, in 1942) is a sociologist

Sociology

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

 especially associated with information society

Information society

The aim of the information society is to gain competitive advantage internationally through using IT in a creative and productive way. An information society is a society in which the creation, distribution, diffusion, use, integration and manipulation of information is a significant economic,...

 and communication

Communication

Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...

 research.

The 2000–09 research survey of the Social Sciences Citation Index ranks him as the world’s fifth most-cited social science scholar, and the foremost-cited communication scholar. He is a member of the International Ethical, Scientific and Political Collegium

Collegium International

International Ethical, Scientific and Political Collegium, also called Collegium International is a high-level group created in 2002.-Origin:...

, a leadership and expertise organisation for developing means of overcoming the problems to establishing a peaceful, socially just, and economically sustainable world.

Life

Manuel Castells was raised primarily in Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

. Although from a conservative family, he was politically active in the student anti-Franco

Francisco Franco

Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...

 movement, an adolescent political activism that forced him to flee Spain for France. In Paris, at the age of twenty, he completed his degree studies, then progressed to the University of Paris

University of Paris

The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...

, where he earned a doctorate

Doctorate

A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...

 in sociology. At the age of twenty-four, Dr Castells became an instructor at the University of Paris, from 1967 to 1979; first at the Paris X University Nanterre, who fired him because of the 1968 student protests, then at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales

École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales

The École des hautes études en sciences sociales is a leading French institution for research and higher education, a Grand Établissement. Its mission is research and research training in the social sciences, including the relationship these latter maintain with the natural and life sciences...

, from 1970 to 1979. Subsequently in 1979, in the US, the University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 appointed him to two professorships; Professor of Sociology, and Professor of City and Regional Planning. In 2001, he was a research professor at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), Barcelona. In 2003, he joined the University of Southern California

University of Southern California

The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

 (USC) Annenberg School for Communication, as a Professor of Communication and the first Walter Annenberg

Walter Annenberg

Walter Hubert Annenberg was an American publisher, philanthropist, and diplomat.-Early life:Walter Annenberg was born to a Jewish family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on March 13, 1908. He was the son of Sarah and Moses "Moe" Annenberg, who published The Daily Racing Form and purchased The Philadelphia...

-endowed Chair of Communication and Technology. Prof. Castells is a founding member of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy

USC Center on Public Diplomacy

The University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy is a joint academic research, teaching and training center created and run jointly by the USC Annenberg School for Communication and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences' School of International Relations.Center leadership is...

, and a senior member of the diplomacy center's Faculty Advisory Council; and is a member of the Annenberg Research Network on International Communication. Prof. Castells divides his residence between Spain and the US; he is married to Emma Kiselyova. Since 2008 he has been a member of the governing board of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.

Theory

The sociological work of Prof. Manuel Castells Oliván synthesises empirical research literature with combinations of urban sociology

Urban sociology

Urban sociology is the sociological study of social life and human interaction in metropolitan areas. It is a normative discipline of sociology seeking to study the structures, processes, changes and problems of an urban area and by doing so providing inputs for planning and policy making. Like...

, organization studies, internet studies

Internet studies

Internet Studies is an interdisciplinary field studying the social, psychological, pedagogical, political, technical, cultural, artistic, and other dimensions of the internet and associated information and communication technologies. While studies of the internet are now widespread across academic...

, social movements, sociology of culture

Sociology of culture

The sociology of culture concerns culture—usually understood as sets of cognitive meanings—as it is manifested in society. For Georg Simmel, culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history".Cultural...

, and political economy

Political economy

Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...

. About the origins of the network society, he posits that changes to the network form of enterprise predate the electronic internet technologies (usually) associated with network organization forms (cf. Castells and Organization Theory

Castells and Organization Theory

The theory of the Information Age is deeply rooted in organization theory. This may come as a surprise since Manuel Castells is perhaps more readily associated with either the study of the Internet, cities and regions, or social movements. There are two points to be made about the parallels with...

). Moreover, he coined the (academic) term “The Fourth World

4th World

The Fourth World refers to# sub-populations socially excluded from global society;# nomadic, pastoral, and hunter-gatherer peoples living beyond the modern industrial norm....

”, denoting the sub-population(s) socially excluded from the global society; usual usage denotes the nomadic, pastoral, and hunter-gatherer ways of life beyond the contemporary industrial society norm.

In the 1970s, following the path of Alain Touraine

Alain Touraine

Alain Touraine is a French sociologist born in Hermanville-sur-Mer. He is research director at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where he founded the Centre d'étude des mouvements sociaux . He is best known for being the originator of the term "post-industrial society"...

 (his intellectual father), Castells was a key developer of the variety of Marxist

Marxism

Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

 urban sociology

Urban sociology

Urban sociology is the sociological study of social life and human interaction in metropolitan areas. It is a normative discipline of sociology seeking to study the structures, processes, changes and problems of an urban area and by doing so providing inputs for planning and policy making. Like...

 that emphasises the role of social movement

Social movement

Social movements are a type of group action. They are large informal groupings of individuals or organizations focused on specific political or social issues, in other words, on carrying out, resisting or undoing a social change....

s in the conflictive transformation of the city, (cf. post-industrial society

Post-industrial society

If a nation becomes "post-industrial" it passes through, or dodges, a phase of society predominated by a manufacturing-based economy and moves on to a structure of society based on the provision of information, innovation, finance, and services.-Characteristics:...

). He introduced the concept of "collective consumption" (public transport, public housing, et cetera) comprehending a wide range of social struggles — displaced from the economic stratum to the political stratum via state intervention. Transcending Marxist strictures in the early 1980s, he concentrated upon the role of new technologies in the restructuring of an economy. In 1989, he introduced the concept of the "space of flows

Space of flows

The Space of flows is a high-level cultural abstraction of space and time, and their dynamic interactions with digital age society. The concept was created by the sociologist and cybernetic culture theoretician Manuel Castells to "reconceptualize new forms of spatial arrangements under the new...

", the material and immaterial components of global information networks used for the real-time, long-distance co-ordination of the economy. In the 1990s, he combined his two research strands in The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, published as a trilogy, The Rise of the Network Society (1996), The Power of Identity (1997), and End of Millennium (1998); two years later, its worldwide, favourable critical acceptance in university seminars, prompted publication of a second (2000) edition that is 40 per cent different from the first (1996) edition.

The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture comprehends three sociologic dimensions — production

Production, costs, and pricing

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to industrial organization:Industrial organization – describes the behavior of firms in the marketplace with regard to production, pricing, employment and other decisions...

, power

Power (sociology)

Power is a measurement of an entity's ability to control its environment, including the behavior of other entities. The term authority is often used for power perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is accepted as endemic to...

, and experience

Experience

Experience as a general concept comprises knowledge of or skill in or observation of some thing or some event gained through involvement in or exposure to that thing or event....

 — stressing that the organisation of the economy

Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

, of the state

Sovereign state

A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...

 and its institutions, and the ways that people create meaning in their lives through collective action, are irreducible sources of social dynamics

Social dynamics

Social dynamics can refer to the behavior of groups that results from the interactions of individual group members as well to the study of the relationship between individual interactions and group level behaviors...

 — that must be understood as both discrete and inter-related entities. Moreover, he became an established cybernetic culture theoretician with his Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 development analysis stressing the roles of the state (military and academic), social movements (computer hackers and social activists), and business, in shaping the economic infrastructure according to their (conflicting) interests. The Information Age trilogy is his précis: "Our societies are increasingly structured around the bipolar opposition of the Net and the Self"; the “Net” denotes the network organisations replacing vertically integrated hierarchies as the dominant form of social organization, the Self denotes the practices a person uses in reaffirming social identity

Identity (social science)

Identity is a term used to describe a person's conception and expression of their individuality or group affiliations . The term is used more specifically in psychology and sociology, and is given a great deal of attention in social psychology...

 and meaning in a continually changing cultural landscape.

Publications

Prof. Manuel Castells Oliván is one of the world's most often-cited social science and communications scholars; he has written more than twenty books, including:

• The Urban Question. A Marxist Approach (Alan Sheridan
  Alan Sheridan
  -Life:Born Alan Mark Sheridan-Smith, Sheridan read English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge before spending 5 years in Paris as English assistant at Lycée Henri IV and Lycée Condorcet. Returning to London, he briefly worked in publishing before becoming a freelance translator...
  
  , translator). London, Edward Arnold (1977) (Original publication in French, 1972)
• City, Class and Power. London; New York, MacMillan; St. Martins Press (1978)
• The Economic Crisis and American Society. Princeton, NJ, Princeton UP (1980)
• The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements. Berkeley: University of California Press (1983)
• The Informational City: Information Technology, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban Regional Process. Oxford, UK; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell (1989)
• The Information Age trilogy: