When Castells starts to discuss social exclusion, I think what is being said is not completely true. Only up to the present time are people not staying with jobs for a long period of time. In the past, it was normal when an individual got a job and stayed with that job till retirement. Only till recent times, it is said that that people will have multiple careers and many jobs within that career. However, I do believe that many people will still stick to one of a few jobs. I did not understand much of what Castells was saying in the section about power relations. Really all I got from that section was power is flexible and can change and move. I also enjoyed the section about relationships of experience. The American culture is slowly moving from the patriarchal society. I think this is becoming a good change because it is allowing equilibrium for woman and men to be at the same level on the playing field. The example brought about how men and more willing to become stay at home dads is a good one and true.