Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age

from the Library of Congress in Washington DC you well good afternoon everybody I am Carolyn Brown I direct the office of scholarly programs and the John W kooky Center here at the Library of Congress and it's my great and sincere pleasure to welcome you here this afternoon for what I know will be a very interesting and mind-expanding lecture by dr. Manuel Castells and the title of the lectures that works of outrage and hope before we begin the program which is about networks and digital things I'm going to ask you though to turn off the buzzing of your digital things if you would turn off cell phones in a bit anything else that will go off and interfere with the program recording in the speaker the John W Kluge Center which has organized this event was established by none other than John W Kluge with a very generous endowment to create a scholarly venue on Capitol Hill where the finest mature scholars might have opportunities to bring their wisdom and their knowledge to the nation's leaders and policy makers a space where as we like to say the world of affairs and the world of ideas where the thinkers and doers might have the opportunity to come together in mutually enriching conversation the center also supports the rising generation of the world's most promising junior fellows as well and the idea is that these two groups the seniors and the juniors will have an opportunity at least from time to time to come together and and form a very vibrant and intellectual community in connection with that we also have a number of lectures occasionally small symposia based primarily on the work of our scholars although occasionally we'll do it a small conference on something else if you want to know more about the center and the programs you can sign up at the back table I'll leave your email and we'll send you RSS feeds and there are also brochures that will tell you more about the Kluge Center today's speaker dr. Manuel Castells is the Kluge chair in technology and society an authority on the Information Age and its sociological implications dr. Castillo's is a university professor and the walls Annenberg chair in communication technology and society at the University of Southern California he's professor emeritus of sociology and professor emeritus of city and regional planning at the University of California Berkeley where he taught for 24 years he has other appointments but I'm not going to go into all of those I could go on too long about him but I am going to say that dr. Kass tells is a member of the library's scholars council and in his time here this summer which has been too short but in his time here there's something he's been very helpful to the library as we've thought through for ourselves the implications of the digital age on our work dr. Castel has been tracking and studying the communications revolution for 25 years many many of us may not really realize it's been going on that long but in fact it has I'm not going to provide the titles and details of the over 26 books he's art he's authored but to give you what I think is the most concise statement of what he's been up to for these 25 years whereas it's more than 25 years but over the the major part of his career I want to sight-read a citation that was read he in March he received the Holberg International Memorial Prize from the Parliament of Norway and I think their citation very wonderfully and concisely sums up his accomplishments manuel castells is the leading sociologist of this and new information and media technologies his ideas and writings have shaped our understanding of the political dynamics of urban and global economies in the networked society he has illuminated the underlying power structures of the great technological revolutions of our time and their consequences his helped us to understand how social and political movements have co-evolved with the new technologies so this is an opportunity for all of us to understand and learn in new ways from our distinguished colleague and I can now say my friend Manuel Castells Thank You Carolyn I let me just in one second express my gratitude to the Kluge Center and particularly to its director dr. Carolyn Brown for giving me the opportunity to share with you this afternoon my most recent research which concerns precisely the relationship between new technologies and new social movements certainly these social movements are not created by technology technology in itself doesn't produce anything it's the technology weave into the fabric of society culture politics which really become significant so in the last two years unexpectedly a number of major social movements spread in countries around the world from Iceland where the most important movement started to Tunisia and then from Tunisia to most Arab countries and then from Spain to the United States and all these are specific connections is no conspiracy but these vitality there are specific connections and then from there to the wall in fact they had been in the last two years they had been demonstrations occupations in thousands thousands of cities around the world including over 1,000 in the United States they are map in my book and this goes on just this week the student movement in Chile just searched again and this is a relentless wave of social movements largely be young the attention of the media and the indifference of the politicians so even you know in specific country that being have this kind of settlement Israel in July October 2011 had the largest social mobilisation of Israeli history with more than 500,000 people in a country of 1 million people participated in demonstrations sittings etc for several months and again the media had not reported carefully unless there is violence and then of course this nice footage the motives and outcomes of these movements are very diverse in the West they were mainly prompted by protest against the mismanagement of government of the major financial crisis that started in 2008 and still goes on ask Europe these days in the Arab countries by a combination of food crisis and the rejection of the dictatorial regimes that had had many specific expressions of protest but some that were savagely repressed and destroyed over the years including the last one in Egypt in 2008 and suddenly the governor's could not cope with it in even if there has been such a diversity in all cases there was an individual and collective feeling of outrage towards social injustice and of humiliation by the arrogance of the authorities these are to keep feelings in the matter but what I want to argue in this lecture on the basis of observation is that there is a largely common pattern that transcends cultural and institutional context to identify this pattern I did over all these last two years filled work in by myself and by a network of collaborators colleagues students in a number of countries including Spain United States several European countries there are countries and also we examine a number of secondary sources and reports on the Internet the result is a book about to be published I could say even this is the first time I specifically addressed the content of this book you could consider it the launching of the book but probably the regulations of the library would not allow the actual launching of the book that will take place in London in early October it's a book title members of outrage and hope and spanish by polity press and the only reason I'm citing it is not a commercial advertising is simply to tell you that I will go to the essence of the matter and you can find in this book all the empirical details all the data all the appendices all the things that I'm saying I'm not saying they are demonstrated but that is they are illustrated by the material that is gathered and presented in this book and more than that the analysis that I will present here and in the book is still preliminary because we lack sufficient perspective and we don't have enough information so it all is it's very tentative however this analysis in fact is rooted in a much broader framework of theory what I call grounded theory which is theory always supported by evidence this is the only theory I do presented in a book published in 2009 by Oxford us depressed communication power communication power that book presents a theory of power as based on communication with number of cases titled redundant mentally is a theory of power and I will give you this theory in a nutshell so that's the convenient way to summarize 600 pages - to express the notion that we this is the background of what we are going to walk in specifically into the movement because it fits it fits and when doesn't fit I will change the theory I will not change the date they my point is that power relations are the most important subject of the study in social sciences at large for the very simple reason that they are the foundational the foundational relationships of society because those who have power shape distributions of society according to their values and interests as simple as that so let's say power relationships are the DNA of society right cherchez La Femme no syllables so power in social theory we have drawn tradition of theories on power basically you can reduce to two forms of power which are often combined in history one is the trajectory of intellectual understanding of power that comes from Machiavelli to much better power us the monopoly the legitimate monopoly of violence myself I take out the legitimate power as monopolies of violent legitimate or not legitimate course that the state power but there is another tradition which throughout the history of social theory has been extremely important and less often cited by both right and left power as persuasion power as cultural hegemony from gram she to Michel Foucault power has the ability to shape the mind I would even say the formula just to simplify things that shape in the minds in the long run is more effective than torturing the bodies because ultimately our decisions our behavior is governed fortunately by our brains by our minds that include at the heart the brain and therefore if people ultimately think otherwise that got this established in the values and interests of the institution's ultimately this will permeate the institution or will change the institutions and therefore will change and so fundamentally fundamentally the power is in our minds although there is always a combination between coercion and intimidation and persuasion and framing the mind as just lake of and a whole stream in political cognition cognitive science argues now framing the mind is the most important thing however this does not mean that we are all governed by ill intention people manipulating or repressing us this is our relationships and therefore relationships our relationship is not one side is both sides is power and what I call counter power in all societies if we would have a one rule to understand history in a human species is wherever there is domination there is resistance to domination now how do you sit and Express with which kind of outcomes but it is a different matter and a matter of specific countries but fundamentally the whole dynamics of history is histah tutions being shaped by those in power and then being resisted by those who don't have enough influence or representation in terms of their values and interests and ultimately over running the resistance of the dominant interest in the institutions sometimes through violence sometimes through election sometimes through moral persuasion and ultimately creating new institutions which reproduce new power relationships which will be challenged later by new people who are not represented etc but you would say is a romantic vision of history but I say it's an empirically grounded vision of history that white revolutions are always betrayed but in the way of betraying them there is some changes in relationship to what happened before now if persuasion and reframing the human mind is a fundamental part of social dynamics how this happens well it happens through the minds right by necessity and how the mind works am not at all but you know scientists have already detected that they were through communication processes meaning what reaches our brains our signals from social networks natural network that through communication networks treats our neural networks and our neural network process B signals this information in relationship to the stock of knowledge ideas images etc that are already installed in our neighbors and they work with this material communication be understood of course at the process of sharing meaning through information exchange now if communication networks are critical for the formation of our intentions our values our behavior it becomes obvious that if there is a transformation of communication in society that has some effects on the transformation of the snail goes under for on the transformation of the human mind and the probe in the way in which human mind processes the signals of our social and natural environment and there has been as we know a dramatic transformation in communication technology organizational tech transformation and institutional transformation in the last let's say 20 years kerning was mentioning that what people think is the future in fact is the past many cases remind you that the internet was deployed for the first time in 1969 so it's an old technology there are simply new incarnations and new forms of communication from these matrix of a network computer networks this transformation which is multi-dimensional has many aspects and that what is analyzing my communication PowerBook but in one word is the shift from mass communication to as self communication not that traditional mass communication disappeared but he's also being reshaped by the new forms of mass communication which are self communication they are mass because they can reach everywhere like the traditional mass communication but at the same time these are networks that are multimodal interactive the messages can be self directed self created several trip and self combined and since everybody does this ultimately the network of communication becomes multimodal interactive global local communication level this is my self communication you can say it's internet plus mobile wireless communication now the Internet is basically all and will be increasingly so and wireless is the combination of both that provides the technological basis in the broadest sense of the social structure of the what I defined time ago as the networked society but in more specific terms in relationship to a transformation of socialized communication of communication that can reach everybody in society is a deep transformation of this system now counter power has been organized on social mobilization throughout history always which is what we usually call at least I call and we can discuss it later social movements which are not in society with political target but their social movements aiming at changing the values of society the way we think about everything women movement environmental movement but in history the movement for Liberty the movement the civil rights movement so movement that are specifically aimed at changing the way we think things in society and by the way they can be of different political and ideological tonalities they're not the good guys of the social movement against the big bad ball for the political system no political system can be nice and evil and the same thing for the social movement and can be racist social movements sexy social movements too torpor clericalism etcetera etcetera in both ways is simply an analytical distinction now from this point of view what I'm going to analyze and present is the common patterns of social movements in the Internet age not the it's essential that they are in the Internet age it is essential that they use the internet and wireless communication platform but of course this is not this is the medium this is not the cause this is not the search but it's important has a specific consequences and this is what I will try to show attention here I'm not normally that's something that usually get people and rage with me in my work and in my lectures that even if my sympathies are obvious although not very clear they when I do my analysis when I do my research I take a huge analytical distance and I am NOT normative so regardless of my personal sympathy with some of this movement not at all please take it as an attempt to report back to you what I have found and then we can discuss on that and when when you will argue well but this is not right I will tell you what the movement would respond not what I will be responding not very important because as a person as a citizen and fully involved in society as an analyst I am the the most traditional kind of academic trying to establish what I find in terms of the traditional practices of scientific research whatever scientific means in every context and so here is my report social movements throughout history usually emerge from a combination of two things they the deterioration the degradation of living conditions that make the life of people at one point unbearable and on the other hand by the deep distrust we survey the political institutions that manage their lives is the combination of two we are in trouble and people who should manage our lives and not responsive and they do their thing and not ours with throughout history in every instance the two things and we know that in the last year's the two the two elements had concurred in most of the world we can later talk in the discussion about the different the state of affairs in in different parts of the world which should provide some nuance to this analysis but fundamentally this is the combination of both so when this happens that is life deteriorates or something outrageous happen and then these deduces are not responsive when people take matters into their own hands and by doing so they with the institutional avenues the procedure is traditionally defined to express their protest and to present their ideas and their projects well this is risky behavior because the institutions are constructed to reward you when you follow the rules and to punish you what you don't in many different ways starting with the legitimizing all actions in the media anarchists terrorists NASA is whatever so not only repressing with the police but repressing in the mind this responsible people who want to destroy democracy they just forget to say that most people in the world think there is no democracy and this includes the United States and Western Europe with the exception usually of his culinary all the data of the opinion polls different sources of the last ten years are in my book and you can to get there that's crisis of legitimacy in the traditional political science analysis now in the historical experience and in the movements that I have observed social movements are emotional movements they start with emotions and here I connect with the most recent neuro scientific research Tomas and others that show the fundamental role of emotions in triggering shaping organizing the human mind from their feelings follow and from their this more rational decision-making follow but they at the roots emotions are fundamental so these social movements are not programmatic movements are emotional movement that they start with emotions which kind of emotions and here we have a whole field of research in political science and in political communication which is associated with a field of thought has a little label well the label of this one is the theory of effective intelligence what would be in political communication political science the equivalent of the emotional intelligence in psychology because all comes from the main source the neuroscience has understanding emotions or the motivation of human behavior so in specific terms got the theory of effective intelligence on the basis of experimental psychology experiments in moon psychology argue this is not me this just incorporating whole series of studies argue that the trigger of social normalization is anger which is a psychologically defined emotion and the repressor is fear the repressor is fear by the way in some interpretations of why fear is the most fundamental emotion of human life this is not scientifically proven but some of the colleges play with that it's linked to evolutionary theory why because we are all the successors the hairs of cords because those who didn't run fast enough because they were creatures they were eaten up and therefore there is a selection of the species in which the more creative you are the less likely you are to survive and the less likely you are children and grandchildren will be there to exist so self-preservation is linked to cover this the for to fear and fear is the repressor now but this is not fatality fear can be overcome and is overcome fear triggers anxiety which is associated with the avoidance of danger but fear is overcome by sharing and identifying with others I am trembling but the you are trembling too let's hold hands and you are trembling too let's hold hands and then becomes a circle white people hold hands in any sociology well we are all trembling and when we cannot hold hands in the street because the police comes too quickly we hold hands in the Internet we get together in the internet we share we identify and just by being together not agreeing on anything just agreeing on the angle on the angle not agreeing on a program not voting for a party just we are all hungry and then by sharing anger but saying it together through together Ness fear is overcome and when fear is overcome then there is process of mobilization which then shifts again psychological research shift to another very potent positive emotion enthusiasm so you go from anger that overcomes fear to then enters and that things can be different hope that the title of my book outrage and hope the connection between the two now this hope and this mobilization is organized from the very beginning through this sharing through what people call communicative action meaning people communicate they share and then they share projects they share into self and they keep growing together building networks of communication the recent transformation in the field of communication allow people to build autonomous communication in the internet networks with much less I will take not control but much less control than ever in history on the part of the established powers the political economic or media corporations we can discuss later about that that is clear that even if the internet is still control and so on even fact is not it surveilled surveil what is the difference between control and survey well the important things to share the message and to build a network if you are surveil what the pressures will find is who said that and then go and get it but the message goes the message goes so if you are the messenger that's a problem but if you are the message you live forever you don't care and therefore therefore this communicative autonomy built into the new system which therefore can form and reform networks constantly by the simple ability of these networks to reprogram themselves so movements that I have studied and those that are similar around the world come from this pattern come from crisis of the economy crisis of legitimacy simultaneously outrage provoked buying just attractions and at the same time they are able to form quickly and autonomously in intended members and then they go into collective action they require an emotional mobilization trigger but outrage and by hope of a possible change I would argue that more and more these type of movements represent the emergence of a new pattern of social movements which I call in the Internet age because they could not take place without the Internet in this particular form the game is daughter Cosman internet but their shape is caused by by by the Internet as let's say the working-class movement in the 19th century could not have formed without the process of industrialization and the connection to largest game assembly factories where the working class was materially formed in addition to the pubs where the movement could be connected so the factories were the moments of formation the networks and the tops were the moments of hope toward the future there are a number of characteristics of these movements of all these countries what what I have studied so rather than giving you nice anecdote from here and there which we can do later if you persist did to the end of the discussion I am going to synthesize what I have found that is common in all cases and look we are talking about Tunisia we are talking I did not talk about the Iran in this group but the 2009 movement in Iran was quite similar we're talking about Tunisia Iceland nothing can be more different but there are common patterns they're talking about Spain and and the United States we're talking about Chile we are talking about England now the intensity of the movement the success of the movements and the art consultant are very different but the pattern is very similar why similar first of all and then I'm going to give you my my laundry list about the different aspects that together form a pattern they are network of course they are network first always first in the internet because it's the space of communicative autonomy where they can form and organize and emerge from this chaotic system of outrage and so that people without often knowing each other get together in the members the most important case is Egypt in which the 2008 mobilization in traditional terms was crushed before it could emerge while in 2011 they they started in the internet following the example of Tunisia and they form in internet on a large scale a critical scale before going into the streets before going into demonstrations so they form first in communication networks why because communication networks have always been at the source of social movements right history would be pamphlet would be preaches from the church or from the mosque where could be late later on radio television communication has always been at the center of social movement because only by people getting together in their minds they can act together otherwise they are already partial organized institutionalized control by the institutions of society however they're not working even if it always starts in internet or in some cases in the mobile phone network which of course more and more is the same thing that may internet but these of all things at the same time but even so the network informed is multimodal it includes social networks online and offline as well as peer assistance or some members family members friends neighbors and very important in the case of the Arab countries soccer club networks funds networks very important remember why unfortunately a few months ago in Port Sayid police provocation killed they many literally hundreds of fans the holily the Cairo the kind of soccer team because they Allah we found networks have actually been decisive at the beginning of the revolution contacted through the internet but once the thing were industry the soccer one narrow so everything that is narrow meaning what connection between individuals not organizations not banners not flags not party no leaders networks people connected to each other trust in each other moreover networks are within the movement with other movements on the world with the internet blogosphere with the media and with society at large networking technologies are essential because they provide a platform for a continuing extensive network in practice that evolves with the changing shape of the equipment the movement evolves the net was in the internet evolved easily without anything to be decided or agreed upon moreover they do not need a formal leadership and no command and control center they or they organize themselves in in terms of the decision there is no anyone who would say do that it would be debated in the neighbors and with things go go were the network goes again fundamental characteristic this dissenter structure maximizes chances of participation in the movement because they are open and in that words you don't need a membership card you don't need to really think you go into the debate and you go in certain mobilizations and not another depending on how you connect to the network it also reduces the vulnerability of the movement to the threats of repression because how you kill the network you kill one node in the network the characteristics they never take reproduce themselves they have biological logic they keep going you cut it out there are many other nodes that's why I have proposed the term that these are drive somatic revolutions they are isomers they're underground they emerge they they go down but they all are connected all the time and sometimes I'm urging the Internet sometimes not sometimes going to the square sometimes go into political mobilization etc moreover networking of the movement protects the movement not only against repression but against its own threats of bureaucratization manipulation anyone trying to manipulate or assume the leadership of the movement with no one telling him or her about that is immediately flame no survival the more do you want to be a leader the less you will be a leader the more people will kill you on the net second while they start an internet they become a movement by occupying the urban space they always go into the urban space why the couple of things first the togetherness which is fundamental requires at some point the most direct expression of emotional bonding you touch the other Internet you connect but you don't still touch the other but when you are together when you shared the danger and when you share space when you share a new form of being together in the city then something else happens there is a moment of psychological and personal transformation moreover you are during a space anyone can join by just going there even disagreeing with the discussions with the gold with everything but you don't have to agree on anything just by being there you're part of the movement simply by being there so is literally open-ended in in that sense and then the province starts up people join for the opposite reason that why other where as you know one part of the Tea Party movement in my state join movement that fundamentally was more on the Democratic side when but both they shared the same thing they share the rejection of traditional political political institutions so in that sense that way I say it depends on your opinion if you are for these movements or not but the movements are such are autonomous potent and sharing certain projects the other reason why movement need urban space is because since they don't have a form of histah to some action they have to exist in society by being there by being visible visible for the media visible for society and also by challenging the institutions if you say I cannot occupy this space and I occupy this space well you can send the police but you have to acknowledge that something is going on in terms of the protest of society that were tactically speaking in all these movements they always have a simple norm if we are 20 they are going to kill us you were 2,000 much less and we are 20,000 they will let us quiet as long as we're 20,000 so there is the capacity to challenge society it's is a different it's a different form when go through physical occupation the space that is organized between this autonomy of his internet networks and the autonomy of urban space occupied by the movement that space is a form what I call a third space which I call the space of autonomy space of autonomy in the network this the pace of autonomy in the communities that are formed locally this space of autonomy is the form of existence of the new social movements thirdly these movements are all local and global at the same time they the rise for local condition local cultures local values in their own terms in their own language and rooted into the specific conditions that provoke their outrage they have different faiths they have different political orientation they have different relationship to gender to class to raise etc they are look but at the same time they immediately connect to the world and they immediately bring promise of the world into the discussion into their debates there both things at the same time they are local and global as the Internet internet is local and global these movements are local and global in terms of their genesis these movements are largely spontaneous in their origin usually they are triggered by a spark of indignation that the name of the Spanish movement the indignant people had indicated first by something in some cases in the cases of the Arab revolutions self-immolation repression savagery from the dictatorship the case of Syria 19 children younger than 1214 being tortured for having given a graffiti that's how it started the Syrian Revolution in other cases like in Europe or in many countries Europe Spain certain the United States is indignation against the behavior not so much of the financial elite but of the political elites being subservient to the financially the obvious thing in the United States they say the bank's not us as the typical thing they're solid opinion polls that yes the people consider that in America 47% of the people are against if the financial executives and considered them respond suppose from for the economic crisis but when asked about the relative responsibility between government of all political orientations and bankers say government government the core government was supposed to protect us and in fact they protect the bankers against us and that word indignation comes and that's why there is a reaction linked to the economic crisis both in Europe and Eurasia the financial crisis has meant for people of all persuasion the bankers have the government's in the pockets they R in the world they'll win the economy they control everything and when they are in trouble they are bailout with our money this goes from Greece to Ohio these movements are vital they follow the logic of the Internet networks first because of the vitality of messages in in the net and particularly images images have a tremendous violent effect people talk a lot about Facebook and Twitter that the most important social networking the Internet in terms of the impact the more did YouTube because the power of the images that everybody can generate citizen journalist remember you have anybody can with the cell phone medium the recording image make a video uploaded and seen people like you being massacred being brutalized being the right stage being paper gasps in your eyes doing nothing in our country just machine gunned down but depending on every context people immediately become indignant the more tells a violent repression the more there is support for tamuka there is more fear but more support at the same time the transition from outrage to hope is accomplished in all movement by deliberation in the space of autonomy there is new nation there is outrage but then when people construct their space of autonomy meaning both in the internet and they occupy the space they start dividing why so what can we do deliveries in the traditional Heather Machine sense the tradition of her Masons and just does not happen in the Parliament happened in the civil society horizontal networks both in the internet and urban space create this together nests that I was mentioning about and the horizontality of networks supports cooperation and solidarity with while undermining the need for formal leadership now here is one point these movements have been considered to be very ineffective they debate for hours for days about what to do a little thing so they are ineffective well except that they are asking them to be effective on logic that is not theirs because the fact that they everything can be challenged means that everybody feels that there are no bosses there that they can be there and talk and contribute and yes grassroots deliberate democracy is very slow and very painful and many people get for that but we have tried our societies they have tried and the last year every other possible Avenue give me a leader give me a program we go well we go usually doesn't work and when it works it ends up in institutional blockage but very important these movements are extremely critical from traditional radical politics from particular from less win of leveling kind trust guide formal anarchists organized anarchist with by definition they're organized and not anarchist at the point they are extremely critical of all these groups because they say well they keep repeating the I the revolutionary mantra for ever and nothing happens so and they are organizing the revolution but in their minds in their homes but nothing happens in society source let just see together what we can do no ideology except ideology of not coming ideology which is not ideology of course but it's a different one less formalized and less blocking they are highly self-reflective they keep all the time asking themselves what what do we want who we are how we can contribute or not contribute there are endless debates and endless proposals there is a fury of every possible proposal people invent here I have seen in the Barcelona occupation the some of the most sophisticated this culture but Heidegger high-level and the revolution Heidegger and democracy by the way people in these movements are usually much more educated than the average of society and some people say wow that's a problem so there's not a real working-class guy well that's insulting the working-class life but but in addition it what happens is that some people debate at the very high levels self-reflective but you have not read Plato you still can say your thing and will be discussed and will be integrated into the debate and into the proposal now in their origin they are all nonviolent movements and I emphasize that because this is absolutely critical including in the Arab revolutions we are now fortified by the civil war in Libya first and then now in Syria well the Syrian movement started as absolutely peaceful movement for months and months and months in critical mass before there was any armed resistance in Syria over 7000 people had been killed in peaceful demonstrations in the streets yes at one point they keep massacring you there is a moment in which people cannot overcome that but by not overcoming that and this has been debated many times in the movement you destroy yourself even if you win why because who are going to win the peaceful demonstrators the civil society know the people financed by Saudi Arabia Qatar who organized the Free Syrian Army in the Sunni Shia debate in the Middle East ok so then yes you can overthrow Assad but but who is thrown aside and they lose and then they start fracturing and then they say they lose the legitimacy among large segments of the population at the same time is logical it's normal I'm just saying when a social movement goes from social movement democratic non-violence to some movement to a contending faction in a civil war even if you win the Civil War you have lost already your existence as a source of movement that is very difficult to just keep the non-violence going in and in every country that debate about violence and non-violence is fundamental because non-violence means heroic resistance in the long term violence means losing the legitimacy in the society in the short term movements are also really problematic they are not problematic they don't have a program or in other words they have thousand programs you know everybody has an idea and many commissions and many committees elaborate programs is in Spain I participated in elaborating reform of the electoral law which is one of the most important things because all the laws in all the countries are tight there are made in the interests of the parties who wrote the law and not in the interests of democracy this crazy thing about the American electoral college from the medieval institutions of the United States makes everybody crazy who in the notion one person one vote is not respected anywhere well yes one country Israel and that's interesting that interesting direct proportionality then political scientist in the ascetic well it's in fact if how everybody can have an opinion we have to constantly they blocks yeah you can do that it's very effective but you lose the people and in the in the case of Greece if you want to blade that example in the last Greek election that the entire European establishment pushed to vote for the two large parties the conservative party that won the election got 30% of the vote the opposing Left Party got 28% of the vote but why then they got absolute majority in the conservative party because a little clause in the in the Greek law says that in a pattern of 300 people the party that wins by one vote gets 50 seats more than allocated by the proportional vote okay so again and again and again so the reaction is that first we have to change the power structure before any program can be implemented and in the meantime there are so many proposals on every aspect of life and one of the most potent movements in Europe has been for agriculture called food did inside the movement and trying to practice in the movement new principles of our ecology people cannot eat whatever they want they have to debate before distributing food of any kind but overall what they are in essence in terms of the program they are not programmatic in the same they don't have any specific program they are fundamentally democratic movement the most important thing is the search for democracy a new form of democracy and not in a program that in a practice practice in this kind of democracy and experimenting with it to see what it is what is gradual democracy what is they are not challenging representative democracy in the traditional they are saying you know this representative democracy does not represent the norms of representation are bias our change the principle is to complement this democracy which is they don't use the traditional my sister formal democracy bourgeois democracy no no no they say representative no please okay it's just not representative and therefore we have to invent new forms of democracies who through what people call Network democracy which of course is nice and easy to say and try to find it in the in the in the debates in the assemblies the local assemblies but no one knows what it is but you know what it is is a utopia is utopian and people say so what utopias are not fantasies are not stupidities utopias are ideas about how the world should be and how the political world should be and utopias are material force because utopias take over the minds and the minds can generate new proposals or major political ideologies and political systems have been utopias liberal is this the Utopia communists in Utopia and releases a utopia socialism the traditional sense of socialist is a utopia utopias are the matrixes of what happens then in real life to a number of intermediator to a number of negotiations between what people want and we really happen in society and this leads me to final point on what is the connection then between political change and this social movement well social movements per se are not political movements although they are very political you see in which sense they are not trying to seize the state no one thinks to tell fall into political party and sees the state when they do that become a political part and that's a different thing they are trying to transform consciousness to through this transformation of consciousness through this awareness of this deliberation then they expect that at some point citizens will changed differently the forms of the state crazy well no Iceland yeah three hundred thirty thousand people but not as valued the Iceland Iceland as you know not only brought down the entire government coalition that had been governing since 1927 one party or the other and brought in a eco Social Democrat coalition that was always marginal brought into the government but not only that they reform the economy they nationalized the banks they sent to jail all the bankers they put on trial the Prime Minister and moreover they crowd first a new constitution over the Internet sixteen thousand people participated and they now have a new constitution crowdsourcing the internet not that this is the end of Ireland but it's it's something there and by the way the Icelandic economy is the best performing economy in Europe nowadays better than Germany according to all the rating agencies you better trust the sovereign debt of Iceland than the sovereign debt of Germany because they are stable because they have control who who they are and how they connect while Germany ultimately depends if a Spain or Italy go belly-up Germany goes belly-up so don't invest in Germany yet now if they are not trying to transform the political system directly what happened then well a lot will depend on how the political system react by the title of my conclusion the book is social movements and reform politics and impossible love maybe maybe not because if the political class understands that these are symptoms whatever distorted whatever exaggerated whatever enraged sometimes of a fundamental distrust in society toward the current political institution if they sincerely want to construct and reconstruct democracy rather than get away with crime if they do that and some may do Obama's not doing it some may do well things could change because throughout history this has always been the movement of social movements external to the system that at one point open up spaces of debate and freedom into a system and then the parties that don't follow that fall apart I make a comparison with late 19th century Europe in which the political establishment in the democratic countries in the democratic country England that they friends to some extent were the Conservatives and the Liberals right and suddenly the societies transform there are new social movements with new ideology that seem to be crazy energies and socialism because they represent the new society that was emerging and was not represented in the political institutions what happened the Liberals disappear basically not a conservative why the Conservatives not because the Conservatives don't change fundamentally they change the names the labels the framing of the ideology defending the dominant interests of society is the easiest way you just go with the flow we just go who whoever is in society but if you are press on debt in society for the liberal for the left of the political system is to represent the interests of society not the interests of the elites then you have a problem you don't do that the same thing is happening now in Europe and maybe to some extent in United States with the Democrats if they do not represent all the outrage indignation and lack of hope visually the subservience of the political leaders on the financial elite well you will have departed and they all or you will have we will have Europe and here the notion that no government is good so let's do ourselves and by doing ourselves to start with our taxes our money why I should give to you if I don't trust you so no taxes my defense I have my gun why me when you look at the Sun already but maybe you know washington-based think tank that will start distributing defusing in Europe the idea that armed citizens are the only ones who reckon really defend the Republic so to a large extent if they that's a progressive elements of the political system do not respond to the new conditions of society then move and fill in but at the same time they not have the institutional capacity to do it but ultimately the main the most positive inference of the movement in politics may happen to to the change of the basic ideas and the basic themes of society in the United States the notion that they there is a cleavage regardless of the statistical demagoguery between the 9 percent that the 1% and the 99% no one talked about this we knew about income inequality we knew about this but now the whole society including conveniens let alone even the Congress they started to talk about the 1% the 99% that means what for people well this society apparently the Society of opportunity know is with fundamental social inequality this change is up here up here now the political response to that depends and the right-wing politics can be the magnitude cetera but changes the term of the debate you know one very interesting opinion poll data in the in the United States is that status always has refused in the public mind the notion of social country between rich and poor plus a struggle if you want to call it well according to the Pew Institute in 19 2009 the proportion of people who thought that the conflict between rich and poor was the defining conflict in society were 45 percent in 2011 seventy percent meaning the notion that there is a conflict between rich and poor that is exactly contrary to the American ideology which the only problem for the poor that are not rich yet but they will they will eventually become rich well people are saying no because of the 99% of it legacy now and lastly the people in the movement the language of the movement say all this discussion about well what are we accomplishing what is ultimately the result they say this is in fact a reflection of the productivist logic of capitalism if you don't produce something you are nothing well maybe the debate is wrong maybe the outcome the important thing is not the outcome but the process because the process is a transformative force why because what you do materially deliberation discussion projection all this is the material practice and is the material practice that changes people's mind and that finally may have necessary has to translate into some it has got movement people say we don't we are going to vote sure but who cares we know I'm not going to solve the problems in the next election but what about in the election twenty years from now that's what social movements like the women movement the environmental movement the civil right movement were saying 20 25 years ago it's a different timing you're not in this election is the next society and that's the space or social movements we still the most important thing is how communicative autonomy has impacted the overcoming of fear they want to finish by reading a tweet from Tahrir Square from a woman named like Val Cassini but the tweet sicyon Surya strong that treat like this we have brought down the world of fear you brought down the world of our house will rebuild our homes but you will never build again that world of fear and that is the transformation thank you for your attention dr. Castells has agreed to take questions please wait for the microphone hi I'm Mike Nelson I'm a writer for Bloomberg government and I'm also a professor of internet studies at Georgetown University I think you've done a wonderful job of giving us an overview of what's happening in social movements targeted at changing national governments I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about how social movements might change corporate government and how boycotts by consumers shareholder action might be enabled by social media and whether you're optimistic or pessimistic that that will change the way corporations function thank you very much absolutely you know the interesting about these movements is that they are multi-dimensional they touch on everything and but this everything ultimately means how things are managed everywhere so you're absolutely right they focus on government because of the price of the movement was linked to the financial crisis and the disastrous management that governments have done with the financial crisis in some cases they were needed pain the financial crisis but even when they had more or less like in the United States has been at the expense of breaking the trust of the older citizens in that in that management so therefore the mainstream of the or the boomer has concentrated there but they are all kind of a discussion on one of those that you mentioned is absolutely about corporate governance remember all the discussions about the bank fees with the Bank of America about the many people have actually switched from their banks to credit unions in a number of states particularly in Washington State there are number of experiments in which people are creating their own community banks and they don't work worse than the others at this point in I have been investigating in Europe a huge movement of what they call ethical banking in which are literally at this point there are over five million people in Europe doing ethical banking meaning you seem past the cooperative between you the profits are for the members of the of the of the muck and they invest only in terms to get enough return to keep the bank going I have not mentioned because I focus on the more politically active movements I have not been to my other research which is my next book meaning published in November not in October which is called is called another life is possible alternative economic cultural during the crisis which is also empirically grounded and is about all the forms in which people are transforming their lives and this is a huge debate within the movement people were more to dissing on social movement we have to change the council we have to go through a political editor many other people who are in the movement as well same way and you know this is going to be long term yeah we'll do it but it's going to be long term I am 35 what the hell I want my better life now not when we make the revolution the revolution can wait but I cannot wait and therefore a huge movement of time sharing time banks alternative financing self conserve consumption self production economic practices but under a completely different logic and I would actually concur with some implicit in your statement this in the short term is going to be more materially practically effective because people know that they already live differently at this point in Europe here I don't I don't think so but I don't know the precise data in Europe the majority of people agreed with the notion of working less and being paid less and why because because well life is something else than just work for a pay interesting which at the same time is massive unemployment well you can take mass unemployment as a tragedy or as an opportunity since they are not going to employ me anyway let's organize the life here on a different set of values and there is an increasing movement in those and even in the most ideological factions there is a huge degrowth movement in arguing for slowing economic growth and actually starting growing negatively not growing more in terms of the natural and as you know there's a huge branch of economics not developing economics of happiness which among other things use the the Bhutan for places they would turn Gross National Happiness index which is being debated in the world in other words what I'm saying is that beyond the more specifically political movement there is a tectonic change in the culture because there is universal distress in global financial capital not in capitalism not in the another fault recovery in this particular form when you ask people they are not the majority they said no capital is okay is this capitalism is this global financial capital with no control speculative no enterpreneur you know creating wealth but inventing wealth and taking our wealth from us that one is a it's a fundamental movement coupled with the crisis of political legitimacy you bring together to the to thing people don't trust those who have their money and don't trust those who have the remote we are in a tectonic change that has different expression interested in the intercultural aspects of of your theory you didn't touch much on China or Far Eastern cultures with other quite distinctive cultural characteristics there's a lot of universalism that you talk about but when we get to these issues of governance and in the way societies work it reflects some sort of cultural norm some common values and the internet phenomenon so you talk about the communications the theory you're espousing has to affect that in some way another could you to perhaps address the intercultural aspects and what makes this Universal in your mind so that normative values what's right wrong good bad what defines a society or affected by your theory thank you well two layers on the one hand there is no cultural homogeneity in the world empirically speaking but cultural diversity is increasing not diminishing except that on top of this some kind of a global cosmopolitan culture of two of two kinds consumerism that's in global Universal culture and at the same time humankind as as a species with common values of preservation preservation of the species preservation of nature let's say ecology in the broadest sense there are the two things so one is clearly capital the other is not and these are the universal cultures spanning and in that sense there is cultural identity in terms of national ethnic religious that are increasing but to these two major cultures that are increasingly share they there is another aspect of the shared culture which i think is new and is linked to Internet what is share is the culture of sharing meaning that I go into internet I find my people and I connect and I construct a new circle but at the same time in combination with other cultures but we all agree that the Internet is fundamental that the culture of selling and that's why a battle is has been already launched not only anonymous many other things in terms of defending the Internet why because the Internet is the common grounds of our age if people feel expropriated from internet particularly teenagers and young people that's the only way they can start making bombs if you take away what they can do in the internet whatever they want that's really something so this culture of sharing is is quite fundamental the political culture I would say is to large extent still I would say liberal democracies in the traditional term it is growing as they share political culture in most countries people agreed that the elections are important are fundamental but on this and therefore there is the contradiction within China nowadays but on the other hand the sharing of this political culture in most cases particularly in the social movements incorporate another dimension but participative democracy becomes a new frontier of democracy pure representative democracy we thought participative democracy it's in fact empty and will soon be ineffective in managing the processes of self-government now wise participatory democracy now possible and they are very interesting discussions about in terms of the history of the movement that were arguing about graphs of democracy participatory democracy and always in the 19th century early 20th century the thing everybody agree with that but was not practical because they have to at one point decide and you could not scale up internet allows you to scale up so the age of networked democracy seems to have arrived so there's an old discussion between masses and energies the masses say no power has to be centralized because I wish is not effective and Anarchy say well but when it's centralized then it becomes a dictatorship but now in our case what I call the nail on our keys because they are not organizational hierarchies are saying you know what the you Marcis always said they met the development of the productive forces allows different forms of social organization that's exactly what happened but what not communists so communing with a theology of the 19th century energies is the one of the 21st century because now the Internet allows decentralized democracy the cement relies participation collective decision-making at it and I find so fascinating discussion just one last question profits and people that work in social movements or building them fit in with all this technology so thank you very much this is a fundamental question both theoretically and practically look to give a short answer we can continue discussion later without social networks in the internet this movement would not exist simply would be other social movement could be others but this is a hypothetical question every of this movement all the protests all the answers everywhere start with the internet and and therefore the only relevant question in my opinion is which are the material and cultural consequences of going through the Internet at least for a substantial part of the movement of the interaction the discussion that I found frankly empty about and the revolution be tweeted or not the Revolution was not tweeted oh yes it was tweeted well empirically it was tweeted actually you cannot explain there are wonderful analysis by Djilas Lawton and others and in tweet flow good researchers that show empirically how they treat organize their revolutions but at the same time were not only the tweets but we thought the - you cannot explain the process the development the participation etcetera etcetera so that's the point technology as always is embedded into a social practice so it starts with other reason for but without the technology this movement would have been crashed again and for me the most important thing in Egypt is a comparison between how the 2008 attempt fertility in the working-class City northern of Cairo was crushed with thousands of people killed and the same people who survived that created the April 6 movement that then using Tunisia as the trigger the same people started another kind of woman on the internet in January 2011 and it work you see so therefore I think at this point you cannot imagine social movements or nonprofit organizations or advocacy groups or the Tea Party for that matter without the Internet and the implications of the internet but the Internet has implications needs interactivity names horizontality you know when politicians decided that oh sure we forgot the internet Obama was the first one in the world who really understood what the potential didn't that was decisive for the finance of the campaign from the organizer of the campaign we know that now all politicians want to do the same how the magic potion you have a good website a good internet network and we win well Internet in one word the cultural definition of Internet is one word autonomy Internet is the technology of autonomy if you are not ready to give autonomy to the movement behind you you better don't try the internet because you may have a problem because if people really take seriously their autonomy and have the technological tools to be they will not need you so and now Obama continues with his things about the internet and but it don't work in the same way right because people autonomously decided otherwise this has been a presentation of the Library of Congress visit us at loc.gov

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Published: Fri Nov 23 2012