Relevance of Social Exclusion in Castellian Theory of Informationalism for South Asia

Abstract

‘Social exclusion’ has become a buzzword in an era of ‘globalisation’. Many social scientists have made an attempt in defining, conceptualising, contextualising and theorising social exclusion. There is an attempt in this paper in examining social exclusion from Manuel Castells’ perspective in South Asian context. Information plays crucial role in informationalism especially due to ICT (information and communication technology). However, it has resulted into a new form of social problem, what he calls ‘redundancy of labour’ as opposed to ‘appropriation of surplus labour’ based on the notion of exploitative relations of production. Social exclusion must be looked upon not only in terms of non-access to resources but also in terms of ‘redundancy of labour’ in an era of globalisation process, intensified with ICT resulting into ‘network production’ to cope with the crisis of capitalism. It has been argued that Castellian notion of social exclusion must be understood from the perspective of technology driven information society characterised by: (a) redundancy of labour and (b) notion of network. To him, information society differs from industrial society which is characterised by: (i) appropriation of surplus labour and (ii) maximisation of profit. Redundancy of labour results into social exclusion in knowledge-based information society.