Search

The article presents a list of books received by the "Canadian Journal of Sociology." The list includes "The Virtual Self: A Contemporary Sociology," by Ben Agger, "Population Change in Canada," by Roderic Beaujot and Don Kerr, and "The Power of Identity," by Manuel Castells.

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Summary: In 2019, sociologist Manuel Castells categorically stated that liberal democracy has exhausted its historical trajectory and, quoting some verses by Octavio Paz, expressed: "Not what it could have been:/it is what it was./And what it was is dead." In this paper, we will reflect on this diagnosis based on five interrelated questions. To what extent is liberal democracy being affected by the current informational technological acceleration? Is there really a democratic crisis? What lessons can be learned from the Cambridge Analytica event? Will it be possible to manipulate feelings: hacking humans? What are the paths available for the future? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the implications of "decolonisation," first by focusing on the work of African thinker, Frantz Fanon's work in this regard, particularly his insistence that decolonisation entails the creation of "new" people, before moving on to the related question of "identity." Here the emphasis is on the work of Manuel Castells, specifically his examination of three kinds of identityconstruction, the third of which he regards as being the most important category for understanding this process in the 21st century, namely "resistance identity." It is argued that this casts the decolonisation debate in South Africa in an intelligible light. An interpretation of E.M. Forster's paradigmatically "decolonising" novel, A Passage to India, is offered to unpack the meaning of the concept further, before switching the terrain to the question of the urgent need for a different kind of decolonisation, today, pertaining to the economic neo-colonisation of the world by neoliberal capitalism. The work of Hardt and Negri on the emerging world order under what they call "Empire" is indispensable in this regard, and their characterisation of the subject under neoliberal Empire in terms of the figures of the indebted, securitised, mediatised and represented, stresses the need for global decolonisation in the name of democracy. This part of the paper is concluded with a consideration of what decolonisation is really "all about," namely power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the making of urban sustainable food provisioning through the case of Barcelona. Barcelona is seeking to develop a more sustainable food system. It aims to green its municipal food markets by reducing the distances from which the food is sourced from. This has been labelled by the city of Barcelona as "proximity food". We shed light on how, and to what extent, proximity food contributes to making the city more sustainable. To frame our analysis, we employ concepts from networks and flows as developed in sociology by Manuel Castells. We examine the provisioning processes that proximity food goes through before they enter retail markets. This includes an analysis of connections with urban energy and water flows. This so-called water, energy and food Urban Nexus, which we argue to be a key factor in the greening of urban food systems. This means that sustainability of food is not just determined by physical distances between its provisioning processes per se but by the specific ways in which food flows relate to connections (both physical and social) with energy and water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The #MeToo movement, which engulfed much of India's news and entertainment industry in October 2018, was projected by many as a watershed moment for Indian journalism. Driven largely through social media activism, it created significant public discourse and outcry, leading to the "outing" and resignation of many journalists. This paper explores the perception of #MeTooIndia in regional and national newsrooms. Drawing on Manuel Castells's ideas of networked social movement, we consider the origins of #MeTooIndia, including its mediation on private and social networks. We then draw on 257 semi-structured interviews with journalists working in 14 languages across India to explore the "cause" of the campaign—the prevalence of sexual harassment and sexual violence in workspaces—before turning our attention to the impact, or potential for impact, that journalists saw in it. We find most journalists felt the movement was "good", but did not think it influenced their environment or newswork in any meaningful manner. Regional journalists expressed more pessimism about the #MeTooIndia, men more so than women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some social movements researchers argue that the Internet globalises protest and equalises cross-national inequalities in opportunities for activism. Critics warn against such techno-optimism, highlighting continued individual-level inequalities and country-level variation in protest participation. In this paper, we operationalise Manuel Castells' theory of social movement development to test the extent to which contemporary demonstrators share the characteristics of global activists. We also examine how country-level economic and political institutions affect levels of protest and moderate the relationship between individual-level predictors and activism. We find support for Castells' contention that use of online media is a significant predictor of protest. However, we also find that having a sense of global connectedness does not significantly affect one's likelihood of engaging in demonstrations. Protest participation continues to be stratified by traditional markers of social privilege including education and gender. Moreover, national political and economic contexts have independent effects on protest and moderate how individual-level political and economic grievances affect civic engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The metaphor of an 'education hub' was initially promoted as also a policy concept for reversing cross-border student flows to the West in both Malaysia and Singapore. The Singapore version of 'Asian education hub policy' represents a distinct economic policy model of higher education which has since also influenced the very Western contexts it was derived from. However, it appears the Singaporeans might have actually borrowed the policy concept from the Malaysians whose aspirations to reverse international student flows to the West was rather aligned to related national capacity development plans as still something of a public good. This paper will use a Malaysia-Singapore contrast to compare distinct developing country (national/regional) vs. developed country (globalised) conceptions of the Asian education hub model. On this exemplary basis, it will also outline an integrated framework to better make sense of the related yet also often conflicting imperatives of privatization, internationalization and marketization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is situated within the ongoing scholarly discourse surrounding the role of social media in the evolving communication landscape. The main aim of this research is to examine the extent to which the Greek traditional media and journalists have adapted to the ethos of social media. In particular, this study conducts a comparative analysis to assess whether the Greek media and journalists have effectively embraced the communication challenges arising from advancements in social media, particularly during election cycles. The theoretical foundation rests on the network theory of power, a concept pioneered by the Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells. The empirical component presents the findings obtained through an examination of journalists' participation in political discourse on Twitter (now named X) throughout seven distinct election periods encompassing all electoral levels in Greece (presidential, national, European and regional/municipal elections, plus a referendum). The findings reveal low levels of adaptation, in contrast with western countries, where journalists and the media have embraced the online culture to a greater extent and appear to take on more prominent roles in debates. The findings provide valuable insights for journalists, politicians and the media in understanding the role of social media in political communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper ? like those following it in this issue of arq? focuses on the shifting notion of ?flow? and the significance of that notion for the practice, critique and theorisation of architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The satellite tracking of offenders, particularly sex offenders, has grown in significance in the United States since the late 1990s. Some evaluations have been undertaken, but few of the larger theoretical questions it raises, as an aspect of surveillance and remote location monitoring, have been explored. Drawing in part on the work of Manuel Castells and Paul Virilio and on the concept of “time-space compression,” this paper appraises the significance of satellite tracking in the context of “the network society” and assesses its implications for supervising offenders in so-called “real time.” It speculates on the different temporal experiences of monitors and the monitored and explores a dubious but possible future development in tracking technology: the power to inflict pain at a distance, forms of which were in fact considered by the those who first imagined offender tracking in the 1970s. For some offenders, potentially subject to lifelong satellite tracking, the specter of “eternal vigilance” is raised, and the paper concludes with ethical questions this practice provokes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to illustrate how social sciences, sociology in particular, have theorized on societal transitions. The first section introduces some preliminary definitions. The assumption is that a societal transition is more than a social, economic or technological change. It is a large-scale and long-term macro process through which a given social system radically changes its structural basis, in terms of new socio-technical practices, governance rules, social and economic institutions, cultural frames, and patterns of social life. The second section provides an excursus on social science accounts on transitions. In particular, the attention has been given to Norbert Elias’ famous study on the rise and fall of the court society in France, between 17th and 18th century and to Manuel Castells’ recent analysis of the emergence of the network society. The third section discusses problems and challenges of standard approaches and suggests some building blocks of societal transition models, taken from complexity and social simulation literature. The concluding section suggests some way-forward measures towards a computational social science approach to societal transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to provide some answers to two questions: What are the distinctive challenges of urban education (especially in London) and how can schools help to meet them? Using theoretical frameworks derived from the writings of two leading scholars of the urban, Manuel Castells and David Harvey, this paper argues that the challenges in urban education are especially manifest in inner‐city communities and in inner‐city schools and colleges. The challenges for urban education consist in trying to find effective, and above all, sustained ways of responding to those contradictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past two decades gay neighborhoods have become familiar parts of the urban landscape. Although these areas may include lesbians, gay men dominate their distinct subcultures, their businesses and their residences, their street life and their political activities. In the book " The City and the Grassroots," author Manuel Castells argues that the predominance of gay men in the creation of distinctly homosexual urban neighborhoods reflects a profound gender difference. In relationship to space, gay men and lesbians, he says, behave first and foremost as men and women. The main purpose of the paper is to clarify the ambiguities surrounding the existence and significance of spatial concentration among lesbians in urban communities. In order to do so, the paper attempts to replicate Castells' method of analysis as closely as possible in a study of lesbian community in the U.S. city. While the paper rejects Castells' characterization of the gender differences between gay men and lesbians, there are important dimensions along which gay men and lesbians may relate differently to urban space and urban politics. These differences do reflect the fact that lesbians are women.

A number of current hypotheses concern the effect of new means of communication particularly Internet-hosted networks and digital spaces on the experience of urban place, often referred to as the 'network city'. Via the digital networking of spatially distant people, the new urban society is frequently illustrated as one where the physical basis of sociability is declining in favour of dematerialized, delocalized, far-ranging systems and networks. However, this may not actually be as recent a phenomenon as it first appears, as Melvin Webber described in his highly influential article "The Urban Place and the Nonplace Urban Realm" of 1964, urban life and urban experience were always synonymous with a partial dissociation from the constraints of locality. The prevalence of technology in daily transactionsand relationships leads to a rich geography, yet inequalities continue to prevail in the 'space of flows' as coined by Manuel Castells. The mobility and connectivity of communities with niche interests may now be seen to have evolved 'digital ecologies' through their use of digital infrastructures that afford meaningful relationships. A key aspect of the position presented here is the use of such technology to develop instrumentality with which to facilitate 'thick' descriptions of digital networks and communities and contribute to our understanding of their spatiality. This paper therefore attempts to describe and explain this transformation and propose theoretical material to address some of the attendant issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to examine the rhizomatic flows of transnational Tamil cinema in Asia in the context of the growing influence of the agents of Web 2.0. The application of the concepts of flow and rhizome forms the theoretical backbone in this regard. The concept of television flow, as advanced by Raymond Williams, has had its transformations in the notion of the space of flows by Manuel Castells and the notion of rhizomatic line of flight of Deleuze and Guattari. Giddens'notion of structuration is the sociological attempt to capture the ephemerality of postmodern representations. In this paper, the rise of transnational Tamil cinema in Asia is juxtaposed with the rise of Web 2.0 in their intertwined contexts. This is to understand their implications for the members of the globalized homeland, who are increasingly connected in the rhizomatic networks of flows originated by the transnational Tamil cinema and Web 2.0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manuel Castells' (1983) groundbreaking investigation of urban social movements traced 'the decisive input of purposive social action' through case studies over five centuries, culminating in the 1960s social revolts in US cities. This paper continues the narrative forward by examining the changing dynamics of community development politics in US cities since 1968. Structural transformations under neoliberalism marked the end of the democratic/redistributive phase of community development, radically altered the material, strategic and institutional terrain of community development politics, and opened a space for new forms of purposive social action aimed at enduring goals of social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of 'identity' is central to much contemporary sociology, reflecting a crisis that manifests itself in two ways. Firstly, there is a view that identity is both vital and problematic in this period of high modernity. Secondly, while this awareness is reflected in sociology, its accounts of identity are inconsistent, under-theorized and incapable of bearing the analytical load required. As a result, there is an inherent contradiction between a valuing of identity as so fundamental as to be crucial to personal well-being, and a theorization of 'identity' that sees it as something constructed, fluid, multiple, impermanent and fragmentary. The contemporary crisis of identity thus expresses itself as both a crisis of society, and a crisis of theory. This paper explores the diverse ways in which 'identity' is deployed before turning to case-studies of its use by Anthony Giddens and Manuel Castells. This strategy demonstrates the widespread and diverse concern with identity before exploring how problematic it has become, even in the work of two of the world's leading sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "action theory" of Alain Touraine and Manuel Castells' theory of urban movements together constitute a social movement paradigm which differs significantly from both the traditional collective behavior explanation and the newer resource mobilization model. In this paper, the Touraine-Castells perspective is contrasted to the existing approaches with relation to social movement causes, characteristics, and outcomes. It is argued that the work of this "French School" represents a partial realization of Traugott's (1978) attempt to reconceptualize social movements as distinct phenomena integrally linked to the analysis of social change outside institutional channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article author provides historical sociological analysis of changes in the system of higher education during the period from the second half of the 19th century until the 1930s in the Russian Empire and later on in the Soviet Union. By analyzing historical materials, legal acts and interpretations author also addresses two important questions of the sociology of education. First one is what role plays education in the forming of modern society. Second is how the higher education institutions in general and Universities in particular reflect the changes in the society and adjust to those changes and how state and government affect the education in general. The purpose of this article is to analyze the higher education system in Russia and its role in the life of Russian society from the second half of the 19th century to the 20s of the 20th century. As theoretical framework author uses modernization theory of Czech-British philosopher and social anthropologist, Ernest Gellner (1925-1995) and his idea of education as source of new universal high culture which forms modern societies. Another theory which is also used in the following research is the ideas of modern Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells and his ideas of the role modern universities play in Western societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Daniel Bell (1919–2011) and Manuel Castells (1942–) are the grand theorists of the information age. The article provides a detailed, up-to-date, comparative analysis of their writings. It begins with their methodologies, identifying numerous commonalities in their post-Marxian frameworks. The substance of their theories is then examined, where it is shown that both plausibly explain contemporary social reality in terms of the interplay of three forces: the information technology revolution, the restructuring of capitalism and the innovational role of culture. There are found to be major similarities in their accounts (the Kantian interpretation, social stratification) but also significant divergences (role of science, the fourth world, the normative content of culture). Suitably combined, Bell's and Castells's thought goes a long way towards delivering a persuasive sociological theory of the global information society. However, the article concludes by suggesting that extensive further work is needed to clarify the precise relationships between the three factors and their relative weightings in the equations required to explain recent social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his landmark trilogy, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, sociologist Manuel Castells argued that networks, information technology, and global economic flows were altering the nature of politics, power, and states. This article examines the network dynamics Castells wrote about in relation to transnational crime and illicit economic markets. The article further explores Castells's influence on the study of transnational organized crime, illicit networks, and the global illicit economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with an emerging trend in political participation: the role played by football fans in engendering activism and protest. The role of fan activism in the debate on patterns of civic and political (dis)engagement – in the age of so-called anti-politics – has been ignored by the scholarly literature thus far. As a corrective, this article examines the development of football fan activism over the last thirty years, since the creation of the English Premier League in 1992. It adopts a case study approach centred on supporters' movements since 1992. It argues that the political activism of football fans has both quantitatively and qualitatively changed over this period. Employing the sociological theory of Manuel Castells it claims that collective identities developed in resistance to the commercialisation and commodification within football have developed into more distinct 'project identities' that seek bring about more profound social change through football. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several papers discussed at the conference of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE), held at the University of California, Berkeley in October 1990 is presented. The topic was the academic and architectural study of developing countries. Numerous papers were presented by historians, anthropologists, architects, and planners including Lisa Peattie, Manuel Castells, and Paul Oliver.

In the 1990s, under the perception of increasing transformations brought about by globalisation, scholars started investigating what happened to the notion of place. Among others, the views of Manuel Castells, Robert Sack and Doreen Massey contributed to construct an opposition between a parochial, bounded, and reactionary notion of place versus a global, unbounded, and relation one. This latter view, under the label of 'progressive sense of place', has since become a dominant paradigm in geography. This paper aims to ground these theoretical arguments in relation to how people understand place today. Qualitative empirical information collected in four different regional contexts in Western Europe confirms the discursive existence of the above opposition. Yet, it also challenges the ways in which notions of thickness/thinness and boundedness/unboundedness relate to the regressive or progressive character of place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The neo-liberal market-driven economy has been affecting the economy and people of India in various ways. One directly visible impact is the agenda of transforming a few large cities into so-called 'world-class cities' as the hubs of operation of trans-national capital and business. Such urban renewal is resulting in further segregation of citizens into the elite class, who are settling in well-serviced and gated settlements, and the majority of the poor, who are being driven out from the core parts of cities to the peripheries. This 'enclave urbanism', as the logic of expansion of capital and revival of stagnant developing economies, is well articulated by scholars like David Harvey, Saskia Sassen, and Manuel Castells. Inspired by David Harvey's essay on 'the right to the city' in the context of South-East Asian countries, this paper analyzes the process of 'enclave urbanism' in Mumbai. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use the case of an internet connectivity project in Scandinavia, Sami Network Connectivity (SNC), as a means to investigate the impulses which designing a network for a semi nomadic population, gives to network design, and to policy making. Thus, we regard the diffusion of innovations as something, which affects not only the culture of technology users but also that of technology producers. Manuel Castells argues that the cultural heritage imprinted in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector's technical design and social organisation has developed as a result of interaction between large, hierarchical institutions on the one hand and the radical thinking of the 1960s on the other and. The conceptual congruence between internet experts and the user community displayed in SNC may so be explained. We suggest that due to discourses that surrounded senior ICT professionals during their youth, there is a preparation for a nomadic scenario within the ICT sector as such. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

New Urban Sociology began in Europe at the beginning of the 1970s and then spread to the United States. It also influenced urban studies in Japan. This article examines the changing debates that have occurred in New Urban Sociology since its introduction to Japan in the late 1970s. The twenty years since its introduction from the West can be divided into three stages. The first covers the period from 1977 to 1985, when French urban sociology, particularly Manuael Castells’ theory of the state, was highly influential. The second stage, from 1986 to 1992, focused on theories of urban social movements and the concept of global city in a context of urban renewal in Japan’s major cities. The third stage, from 1992 to the present, is characterized by a transformation of New Urban Sociology into a sociological theory of space under globalization that has been heavily influenced by the work of David Harvey. Née en Europe au début des années 1970, la Nouvelle Sociologie urbaine a ensuite atteint les Etats–Unis, mais elle a aussi influé sur les études urbaines au Japon. L’article examine l’évolution des débats qui ont animé la Nouvelle Sociologie urbaine depuis qu’elle y est arrivée d’Occident à la fin des années 1970. Les vingt années qui ont suivi peuvent se décomposer en trois phases. La première va de 1977 à 1985, alors que la sociologie urbaine française, notamment la théorie de l’État de Manuel Castells, faisait autorité. La deuxième, entre 1986 et 1992, s’attache aux théories des mouvements sociaux urbains et au concept de la ville planétaire (global city) parallèlement à une rénovation des grandes villes nippones. La troisième phase, de 1992 à nos jours, se caractérise par une transformation de la Nouvelle Sociologie urbaine en une théorie sociologique de l’espace soumis à la mondialisation, concept largement inspiré des travaux de David Harvey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the production of the urban, the reproduction of labor power, collective consumption, the emergence and significance of urban social movements and similar issues. The author R.E. Pahl illustrate the nature of one set of confusions by focusing on the notion of collective consumption. He intends limit himself largely to the various formulations of Manuel Castells who has been one of the most energetic and productive of the new school of urban marxist scholars. He has an impressive list of publications from his early demolition of urban sociology to his most recent research papers and the revised, English edition of "The Urban Question." The socialization of various services and facilities may be accounted for by a number of possible theories. First, Castells notes that collective organization and management may be inevitable given the size of socially defined problems. This must be a historically specific process. Certain facilities such as the provision of roads or facilities for preschool children may be socialized or desocialized at different periods of time.

Copyright of Professional Geographer is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Manuel Castells (1996) famously argued that human processes are increasingly operating according to the logic of flows and it has now become commonplace to analyse movements of people, information and commodities in terms of flows. However, scholars have been slow to capture the dynamics of border enforcement practices in these terms. In this article, we argue that 'deportation' can best be understood, not as a discrete practice that is unidirectional, territorial and wholly controlled by individual states, but as a range of diverse practices used by states (and sometimes undermined by other parties) to try to control the circulation of people within a dynamic supra‐national space. By focusing on 'mobility control continuums' operating in selected countries at the peripheries of Europe, we capture the dynamics of state intervention in trans‐border flows and thereby contribute towards developing concepts and methodologies for the criminological study of border controls that are 'sensitive to the complexities of the global' (Aas 2007). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the greatest challenges in nature conservation is funding. In the pursuit of new financing sources critical to fight biodiversity and ecosystem loss, nature conservation organisations increasingly aim to create networks between states, markets and civil society. Using Manuel Castells' network theory and World Wide Fund for nature (WWF) as a case study, this article aims at understanding how large conservation NGOs utilise networking in their pursuit for funding. Apart from increasing income by attracting public funds from governments and aid agencies, around 2010 WWF's public sector finance strategy expanded to influencing and leveraging finance—both public and private—using public funds. During WWF's engagement with private sector financing, paradoxically its public sector financing grew at the average rate of 7.5% per year. Our network analysis shows that WWF has continuously reworked and renegotiated its position in order to stay connected to the 'space of flows'. WWF and other large conservation organisations have to be in the right networks, speak the right language, and connect to relevant social, informational and political flows to stay relevant and connected to substantial flows of funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the accelerating process of globalization and the development of its technological dimension, more and more opportunities and channels are available to the terrorist groups in the world to mobilize resources and advocates. "Islamic State of Iraq and Sham" (ISIS), as the most modern terrorist-excommunicative group (Takfiry), has been able to utilize the Internet and social networks highly adeptly. While ignoring the function of long-term structural and essential factors underlying the formation of ISIS, and also combining the networked society theory and triple forms of identities proposed by Manuel Castells with theoretical discussions on identity making, networking, and mobilization of media, the current article seeks to analyze the role of cyberspace and social networks as accelerating and opportunistic agents in mobilizing resources and disseminating ISIS. Using an explanatory analytical research method, the current article mainly intends to find a reply to the question: What has been the role of online social networks in connection with ISIS as an excommunicative and terrorist group? According to the research hypothesis, due to ISIS's subtle, prevocational-emotional and targeted utilization of online social networks, the networks have played the role of an accelerator and opportunity maker in some areas including network building, guidance of public opinion, identity making, and the promotion of project identity of this terrorist group. The general conclusion obtained from the article is that ISIS, as the most terrifying and the most modern group equipped with cyber media, has been able to attract many forces out of fanatical religious groups, unemployed people, criminals, etc., worldwide. Additionally, with the recruitment of fanatics, ISIS has been able to accomplish identity making and network building. As a result, regional security and even security in Western countries is also highly endangered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the connections between information science, national security and area studies through a history of the overseas collections of U.S. research libraries, particularly from the Middle East and South Asia. Topics discussed include the growth of research libraries during World War II, the changing role of librarians as providers of open-source intelligence during the Cold War, and on how national security priorities influenced the production of academic knowledge. Also mentioned are the work of anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler and sociologist Manuel Castells, the wartime demand for actionable information, and the increased collaboration between librarians and intelligence agencies.

This section presents brief backgrounds of authors who contributed their papers for publication in this journal, including Manuel Castells, Lidan Chen and Francis L. F. Lee.

This article explores what happens to the Chinese Party-state’s notion ofminzu(nationality, ethnicity or ethno-national identity) in the vastness of cyberspace. The idea that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) comprises 56 distinct yet unitedminzugroups has encapsulated and circumscribed the performance of ethnocultural diversity in mainland China over the last 60 plus years. In this article, I seek to demonstrate how the Internet helps to loosen the Party-state’s grip on ‘Chineseness’ and its related categories of identity, opening up new spaces for the articulation of a wide range of ethnocultural subject positions that both self-define, mediate and, at times, even transcended minzu-ness. At the same time, however, the fractured and transitory nature of these online congregations renders them largely inconsequential when faced with a powerful and authoritarian Party-state and its robust regime of minzu classification and minzu-based policies inside the PRC. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After communicative planning theory emerged in the 1980s, challenging assumptions and prevailing theories of planning, debates ensued among planning theorists that led to apparently opposing groups with little space for mutual learning. The most difficult obstacle is that critiques of communicative planning theory framed several dichotomies making different perspectives appear incompatible. This article seeks to advance the dialogue of planning theory perspectives by acknowledging the key tensions embedded in this framing, but arguing that they can be viewed as reflecting contradictions to be embraced as an opportunity for a more robust planning theory. Drawing on Manuel Castells’ theory of communication power, the article explores four of these contradictions and shows how in each case embracing the contradictions as aspects of our complex world can lead to insights and a richer planning theory. The article concludes with suggestions for improved dialogue among theorists and identifies research that can advance our understanding of communication power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the concept of entangled fidelities and the contribution of relational Christian realism to public theology. Topics include the reformulation of the Christian realism tradition to address the problematic areas of human experience, the arguments of theologist H. Richard Niebuhr, sociologists Bruno Latour, and Manuel Castells, and the use of number of case studies to examine the dynamics and methodologies of relational Christian realism.

This article focuses on the book "The Rise of the Network Society. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture series," Manuels Castells. This book proposes some elements of an exploratory, cross-cultural theory of economy and society in the information age as it specifically refers to the emergence of a new social structure. It also discusses the information technology revolution; the informational economy and the process of globalization; the culture, institutions, and organizations of the informational economy; the transformation of work and employment; the integration of electronic communication, the end of the mass audience, and the rise of interactive networks; and the space of flows.

This article presents information on publications of books related to population studies. Some of the books are as follows: "Fertility and Family Planning in the Third World. A Case Study of Papua New Guinea," by William K.A. Agyei; "Developments in Kinship Support Networks for the Aged in the Netherlands," by J. Bartlema; "Mobility and Employment in Urban Southeast Asia. Examples From Indonesia and the Philippines," by Michael A. Cosello, Thomas R. Leinbach, and Ulack Richard; "Global Restructuring and Territorial Development," by Jeffrey Henderson and Manuel Castells.

The authors opine on how European cities have developed as global command-and-control centers in context to the financial crisis in 2008 and the Eurozone debt crisis in 2011. They analyze information as mentioned in the Forbes Global 2000, annual ranking of the top 2000 public companies in the world by the journal "Forbes" based on companies' ranking for sales, assets and market value. The authors also cites reference to the book " The Informational City" by Manuel Castells.

This article critically discusses the intellectual and conceptual shifts that have occurred in information society theories (and also policies) in the previous four decades. We will examine the topic by focusing on the work of Daniel Bell and Manuel Castells, arguably two of the most important information society theorists. A key element in the academic shift from "post-industrial" (Bell) thinking to the discourse on "network society" (Castells) is that it has brought forward a different way of understanding the role of the state vis-a-vis the development of new information and communication technologies, as well as a new assessment of the role of the state in the economy and society at large. Against the Keynesian undertones of Bell's ideas, Castells' network society theory represents a neoliberally restructured version of "information society" that is associated with the rise of flexibility, individuality and a new culture of innovation. We argue that these changing discourses on the information society have served a definite hegemonic function for political elites, offering useful ideals and conceptions for forming politics and political compromises in different historical conjunctures. We conclude the article by looking at how the on-going global economic crisis and neoliberalism's weakening hegemonic potential and turn to austerity and authoritarian solutions challenges existing information society theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the role of online networking in a grassroots movement in China. Drawing on Manuel Castells’s theory of communication power in the network society, we argue that microblogs can facilitate China’s mass self-communication in a network environment, even under authoritarian control, and are able to challenge the power of agenda setting, which has been mainly dominated by the state and the state media. We study a grassroots movement in China and examine the ways in which messages were communicated and people were connected into a network. Thus we investigate the role of online communication in reconfiguring the balance of power between the authority and Chinese citizens. Using systematic data collection and social network analysis, we characterize the microbloggers who contributed to the process, the network configuration, and the interplays between different stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]