Bio-bibliography

USA/Catalonia

Manuel Castells

2013 Balzan Prize for Sociology

For his wide-ranging and imaginative thinking through of the implications of the great technological changes of our time: the digital revolution and the profound social and political challenges brought about by the emerging technologies of communication and information processing associated with computing, microelectronics, and the Internet. For having proposed a general theory of the new global information society that has arisen out of these technologies.

Biographical and Bibliographical Data

Manuel Castells was born on 9th February, 1942, in Hellin, Spain.

He is currently University Professor and Wallis Annenberg Chair of Communication Technology and Society at the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California, Los Angeles; Professor at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona; Director of Research in the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge and Professor Emeritus of Sociology and of City and Regional Planning, University of California at Berkeley where he taught for 24 years.

He is a Fellow of the Academia Europaea, Fellow of the Spanish Royal Academy of Economics and Finance, Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. He is also a Harold Lasswell Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. He holds Doctorates honoris causa from 17 universities in Europe, North America, Latin America, and Asia, including the University of Leuven, the Helsinki University of Technology and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, as well as university medals and honorary professorships by institutions including the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and East China Normal University in Shanghai. He has received several prestigious scientific awards, and has been honored by different governments.

He studied law and economics at the Universities of Barcelona and Paris. He later earned a doctorate in Sociology (1967) at the University of Paris. He also holds a Doctorate in Sociology from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and a Doctorat d’Etat ès Lettres et Sciences Humaines from the Université de Paris V, René Descartes-Sorbonne.

He was an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Paris, Nanterre Campus (1967-1970), Associate Professor of Sociology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris (1970-1979), Professor of City and Regional Planning and of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley (1979-2003), Professor and Director of the Institute of Sociology of New Technologies at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (1988-1993), Research Professor in the Higher Council for Scientific Research in Barcelona (1997). Between 2004 and 2010 he held multi-year appointments as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2004-2009), at the University of Oxford (2007-2010) and at Santa Clara University (2008-2010). Since 2009 he has held the position of Visiting Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, in South Africa. He was appointed to the Kluge Chair of the U.S. Library of Congress in 2011. He currently holds a Chair on the Network Society at the Collège d’études mondiales, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris. He is also Director of Research at the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge. He has been a Visiting Professor in 17 universities around the world and invited lecturer at over 300 academic and professional institutions in 45 countries.

Manuel Castells has been a founding board member of the European Research Council (2005-2008) and a founding board member of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (2008-2012). He has also served in the Advisory Council to the Secretary General of the United Nations on Information Technology and Global Development, as well as in the U.N. Secretary General Panel of High Level Personalities on the relationship between the U.N. and global civil society. He has been a pro-bono advisor to several governments as well as to the European Commission, World Bank, Unesco, International Labor Office, and United Nations Development Program. He has served on 22 editorial boards of academic journals. He is currently a member of the Scholars Council of the U.S. Library of Congress.

Manuel Castells has authored 26 books, and co-authored and edited another 22 volumes. Among his publications we would mention:

– La question urbaine, François Maspero, Paris, 1972, revised edition La Découverte, Paris, 1980 (translated into English, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Greek, Polish and Japanese);
– The Economic Crisis and American Society, Princeton University Press and Basil Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1980 (also published in French [PUF] and translated into Spanish and Chinese);
– The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements, University of California Press, Berkeley, and Edward Arnold, London, 1983 (C. Wright Mills Award; translated into Spanish, Japanese and Korean);
– The Informational City: Information Technology, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban-Regional Process, Oxford, UK and Cambridge, Mass., Blackwell Publishers, 1989 (translated into Spanish, Chinese and Korean);
– The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture, Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, Mass., Blackwell Publisher. 1996-1998, 2000-2004 editions:
Vol. I: The Rise of the Network Society, 1996, 2nd edition 2000
Vol. II: The Power of Identity, 1997, 2nd edition 2004
Vol. III: End of Millennium, 1998, 2nd edition 2000
(The three volumes have been translated into 21 languages and reprinted 18 times in English);
– The Internet Galaxy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001 (translated into Spanish, French, Catalan, Italian, German, Russian, Swedish, Korean, Portuguese, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Polish, Dutch, Danish, Chinese and Japanese);
– Mobile Communication and Society, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2006 (main author) (translated into Spanish, Korean, Italian);
– Communication Power, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009, 2nd edition 2013 (translated into Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Polish, Arabic and French);
– Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2012 (translated into Spanish, Italian, Catalan, Portuguese, Turkish and Arabic).

(October 2013)