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NETWORK SOCIETY THEORY

Thus, the process of identity formation today is understood as
fundamentally a ‘defensive’ one. There is no going forward, one can only
look back. Civil society is seen by Castells as ‘in the process of disinte-
gration’ and can provide neither a basis for the reflexive reformism of
Giddens nor for the even more rationalistic aspirations of a revolutionary
socialism. Therefore the political task is not the supersession of parochial
identities by a process of Aufhebung which recognizes, incorporates and
qualitatively transforms ‘resistance’ – raising it and humanity to an alto-
gether higher level of (international) social existence. The vision here is
different and irreducibly communitarian: ‘project identity, if it develops
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at all, grows from communal resistance’. The vision is even more deeply
pessimistic than is the case with the writings of other scholars discussed
above.
Castells’ notion of a ‘space of flows’ is part of this communitarianism.
Since for him a communal identity is the primary ontological reality,
it follows that social and economic relations which operate outside of
and beyond communities necessarily operate in an alienating ‘space’ – a
void which never achieves the ‘meaning-full’ interactions of ‘place’. This
‘space’ is simply a ‘space of flows’ – a realm of alienation impacting on
‘fully autonomous’ communities from outside. It is able to subordinate,
exploit and even crush communities, without penetrating and profoundly
transforming their very nature and inner social characteristics. Thus,
interestingly enough, although the thesis is about the triumph and all-
pervasiveness of ‘network society’, there is no ‘network identity’ – not to
mention ‘network consciousness’. Castells specifically rejects the notion
that network society is a new (international) culture ‘because the multi-
plicity of subjects in the network and the diversity of networks reject
such a unifying “network culture”’. 31 ‘Identities’ and ‘flows’ occupy
different worlds and have radically different characteristics: ‘networks’
simply ‘link’ identities which are the real, ontologically privileged, cultural
actors in human history.
This attachment to identity also explains Castells’ critique of neo-
liberalism, his preference for the East Asian developmental state and
what, given his communitarianism, may appear to be a surprising affir-
mation of a strong role for the state. Neo-liberalism is rejected from the
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communitarian standpoint as a ‘project’ inherently antithetical to iden-
tity. By foregrounding the free market, it threatens to undermine the very
foundations on which identity rest. Castells’ attitude to the state is more
complex. It depends on the type of state and the role which it plays
vis-à-vis identity. He is, as one might expect, highly critical of the Soviet state
and sees its bureaucratic rigidity as the main reason for the failure of the

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