When most people barely perceived the impact that could have on the Internet, Manuel Castells (Hellín, Albacete, 77 years old) had already written his great work on the Information Society and had predicted that the breakthrough disruptive new communication technologies not only change the way we communicate and access information and the culture, but that would set a new model of production, a new economy.
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Pablo Iglesias, Irene Montero, Alberto Garzón, Yolanda Díaz and Manuel Castells will be the ministers of United we Can
With the trilogy The Information Age: economy, society and culture (1996-2003), Castells became the international reference for the new information society. A tireless researcher, has not stopped publishing books and scientific papers while serving as an advisor of all sorts of international organisations, from Unesco to the European Commission, and numerous governments. As a result of this huge work, Castells occupies the sixth position in the list of researchers most cited between 2000 and 2017 in the Social Science Citation Index.
But his interest as a sociologist has always been global, holistic, and has not been limited to analyzing the effects of the technological revolution, but to explore the mutations of a world in rapid transformation, immersed in a globalization process that brings new forms of exclusion. His concern for the social effects of the economic and political evolution has been present in all his work, with recent titles as explicit as The crisis of Europe or Rupture, the crisis of liberal democracy, in that it addresses the causes of the loss of legitimacy of the institutions.
Castells, followed very closely the discussions of the Social Forum of Porto Alegre, the movement 15-M in Spain and all the uprisings of the indignados who toured the world in those years, from the arab spring to the protests of Occupy Wall Street. Examined your motivations and the change implied in works such as Networks of outrage and hope, a title of a reference on new forms of political expression. With Pekka Himanen published Information Society and the Welfare State, in which they argue that, as demonstrated in the case of Finland, it is possible to be in the forefront of the technological transformations of globalization without paying for it a high price in terms of inequality and social exclusion.
Man, discreet, of deep convictions and progressive, that shy away from the notoriety and the spotlight of the television as if burned, has built a huge amount of academic work on the formation of multidisciplinary teams to which he has urged them to explore new angles of reality. Your employees know from the first contact that every effort will be little to be at the height of the demand that Manuel Castells applies to yourself and to your teams. This is the key to their successful passage through the most prestigious universities. Expelled from Spain by the franco regime, he graduated in Sociology from the University of Paris, in which she was mentored by Alain Touraine, and with just a 24-year-old became the youngest professor in that university. Paris jumped to the University of California at Berkeley, where he was professor of Sociology and Urban Planning and over 24 years developed the central part of his career. Without leaving this institution, of which he is still professor emeritus, Castells returned to Spain to direct the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.
the Author of 26 books and co-author, or editor other 22, doctor honoris causa from 18 european universities and has been a visiting professor in 17 of the most prestigious in the world, including Oxford and Cambridge and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The number of awards and distinctions that are listed in your curriculum apabulla, among them the National Prize of Sociology and Political Science in 2008 or the prize Holberg, 2012 created by the Parliament of Norway to supply the deficiencies of the Nobel peace prize in social sciences. To have that level of international recognition is a great credential to occupy the portfolio of Universities.
In recent years, it has been implicated in the evolution of Spanish political and international from tribunes news and discussion forums. Has expressed no-holds-barred criticism of abrasive to the form in which it is approached from the institutions of the State, the political conflict Catalan, and also to the manner in which it has managed the economic crisis in Spain and in Europe. Understanding of the causes that have led to the boom of sovereignty in Catalonia has also addressed the role of the new religious identities, cultural and national in the global world. The line of thought that he expressed in his newspaper articles has been in tune with the new political currents of the call left transformative. In the brazilian elections made an appeal to the intellectuals to prevent the election of Jair Bolsonaro, and in the latter city supported the candidacy of Ada Colau. He now responds to his call for a task as committed as part of the Government in these times of extreme polarization.
