This will be a series of blog posts that I am writing to assist me in the work of developing my book. Basically, I want to engage in a critical analysis, as it pertains to my interest in civics and citizenship education, of some of the key scholars in a range of different fields. I will be aiming to describe their arguments, the relevance of those arguments to my work, and any differing points of view related to the work in question.
This section, on Manuel Castell’s book, Networks of Outrage and Hope will be relevant to Chapter Three: The organizing potential of networks and social media: challenges and opportunities.
This book, by the well known sociologist Manuel Castello, is a very different take on the role of the internet and social movements than some of the previous books that I have written about. It takes as its theme the rise of global protest movements, and seeks to identify the motivating causes for these movements, as well the mechanics by which the operate. Although Castello is quick to point out that he’s not covering the topic in any great depth, it is a comprehensive analysis that is wide ranging and reasonably detailed. In his analysis, Castells takes what are quite considerably different social movements- such as the Tunisia in 2011 and Iceland in 2010 – and examines the way that they came to prominence, the tactics they employed, who was involved, and what the results of the social movement were. His argument is that despite the vastly different cultural and institutional contexts, there are some striking similarities in these social movements – which he terms as ‘networked social movements’ – and one factor that must be considered in these social movements (of which Iceland and Tunisia are just two examples) is the role that digital social media and wireless networks played in the formation and operation of the social movements. This role is, of course, much more nuanced than either the critics of ‘slacktivism’ or the techno-optimists would have you believe.
Castells argues that these movements – and the global wave of protest movements, despite the significant outcomes and differences within them – all shared a number of common features. These included the fact that, for the most part, these movements ignored traditional political parties, distrusted the media, did not recognise or promote any formal kind of hierarchical leadership structure, and instead relied on the internet and local assemblies for collective debate and decision-making. Castells basis his analysis on his own work about the grounded theory of power, which argues that power is embedded in the institutions of society, and particularly the state. However, counter power, which is exercised by social actors, also exists and can be used to disrupt the power of the state. Central to the control of power is the shaping of meaning, on an individual level and a collective level – so changing society (transformation in Castells’ terminology) is the use of communication. Castells argues that transformation fo the communication environment directly affects the forms of meaning construction, which in turn affects the production of power relationships.
This is important because the recent rise of mass self-communication via the internet has the potential to disrupt the traditional lines of communicative power. The power o the state, exercised and ormed through the control of mass media, is dependent on the coordinating and regulatory functions of the state. Power networks come together by switching power – that is, by connecting tow or more differnt networks in the process of making power for each one of them in their respective fields. For example, the corporate power of the communications industries and the government might support each other through a shared network of communication.
However counter power, in Castells’ argument, can be exercised by reprogramming networks around alternative interests and disrupting the dominant switches. He argues that, “by engaging in the production of mass media messages, and by developing autonomous networks of horizontal communication, citizens of the Information Age become able to invent new programs for their lives with the materials of their suffering, fears, dreams and hopes”. (p. 9)
The crucial difference between Castell’s argument, and the ones made by Earl and Kimport is the role of public space. Acknowledging that Earl and Kimport mostly focused on e-tactics, rather than protests (which might be called e-mobilisations, in their terminology), Earl and Kimport are somewhat agnostic about the importance of what they describe as co-presence. That is, the need for people to come together in a physical space. On the other hand, Castells argues that this essential – indeed, his central argument about outrage, fear and hope relies upon mass gatherings as a crucial part of enacting social change (or at least foregrounding the opportunity for such social change). He argues that these occupied public spaces create community, based on the close presence of others with shared values and goals, and this is necessary for overcoming fear of the repercussions of power of the dominant forces in society.
Castells’ then examines a number of well known global protest movements that all took place in the 2010s, including:
- Tunisia
- Iceland
- Egypt and the Arab Uprising
- Los Indignadas in Spain
- Occupy Wall Street
From this study (as well as others that he references but doesn’t discuss in the same level of detail, such as Turkey, Brazil, Mexico and Chile), Castells’ develops the notion of networked social movements as a new global trend. These examples ‘express the vitality and continuity of the new form of social movements in spite of their diversity and differential outcomes’. While acknowledging the different contexts, Castells points out that there are some similarities. Firstly, these are not the direct result of economic crises or authoritarian regimes. Instead, they are often linked to a crisis in the legitimacy of the poetical system – mostly because people who have grievances no longer feel that they have the channels to express those grievances, so they result to alternative forms of protest, aimed at reinventing democracy.
A second major feature, linking back to Castells’ notion of communicative power, is that these protests had an autonomous communicative capacity. In other words, the participants and the broader public were able to communicate with each other via social media and the internet. From this point, castles identifies some common features present with all of these movements:
- Networked in multiple forms
- Become a movement by occupying the urban space
- Space of autonomy is the new spatial form of networked social movements
- They are both local and global at the same time
- Generated their own form of time – timeless time.
- Movements are viral
- Transition from outrage to hope is accomplished by deliberation in the space of autonomy
- Horizontal, multimodal networks – create togetherness
- Usually leaderless movements.
- Horizontality of networks – supports cooperating and solidarity while undermining the need for formal leadership
- Highly self-reflective movements
- Non-violent
- Rarely programmatic