Manuel Castells gave a powerful speech about the underlying challenges generated by our current era of international finance capitalism at the Occupy London encampment last Friday November 25th. He backed up his argument with some sobering statistics about the shifts in the concentrations of wealth in the global economy since the advent of the neoliberal economic epoch some 30 years ago. Castells currently has a new book out ‘Communication Power’ on the role of digital technology in new social movements, which was fitting given the speech’s location at a physical manifestation of emerging digital activism. Though not necessarily providing the solutions to current crises, Castells combined with the Occupy movement opens up a space in which we can begin to shape the questions that need to be asked about some of the most pressing issues of our time.
See the video of Castell’s speech below, courtesey of the Polis Blog:
