The Power of Identity (Vol. 2 The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture)

The second volume of the trilogy The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture.

In this book, the author examines the two major conflicting trends shaping today's world: globalization and identity.

Manuel Castells describes the origins, purposes, and effects of activist movements such as feminism and environmentalism, which aim to transform human relations at their most fundamental level, as well as conservative movements, which build trenches of resistance in the name of God, nation, ethnicity, family, or locality.

The author shows that the basic categories of existence are being threatened by the combined and conflicting assaults of technoeconomic forces and transformative social movements, each using the new power of the media to further their ambitions. Between these two opposing trends, the nation-state is being questioned, dragging the very notion of political democracy into its crisis. Seeking to understand a variety of social processes that are strongly interconnected in their functions and meanings, Castells covers a broad territory, encompassing the United States, Western Europe, Russia, Mexico, Bolivia, the Islamic world, China, and Japan.