ABSTRACT
Because I am trying to distill theory from observation, I will not discuss here the many important, and fruitful, theoretical contributions that exist in sociology and related disciplines, which could anchor the categories and analyses proposed in this article. I will present an argument as schematic, and simplifi ed as possible, so that it could be useful to sociologists’ collective investigation, without spending space and time in reminding the reader of well-established theoretical contributions. A short bibliography indicates the works that have helped me in theorizing my investigation. Similarly, the statements on current social trends cannot be empirically substantiated in this paper: they rely on data and sources presented in the updated version of my trilogy (Castells 2000a).
