I attended the ICTs and Society-conference at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) near Barcelona (June 30-July 2, 2010). The first day was a PhD conference track. Two years ago I organized a similar PhD event in Salzburg. My main observation was that other than two years ago, there was this time a focus of many of the students on critical studies of the Internet, ICTs and the role of information in society. And by “critical“, I do not mean asking questions, which all scholars do, but the questioning of structures and practices of domination, which is only possible based on a realistic epistemology (see my critique of Ernst von Glasersfeld’s radical constructivism and Glasersfeld’s somewhat awkward response, which shows that he has no clue what I mean when I say that radical constructivism is a form of normative relativism that relativizes the danger of forms of domination such as fascism). It is my general observation, not only at this conference, that there is a opening up of information society studies/Internet research/cyberculture studies/social informatics (or whatever terms one wants to use to describe this field) towards critical studies that is becoming more and more important within the field. My own experience is that there is also a strong “demand” for critical scholarship by students who work in the just mentioned field. Courses like “Reading Marx’s Capital in the 21^st Century Information Age“, “Critical Theory of the Internet/Critical Internet Research”, or “Critical Information Society Studies” that I have taught have proven quite popular. I found many contributions and discussions at the PhD day very good. This is an indication that there is an upcoming generation of talented critical scholars within the field. My only two points of criticism are that each student should have got five more minutes of presentation and that each student should have been required to present besides a framework also some results or theoretical contribution, even if s/he is in the very early stage of her/his research.

The second day started with a keynote talk by William Dutton, director of the Oxford Internet Institute. He maintained that “Internet studies” is a multidisciplinary, young, fragmented, comparatively small field with a huge scope and potential. I think that the term multidisciplinarity is not self-explaining, and Dutton did not engage with its meaning. One should at least distinguish between inter-, multi- and transdisciplinarity and it is the latter term that can be most fruitfully applied to Internet studies/information society studies. But doing this requires engagement with philosophy of science. Personally I find in this context the work of Basarab Nicolescu very useful and applicable. “Internet studies” is in my opinion a far too narrow term because it excludes ICTs that are not connected to the Internet (such as mobile phone usage without Internet access) and excludes more subjective phenomena of the information age, such as knowledge work and the knowledge economy in general (where not only the Internet plays a role). The term also implies more a technology-centred focus that neglects subjective phenomena of the information age that are not Internet-mediated. A more broader and inclusive term is for example “information society studies”, as suggested by Alistair Duff in his book with the same title. It is in my view necessary to distinguish different forms of information society studies and this should include theoretical, normative, ethical, philosophical, and critical aspects.  Internet studies is only one part of a larger whole, not the whole itself.

William Dutton presented some results from the World Internet Project (WIP) and maintained that the WIP is a typical Internet studies project. My own impression is that the main challenge for the field is not only to develop it and to overcome its strong fragmentation, but to overcome the lack of theoretical grounding and the frequent neglect of the framing of topics within their overall societal context (fetishistic particularism of topics). I do absolutely not argue against empirical research as such, only against a certain form of empirical research. Projects like WIP are important and absolutely needed for generating a good data basis. I am myself at the moment directing an empirically-oriented research project about surveillance on social networking sites. The problem that I see is that many scholars in the field of Internet studies conduct theoretically guided empirical research or theoretically ungrounded empirical research and that they tend to understand theory as discussing some single definitions from single sources in order to ground hypotheses. They however neglect to give grounds for why certain definitions of concepts are used and not others and how these categories fit into larger theoretical wholes. What they are doing is in no way connected to theory. And by theory I do not mean the kind of work Manuel Castells is doing, who himself wrote that his work is not theory, but that theory is only a tool for him. My argument is that what is needed is not more theoretically-guided empirical research, but more critical, empirically-grounded theoretical work, which is to say that there is a lack of critical and theoretical work. Theorizing the Internet and the information society requires sociological theory, classifications and typologies of different definitions of concepts, comparative discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of definitions, etc. It is for example no wonder that many contemporary Internet scholars use notions such as participation in a shallow way because they neglect engaging with participatory democracy theory. Other approaches are more interested in theory, but are rather eclectic – they take single concepts from single theories that are applied to examples. Frequently it is forgotten to give grounds for why a certain interpretation of a theoretical concept is used and not another one. Theorizing the Internet and the information society requires philosophy and concepts of society, information, modern society, capitalism, democracy, etc. Building these theoretical foundations, and building them in a critical manner, and engaging in empirical studies that interact with theory and – importantly – take the macro context of the economic, political and cultural development of society into account, has too long been neglected. But, as already mentioned, I am quite confident that this is about to change.

So my feeling is that different forms and ways of doing information society studies need to be distinguished and that one also needs to take a look a the power structures of the field. What are dominant paradigms? What are alternative paradigms? Is there a struggle of paradigms? Which kinds of work tend to be funded to a large extent, which ones to a small extent? In order to establish a good information society, we need discussions of possible meanings of concepts like sustainable information society, participatory Internet, informational capitalism, digital democracy, etc, empirical research that tests to which extent and in which ways such concepts exist in reality, ideology critique that questions information society myths, discussions of the normative and political implications of research, interfacing with the political level, etc.

László Karvalics, founder of ITTK, presented hypotheses about Frank Webster’s works on the information society, which in his opinion are fundamentally flawed. I agree with László on many other issues related to the information society discourse, but not on his view of Webster’s work. He misses one fundamental point, namely that it is a crucial hypothesis of Webster that “informational developments” are “being heavily influenced by familiar constraints and priorities” (The information society revisited, p. 31). Webster reminds us to be cautious about claims that we have entered a new society that can be found in works of information society thinkers like Daniel Bell, Alvin Toffler, Peter Drucker, Nico Stehr, or Manuel Castells and that one should not forget about class and power structures in information society analysis. Nicholas Garnham has expressed the same critique in the following words: “the shift from energy to brainpower does not necessarily change the subordination of labour to capital“. For me, there are two interfaced levels of analysis, what Marx termed the productive forces and the relations of production. At the level of the relations of production, contemporary society is still a class society, although the exact subtypes and composition of classes change (also partly due to informatization, as Erik Olin Wright has shown). At the level of the productive forces, we can observe and measure the rise and effects of digital technologies, knowledge work, etc. The informational productive force thereby become a means of class domination, but, as Marx knew, also advance the antagonism between the productive forces and the relations of production, which expresses itself for example on the Internet as antagonism between free sharing and capitalist appropriation of information. So the effect of IT on the class structure is antagonistic, but has not resulted in the dissolution of the class structure, but its differentiation.

An interesting session organized by critical scholars from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Safiya Umoja Noble, Sarah Roberts, and Miriam Sweeney from the School of Library and Information Science, focused on the role of the “critical” in ICTs and society-studies. In my opinion it is absolutely essential to discuss what “critical studies” actually means, in which ways critical studies of the Internet, ICTs and the information society can be best conducted, given grounds for, institutionalized, diffused, networked, etc. Of course there are no easy answers, but the important aspect of this session is that it is an indication that quite some people have started thinking about these questions.

William Dutton tweeted that an alternative to critical thinking is analytical skepticism understood as the questioning of taken-for-granted assumptions. Well, scholarship is always a form of analytical scepticism, questioning is a core process of any science, any research, any theory, etc. Analytical skepticism is therefore not an alternative to critical studies, but part of all studies. To purely focus on analytical skepticism clearly is not a good option because not all forms of questioning society are automatically good forms of questioning. For example questioning the taken-for-granted assumption of the existence of gas chambers under German fascism (the so-called Auschwitzlüge) or questioning the legitimacy of anti-racism or anti-fascism (which automatically means arguing for racism respectively fascism) are problematic.

Karl Popper argued that science is/should be neutral and value-free. In contrast, I agree with Juliet Webster, who in her keynote talk on the third day maintained that academia and therefore also ICT research is always political and should contribute to the advancement of participatory democracy and socialism.

In the German positivism debate between Adorno and Popper, Popper did not speak of “analytical scepticism”, but of critical rationalism as a form of questioning at the epistemological level, whereas Adorno in contrast spoke of critical studies of society. This shows that this is a discussion, where one can draw on already existing debates. In my forthcoming book “Foundations of Critical Media and information Studies” (Routledge, late 2010), there will be two long chapters discussing the meaning of the critical in general and particularly for media/communication studies and information society studies (Chapter 2: Critical Theory Today, Chapter 3: Critical Media and Information Studies). In the rest of the book, example studies try to show how critical studies of the information age can be conducted. In chapter 2 and 3, I maintain that we should have an Adorno- and not a Popper-understanding of the “critical” and I review classical and contemporary debates about the status of the critical (for example: Horkheimer’s notions of traditional and critical theory, the Nancy Fraser/Axel Honneth debate, the debate about public sociology, different ways of defining “critical theory”) and elaborate a typology of different kinds of critical media and information studies.

On the second conference day, I found many sessions too dense (6 presenters, each with a presentation time of ten minutes). Also in some sessions I got the impression that the topics were arbitrarily grouped. It might be better to have less papers and more presentation and discussion time. Also I am again and again surprised that many senior scholars tend to waste most of their presentation time by making long, unnecessary introductions. Once they really start, their presentation time is over and they are surprised and want to continue talking. Professors and senior scholars teach presentation methods, rhetorical and didactical methods to their students, but surprisingly many of them do not apply these techniques themselves, but have rather boring linguistic styles and presentation methods. The cardinal mistake that one can make in my opinion is to read a paper and to thereby set one’s audience asleep. But this fortunately occurred only a few single times a this conference. My impression is that many students tend to be better in presenting than senior scholars.

The second day also showed how much the room setting influences discussion culture. To organize a discussion in a lecture hall that is comprised of an elevated podium/stage for the speakers and theatre tiers does not foster an open atmosphere of discussion. Personally I hate giving lectures myself in lecture halls that have an elevated podium, but I also do not like that many participants in lectures, seminars, conferences, tend to take seats in the back of the room, not in the front. All of this creates a spatial distance between all participants that harms the possibility for discussions. The best way to overcome this atmosphere of non-communication is to use alternative room and panel settings.

In the morning of day 3, electricity in the larger lecture hall failed due to a malfunctioning laptop. The person who caused this (person known), should be given a conference award because the fact that we had to move to a smaller conference room really proved beneficial for the discussions. Especially the first session in the seminar room on day 3 was alive, dynamic, and full of interesting contributions and discussions. The session was very well structured and chaired. Especially the presentations “Illegal Workers in Virtual Worlds: Unfree Labor, Incivility, and the New Orientalism” by Lisa Nakamura and “Internet in China: Myths and Realities” by Robert Bichler fostered interesting discussions about class, gender, race, censorship, the Internet in Asia, cultural and societal differences, etc. Lisa Nakamura’s presentation discussed good examples (goldfarming, Tila Tequila) for forms of online labour that are shaped by structural racism. It raised interesting questions for me: What is the class status of Tila Tequila? What is the class trajectory of Tila Tequila and how is that trajectory shaped by race and gender? How do race, class, and gender relate on the Internet and create different structurings and stratifications? How can the triple oppression-approach best be applied to the Internet? Lisa Nakamura’s presentation in my opinion very well showed that there is not a single “virtual class”, but that information workers are stratified by different patterns, that there are winners and losers online and different forms of race-, class-, and gender-mobilities.

In the afternoon of the third day, it was again sleeping time with a panel on PhD programmes that only featured the voices of the great professorial masters of PhD programmes, but neglected the voices and experiences of the students studying in these programmes. Also there was more focus on marketing PhD programmes (or research centres, as was the case in another session) than on the failures and problems, as promised by the session title.

Overall, I had great days in Barcelona, had many good new insights, learned about interesting works that I did not-yet know, and very much enjoyed meeting many people. A conference of this kind enables many different organizational modes for panels. For the future, I think that more workshop-style sessions and spontaneous group discussions that interface with plenary discussions should be added.

Global warming would be related to energy supply. The USA, which account for 5% of the world population, account for 25% of carbon emissions. What Jeremy Leggett calls the empire of oil and transport would be important influencing factors. Zygmunt Bauman argues that mobility is one of the most important values today and that it is an unequally distributed commodity. Urry stressed especially that neoliberalism has generated new forms of mobility that have generated an excesses that have caused high carbon consumption.

As a result, sociology would have to take the future more serious than in the past and there would be a need for sociology to imagine alternative futures. Alternative systems would be needed. Potential negative scenarios for future society would for example be oil, gas, and water wars and the restriction of travel to the super-rich. Nicholas Stern, an anti-neoliberal thinker, has argued that climate change is the greatest market failure. The problem according to Urry is that 20th century capitalism has generated unprecedented levels of carbon emissions.

I liked about this talk that John Urry abstracted a specific problem and analyzed it within its societal and capitalist context. He gave a realistic and materialistic analysis. In comparison, Castells – who covered another issue (the network society), but nonetheless a comparison in respect to the means of analysis can be made – did not see capitalist development as a problem and was not much concerned with problems of current and future society and the role of the economy. Urry talked about the need for alternative systems and an interventionist sociology, whereas Castells was keen to draw a separating line between political action and sociology and was mainly concerned about the development of new sociological methods for the future of sociology. It is alarming that someone, who is considered as one of the most important sociologists by many, is mainly talking about new rigorous research methods and not about global societal problems when addressing the future of sociology in a society that is full of global problems. John Urry’s talk differed radically in this respect.

I discovered and found interest in John Urry’s work on “Global Complexity” some years ago, when in the EU-funded research project “Human Strategies on Complexity”, I tried to apply the notion of self-organization that we had developed in the project to the phenomenon of globalization (”Globalization and Self-Organization in the Knowledge-Based Society“). I found interesting the connection of social theory and complexity theory that Urry has made because I have also had a comparable endeavour in the past 8 years, which has resulted in my recent book. I lost sight of Urry’s work in the past years. His talk given in Barcelona has renewed my interest in reading some of his works that have ever since been published.

One question remained unanswered for me: Does building new systems only mean to establish new forms of consumption, or does this also involve the need for new economic forms of production? Mobility based on neoliberally caused excesses today surely not only means that people move globally, but also that commodities move globally because the practice of globally outsourcing and diffusing production has become so common in order to reduce capital investment costs (constant and variable capital in Marxian terms). For me the primary problem concerning travel is not personal travel by private people, but commodity transport and business-related travel. Also according to statistics energy production itself is the highest source of carbon emissions today, not transport. It might not suffice to change consumption, there might be a need to find alternatives to capitalist production. A pure focus on consumption could even distort the analysis of the importance of the role of production. I did not get from the talk in how far what Urry was saying about the problems’ causes and building alternative systems is related to production as well.

In the final plenary session, Michael Burawoy spoke about “Whose Knowledge? Varieties of Public Sociology”. He distinguished four types of sociology: Professional sociology is instrumental in producing knowledge and addresses an academic audience. Policy sociology produces knowledge for a client external to the academic system. Critical sociology is reflexive and tries to provide alternative foundations to sociology. Especially value foundations are discussed. Public sociology engages in dialogue with publics. The typology based on the distinction between academic and non-academic audiences and instrumental and reflexive knowledge. The latter is taken from Horkheimer and Adorno. Burawoy added another dimension: Gramsci’s distinction between traditional and organic intellectuals. Traditional intellectuals would address the public with the help of public media such as newspapers, whereas organic intellectuals would have unmediated relations to the public and would conduct a more activist type of sociology. As examples for traditional public sociologists, Burawoy mentioned Bourdieu, Mills, and Giddens, as examples for organic public sociologists; Gramsci, Freire, Touraine, and feminism. He concluded by arguing that all four types of sociology are important and should be connected and that his work has focused on building space and acceptance for critical and public sociology within sociology.

Alberto Martinelli, a former ISA president, criticized Burawoy. He argued that Burawoy sometimes makes a clear hierarchy between the four types. The most important form would then be public sociology, followed by critical sociology, professional sociology, and policy sociology. The latter would then be presented as corrupted by money and power. Martinelli called such a distinction fundamentalist and saw the focus on subordinate groups as rather dangerous. There would be dangers of dogmatism, elitism, and vanguardism. Martinelli stressed the importance of policy sociology and called for a connection of sociology to the natural sciences.

Alain Touraine on the one hand argued that it is important to defend the autonomy of sociology because it would have been distorted and limited by ideological interests in the past. Sociology would have to be protected from ideology. But contemporary society would be dominated by violence, war, and an extreme gap between the rich and the poor. Therefore on the other hand a second type of sociology would be needed, one that defends human rights for all. Sociology would have to uncover and eliminate the presence of hell in society. Sociologist would be responsible for the whole world and society would be full of forces that destroy human rights. Sociology would have to connect to the new generation that is eager to intervene and attack. This should be accompanied by the necessary reconstruction of many concepts of sociology. Touraine’s statements were closer to Burawoy than to Martinelli.

The debate showed that the issues that were underlying the positivism dispute between Popper and Adorno in German sociology in the early 1960s, are still at the core of discussions on the current and future state of sociology more than 45 years later. There are some who want to directly connect sociology to social struggles and the problems of the time, whereas others (including not only Martinelli, but in my opinion also Castells) claim that sociology can and should be neutral and value-free.

For me, Burawoys position is good, but not radical enough. He argues that public sociology has no intrinsic normative valences and that it can also be conducted in the interest of Christian fundamentalism. Burawoy bases his distinction between instrumental and reflexive knowledge on Horkheimer and Adorno. But for Horkheimer (in essays like “Traditionelle und kritische Theorie” or “Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft”) the distinction was between instrumental and critical knowledge. The latter is a specific form of normative knowledge, it operates according to Horkheimer with categories such as class, exploitation, surplus value, profit, misery, and breakdown, and is oriented on a “society without injustice”, “man’s emancipation from slavery”, and “the happiness of all individuals”. Therefore Horkheimer would consider a sociology conducted in the interest of Christian fundamentalism always as an instrumental type of sociology and would argue for a left-wing sociology. So in my opinion Burawoy should either drop his reference to Horkheimer or reformulate his concept of public sociology as critical public sociology. In my opinion Burawoy has a too positive picture of NGOs, the public sphere, and civil society. NGOs frequently support also conservative values. And the public is not automatically rational and willing to discuss, especially under neoliberal conditions, where people first of all have to struggle to survive and might not find the time and energy needed for engaging in public discourse. Horkheimer: “It is possible for the consciousness of every social stratum today to be limited and corrupted by ideology, however much, for its circumstances, it may be bent on truth. For all its insight into the individual steps in social change and for all the agreement of its elements with the most advanced traditional theories, the critical theory has no specific influence on its side, except con¬cern for the abolition of social injustice”. In my opinition, public sociology means a public interest sociology, a sociology that defends public interests, i.e. provides intellectual means and arguments for establishing conditions that benefit all. An such a public defense should also be made, if there is no or only a small critical public. When speaking about public intellectuals, my first example would be Marx, and my second, and most important one, Herbert Marcuse.

Also political reforms of society, the political system, the economy, and the public sphere might be needed. Civil society alone is not enough. It needs to be combined with progressive institutional politics. Public sociology has to confront the situation of a disinterested public and the role of ideology in public life. Burawoy hardly gives attention to these phenomena. Public sociology should not be seen as a solution to all problems, it has many difficulties. If I were to describe myself as being a public academic due to my intellectual and political engagement in the basic income movement, then I would mainly reflect about the difficulties involved, the notion of a limited public with limited consciousness, limited resources, etc. Failure and defeat are permanent features of civil society under contemporary conditions. Civil society also has a role of legitimating domination, as Gramsci already knew. This can for example be seen in the outsourcing of welfare functions from the state to civil society under neoliberal political conditions. Burawoy’s picture of civil society is too idealistic. Nonetheless his typology is very important because it has started a debate in sociology that could open up new spaces for critical, radical, and progressive theories and studies.

Manuel Castells’s talk was presented as one of the main events of the entire conference and several hundred people were attending. Castells defined sociology as the scientific study of society. He argued that the status of sociology in society is at an all-time low. One of the reasons would be that sociologists would have engaged in ideology and politics and would have therefore abandoned their duties as analysts. He argued for a distance between analysis (is) and morals (ought). Objective knowledge would be needed in sociology. Therefore it should be rooted scientifically. This means that Castells argues that it is possible and desirable to focus on empirical social research and to deny that sociology is always (to certain degress consciously and unconsciously) shaped by political interests. Immanuel Wallerstein in contrast has argued that sociology always has an intellectual, a moral, and a political dimension, and that it is honest not to deny that all three are always present. Castells believes in the possibility of a neutral and value-free sociology. In my opinion this is never the case. So for example also the choice of a central model or concept – such as Castells’s network society – tells us something about political values that shape a scholar’s work.

Castells argued that sociology should study processes of the constitution, organization, and change of the new society. He claimed that the network society is a new society.

Castells identified seven axes of change of the network society: 1. Digital communication networks (ICTs) as new technological paradigm. 2. Globalization as social systems that work in real time on a planetary scale. 3. The culture of real virtuality. 4. The network state. 5. The crisis of paternalism and patriarchy that has resulted in new lifestyles. 6. Resistance identities and project identities as results of the loss of basic securities. 7. The emergence of global ecological consciousness. One can ask some questions about this analysis: Why are there exactly seven axes? On which theoretical foundations and categories of society are they based? What is the underlying model of societal change? How are the seven axes connected? Why isn’t there a logic that establishes connections and a certain unity of these seven dimensions?  What about economic issues? Isn’t the economy a central axis of society? Aren’t global war, class divisions, neoliberalism, poverty, unequal income distribution, and surveillance also important?

Castells’s argued that three independent variables shaped the emergence of the network society accidently: 1. The crisis of capitalism and state socialism. 2. The technological revolution. 3. The influence of counterculture on software engineers. To assume that causes are fully independent, means to engage in ontological dualism. It cannot account for the connections of phenomena and show how they are adequately grounded. Dualism violates a fundamental logical and philosophical theorem: the law of ground. Technologies do not diffuse accidentally, but because there are societal situations in which there are concrete needs for these technologies. In stratified societies, such as the modern one, these diffusion processes are connected to economic interests and power and therefore to Castells first variable. Also culture is not independent of economy and politics. 1960s counterculture did not emerge in a vacuum, but in response and in interaction with certain conditions of the economic and political system.

Castells said that if society changes, sociology would have to change, it would have to change its tools in order to analyze society. The network society would be non-linear, but the tools used by contemporary sociology mainly linear. He therefore suggested three modifications of sociology: 1. The usage of complexity mathematics, non-linear dynamics, and mathematical modelling. A hardening of sociology would be needed. Sociologists according to Castells should stop using 19^th century philosophy in the 21^st century. A hardening of sociological education would mean that sociologists “would have at least to do some work”. Aren’t theory construction and social philosophy also hard  and complex academic work? 2. Open-source sociology: networked, co-operative forms of production in which ideas and data are shared and co-produced. 3. Applied sociology: Sociologists should engage in qualitatively, rigorous, relevant empirical research, not in politics and social movements, which should be aspects of citizenship, but not of sociology.

Castells calls for a natural science model of the social sciences. It seems to be no coincidence that he calls for a focus on the productive of “objective knowledge”, which is also the title of one of the most successful book by Karl Popper.

Open source sociology can be a good approach for advancing co-operation and new forms of dissemination and publication. But in a neoliberal world that is dominated by heavy competition also between academics, open source sociology could well result in an increase of gaps between influential and less influential academics if the first manage to make use of open source data and knowledge for publishing papers in high-reputation journals, by which they gain even more reputation. So just like in open source software, there should have to be a requirement that new knowledge that makes use of open source academic knowledge must be published in academic open source platforms. The availability of such platforms would not solve the problems that the academic world is facing today due to the colonization by economic logic. In my opinion, open source sociology would only work in a decolonized world, otherwise it could increase academic inequality based on the Matthew effect, as was shown by Robert Merton in the 1960s. One of the connected problems is that the academic system is today based on status competition and the individual accumulation of academic capital. There is a lack of co-operation and openness. Open access online journals and archives are today in most cases not acknowledged as important academic publications (e.g. they are hardly covered by the Social Science Citation Index, Sociological Abstracts, or Scopus). For open source sociology to work, we not only have to change academia, but society at large.

On days 2 and 3, I had the pleasure to listen to two papers that just like my approach deals with new media and the “knowledge society”/”network society” from a Marxian perspective:
Eran Fisher: Digital de-alienation: information technology, work, new spirit of capitalism
Peter Kennedy: A Value Theory of Labour Critique of the Knowledge Economy and the Expansion of Post-Compulsory Education Industry.

Also on day 3, Craig Calhoun and Donatella della Porta discussed the topic of “Prospects for Democracy”. Calhoun argued that US hegemony, global war, surveillance, inequality, the displacement of people, and corporate power limit the prospects for democracy. NGOs would be celebrated as the saviors of democracy by many, but most of them would support business and lack accountability. States would be the primary actors that can pose limits to capital, not NGOs. Therefore Calhoun called for strengthening and rebuilding public institutions. Donatella della Porta other than Calhoun gave a more positive assessment of new social movements (such as the movement for democratic globalization) and NGOs. She argued that many of these actors practice participatory democracy and that such democracy from below has potentials for releasing potentials for transforming society and its institutions towards more participatory structures. This debate was interesting, but lacked a clarification of how the two positions could be combined. In my opinion the problem for Calhoun’s approach is that although he is right that capital can only be limited by policies, there currently are no or hardly parties on the left that are willing to carry out such policies. But in civil society, critical actors can be found. This is what della Porta stresses. But for her approach, the problem is that civil society activists are frequently unwilling to engage in institutionalized political work. Therefore they frequently remain in an non-influential ghetto. Calhoun was right that he renewed Rudi Dutschke’s call for the march through the institutions. But what might first be needed is the creation of an institutionalized wing of critical social movements in the form of political parties.

The session on “Economic Sociology as Critique” with more than 60 participants was one of the most successful parallel sessions at the conference. Andrew Sawyer and Sylvia Walby in their two talks discussed Amartyra Sen’s capabilities approach as potential foundation of critical economic sociology. They argued and opposed relativistic and postmodern interpretations of Sen and suggested that a progressive political interpretation of Sen’s capability approach that can be used as foundation for critical economic sociology can be made. Sawyer argued that such an approach could be connected to Aristotle and early Marx’s notion of the well-rounded individual’s realization of all faculties. Michael Burawoy argued to ground critical economic sociology in the works of Marx and Karl Polanyi. The grounding concept should be commodification and not exploitation and the decisive group that should be addressed as potentially struggling subject should be civil society because it could struggle for human rights. John Helmwood based his type of critical economic sociology on Durkheim and argued for a capitalism of production combined with a socialism of distribution. I doubt that such a system is possible because already Marx had shown that production and distribution are dialectically connected and cannot so easily be separated. I do not understand why Burawoy is so strictly focusing on civil society and counter to Calhoun seems to be rather opposed to the idea of left-wing political parties. He does not see that civil society, as Gramsci stressed, legitimizes domination and under neoliberalism is used as a means for outsourcing social labour that was in former times organized by the state. I disagree with Sawyer’s and Walby’s focus on Sen because his concept of capability is strongly focusing on a subjectivistics, individualistic free choice model of freedom and neglects relational issues of freedom such as class. He is so much preoccupied with stressing that GDP per capita is not the only aspect of freedom, that he leaves out an important socio-economic variable: income inequality. He argues that a poor person can be happier than an ill, old or disabled. But if you are ill, old or disabled and poor, then you surely are worse off than ill, old, disabled rich persons. Sen mentions that life expectancy in China is higher than in South Africa and Brazil, although its GDP per capita is lower. He does not mention that income equality is much higher in the latter two countries, which might drive down life expectancy. Material wealth is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for freedom. And it is a relational category because today the wealth of some is based on the poverty of the rest. Distribution is a foundational issue of freedom. Sen’s approach is uncritical and neglects class and distribution. In the end, Sen tells us that the poor can be happier than the non-poor, that therefore no alternatives to capitalism are needed, and that everything can stay the same.

I share the idea that basic human faculties should be distinguished. For doing so, one does not need Amartyra Sen. A good point of reference can be Marx’s early writings, in which he identified basic human capacities as human Essence that can only be realized if the class individual is abolished, which means to overcome private property relations. This work was continued by for example Herbert Marcuse and Crawford B. McPherson.

Christian Fuchs: “Critical Theory in the Age of the Internet”, ISA World Forum, Barcelona, September 6, 2008, Part 1

Christian Fuchs: “Critical Theory in the Age of the Internet”, ISA World Forum, Barcelona, September 6, 2008, Part 2

Touraine is 83 years old and an impressive figure that has made important contributions for sociology, especially in the area of new social movement research. Unfortunately his English is very bad and he speaks very oddly, which makes it hard to follow him. I have three points of criticism of Touraine’s presentation: A. I did not see what is new about his new book. He keeps repeating the same message since several decades: that a new sociology of action is needed. So for example he already published a book with the title “The Return of the Actor” in 1988. B. He falls behind social theory approaches that have tried to overcome the gap between action theory and structuralism by focusing strongly on the primacy of actors (e.g. Roy Bhaskar, Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, Margaret Archer). Touraine deepens the gap between these two approaches and rather neglects how existing institutions condition, enable, and constrain actors’ practices. The insight of a dialectic of structures and actors that the aforementioned authors have elaborated, is ignored and not discussed. C. I cannot share Touraine’s implication that Marxism is outdated. Contrary, I think that referring to Marx is the most important task for sociology today because: 1. Marx described globalization as an immanent feature of capitalism and therefore anticipated contemporary discourses. 2. The importance of technology, knowledge, and media in contemporary society was anticipated by the Marxian focus on machinery, means of communication, and the general intellect. 3. The immizerization and precariousness caused by neoliberal capitalism suggests a renewed interest in the Marxian category of class. 4. The global war against terror after 9/11 and its violent and repressive results like human casualties and intensified surveillance suggest a renewed interest in Marxian theories of imperialism (theories of empire and new imperialism). 5. The ecological crisis reactualizes a theme that runs through many Marxian works: that there is an antagonism between modern industrialism and nature that results in ecological destruction. 6. Marx is not a structuralist, but can also be read as an action theorist (e.g. Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts, Theses on Feuerbach, German Ideology), or as a structure-action-dialectician.

Castells and Calhoun honoured Touraine’s works and made some critical remarks on his latest book. Castells stressed that he is not a theorist, but a researcher who makes use of those theories that he can apply in empirical research. He would discard and find useless other theories. He would have dropped, but not renounced Marxism, 25 years ago because it no longer made practical-empirical sense for him to refer to it and it did no longer inform the questions that he was interested in. Theories would be tools that would have to make sense for research. Touraine’s social theory other than the Marxian one would have been continuously important for him, Castells argued. For example in the Project Internet Catalonia, in which 50 000 interviews on Internet usage in Catalonia were conducted, the central goal was to identify projects of autonomy. The major finding was that people who have projects of personal, professional, entrepreneurial, socio-political, corporeal, or communicative autonomy, make more use of the Internet than others, which in turn would reinforce autonomy, etc. Here Touraine’s notions of subjectivity and autonomy would have been important influences. One criticism by Castells was that Touraine would spent too much time in his book for deconstructing dying trees like functionalism, Marxism, or postmodernism that less and less people are interested in today. Students would for example no longer read Parsons. Castells remarked that he found postmodernism never useful because it was not understandable for him. Marxism would have killed functionalism. Postmodernism would have killed Marxism. By referring to Touraine, one could maybe kill postmodernism. Castells said that Touraine is mainly focusing on France and French theorists, but France would be the most boring society and would be an old world that does not follow up with new developments. Castells argued that Marxism continues to be important for some parties, unions, and intellectuals in France, Latin America, and Korea, but not in other countries. I disagree with Castells’ assessment of Marxism that very much resembles the one voiced by Touraine due to the reasons already mentioned. I find it troublesome that a figure like Castells, who is considered as one of the most important contemporary sociologists by quite some scholars, neglects to build social theories himself. He seems to consider theories as rather unimportant. Therefore it is no wonder that his trilogy on the information age lacks social-theoretical foundations. In my opinion the reason why Castells finds Marxism no longer useful is not that Marxism has lost touch with contemporary reality, but because Castells has lost critical impetus. This becomes very clear in Castells’ neglect of ethical and policy conclusions. He separates academic from politics, as if academia were not always influenced by political values and choices. To claim that one negates political conclusions is itself a political statement and shaped by political values and interests. Immanuel Wallerstein in my opinion is in this context right in arguing that all sociologists permanently perform three functions: an intellectual, a moral, and a political one. It would be honest to actively admit this partisanship, and ideological to deny it. Castells has been criticized by Jan Van Dijk has criticized Castells’ approach as a form of structuralism, in which structural networks substitute actors and human actors are rather neglected. Therefore it can seem odd to some that Castells argues that Touraine’s action theory and focus on subjectivity has been an important influence on his works.

I found Craig Calhoun’s intervention the best of the three contributions because he expressed concern about Touraine’s and Castells’ discarding of Marxian theory. This would result in the opinion that political economy is not important for sociology, that sociologist can learn nothing from economists, and that they should focus on the effects of economic structures, but not on the economy itself. The economy would not be external to sociology. Marxism would not be useless because it could grasp large-scale structures of power. Therefore a renewal of Marxism would be important. Calhoun also expressed the concern that Touraine only focused on progressive actors and not on repressive ones like fascists. He asked: Are actors and movements always good? Can a fascist be an autonomous subject? Sociologists like Touraine would disregard nasty actors because they would find it more pleasurable to analyze people they like and sympathize with.

Touraine as a conclusion pointed out that new categories and new institutions would be needed due to the changes of society; that the time has come, where a new generation would have to reconstruct society and its analysis; and that social facts are founded on non-social facts like biology and religion. I cannot understand Touraine’s new focus on religion and he also did not explain the personal and intellectual reasons for this move.

Touraine published his first paper in 1948. The evening showed that he has produced a vivid and influential oeuvre that is critically discussed.

Overall, I must say that I enjoyed many of the sessions that I participated in yesterday and today (The Internet: From Utopia to Nightmare; New realities, new definitions: revisiting theories of communication; new media, social movements, and democracy; From the workspace to cyberspace: situating alienation in the 21st century) more than listening to the old guys because I there felt no oddity, more enthusiasm to create new theories and approaches, to transform society, and to renew critical thinking and radical sociology.

In the opening session, the president of the Catalan Association of Sociology, Arturo Rodriguez Morató, argued the anti-sociological character of neoliberalism, disciplinary competition and fragmentation in sociology, and the colonization of sociology by journalistic logic has affected the possibilities for doing sociology. In this situation, public sociology that according to the American Marxist sociologist Michael Burawoy is sociology that speaks to and with the public, would be necessary for renewing sociology. The overall question of the conference would be: How can sociology make a contribution to public debates?

Saskia Sassen argued that powerless individuals and groups could find ways of resistance. Two master categories for contemporary sociology would be the global and the national. The only truly global organizations would be the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). Others would be not really global, but mixtures of global and national organizations. So for example global finance would need financial centres in global cities. I found her analysis undialectical and dualistic. Isn’t there a dialectic of globalization and localization, so that all globalization processes are in need of national or local appropriation and the global emerges from interactions of non-global actors? Roland Robertson has spoken in this context of glocalization. So for example the WTO can only meet and thereby enforce its power in local settings, which has enabled anti-WTO demonstrations by activists who come from different nations, but travel globally and interact to form a global movement that protests in different local settings. Powerful institutions according to Sassen create powerless actors. But the latter would not be victims, they could find ways to resist. For example in the US law suits against multinational corporations that abuse workers in different countries would have been successful by making use of national laws. Immobile local activists could make use of the Internet for forming a global identity. It would be possible to act and resist in local spaces in ways that have more global impact. I found Sassen’s analysis too optimistic, voluntaristic, and advancing a subjective determinism. Isn’t it the case that powerless humans frequently fail, because they do not have the time, money, resources, motivation, energy etc for activism due to structural features of their existence like precarious labour, ideology, manipulation, etc? Concerning the Internet, most social movement- and Internet researchers agree that the Internet alone does not suffice for the establishment of collective political identity and that face-to-face interaction is needed because it is less anonymous and more easily supports emotional cohesion.

Michael Wievjorka, the president of the ISA, said that in professional sociology there would only be talk between experts and a neglect of the public. He distinguished three positions: An elitist one that sees the public as stupid and neglects it. The position of restitution, which wants to give back something to the people that are studied by providing them with knowledge and analysis. And the one of deliberative democracy, in which researchers generate knowledge and debates with a public that wants to discuss. The most important traditions of public sociology would be action research and participatory research.

My personal position is that not just a public sociology is needed, but a critical public sociology, by which I mean a sociology that opposes all forms of domination, supports the interests of dominated, oppressed, and exploited groups, is partial for these people, and aims at contributing to the establishment of a co-operative society. This would be a sociology that acts in the public interest, a public interest sociology that wants to create societal situations in which all, not just certain elitist classes, benefit. This also means that public sociology that supports conservative or right-wing causes is undesirable and should be eliminated. Therefore what is needed is a radical, critical, left-wing sociology and the goal should be that a day will come where instrumental, uncritical sociology will cease to exist and all sociology becomes left-wing. Therefore I agree with Francis Fox Piven that a “dissident and critical public sociology” is needed.

I found worrying that starting with the opening session, the habit was taken to focus on pure penal discussions in the plenary sessions without involving the audience. Typically, three experts discussed and the audience listened. This practice runs totally counter to the idea of public sociology and it is questionable that those who discuss about public sociology in a non-public and elitist way are good role models for practicing public sociology.

The parallel sessions typically consisted of 80 (!) parallel events. I found this practice troublesome because there were always at least four parallel panels that I found interesting and that I would have loved to attend and the practice resulted in a very low number of participants (typically 10-15, sometimes 20) in the sessions. Therefore the academic audience was minimized by an idiosyncratic practice that is unsuitable for the issue of public sociology because it fragments the audience into many specialized parts that even in plenary sessions are excluded and not enabled to talk with each other in a general universal space that all share.

In the evening, a very nice welcoming party in the courtyard of the Centre of Contemporary Culture took place that featured fine drinks, Catalan food, and a relaxed atmosphere that enabled good talks and nice personal encounters.