End of Millennium by Manuel Castells

End of Millennium by Manuel Castells

‘End of Millennium’ is the third book of Manuel Castells’ trilogy of ‘The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture’ that captures the global processes of social change. This volume (3^rd of the series) has been devoted to discussion of the precursors to global social changes vividly marked by the onset of twenty first century. Although it will be useful to read the first two volumes ‘The Rise of Network Society’ and ‘The Power of Identity’ to gain more insight about the author’s social theory of Information Age; I read this book as a stand-alone book and it offers requisite explanation to necessary concepts without loss of vigor. However the author has concluded the volume to construct an open-ended social theory of the Information Age and the conclusion borrows its discussion from all the three volumes.

The author opens the volume stating the end of second millennium was uneventful (except the fears of Y2K global computer collapse), yet it is time of change. The technological change of the last quarter of twentieth century has changed the way we think, we produce, we trade, we communicate, we live and we die. The technological changes coupled with historical changes have constituted a new historical landscape that affects our lives. The author has identified five such social, historical changes of twentieth century: the fall of Soviet Union, the rise of fourth world (segments of socially excluded societies as a result of global capitalism), the rise of criminal economy, the development and crises in emerging capital markets of Eastern Asia and unification of European countries.

The Soviet Union was a major experiment of socio-economical change aimed at equal distribution of wealth in poor Tsarist Russia. The author has quantitatively illustrated that this experiment aimed at rampant industrialization at the expense of deforming the economy forever and the economic growth followed the path of any developing economy where the production increased with the increased pool of labor and capital. However it reached stagnation where steady increase in labor disappeared and capital available was limited with the same production function with the same technology. The author has explained the shortages that followed as a result of centrally planned economy and the alternate ways the bureaucracy devised to address this issue. It created a gigantic shadow economy of illegal payments, in form of money or goods. By the 1980s when Soviet leaders realized the root of stagnation and statism, they felt the need of changing the functioning of the economy and the division of labor. The author then goes on to detail the crisis of Soviet Union with reference to abduction of identities of its nation states. With an aim of rectifying the internal failures within the system, Gorbachev’s perestroika had disarmament i.e. release of Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe, economic reform and gradual liberalization of media, opinion and gradual step-up towards democracy. But Soviet Union went from one perestroika to another and triggered nationalism, increased demand for liberalization and democracy led to disintegration of Soviet Union.

The author has tactfully identified the relation between technological backwardness of Soviet Union with the statism and thus ingrained lack of ability to respond quickly to demands of informationalism. Informationalism is a word coined by the author for a technological paradigm based on the augmentation of the human capacity of information processing and communication made possible by the revolutions in microelectronics, software, and genetic engineering.

In the second chapter the author has developed the concept of ‘The fourth world’ as a result of marginalization practiced by the Informational capitalism. He makes use of detailed statistics to compare economic condition of each country in terms of GDP/Capita, change in GDP/Capita over last 50 years to demonstrate we are inevitably led to a highly polarized world. The plight of Sub-Saharan African countries, the destitute shady neighborhoods of Eastern Los Angeles, Chicago and impoverished rural districts of Myanmar, Cambodia and other South Eastern Asian nations, in writer’s opinion, are all indicators of social exclusion of communities. The author attributes the social exclusion process to a variety of factors such as hostile government structures, lack of communication infrastructure, greed of monarchs, abject poverty leading to poor living conditions & epidemic of AIDS and ethnic conflicts to the Africa’s plight whereas factors such as functional illiteracy, deindustrialization and restructuring, crime and drug addiction to explain the wretched situation of inner-city ghettos and Latino Diaspora of the cities of Unites states. His observations about child labor, child exploitation also applies to developing country of like India and China. Therefore the observation of distinct patches of society all over the world (even within the developed countries) deprived of reaping the benefits of informational capital economy is sound and correct.

The impacts of global crime have been apparent on all of global economy, governments and cultures. The global communication networks and information technology eased the functioning of crime networks in last quarter of twentieth century; the laundered money could be easily legitimated and brought to economies and then used for investments in stocks and bonds and for the purpose of destabilizing the financial markets. The author has illustrated financial crises triggered by criminal maneuvers with an example of ‘Yakuza’ who forced firms to borrow heavily and led to defaults on loans worth billions of dollars in Japan in 1995. The author has evaluated the threat not only to sovereignty but also to economy where the magnitude criminal activity and monetary transactions amounts are sizeable enough to condition the macroeconomic processes of some countries e.g. development activities in the city of Medellin, Colombia by drug lord Pablo Escobar. The author identifies the motives of the criminals, by and large, in specific cultural groups such as Mafia from Sicily, drug traffickers from Latin America, Chinese Triads and attributes their activities to specific favorable geo-economic situations. He also identifies the assassinations/murders as an intranational phenomenon where a particular group (among Italian mafia gangs or Colombian cartels from Medellin or Cali) is trying to establish the control over a local geographical region. The main cultural impact of global crime is in the culture they induce where the criminals have been looked upon as the role models by the youth that see no way out of poverty. The youth is made to believe in getting high for the brief moments of existence, the breaking of the rules and the feeling of empowerment rather than a monotony of long miserable impoverished life.

The extraordinary capitalist growth of Asia Pacific countries signify the end of western domination however the volatility of new global capitalism is revealed during the financial crisis of the 1997-98. The author has elaborated on the crisis as an outcome of tension between global economy and the state.

The final chapter of the volume talks about the integration of European countries under European Union (EU) as a reaction to the process of globalization. The globalization process concerns currency markets and financial markets and therefore the integration to EU entailed the integration of capital markets, the establishment of single currency (EURO). Integration of capital markets and single currency establishment required homogenization of macro-economic conditions in different EU countries and thus requiring the budgets to give a priority to some budget items within the constraint of same fiscal procedure. Another dimension that the author mentions about globalization is information technology at the centre of production capacity of economics and the military might of the state. The intensification of European integration came along partly due to perceived technological deficit vis-à-vis the United States and Japan. With the integration of Europe (Aviation industry of France, Mobile telephony (Nokia, Ericsson), giant pharmaceutical firms from Switzerland, Germany and France, R&D labs of Europe in areas of Genetic engineering etc.), European companies are catching up with the American or Japanese counterparts both in Europe and in the global market. Europe happens to keep a competitive position despite higher labor costs, the financial conservatism of the firms and lower level of technological innovation and this can be attributed to confinement of European Trade within European union (with an exception of garments or textiles) and increased labor productivity due to technological and managerial retooling of European companies. Finally on the front of migration of labor, the Europe (especially Germany and Italy) has been assimilating migrants from Eastern Europe and past Soviet Union republics. However the author warns us of lack of a single identity for Europe as these different nationalities cannot be united on the basis of Christianity, democracy or even ethnicity. Moreover the author theorizes project identity for Europe where each European has an appeal of the social values and goals such as liberty, equality, social solidarity, stable employment, concern for human rights and the plight of the fourth world, the reaffirmation of democracy and so on.

The trilogy of the Information Age is the summit of author’s 12 years of research on sociology at University of California, Berkeley. Considering the magnitude of research and the justification of his new social theory on Information Age; the overwhelming statistics details are justified. A reader may get bogged down by statistics especially the continuous statistical data from page 73 to 90 (Global economic statistics explaining the polarization of world); though the statistics helps take home his point. Reading and comprehending the book sometimes requires a close attention and concentration as the language uses jargon of economics and the language is generally heavy; albeit reading this book is indeed a self enriching exercise as it offers insight into many contemporary changes to which many readers can relate to. I, as a student from the third world country, India, agree to his observations about the polarization of world and social exclusion of certain classes of society by the information capitalism. It is painful to see farmers committing suicide and children sold, toiled, beaten, exploited for pity penury when India stands at the dawn of transformation to a superpower nation.

The author has always narrated the history and explained his analysis but has never indulged in futurology. The author has covered the major social changes and challenges however does not mention about criminal activities by religious fanatics. I find the answer; indeed, the crimes by religious chauvinists are motivated by an attempt to dominate on the basis of religion and religious principles and are not driven by monetary motives as those of drug or weapon traffickers. However the modern religious chauvinists are making intensive use of information networks and technology to achieve their goals.

The author has reasoned out observations about criminal economy very well. The trigger (huge markets but hefty prices if traded through legal channels) for criminal and drug trafficking activities from Colombia or Bolivia, the sustenance of these activities in geographically secluded areas, the supply of personnel from the pool of impoverished rural people can be all correlated to Sandalwood and Ivory smuggling activities of Southern India. Also the criminals becoming role models among the poor, is a global observation applicable to Indian Naxallites.

Having worked for an IT company and understood the need of constant learning and education, I liked the following excerpt from the book; it rightly emphasizes the change of definition of labor in information age:

The critical quality in differentiating two kinds of labor viz. generic labor versus programmable labor is education; that is, embodied knowledge and information. The concept of education must be distinguished from the skills. Skills can be quickly made obsolete by technological and organizational change. Education (as distinct from warehousing of children and students) is the process by which people, that s labor, acquire the capability constantly to redefine the necessary skills for a given task and to access the sources of learning these skills. Whoever is educated, in proper organization environment, can reprogram himself/herself toward the endlessly changing tasks of the production process.

References:

Manuel Castells (2001) “The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture – Volume III End of Millennium”, Blackwell Publishers