NetworkState - NetworkSociety - forse i nodi vengono al pettine nella NetworkIdentity
The Network Society and Organizational Change
Your trilogy is on the network society. Help us understand the defining features of that society and how it's different from what came before.
Well, as you well said before, in fact, my trilogy is on the interaction between the network society and the power of identity and social movements. It's that interaction which, I think, defines our world...
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The network society itself is, in fact, the social structure which is characteristic of what people had been calling for years the information society or post-industrial society. book cover: Network SocietyBoth? "post-industrial society" and "information society" are descriptive terms that do not provide the substance, that are not analytical enough. So it's not a matter of changing words; it's providing substance. And the definition, if you wish, in concrete terms of a network society is a society where the key social structures and activities are organized around electronically processed information networks. So it's not just about networks or social networks, because social networks have been very old forms of social organization. It's about social networks which process and manage information and are using micro-electronic based technologies.
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So what we have, for instance, in the case of Europe, is a complex system of institutional relations, which I call the network state, because, in fact, it's a network of interactions of shared sovereignty. Under different forms, you have a similar situation in most of the world. In Latin America, some states are with others, but the main thing is that the key economic conditions are governed in connection with international institutions like the International Monetary Fund, through different trade treaties, MERCOSUR or the Andean Pact or the connection to the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA]?. So in other words, states operate, still exist, but operate as actors of a much more complex and interactive network.
Even in the case of the United States, few people think that the United States can act alone and impose conditions, both in military or economic terms. To start with, it's not the U.S. Government but the Federal Reserve Bank that has some kind of economic policy, but this economic policy is highly conditioned and shaped by the interaction with the global financial markets. Alan Greenspan does not control the global financial markets. He follows and creates conditions for the economy to perform better under the conditions or the constraints created by the global financial market.
We could say the same thing in technology networks, in flows of trade and flows of information. So the notion here is not the disappearance of the nation state; it's the transformation of a world based on sovereign nation states into a world of interdependence, of nation states sharing sovereignty.
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One of the legendary business tycoons in the world, Barnave, who is the leader of the major engineering company, BBM in Sweden, in one of the meetings we had last year said, "Well, my company is the largest engineering company in the world." They're building in Thailand, China, India, South Africa, etc. "We are predicated on the principle, which is complimentary to this, if you're the biggest and the fastest, then you win." But what he would not challenge is the notion that if you have to choose between size and resources, and agility and adaptability, there's no question that agility and adaptability wins.
This is simple to understand, but difficult to actually implement, because people who are currently in power in bureaucracies, in political organizations, in large corporations, in universities, are there because they have gone through the hierarchy, they have their clientele, they have their systems of support. All this has been pushed out by the out-competing logic of networks. And therefore, they will resist to the end. But by resisting, they bring the organizations down with themselves.
Now, it doesn't mean that networks, by definition, are wonderful. It can be networks of destruction. Networks don't have personal feelings. They kill or kiss. But the issue here is that first you start with a network which is equipped with information technology. That's the key. Then what the network does depends on the programming of the network, and this is of course a social and cultural process.
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... So in that sense, companies do not run the world, because they cannot even control the global economy. There are a multiplicity of factors and influences. There's not an executive committee of the capitalist class planning and running the world. But on the other hand, companies and governments don't run the world because more and more there are alternative actors, social movements of all kinds, identity, communal movements, as well as proactive movements such as environmentalists, women, etc., that ultimately shape the agenda of both corporations and government institutions. Governments in the world, at this point, have a tremendous crisis of legitimacy. Kofi Annan in the fall of 2000 commissioned a global survey of citizens' opinions in the world which showed that two-thirds of citizens in the world did not consider themselves represented by their governments. And this was also true for the advanced democracies, the United States and others, with the only exception being the Scandinavian democracies.
So, citizens are not trusting their governments by and large these days; are not trusting, in fact, anyone except themselves and their identity networks, and in some cases, social movements with alternative values. And in that sense, the complexity of our world is that the institutions of governments are crumbling, while on the one hand, networks of technology, capital, production are organizing our lives throughout the world and many, many, different alternative sources of values and interests are emerging as a response to this one-sided domination, because people do not have institutions through which they can process their claims and their demands.