Manuel Castells

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Lore & Background

Manuel Castells was born on 9 February 1942 in Hellín, Spain, to civil servant parents. He grew up in Madrid, Cartagena, and Valencia, and became politically active against Franco's regime as a teenager. He notes: 'You had actually to resist the whole environment, and to be yourself, you had to fight and to politicize yourself from the age of fifteen or sixteen.' After participating in solidarity actions with miners in the Asturias region in May 1962, he escaped to France and successfully claimed political asylum. In Paris, he completed his first degree at the Sorbonne in 1964 and earned a doctorate in sociology from the University of Paris in 1967, supervised by Alain Touraine. He taught at several Parisian universities and held visiting appointments in Chile before joining the University of California, Berkeley in 1979, where he taught for 24 years. Castells is best known for his trilogy 'The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture', which examines the organization of economy, state, and identity in the network society. He argues that societies are structured around the opposition of the Net (network organizations) and the Self (personal identity). His work synthesizes urban sociology, organization studies, internet studies, social movements, and political economy. He has also held positions at the Open University of Catalonia, the University of Southern California, and the University of Cambridge, and served as Spain's minister of universities from January 2020 to December 2021.

Reader's Guide

Manuel Castells is a central figure in understanding the information age and network society. His trilogy 'The Information Age' has shaped sociological thinking on how digital networks transform economy, power, and identity. The 2000–2014 research survey of the Social Sciences Citation Index ranks him as the world's fifth most-cited social science scholar, and the foremost-cited communication scholar. His awards include the Holberg Prize in 2012, for having 'shaped our understanding of the political dynamics of urban and global economies in the network society,' and the Balzan Prize for Sociology in 2013, for 'his wide-ranging and imaginative thinking through of the implications of the great technological changes of our time.' Castells' work remains influential in urban sociology, communication studies, and globalization theory, and his brief tenure as Spain's minister of universities underscores his engagement with public policy. His legacy lies in providing a comprehensive framework for analyzing the interplay between technology, society, and individual identity in the contemporary world.

Did You Know?

• Castells completed his secondary education in Barcelona two years ahead of time in 1958.
• He taught himself Catalan while at university, as the language was not taught in schools under Franco.
• He was supervised by sociologist Alain Touraine, and his thesis committee included Henri Lefebvre and Jean Bastié.
• Castells served as Spain's minister of universities from January 2020 to December 2021.
• He is a fellow of St John's College at the University of Cambridge.