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NETWORK SOCIETY THEORY

important type of identity building in our society’. 21 Hence the effort
which is placed on celebrating the Zapatista and feminist movements –
although it is highly questionable whether the term ‘identity’ adequately
captures feminist (or any other) consciousness and it is clearly the case
that his analysis of the Zapatistas was suffused with romantic illusions.
The most interesting aspect of the analysis, however, has to do with his
concept of ‘project identity’.
Castells uses this innocuous-sounding term to characterize what
happens ‘when social actors, on the basis of whichever cultural materials
are available to them, build a new identity that re-defines their position
in society and, by so doing, seek the transformation of overall social
22
structure’. In other words, unlike ‘resistance identity’, this form of iden-
tity ceases to be purely defensive. It does not merely ‘resist’ but is also
able to put forward positive alternatives to the status quo. In a word,
‘project identity’ is transformative of the fundamental conditions which
produces its oppression. It addresses root causes, not simply symptoms.
One could say – Castells does not say this – it is revolutionary rather than
reformist even though Castells’ terminology makes it sound almost like a
technical process in which intellectuals may dabble – a ‘project’. However,
of greater importance is Castells’ portrayal of this process. Although ‘pro-
ject identity’ is said to seek ‘the transformation of overall social struc-
ture’, it does so, according to Castells, ‘on the basis of whichever cultural
materials are available to them’.
In other words, ‘project identity’ is put together from the group’s own
inner cultural resources, perhaps long suppressed by an oppressor but
kept alive in popular memory. Long underground, it now resurfaces as
‘project identity’. It therefore does not represent a fundamental transfor-
mation of this consciousness but a kind of ideological resurrection. Nor
does it require the group to rise above any parochialism to which it may
have been prone. Castells operates with a hierarchy of types of identity
modeled to some extent on Weber’s treatment of types of domination:
‘resistance identity’ can rise to the level of ‘project identity’ and the
latter can degenerate into ‘legitimizing identity’. But ‘project identity’ is
generated from within the group, is, as Castells puts it, the result of an
‘expanding’ and occurs ‘on the basis of an oppressed identity’ – a
recrudescence. 23 In other words, this is, indeed, an ‘identity’. Structural
transformation does not require rationalistic forms of consciousness in
order to achieve its goals. All that is required is a recovery of the com-
munity self – a Heideggerian revelation of ‘authentic Dasein’. 24
Castells goes on to explicitly contrast his ‘project identity’ with
Giddens’ ideas of the requirements of ‘late modernity’. As one would

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