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Example research essay topic: Time And Space Form Of Social - 1,898 words

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... workers and those operating other home-based businesses. (Castells 2000, p 425) Another important change enabled by information technology is "just-in-time delivery, " an inventory management technique. Just-in-time delivery requires reliable, on-time delivery of inputs on an as-needed basis. With reduced inventory, companies can reduce their storage space requirements. Just-in-time is spreading from manufacturing to distribution to retail, even to hospitals and other institutions, suggesting a reduced need for bricks and mortar in carrying out these activities. (Castells 2000, p 169 - 184) All of these trends shift the demand for work space away from the traditional employment environments, reducing the demand for conventional, centralised workspaces, while increasing the need for flexibility in residential neighbourhoods to accommodate home -- or neighbourhood -- based work. (Freeman, 1994) According to Castells, he believes that Information Technology evolves in a distinctively different pattern than previous technologies, thus constituting the informational mode of development a flexible -, pervasive, integrated and reflexive, rather than additive revolution. The reflexivity of the technologies, the fact that any product is also raw material because both are information, has permitted the speeding up of the process of innovation. (Castells 2000, p 29 - 30) The IT Revolution enabled a Network Society to emerge.

The word network refers to any kind of functioning network- financial, supplier, producer, coalition etc. , as well as the underlying electronic communications network. According to Castells, the convergence of the digital revolution in informational technology and the re-invention of capitalism, into a vehicle for decentralisation, has made possible the development of a global, informational economy, which is a key feature of the network society. His is not the same as a world economy, and is a new reality. At its core it has strategically dominant activities which have the potential of working as a unit in real time on a planetary scale. (Castells 2000, p 77) National, regional and local economies depend ultimately on the dynamics of the global economy to which they are connected through networks and markets. It reaches out to the whole planet but does not include the whole planet and excludes the majority in an uneven geography, and switches on and links up valuable input, markets and individuals whilst it switches others off.

The third world has become increasingly diversified internally, the first world has generated exclusion and an emergent of a fourth world as being the most excluding part of the world not taking advantage of the IT revolution. Castells argues that the IT revolution has bia- passed certain regions of the world. A fourth world is not just the less developed, but is loosing out from the IT Revolution. (Castells 2000, p 32) The informational economy is one which productivity and competitiveness depend on the capacity of firms to generate, process and apply information. Although major corporate centres provide the human resources and facilities necessary to manage an increasingly complex financial network, it is in the information networks connecting such centres that the actual operation of capital and business take place. Capital flows become at the same time global and increasingly autonomous vis-a vis the actual performances of economies. Financial markets, including currency markets, are inter-connected throughout the world.

Capital and information are truly global. (Castells 2000, p 77) A new kind of organisation, the network enterprise, has arisen to operate in the global economy. The network enterprise is a virtual organisation composed of many different types of businesses and networks of firms, supported by information technology, doing business with each other. Each part o the network enterprise may have autonomous set of goals; the performance of the given enterprise will depend on how well it is connected, and how well the goals of the network components are consisted with the goals of the network enterprise itself. (Castells 2000, p 187 - 188) Castells sees the information age as marked by the rise of social networks. This was the development of global computer network (Internet) and other new means of global communication lead to the birth of diverse global economic, political and cultural networks (the network society). These networks are established between economic actors (global capital movements, global organisation of production, global hunting of economic resources), political actors (multilateral relations between governments, political parties, social movements) an cultural actors (new global media arena. These diverse networks establish a new kind of global social order that is no more tied to local, national or regional socio-political entities and identities.

This new global social order can be envisioned as multi-layered networks that are positioned above the established state borders. Thus these networks do not mean the withering away of nation states but radical diminishing of their powers. Since this new global form of social organisation is indifferent towards established collective identities, be these local, national, or religious, one can see increasing tensions between the self (established social identities) and the net (new global network society). (Castells 2000, p 21 - 24) These tensions express themselves in diverse social movements that aim to defend particular local identities against abstract politico-economic forces of globalisation. A network society no longer rests upon fixed realities of time and place. Networks are clusters of relationships and may span indefinite ranges of time and space. (Castells, 2000) With the new communications technology it is possible to sustain close friendships across many thousands of miles. Howard Rheingold believes that virtual communities are emerging.

The Internet for example is bringing people together from many parts of the globe on a range of interests. (Castells 2000, p 50) Most of the major social institutions are becoming reorganised in network form. For instance, the economy now has become globalised and its substance consists of endlessly complex financial flows. The industrial corporation increasingly takes on the form of s network rather than a hierarchy of established offices. (Castells 2000, p 45) Networks are open ended- they have no clear limits and are able to expand and contract in relation to external changes. They have indefinite boundaries and for the most part have no definite spatial form. The network society sits very uncomfortably with the nation state or any other territorially based form of organisation. (Castells, 2000) The network society introduces new connections between the net as a whole and the individual self where there are continuous global flows of wealth, power and media images, the search for identity becomes acute and difficult.

People look for identity and meaning in forms of collective association, which run counter to the diffuse and mobile communications of the network society. Often these tend to be archaic- a sort of refuge from the swirling chaos of the new order. People look for identity in the older forms of communal life, such as religion or ethnic community. (Castells 2000, p 2 - 5) According to Castells, although keen to avoid technological determinism, he believes that the information technology revolution supplies much of the framework for the new society. The network society emerged in microcosm in Silicon Valley- California. (Castells 2000, p 62) Silicon Valley was not only the centre of breakthroughs in the computer industry; it pioneered emphasis upon networking and decentralised corporate structures. It was a centre of intense radicalism, but not for the orthodox political variety. The innovators in Silicon Valley rapidly broke the bounds of their original location.

They set up vast displays of global connections and the innovations they pioneered helped directly to intensify global ising processes in economic life and elsewhere. Silicon Valley was where the integrated circuit, microprocessors and other core computer technologies began. It also played a key role in the origins of genetic engineering and computer software design. Its social and economic innovations, however, were at least as central as the more technical ones. (Castells 2000, p 62) In the network society, information technology and globalisation promote one another.

Competitiveness in the global economy depends upon the capacity of units (firms, regions, and nations) to generate and apply knowledge-based information. The economy is global because all its core components (capital, labour, raw materials and management) are organised on a global scale and are themselves linked through informational networks. The global economy, is not just a development of the old-established world economy as identified by the world systems theory of Immanuel Wallenstein. The Old World system was based upon the geographical expansion of capital. The new global economy, which functions only in and through information technology, works on a global scale in real time.

Instantaneous electronic communication, made possible by global computer networks and satellite transmission, allows for continuo's economic decision-making to be enacted globally. Vast capital sums can be transferred immediately from any part of the planet to another. Labour appears to be much more static, but to the degree to which work itself becomes a matter of handling information, labour also becomes disposable on a global scale. (Castells 2000, p 101) Castells argues that the informational economy is not post-industrial according to the thesis of post-industrialism, modern economies are marked by a sharp decline in the importance of manufacturing and a accompanying rise in the service sector. In Castells view, the informational economy still depends in a fundamental way upon manufacturing. (Castells 2000, 218 - 223) Manufacturing however has changed. Work processes have become increasingly penetrated by information technology, thereby rapidly eliminating many of the older forms of industrial labour. Castells believes that information technology for the most part upgrades workers skills.

The more the use of advance information technology expands, the more there is a need for autonomous, educated workers able to supervise whole sequences of work processes. (Castells 2000, p 224 - 225) The transformation of work and employment has brought in the flexi-workers. There is no major surge in employment (except in Western Europe) but there is great anxiety and discontent about work. Power relations have shifted in favour of capital with much downsizing, subcontracting, and networking of labour, inducing flexibility and individualization of contractual arrangements. There is a growth of self-employment, temporary work, and part-time, particularly for women. (Freeman 1994, p 97 - 100) Time and space are related in society as is nature and their meanings and manifestations in social practice evolve throughout histories and across cultures. It is not concerned with physical space but electronic space. The concept of time and space is fundamentally changing.

We are able to access more information, i. e. books, articles etc. to an American site without physically having to go there. Castells again refers to Weber and says, that space is erased by time people dont have to be co-present to be in touch or communicate with each other. (Castells 2000, lec 3) The network society is organised around new forms of time and space, timeless time and the space of flows. The space of flows is the material organisation of time sharing social practices that work through flows.

The space of places continues to be the predominant space of experience. In the network society a fundamental form of social domination is the prevalence of the logic of the space of flows over the space of places and induces a metropolitan dualism and a form of social / territorial exclusion, which bypasses and marginalizes people and places. (Castells 2000, p 453) Castells finds the function identity of politics, the dichotomy between the space of flows and the space of place. This crucial aspect economic function of society is dispensing into spaces of flows (information network).


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Research essay sample on Time And Space Form Of Social

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