Manuel Castells: A canon during information age?


	A canon during Information Age? Manuel Castells' "Media as the Space of Politics" (This paper was produced for JOUR 801 under guidance of Prof Michael Gurevitch) By Saswat Pattanayak When Will Durant attempts at making Shakespearean literature a canon in Philosophy, he uses two well known quotes: Of Touchstone asking Corin “Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd?” and Hamlet’s “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Durant tells us that if Shakespeare made a guess he kept it to himself, and perhaps thereby proved himself a philosopher. But the confessed Shakespearean rival George Bernard Shaw refutes Shakespeare’s canonical status in Philosophy by claiming that there was no metaphysics in the latter’s works, no view as to the ultimate nature of reality, no theory of God. Even Shakespeare, according to Shaw, speaks with no reverence of professed philosophers and doubts that any of them ever bore the toothache patiently. Of course Durant’s interpretation of Philosophy is not metaphysics but a large perspective of human affairs, as a generalized view not only of the cosmos and the mind, but as well of morals, politics, history and faith, and in that sense Shakespeare emerges as a philosopher profounder than Bacon, as Montaigne is deeper than Descartes. “There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so” or “Our virtues lie in the interpretation of the time” could make for Durant claims. Not that Philosophy needed yet another canonic text in form of Shakespearean literature. But for sure, a canon does not imply any anticipation of desired results; it’s merely a tool to seek them. Durant is well aware of this tool when he quotes Hamlet, a canon within Shakespearean literature that may be useful for him in many cases, redundant in others and its careful employment to canonize it within Philosophy, depends entirely on his own caution. In like manner and with similar limitations, Manuel Castells’ “Media as the Space of Politics in the Information Age” is a proposed canon. One which I propose, first by locating it within the wider and narrower scopes of media studies as an academic field (not a discipline). Like the well-meant critic GBS, if I try to locate an author-proclaimed theory of media studies with strict paraphernalia of novel observations, I rather not seek a reason further. Castells’ vast work then has a small mention of media. But if I look at media studies themselves as a broader arrangement of socio-political values whereby relations are re-presented, news are ‘produced’ and culture understood from various participants’ perspectives, then Castells provides for a seminal work, close to be argued for as a canon, most rich in content, where media finds a big mention within the information society he speaks of. Sometimes, it’s the works and some other times, it’s the authors who have a case for the canon. To me it seems, both Castells and his works are pertinent for the purpose, although the weight is in favor of the former more. In favor of the Canon: Because present alone does not lurk “A (the) canon has the wise man taking a dogmatic, not a sceptical position. Yes, exactly this makes him superior to all the others, that he knows with conviction. All senses are heralds of the true. Nor is there anything which can refute sensations, neither like can refute like, because of their equal validity, nor can unlike refute unlike, because they do not pass judgment on the same thing, nor the concept, because the concept depends on the sensuous perceptions.” -Karl Marx Great works do not appear in every generation as unrequited elements of cultural inheritance, with only unique standpoints never thought or heard before. Instead they come back in the garb of individual thinkers, humiliated and rejoiced for sharing their personal scars and triumphs of rediscoveries. Each generation finds in them new inspirations, new sources of illumination. The general canons that permeated Marx’s work may not seem now to introduce anew any unsuspected heights of reasoning and it may actually elicit negative reactions from technocrats and the individualists of today. Yet Marxian thoughts have brought to fore much different criticisms and appraisals, which have opened up many novel strands from very divergent platforms, yet share a common point of confrontation. Canons serve the purpose of ensuing debates and result in widening the scope of concentrations. They could actually give birth to newer subjects of study and update the future generations on the past. By virtue of their studies alone, at times, canons also fulfill the need of society to beware of fallacious generalizations. Canons ensure that wisdoms of the ages are revisited and information on the present is challenged on basis of past observations. Canons are vital supplement to study any subject which needs a justification, as well as subjects which are justified already as independent disciplines, because how they came about to be independent can be traced back to generations of canonic texts. Critics point out the elitist perspective of the canons, which tend to reinforce one text over the other owing to hegemonic influences. Whereas they are not very far from a correct observation, the problem then would lie with the disease and not the diseased. Certain studies, which are declared canonic for their wide-reaching consequences, need not be so undermined, as certain other texts, which have had the equal potential of becoming canonic, need to be introduced in context. There is one last political apprehension of mine, which leads me to advocate for canonic texts. Even in modern democracies, where the governments replace textbook contents to favor their own agendas, it is important to ensure that students at least get introduced to the great works that have permeated the human society over the generations. At least discussing a number of great works might evoke necessity of introducing or reintroducing other relevant works of wide implications. Abandoning canonic texts at the first place will do the disservice, in this case, of not allowing for many voices to be heard. In favor of Castells: Information Society Sociologist Castells’ works, largely reviewed and revered as seminal works of society, have some definitive intrinsic value (a test of a canon) regarding the media. Of course the mortification of text is still a wishful thought at this juncture as the debate has recently begun around some issues Castells brings to center. But the fact that such topics always had the potential for a debate and will continue to be there in different forms, makes Castells’ works inevitably compelling ones. Manuel Castells wrote his first major book in the early 1970s when he was a Marxist scholar in University of Paris, and he claimed to be so too (The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach), specially influenced by the structuralist type professed by Louis Althusser. Where however he makes a shift as he progresses, is in his distinction between capitalist mode of production from the informational mode of development. Whereas the former is a way of organizing a social system, the mode of development is a means of generating a given level of production. Hence, Castells argues, different societies operate with disparate modes of development and now it is a new technological paradigm that heralds the new mode of development, given birth by information processing as core activity “conditioning the effectiveness and productivity of all processes of production, distribution, consumption, and management.” Shift from Structuralists: Castells however argues, that while social relations and technical developments are closely connected, they are also independent factors in determining change. Whereas it’s common for Marxists to argue that capitalist principles shape the direction of change, including technical innovations, Castells viewed that ‘Modes of development evolve according to their own logic’12 and hence the informational mode of development is ‘relatively autonomous’ from the capitalist mode of production which predominates in the world today. Technical “new” foundation: With technique remaining in some way aloof from capitalism, an extension can point to the limits in changeability of a society since the mode of development, in many respects, then is beyond the reach of politics. This form of a technological determinism suggests political activity and aspiration are sharply limited since social arrangements (including of course political conspicuousness) are dependent on technical foundation. There is, no doubt, a common frame of reference between Daniel Bell’s post-industrialism and Castells’ informational mode of development insofar as theirs (along with Baudrillard’s postmodernism and Piore & Sabel’s flexible specialization) is a position that proclaims a new society has emerged from the old. This is in contradistinction from the scholars who emphasize on continuities, like Schiller (neo-Marxism), Aglietta (regulation theory), Harvey (flexible accumulation), Giddens (nation state and violence) and Habermas and Garnham (the public sphere). The Trilogy: The present essay comes from a mammoth work of 1200 pages, published in “The Power of Identity” (1997) as second volume, the first being “The Rise of Network Society” and the third volume being, “End of Millennium”. Castells says this is not a book about books. He views social theory as a tool to understand the world, not an end for intellectual self-enjoyment and in that spirit explains ethnic unbonding, insurgencies, environmental activisms, declares an end of patriarchy, calls the state powerless and announces a crisis in democracy. It is within the purview of last argument on democratic crises, that he details politics as media space. In favor of the Essay: Orthodoxy as canonic “The information technology revolution, and the restructuring of capitalism, have induced a new form of society…By a culture of real virtuality constructed by a pervasive, interconnected and diversified media system.” I view Castells’ essay as canonic, precisely because of the line of orthodoxy it purports to follow, and yet look anew at new movements with superb detachment. To call a set of current affairs analysis as future volumes of classics is an unenviable risk I have chosen to take. Yet it is difficult to conceive, let alone find, such encompassing works documenting collapse of Soviet Union, global criminal economy, fundamentalisms and social exclusions and linking them up all to the active media interplay, where the audiences are active constructors of exchanged messages. Not only, media, according to Castells are extremely diverse, but they are rooted in society, their interaction with the political process is a highly undetermined, depending on context, strategies of political actors, and specific interaction between an array of social, cultural and political factors. The space is media dominated and yet not determined by media. The sheer volume: What set Castells apart is the vast volumes of world-scale researches he undertook and cited to reach his conclusions. Not only on economic sense, the first, second and third world, but all the other social worlds (of the LGBT and the feminists, of the Zapatista and the elite political scandals) have featured in the arguments he makes. It’s the sheer volume of international researches which must make for a strong case. While dealing with American Presidential polls using television as a ritual, Bolivian crisis, which took radio for experiment does not escape his works. From Islamic and indigenous social movements, to national movements in the ex-USSR, to women's movements in Latin America and Taiwan, to the crisis of the Mexican state, scandal and corruption in India, Castells uses them all in truly global manner to explain the complexities and not deliver a solution. Mediacracy, not democracy: “Media politics is not all politics, but all politics must go through the media to affect decision-making.”14 Mediacracy appears not as contradictory to democracy because it is as diversity-friendly as the democracy! Castells opines, with lots of examples and empirical observations of course, that politics is then, fundamentally framed by the intrinsic logic of the new media. Scandal Politics: Castells makes scandal a rule of politics, not an explosive exception. This is because leaking information to the media to discredit the opponent, or producing counter-information to restore the image of an embattled politician, has become a critical weapon of latter-day politics. American model of show politics and political marketing or corruption practices after Indian elections become cases in point. Blurring of political positions among parties has led to more focus on political corruption than personal morality (with declining stature in leaderships as they struggle with mud-slinging; ‘they are all the same, anyway’ reactions are generated from public). Informational Politics: Castells detaches the technology from the politics and then explains the politics in terms of the technology. Despite differences between political left and political right (their sharply divergent concern with social equality), right, left and center must process their projects and strategies through a similar technological medium if they wish to reach society. Technological sharing induces new rules of the game that dramatically affect the substance of politics. Electronic media, then, have become the privileged space of politics. Everybody ends up playing the same game, although not in the same way or with the same purpose. Castells predicts Americanization of world politics as a crisis of democracy, as informational politics advances well into most of Europe, the new Russian democracy, or the Spain’s younger avatar. Identity Politics: After mediacracy resulting in scandal politics of glorification where information warfare takes the front-seat, Castells does not turn blind eye to the “other” movements. He takes help of electronic populism in Bolivia to suggest that media politics does not have to be the monopoly of influential. Identity-based communalism and poor peoples movements can also contribute to enclosing of politics in the media space and can attain power by using media. Future of Informational Politics: Castells uses tools of the same media to predict the politics which will shroud it. A re-creation of local state (local democracy) and enhanced political participation by means of horizontal communication (online interactions) are envisaged for the future. Because in Castells’s information society, tight political control and electronic openness seem to be mutually exclusive. In favor of the debate: Canon proposed, not declared There is no denying of a possibility where world will be suddenly devoid of electronic media, or as Einstein put it, the fourth world war will be fought with bows and arrows. With all options opening for the new media, there are others at the end of Internet security and Y3K with its families of hopelessness. As the technology will stand to take charge with artificial intelligence, the human may have to retire from concretizing time and space. In all these cases, Castells’ theories on information society may sound too optimistic. On the other side of criticism, both Marx and Weber made meticulous yet elaborated conceptual frameworks of a theory of capitalism and industrial society in 'Capital' and 'Economy and Society'. In contrast, Castells' conceptual elaborations of the traits of the information age are sketchy and the causal connections he makes do not reach the levels of abstraction and generalization we know from the canonic writers. Of course the fact that the new I-age is still fresh out for analysis and is yet to touch vast areas of the world is evidence for Castells’ genius for the way he has defined most parts. It’s not new for a sociologist to deal at length with media politics; indeed historically, Sociology for most part contributed to media studies. What, however is refreshing to note is that as with time, mainstream sociology purposively deviated from discussion of media, an ‘information society sociologist’, Castells, has based the general arguments of his theories around the ‘networked’ world woven by the media system. The views, singularly and emphatically made, have now been made open to intense debates and disputes. Such differences on wide ranging novel opinions, culminating in a ground for newer researches, I think, makes for the starting point for a seminal work to claim its canonic status. Hence I propose Castells. Notes: 1. Will and Ariel Durant: The Age of Reason Begins 2. William Shakespeare: As You Like It, Act III, Scene ii 3. William Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act I, Scene v 4. George Bernard Shaw: Man and Superman, Preface, p xxviii 5. William Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing, Act V, Scene i 6. William Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act II, Scene ii 7. William Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act IV, Scene vii 8. Manuel Castells: The Power of Identity, p 313 9. Karl Marx: The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature (doctoral dissertation) 10. Michael Gurevitch & Paddy Scannell: Canonization Achieved? Stuart Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding” (from Canonic Texts in Media Research) 11. Manuel Castells: The Informational City, p 17 12. Manuel Castells: Ibid., p 11 13. Manuel Castells: The Power of Identity, Preface 14. Manuel Castells: Ibid., p 317 Saswat Pattanayak blog@saswat.com	BLOG it?