The world in the last two decades of the twentieth century fundamentally and radically changed at a speed and on a scale never before witnessed. The challenge posed at the beginning of the third millennium is enormous for governments and people the world over. Globalization, along with globalism, continues its unrelenting and accelerating march as it draws more countries, cities, and people closer into interdependent relationships. Globalization and Networked Societies attempts to tease out some of the salient elements of this process, especially as it has affected urban centers in Pacific Asia over the past twenty years. Globalization and rapid economic growth have transformed the region and its cities on varied spatial scales, bringing new opportunities and challenges for governments, the private sector, and individuals. All countries in Pacific Asia are covered in this work, with special attention given to Hong Kong and to China, a late bloomer in the Asia scene but nevertheless one that has experienced phenomenal growth and accelerated globalization in recent decades. The empirical analyses reveal the outcome, dilemmas, and meanings of globalization in the urban-regional scene.

This first book in Castells' groundbreaking trilogy, with a substantial new preface, highlights the economic and social dynamics of the information age and shows how the network society has now fully risen on a global scale. Groundbreaking volume on the impact of the age of information on all aspects of society Includes coverage of the influence of the internet and the net-economy Describes the accelerating pace of innovation and social transformation Based on research in the USA, Asia, Latin America, and Europe

What is the network society? What effects does it have upon media, culture and politics? What are the competing forces in the network society, and how are they reshaping the world? The rise of the network society – the suffusion of much of the economy, culture and society with digital interconnectivity – is a development of immense significance. In this innovative book, Robert Hassan unpacks the dynamics of this new information order and shows how they have affected both the way media and politics are ‘played’, and how these are set to reshape and reorder our world. Using many of the current ideas in media theory, cultural studies and the politics of the newly evolving ‘networked civil society’, Hassan argues that the network society is steeped with contradictions and in a state of deep flux. This is a key text for undergraduate students in media studies, politics, cultural studies and sociology, and will be of interest to anyone who wishes to understand the network society and play a part in shaping it.

The world in the last two decades of the twentieth century fundamentally and radically changed at a speed and on a scale never before witnessed. The challenge posed at the beginning of the third millennium is enormous for governments and people the world over. Globalization, along with globalism, continues its unrelenting and accelerating march as it draws more countries, cities, and people closer into interdependent relationships. Globalization and Networked Societies attempts to tease out some of the salient elements of this process, especially as it has affected urban centers in Pacific Asia over the past twenty years. Globalization and rapid economic growth have transformed the region and its cities on varied spatial scales, bringing new opportunities and challenges for governments, the private sector, and individuals. All countries in Pacific Asia are covered in this work, with special attention given to Hong Kong and to China, a late bloomer in the Asia scene but nevertheless one that has experienced phenomenal growth and accelerated globalization in recent decades. The empirical analyses reveal the outcome, dilemmas, and meanings of globalization in the urban-regional scene.

This volume explores the patterns and dynamics of the network society in its policy dimension, ranging from the knowledge economic, based in technology and innovation, to the organizational reform and modernization in the public sector, focusing also the media and communication policies. The Network Society is our society, a society made of individuals, businesses and state operating from the local, national and into the international arena.

Since the dawn of the digital era, the transfer of knowledge has shifted from analog to digital, local to global, and individual to social. Complex networked communities are a fundamental part of these new information-based societies. Emerging Pedagogies in the Networked Knowledge Society: Practices Integrating Social Media and Globalization examines the production, dissemination, and consumption of knowledge within networked communities in the wider global context of pervasive Web 2.0 and social media services. This book will offer insight for business stakeholders, researchers, scholars, and administrators by highlighting the important concepts and ideas of information- and knowledge-based economies.

For all the attention globalization has received in recent years, little consensus has emerged concerning how best to understand it. For some, it is the happy product of free and rational choices; for others, it is the unfortunate outcome of impersonal forces beyond our control. It is in turn celebrated for the opportunities it affords and criticized for the inequalities in wealth and power it generates. David Singh Grewal’s remarkable and ambitious book draws on several centuries of political and social thought to show how globalization is best understood in terms of a power inherent in social relations, which he calls network power. Using this framework, he demonstrates how our standards of social coordination both gain in value the more they are used and undermine the viability of alternative forms of cooperation. A wide range of examples are discussed, from the spread of English and the gold standard to the success of Microsoft and the operation of the World Trade Organization, to illustrate how global standards arise and falter. The idea of network power supplies a coherent set of terms and concepts—applicable to individuals, businesses, and countries alike—through which we can describe the processes of globalization as both free and forced. The result is a sophisticated and novel account of how globalization, and politics, work.