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Copyright of Rétor is the property of Asociacion Argentina de Retorica 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.)

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.)

Copyright of Humania del Sur: Revista de Estudios Latinoamericanos, Africanos y Asiáticos is the property of Humania del Sur. Estudios Latinoamericanos Africanos y Asiaticos 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]

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 #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]

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]

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]

The globalization of the economy and the communication systems beyond the nation-states encourages consumer citizens to participate actively in politics. Through the Internet, which is a global communication system, political communication becomes stronger and it is possible for citizens to be a part of the democratic society.This work gives particular reference to Manuel Castells' works that illuminate the relationship between information society, communication and globalization, and emphasizes the increasing personalization of politics as a result of the strengthening of digital networks, the diversification of the media. From this framework of Castells, as a result, the leadership has become more personalized. Today, politicians can easily and instantly communicate with millions of people. Politicians do not have to organize large rallies for big expenses. Instead, it is necessary for policy makers to understand, to use the dynamics of network society, and to benefit the social media and other means of communications within the Internet.In this context, the focus of the study is to make sense of the relationship between the dynamics of political communications and global communication systems. The aim of this study is to try to understand how political communication works with global media and especially Internet with a critical perspective in the light of wider economic, social and political issues.In this article, New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will be presented as an exemplary leader in terms of communications. This paper concludes that, political leaders should be capable, selfconfident, respecting the differences of others and able to cope with virtual reality in the global era. [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]

Due to the dysfunction of mainstream media in Iran after the advent of cyberspace, this article raises the question of whether a new paradigm has emerged in the field of media that has changed the requirements of media policy and planning? The premise of this study is that with the advent of cyberspace, a new paradigm has emerged in media policy-making that has affected all media, but instrumentalism is a veil to see. Information and communication technology is the new infrastructure of human society. This infrastructure does not only have a technological aspect, but its paradigmatic aspect is more obvious, and it has caused the effects that the society has received from the new media technology to not only have technical dimensions, but these effects are more extensive in terms of biological philosophy. The experience of recent years shows that most of the strategic plans of institutions and organizations in charge of media policy in Iran, especially in the field of virtual space, have failed in practice. The unsuccessful plan to replace the native platforms of social networks instead of foreign platforms is a clear example of this. The main cause of this failure is a purely technological view of the issue and neglect of the paradigm that governs and drives these media. Therefore, the necessity of this review lies in the importance of understanding the philosophy of virtual space technology. Before proceeding to import the technology, the country importing the technology should determine the paradigm context within which this technology was created. What issues are you trying to solve with it? What are the changes it creates in the heart of the society? What aspects of technology can be accepted and adapted, and how much can it be controlled and modified, and how much does it create conflict in society? The main question that this article pursues is that "virtual space has brought about paradigm changes in media planning and policy-making, and what are the effects of the new space on "media production" and "media distribution"? In this research, three library methods, phenomenology and thematic analysis were used, and in-depth interviews were conducted with 25 active media experts in the two fields of mass communication and virtual space, who were selected by snowball sampling. Among the theories that can guide the topic of discussion are the theories of "network society" by Manuel Castells, "participatory-democratic media" by McQuail, "alternative media" by Downing, and the theory of "the end of the social thing" from Alan Thorne that have been taken into consideration. In the findings of the research, by extracting 64 themes of the paradigm governing the virtual space, it was shown how the communication space has faced the new media grammar. The principles of the new media grammar are "overcoming the rightoriented over the task-oriented, going through the maximalist and absolutist media, multi-source media and de-publicizing the news, minimizing the media structure with the aim of agility and increasing the range and ending the domination of pyramid-shaped structures, changing the approaches of message management, the content and demand for change and response". The results of the research tell us that virtual space is the result of the accumulation and historical continuity of the biological paradigm of the reformation and its intellectual branches, especially human-centered. According to the results of this research, although virtual space and social networks cannot be considered a "paradigm case" and a complete model of communication technology, in many dimensions, media policy and planning are changing from one paradigm to another. In response to the research questions, cyberspace phenomenology has changed the fields of media "production" and "distribution" and media policy and planning in many dimensions by reproducing the biological paradigm of the reformation. The paradigmatic data governing the virtual space creates the awareness that this technology has a heavy philosophical obstacle and is the result of the accumulation and historical continuity of the biological paradigm of the Reformation and the resulting intellectual branches such as existentialism, humanism, secularism, liberalism and human rights ideas. and postmodern critics. The school ruling the virtual space can be defined as the "Social Democratic Existentialist" identity combination; a technology based on "equality, freedom and human-centeredness". This technology is supposed to create a human being who is not a prisoner of any historical, political, social and religious determinism and does not have a predetermined nature. The pluralism ruling the virtual space should not create the impression that the weight of ideology has been reduced in favor of technology. The human-centered idea that forms the basis of Western technology is a return to the humanistic thought of Protagoras who believed that "man is the measure of everything" and this idea was developed by "William Acham" and "Martin Luther" in the 14th and 16th centuries. It was reread and interpreted as "everyone is his own spiritual person" and its media expression in the virtual space can be projected as "everyone has his own media". [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]

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.)

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]

Copyright of Relações Internacionais no Mundo is the property of Relacoes Internacionais no Mundo 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.)

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.

The article is a proposal to answer the question of how we are shaped by the digital experience. Considerations taken in the context of transforming the culture of writing and printing into digital culture, aim to show how our ways of writing and reading, and with them thinking, cognition and constructing and expressing oneself through the increasing access to modern technologies and the Internet, are changing. The research is also aimed at determining the possible consequences of transformations in the field of culture and anthropology. As a starting point, I take Zygmunt Bauman's concept of liquid modernity, Erich Fromm's ideas on having and being, as well as the analysis of post-media condition by Piotr Celiński, literacy in the era of digital culture by Henning Lobin and network society by Manuel Castells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

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.

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]

Background: Silo-thinking stands for one-dimensional and sectorial policy and decision-making in which natural resources managers do not reflect on interrelations between different sectors involved in the management of resources. Nexus-thinking stands out as a way of breaking down silos by identifying and understanding the interconnectedness of multiple resource flows within a determined spatial and temporal context, as in our case study of the flows of water, energy, and food (WEF) in the city of Amsterdam. To further the conceptualization and analysis of the Urban Nexus, this research introduces the theoretical perspective of networks and flows as developed in sociology by Manuel Castells. It offers a set of concepts to analyze how networks of WEF integrate or fail to do so, what the main actors are in connecting and configuring WEF networks, and how they interact. Method: We analyze how the structure and function and power dynamics of networks play out in the WEF Nexus. We use the city of Amsterdam as a case study because this city offers examples of how networks of provisioning are being integrated in innovate ways. Results: Amsterdam managed to realize a certain level of nexus dynamics in its existing WEF networks. The nexus in Amsterdam so far has materialized at a start-up or experimental level which proved feasible for trying out innovative approaches towards sustainability in interconnected flows of WEF. Conclusions: However, the studied projects still have to find their way in terms of becoming more prevailing modes for organizing water, energy, and food provisioning in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]