Castells is the full professor of sociology, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), in Barcelona.

He is also a fellow of St. John's College at the University of Cambridge and holds the chair of network society at Collège d’Études Mondiales, Paris.

[2] In 2012, Castells was awarded the Holberg Prize,[3] for having "shaped our understanding of the political dynamics of urban and global economies in the network society.

"[4] In 2013, he was awarded the Balzan Prize for Sociology for "his wide-ranging and imaginative thinking through of the implications of the great technological changes of our time.

"[5] In January 2020, he was appointed Minister of Universities in the Sánchez II Government of Spain,[6] a position he held until his resignation in December 2021.

[7] Manuel Castells was born on February 9, 1942, in the city of Hellín, in La Mancha region, Spain.

The family’s residence in La Mancha was short lived, as it was related to Castells’ parents’ work.

Castells joined an opposition group of diverse ideologies called the Workers Front of Catalonia.

Its goal was to protest the iron-fisted government and stand in solidarity with exploited miners in the Asturias region of Spain.

Following his escape, a fellow resistance member assisted him in achieving political refugee status, and he travelled to Paris.

[13] He spent a large portion of his adolescence there, completing his secondary and beginning his college education at the University of Barcelona.

Castells’ most well-known work is a trilogy of books, entitled, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture.

Overall, it comprehends three sociological dimensions—production, power, and experience—stressing that the organization of the economy, of the state and its institutions, and the ways that people create meaning in their lives through collective action, are irreducible sources of social dynamics—that must be understood as both discrete and inter-related entities.

In other words, Castells’ theory of the Information Age explores the dissonance between “universal, digital language,” and individual, even local identities.

Castells also became an established cybernetic culture theoretician with his Internet development analysis stressing the roles of the state (military and academic), social movements (computer hackers and social activists), and business, in shaping the economic infrastructure according to their (conflicting) interests.

[citation needed] Put simply, this quote exemplifies Castells’ concept of “Informationalism.” He asserts that from the 1970s to the present day, informational technology has allowed large businesses, organizations, and social structures in general to form global networks.

For certain areas of the globe that are not as connected with mainstream society and massive international networks, it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep pace with the expansion of capitalism.

[20] These illicit economic activities illustrate another of Castells’ points, that resistance to globalization is a result of the development of the information age.

Castells emphasizes that problems within cities do not exist in a social vacuum, and that they must be contextualized to be appropriately analyzed.

By moving away from Marxism, Castells could explore the concepts of gender, urban social movements, and nationality in a more thoughtful way.

In 1989, he introduced the concept of the "space of flows", the material and immaterial components of global information networks used for the real-time, long-distance co-ordination of the economy.

[26] In the 1990s, he combined his two research strands in The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, published as a trilogy, The Rise of the Network Society (1996), The Power of Identity (1997), and End of Millennium (1998); two years later, its worldwide, favourable critical acceptance in university seminars, prompted publication of a second (2000) edition that is 40 per cent different from the first (1996) edition.

Some criticisms of Castells’ work compare his ideas to functionalism, in that they include some “abstract system-building.” In other words, there is a certain level of inattention to individuals, while sweeping generalizations are made about society.

These information networks have the potential to be useful “ideal types” for studying global relations, but one should exercise caution when using them to model the real world.

This reveals a thought process that supports the status quo, which can be a problem for social change and justice movements.

[30][31] Castells is a sole author of 23 books and editor or co-editor of fifteen more, as well as over one hundred articles in academic journals.