End of Millennium

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Summary: End of Millennium
Review: Description: The final volume in Manuel Castells' trilogy is devoted to processes of global social change induced by interaction between networks and identity. Castells studies empirically the collapse of the Soviet Union, tracing it back to the incapacity of industrial statism to manage the transition to the information age. He shows the rise of inequality, polarization, and social exclusion throughout the world, focusing on Africa, on urban poverty, and on children's plight. He documents the formation of a global criminal economy that deeply affects economies and politics in many countries. He analyzes the political and cultural foundations of the emergence of the Asian Pacific as a critically important region in the global economy. And he reflects on the contradictions of European unification, proposing the concept of the network state. The new edition of End of Millennium includes a revised chapter on Pacific Asia taking into account recent trends, while the book has also been updated to account for developments in the European Union. In the general conclusion of the trilogy, included in this volume, Castells draws together the threads of his arguments and his findings, presenting a systematic interpretation of our world at this end of millennium. Author Description: Manuel Castells is Professor of Sociology and of Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was appointed in 1979, after teaching for 12 years at the University of Paris. He has also taught and researched at the Universities of Madrid, Chile, Montreal, Campinas, Caracas, Mexico, Geneva, Copenhagen, Wisconsin, Boston, Southern California, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Amsterdam, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Hitotsubashi and Barcelona. He is the author of 20 books, including The Informational City (Blackwell, 1989). He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and a recipient of the C Wright Mills Award and of the Robert and Helen Lynd Award. He is a member of the European Academy. The Information Age is being translated into 10 languages. Contents: List of Figures. List of Table. List of Charts. Acknowledgments. A Time of Change. 1. The Crisis of Industrial Statism and the Collapseof the Soviet Union. The Extensive Model of Economic Growth and the Limits··of Hyperindustrialism. The Technology Question. The Abduction of Identity and the Crisis of ··Soviet Federalism. The Last Perestroika. Nationalism, Democracy, and the Disintegration··of the Soviet State. The Scars of History, the Lessons for Theory,··the Legacy for Society. 2. The Rise of the Fourth World: Informational Capitalism, Poverty, and Social Exclusion. Toward a Polarized World? A Global Overview. The De-humanization of Africa. Marginalization and selective integration of··Sub-Saharan Africa in the informational/global··economy. Africa's technological apartheid at the dawn of the ··Information Age. The predatory state. Zaïre: the personal appropriation of the state. Nigeria: oil, ethnicity, and military predation. Ethnic identity, economic globalization, and state··formation in Africa. Africa's plight. Africa's hope? The South African connection. Out of Africa or back to Africa? The politics and··economics of self-reliance. The New American Dilemma: Inequality, Urban Poverty,··and Social Exclusion in the Information Age. Dual America. The inner-city ghetto as a system of social exclusion . When the underclass goes to hell. Globalization, Over-exploitation, and Social Exclusion:··the View from the Children. The sexual exploitation of children. The killing of children: war massacres and··child soldiers. Why children are wasted. Conclusion: the Black Holes of Informational Capitalism. 3. The Perverse Connection: the Global Criminal Economy. Organizational Globalization of Crime, Cultural Identification of Criminals. The Pillage of Russia. The structural perspective. Identifying the actors. Mechanisms of accumulation. Narcotrafico, Development, and Dependency··in Latin America. What are the economic consequences of the drugs··industry for Latin America? Why Colombia? The Impact of Global Crime on Economy, Politics,··and Culture. 4. DEVELOPMENT AND CRISIS IN THE ASIAN PACIFIC: GLOBALIZATION AND THE STATE: The Changing Fortunes of the Asian Pacific. Heisei's Japan: Developmental State versus··Information Society. A social model of the Japanese developmental··process. Declining sun: the crisis of the Japanese model··of development. Hatten Hokka and Johoka Shakai: a contradictory··relationship. Japan and the Pacific. Beheading the Dragon? Four Asian Tigers with a Dragon··Head, and their Civil Societies. Singapore: state nation-building via multinational··corporations. South Korea: the state production of oligopolistic ··capitalism. Taiwan: flexible capitalism under the guidance··of the state. Hong Kong model versus Hong Kong reality:··small business in a world economy, and the··colonial version of the welfare state. The breeding of the tigers: commonalities and ··dissimilarities in their process of··economic development. The developmental state in East Asian ··industrialization: on the concept of the ··developmental state. The rise of the developmental state: from the ··politics of survival to the process of ··nation-building. The state and civil society in the restructuring of··East Asia: how the developmental state succeeded··in the development process. Divergent paths: Asian "tigers" in the economic crisis. Democracy, identity, and development in East Asia··in the 1990s. Chinese Developmental Nationalism with Socialist··Characteristics. The new Chinese revolution. Guanxi capitalism? China in the global economy. China's regional developmental states and the ··bureaucratic (capitalist) entrepreneurs. Weathering the storm? China in the Asian economic crisis. Democracy, development, and nationalism in ··the new China. Conclusion: Globalization and the state. 5. The Unification of Europe: Globalization,Identity, and the Network State. European Unification as a Sequence of Defensive ··Reactions: a Half-century Perspective. Globalization and European Integration. Cultural Identity and European Unification. The Institutionalization of Europe: the Network State. European Identity or European Project? Conclusion: Making Sense of our World. Genesis of a New World. A New Society. The New Avenues of Social Change. Beyond this Millennium. What is to be Done? Finale. Summary of Contents of Volumes I and II. References. Index.

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Summary: This is an outstanding book that deals with our world.
Review: I read this book as a stand-alone book even though it is No. 3 of a trilogy. Castells deals with the most important issues of our times, and he does so, in a serious, scholarly, but readable way. This book is "must" reading for people in economics, politics, policy studies as well as in the other social sciences. Interested lay persons will find this book quite accessible..

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Summary: Is information technology the culprit?
Review: Many of the observations Prof. Catells made are valid, however the connection between information technology and the social problems are not very strong. The network states, global criminal society, wealth disparity, etc. are more or less the byproduct of globalization. Yes, information technology accelerates the rate of globalization. But would those social problems exist without information technology? Mostly likely yes. These phenomena are not new, they predate the advent of the Information Age (the World Wide Web and mass adoption of internet is a post-1990 phenomenon). Multinatioal organizations (or globalization) have been around for many decades, same goes for the North-South polical economic paradigm. So, attributing all these social problems to the Information Age (at least that is the impression I got out of it) may not be an accurate representation. Nonetheless, his trilogy does demonstrate the acute problem of a global digital divide, and he suggested some possible solutions in some of his other books.

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Summary: don't read it if you can help it
Review: This is a horrible book and very hard to read. The author writes with long sentences that use big words throughout, that are not necessary in understanding his concepts. This book could have been written in half the words and you would have actually been able to comprehend it. VCR manuals read better than this book.

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Summary: whose evaluation?
Review: Who is entitlted to judge 'project identity' over 'risistant identity' without recognizing firstly the issues of power, source, context? It is reasonable to imbue 'project identity' to those self-programming producers as well as to those nation-states that are capable of lunching a war just for their national or religious identity. But it could be harmful to suggest those generic labor give up 'resistant identity' while they are not yet organized or empowered. Not mention to those minority or aboriginal people, who could become extinct without resistance. In fact, why should not a resistant identity be counted as a 'project' in the first place?

At any rate, the descriptive part of the book is a good reference for those who never watch/read international news.