Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In this second volume of The Information Age trilogy, with an extensive new preface following the recent global economic crisis, Manuel Castells deals with the social, political, and cultural dynamics associated with the technological transformation of our societies and with the globalization of the economy. Extensive new preface examines how dramatic recent events have transformed the socio-political landscape of our world Applies Castells' hypotheses to contemporary issues such as Al Qaeda and global terrorist networks, American unilateralism and the crisis of political legitimacy throughout the world A brilliant account of social, cultural, and political conflict and struggle all over the world Analyzes the importance of cultural, religious, and national identity as sources of meaning for people, and its implications for social movement Throws new light on the dynamics of global and local change

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Charts
• Preface to the 2010 Edition of The Power of Identity
• Preface and Acknowledgments 2003
• Acknowledgments 1996
• Our World, our Lives
• 1 Communal Heavens: Identity and Meaning in the Network Society
• The Construction of Identity
• God's Heavens: Religious Fundamentalism and Cultural Identity
• Umma versus Jahiliya: Islamic fundamentalism
• God save me! American Christian fundamentalism
• Nations and Nationalisms in the Age of Globalization: Imagined Communities or Communal Images?
• Nations against the state: the breakup of the Soviet Union and the Commonwealth of Impossible
• States (Sojuz Nevozmoznykh Gosudarstv)
• Nations without a state: Catalunya
• Nations of the information age
• Ethnic Unbonding: Race, Class, and Identity in the Network Society
• Territorial Identities: The Local Community
• Conclusion: The Cultural Communes of the Information Age
• 2 The Other Face of the Earth: Social Movements against the New Global Order
• Globalization, Informationalization, and Social Movements
• Mexico's Zapatistas: The First Informational Guerrilla Movement
• Who are the Zapatistas?
• The value structure of the Zapatistas: identity, adversaries, and goals
• The communication strategy of the Zapatistas: the Internet and the media
• The contradictory relationship between social movement and political institution
• Up in Arms against the New World Order: The American Militia and the Patriot Movement
• The militias and the Patriots: a multi-thematic information network
• The Patriots' banners
• Who are the Patriots?
• The militia, the Patriots, and American society
• The Lamas of Apocalypse: Japan's Aum Shinrikyo
• Asahara and the development of Aum Shinrikyo
• Aum's beliefs and methodology
• Aum and Japanese society
• Al-Qaeda, 9/11, and Beyond: Global Terror in the Name of God
• The goals and values of al-Qaeda
• The evolving process of al-Qaeda's struggle
• The mujahedeen and their support bases
• The young lion of the global jihad: Osama bin Laden
• From bin Laden to bin Mahfouz: financial networks, Islamic networks, terrorist networks
• Networking and media politics: the organization, tactics, and strategy of al-Qaeda
• 9/11 and beyond: death or birth of a networked, global, fundamentalist movement?
• ''No Globalization without Representation!'': The Anti-globalization Movement
• ''El pueblo desunido jamas sera vencido'': the diversity of the anti-globalization movement
• The values and goals of the movement against globalization
• Networking as a political way of being
• An informational movement: the theatrical tactics of anti-globalization militants
• The movement in context: social change and institutional change
• The Meaning of Insurgencies against the New Global Order
• Conclusion: The Challenge to Globalization
• 3 The Greening of the Self: The Environmental Movement
• The Creative Cacophony of Environmentalism: A Typology
• The Meaning of Greening: Societal Issues and the Ecologists' Challenge
• Environmentalism in Action: Reaching Minds, Taming Capital, Courting the State, Tap-dancing with the Media
• Environmental Justice: Ecologists' New Frontier
• 4 The End of Patriarchalism: Social Movements, Family, and Sexuality in the Information Age
• The Crisis of the Patriarchal Family
• Women at Work
• Sisterhood is Powerful: The Feminist Movement
• American feminism: a discontinuous continuity
• Is feminism global?
• Feminism: an inducive polyphony
• The Power of Love: Lesbian and Gay Liberation Movements
• Feminism, lesbianism, and sexual liberation movements in Taipei
• Spaces of freedom: the gay community in San Francisco
• Summing up: sexual identity and the patriarchal family
• Family, Sexuality, and Personality in the Crisis of Patriarchalism
• The incredibly shrinking family
• The reproduction of mothering under the non-reproduction of patriarchalism
• Body identity: the (re)construction of sexuality
• Flexible personalities in a post-patriarchal world
• The End of Patriarchalism?
• 5 Globalization, Identification, and the State: A Powerless State or a Network State?
• Globalization and the State
• The transnational core of national economies
• A statistical appraisal of the new fiscal crisis of the state in the global economy
• Globalization and the welfare state
• Global communication networks, local audiences, uncertain regulators
• A lawless world?
• The Nation-state in the Age of Multilateralism
• Global Governance and Networks of Nation-states
• Identities, Local Governments, and the Deconstruction of the Nation-state
• The Identification of the State
• The Return of the State
• The state, violence, and surveillance: from Big Brother to little sisters
• American unilateralism and the new geopolitics
• The Iraq War and its aftermath
• The consequences of American unilateralism
• The Crisis of the Nation-state, the Network State, and the Theory of the State
• Conclusion: The King of the Universe, Sun Tzu, and the Crisis of Democracy
• 6 Informational Politics and the Crisis of Democracy
• Introduction: The Politics of Society
• Media as the Space of Politics in the Information Age
• Politics and the media: the citizens' connection
• Show politics and political marketing: the American model
• Is European politics being ''Americanized''?
• Bolivia's electronic populism: compadre
• Palenque and the coming of Jach'a Uru
• Informational Politics in Action: The Politics of Scandal
• The Crisis of Democracy
• Conclusion: Reconstructing Democracy?
• Conclusion: Social Change in the Network Society
• Methodological Appendix
• Summary of Contents of Volumes I and III
• References
• Index