Manuel Castells (Spanish: Manuel Castells Oliván, pronounced: [kaˈsteʎs]; born 1942) is a Spanish sociologist especially associated with research on the information society, communication and globalization.The 2000–2014 research survey of the Social Sciences Citation Index ranks him as the world’s fifth most-cited social science scholar, and the foremost-cited communication scholar.He was awarded the 2012 Holberg Prize, for having "shaped our understanding of the political dynamics of urban and global economies in the network society." In 2013 he was awarded the Balzan Prize for Sociology.