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The Globalization of Nothing
The Globalization of Nothing THE GLOBALIZATION OF NOTHING GEORGE RITZER University of Maryland WITH MICHAEL RYAN University of Maryland In this essay,1 we will argue that we are witnessing the globalization of nothing.2 Note that we are not arguing that globalization is nothing; indeed it is clear that the process is of enormous significance. Rather, the argument is, using a term borrowed from Weber, that there is an elective affinity between globalization and nothing. That is, one does not cause the other, but they do tend to vary together. Thus, globalization tends to involve the spread of nothing throughout the world. Of course, what is pivotal is the meaning of nothing. By nothing, we mean (largely) empty forms that are centrally conceived and controlled and relatively devoid of distinctive content. Conversely, something is defined here as (largely) full forms that are indigenously conceived and controlled and relatively rich in distinctive content. Thus, it is easier to export empty forms (nothing) throughout the globe than it is forms that are loaded with content (something). The latter are more likely to be rejected by at least some cultures and societies because the content is more likely to conflict with local content and be found offensive by more of the natives. In contrast, empty forms are less likely to come into conflict with local forms and since they are devoid of distinctive content, it would be difficult for them to arouse anxiety in the natives. In addition, empty forms have other advantages from the point of view of globalization including the fact that since they are so minimalist, they are easy to replicate over and over 51 Social Thought & Research and they have a cost advantage since they are relatively inexpensive to reproduce. -
Comparing Capitalisms Through the Lens of Classical Sociological Theory1
Comparing Capitalisms through the Lens of Classical Sociological Theory1 Gregory Jackson 1 Introduction The ‘classical tradition’ in sociology, stemming from Marx, Durkheim, and We- ber, continues to inspire sociological approaches to the economy (Beckert 2002; Swedberg 2000). Despite its foundational infl uence, the distinctively sociologi- cal contribution of this ‘classical’ tradition has been somewhat overshadowed by the widespread diffusion of economic theory, such as transaction costs or agency theory, and newer sociological approaches, such as network analysis or ‘new institutionalism’ in organizational analysis, in the process of forging inter- disciplinary approaches to the economy. In honor of the sixtieth birthday of Wolfgang Streeck, this essay looks at his contribution to economic sociology and its relationship to classical sociological theory. Wolfgang Streeck has retained and developed a distinctly sociological approach to the study of the economy that draws important inspiration from the classics. His closeness to the classic sociological tradition is perhaps unsur- prising given his early journey as a student in the 1970s from the ‘critical theory’ found in Frankfurt to the then often more ‘middle range’ concerns of sociology pursued at Columbia University by infl uential fi gures such as Robert Merton, Peter Blau, and Amitai Etzioni. Wolfgang Streeck was excited by the empiri- cal richness of early American sociology, as is evident in his subsequent edited volume Elementare Soziologie (1976). Alongside Durkheim, Weber, and Friedrich Engels, the book translated writings of postwar American sociologists such as Peter Blau, Alvin Gouldner, Howard Becker, and William Whyte. However, the focus was not on positivist empirical sociology, but on the way these sociologists utilized fundamental theoretical concepts, such as confl ict, exchange, or status, to inform their detailed empirical or even ethnographic fi eldwork. -
Challenges to the Professional Control of Knowledge Work in Academic Libraries: a Proposed Agenda for Organizational Research and Action
Challenges to the Professional Control of Knowledge Work in Academic Libraries: A Proposed Agenda for Organizational Research and Action Mark Tyler Day, Associate Librarian Reference, Indiana University Libraries Bibliographic abstracts are available at http://php.indiana.edu/~daym/acrlpaperbib.htm (http://php.indiana.edu/~daym/acrlpaperbib.htm) ABSTRACT This paper examines contemporary challenges to the professional claims of academic librarians, who historically have been granted authority to organize academic library work. Many arguments for reorganizing library work along less bureaucratic, more market-driven, and more highly technological lines do not adequately consider the effect such changes have on professional authority. To better understand these effects, a review was undertaken of social scientific research on information technology, organizations and professions as it pertains to academic librarianship. It is suggested that we can strengthen our professional authority, practice, and recruitment by expanding our disciplinary knowledge through collaborative research in social informatics. Introduction: ACRL's Professionalization Project and the Modern System of Professions Since its founding in 1889 as the "College Library Section of the American Library Association,"(1) the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) has been engaged in a "professionalization project" (2) to raise the occupational status of academic librarianship. This project occurred as part of that general "rise of the modern professions" which -
The Internet, Web 2.0, and Beyond
33 The Internet, Web 2.0, and Beyond Nathan Jurgenson and George Ritzer Technology changes rapidly, often transforming the social world in the process. The internet, Web 2.0 in particular, is a perfect, even an extreme, example of this fact. This chapter focuses on the changes in the last half-decade that have radically transformed the web, creating what many now describe as Web 2.0 (succeeding the largely earlier Web 1.0). This new version of the internet is defined by the explosion in user-generated content. Because so many people are actively involved in this, as well as in the internet in general, their social lives have changed, sometimes dra- matically. Furthermore, new, very active, social worlds have been, and are being, created on the internet; users are actively creating a more richly social internet. Because of its impact on the larger social world, and because of the social worlds that it is creating, Web 2.0, as well as whatever form the web takes in the future (Web 3.0), should (must) be of increasing concern to sociologists. Technology is social: an inTroducTion To social Technologies online Barry Wellman (Wellman, Salaff, Dimitrova, Garton, Gulia & Haythornthwaite 1996; Wellman & Gulia 1999a, 1999b; Wellman, Haase, Witte & Hampton 2001; Wellman & Haythornthwaite 2002) has argued that computer networks can be social (see especially Wellman et al.’s [1996] article, “Computer Networks as Social Networks: Collaborative Work, Telework, and Virtual Community”). One of his early insights is that virtual communities are based more on shared interests The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Sociology, First Edition. -
Centennial Bibliography on the History of American Sociology
University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Sociology Department, Faculty Publications Sociology, Department of 2005 Centennial Bibliography On The iH story Of American Sociology Michael R. Hill [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/sociologyfacpub Part of the Family, Life Course, and Society Commons, and the Social Psychology and Interaction Commons Hill, Michael R., "Centennial Bibliography On The iH story Of American Sociology" (2005). Sociology Department, Faculty Publications. 348. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/sociologyfacpub/348 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Sociology, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sociology Department, Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Hill, Michael R., (Compiler). 2005. Centennial Bibliography of the History of American Sociology. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association. CENTENNIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY Compiled by MICHAEL R. HILL Editor, Sociological Origins In consultation with the Centennial Bibliography Committee of the American Sociological Association Section on the History of Sociology: Brian P. Conway, Michael R. Hill (co-chair), Susan Hoecker-Drysdale (ex-officio), Jack Nusan Porter (co-chair), Pamela A. Roby, Kathleen Slobin, and Roberta Spalter-Roth. © 2005 American Sociological Association Washington, DC TABLE OF CONTENTS Note: Each part is separately paginated, with the number of pages in each part as indicated below in square brackets. The total page count for the entire file is 224 pages. To navigate within the document, please use navigation arrows and the Bookmark feature provided by Adobe Acrobat Reader.® Users may search this document by utilizing the “Find” command (typically located under the “Edit” tab on the Adobe Acrobat toolbar). -
Taking on the Newly Configured Reductionist Challenge to Sociology
#2714-ASR 71:1 filename:71101-Duster 2005 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS Comparative Perspectives and Competing Explanations: Taking on the Newly Configured Reductionist Challenge to Sociology Troy Duster New York University Sociology faces three important interrelated challenges in the coming decades. The first will be the increasing authority of reductionist science for which partial evidence is found in the strikingly imbalanced allocation of research funding for “causes” of wide- ranging problems—from disparities in health and educational achievement to explanations of alcoholism and violence. The second is the attendant expansion of databases on markers and processes “inside the body.” Directly but inversely related is the third challenge: new evidence that the release of already collected data sets is blocked and data collection on social and economic forces is reduced. These challenges can be confronted and addressed directly if sociologists emulate an earlier generation of sociological researchers and turn greater attention to an analysis of data collection at the site of reductionist knowledge production. This includes, for example, close scrutiny of new computer technologies assisting several DNA identification claims. It is Delivered by Ingenta to : insufficient to simply assert the arbitrarinessHarvard of the University “social construction” of these claims. Instead, the architecture of thatWed, construction 25 Oct 2006 must 22:39:39 be demonstrated. Unless that is done, competing explanations (from various disciplines) will have far greater significance on public policy and on the particular discipline’s status with public and private funding sources. he centennial of the American Sociological field in new and unchartered ways, because TAssociation (ASA) is an appropriate time to they experience their group’s perspective as step back and take a full sociohistorical view of either thwarted or ignored. -
Prosperity Without Growth?Transition the Prosperity to a Sustainable Economy 2009
Prosperity without growth? The transition to a sustainable economy to a sustainable The transition www.sd-commission.org.uk Prosperity England 2009 (Main office) 55 Whitehall London SW1A 2HH without 020 7270 8498 [email protected] Scotland growth? Osborne House 1 Osbourne Terrace, Haymarket Edinburgh EH12 5HG 0131 625 1880 [email protected] www.sd-commission.org.uk/scotland Wales Room 1, University of Wales, University Registry, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3NS Commission Development Sustainable 029 2037 6956 [email protected] www.sd-commission.org.uk/wales Northern Ireland Room E5 11, OFMDFM The transition to a Castle Buildings, Stormont Estate, Belfast BT4 3SR sustainable economy 028 9052 0196 [email protected] www.sd-commission.org.uk/northern_ireland Prosperity without growth? The transition to a sustainable economy Professor Tim Jackson Economics Commissioner Sustainable Development Commission Acknowledgements This report was written in my capacity as Economics Commissioner for the Sustainable Development Commission at the invitation of the Chair, Jonathon Porritt, who provided the initial inspiration, contributed extensively throughout the study and has been unreservedly supportive of my own work in this area for many years. For all these things, my profound thanks. The work has also inevitably drawn on my role as Director of the Research group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment (RESOLVE) at the University of Surrey, where I am lucky enough to work with a committed, enthusiastic and talented team of people carrying out research in areas relevant to this report. Their research is evident in the evidence base on which this report draws and I’m as grateful for their continuing intellectual support as I am for the financial support of the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant No: RES-152-25-1004) which keeps RESOLVE going. -
Global Studies Capstone Course -- HIST 1005-1280 Fall 2013
Global Studies Capstone Course -- HIST 1005-1280 Fall 2013 GLOBALIZATION: Impacts, Approaches, Struggles Instructor: Roger Rouse Wednesdays, 6.00-8.30pm 103 Allen Office Hours: M noon-2.30pm in 4106 Posvar; or by appt. Phone: 412-251-0327; e-mail: [email protected] OVERVIEW What is globalization? How has it been changing? And what does it mean for the ways people around the world relate to one another and their shared environment? In recent years, scholars, journalists, and artists have increasingly used the term “globalization” to register the sense that we are in the midst of a rapid intensification and reorganization of the processes through which people interact with one another and with nature beyond the boundaries of the states in which they live. Yet there are significant debates about how to evaluate these transnational developments and more profoundly about how to understand them. Such debates are often closely linked to major disagreements and disputes about whether globalization should continue or more commonly about the forms that it should take. 2 LEARNING OBJECTIVES In this course, we will focus on enhancing your ability to understand and evaluate these developments, debates, and conflicts, giving particular emphasis to: • the varied and changing impacts of contemporary globalization on people in different parts of the world and on the processes through which their experiences are connected and divided • the contending approaches that scholars, journalists, and artists are taking to conceptualizing these developments, investigating -
An Introduction to Mcdonaldization
Ritzer-ch01.qxd 1/22/02 11:05 AM Page 7 1 An Introduction to McDonaldization George Ritzer cDonald’s is the basis of one of the most influential developments in Mcontemporary society. Its reverberations extend far beyond its point of origin in the United States and in the fast-food business. It has influenced a wide range of undertakings, indeed the way of life, of a significant portion of the world. And that impact is likely to expand at an accelerating rate. However, this is not . about McDonald’s, or even about the fast-food business. Rather, McDonald’s serves here as the major example, the paradigm, of a wide-ranging process I call McDonaldization—that is, the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the world. As you will see, McDonaldization affects not only the restaurant business but also . virtually every other aspect of society. McDonaldization has shown every sign of being an inexorable process, sweeping through seem- ingly impervious institutions and regions of the world. Editor’s Note: Excerpts from “An Introduction to McDonaldization,” pp. 1–19 in The McDonaldization of Society, 3rd ed., by George Ritzer. Copyright © 2000, Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks, CA. Used with permission. 7 Ritzer-ch01.qxd 1/22/02 11:05 AM Page 8 8 Basics, Studies, Applications, and Extensions The success of McDonald’s itself is apparent. “There are McDonald’s everywhere. There’s one near you, and there’s one being built right now even nearer to you. -
Chapter Iii Values in Jean Baudrillard's Theory Of
CHAPTER III VALUES IN JEAN BAUDRILLARD’S THEORY OF CONSUMER SOCIETY A. Biography1 Baudrillard was born in Reims, northeastern France, on 27 July 1929. He told to the interviewers that his grandparents were peasants and his parents were civil servants. During his high school studies at the Reims Lycée, he touched with pataphysics (via the philosophy professor Emmanuel Peillet), which was said to be crucial for understanding Baudrillard's later thought. He became the first of his family who attended university when he moved to Paris to attend Sorbonne University. There he studied German language and literature which led him to begin teaching these subjects at several different lycées, both Parisian and provincial, from 1960 until 1966. While teaching, Baudrillard began to publish reviews of literature and translated the works of such authors such as Peter Weiss, Bertolt Brecht, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann. During his time as a teacher of German language and literature, Baudrillard began to transfer to sociology field, eventually completing his doctoral thesis Le Système des objets (The System of Objects) under the dissertation committee of Henri Lefebvre, Roland Barthes, and Pierre Bourdieu. Subsequently, he began teaching sociology at the Université de Paris-X Nanterre, a university campus outside of Paris which would become heavily involved in the events of May 1968. During this time, Baudrillard worked closely with Philosopher Humphrey De Battenburge, who described Baudrillard as a “visionary”. At Nanterre he took up a position as Maître Assistant (Assistant Professor), then Maître de Conférences (Associate Professor), eventually becoming a professor after completing his accreditation, L'Autre par lui- même (The Other by Himself). -
What Is Racial Domination?
STATE OF THE ART WHAT IS RACIAL DOMINATION? Matthew Desmond Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin—Madison Mustafa Emirbayer Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin—Madison Abstract When students of race and racism seek direction, they can find no single comprehensive source that provides them with basic analytical guidance or that offers insights into the elementary forms of racial classification and domination. We believe the field would benefit greatly from such a source, and we attempt to offer one here. Synchronizing and building upon recent theoretical innovations in the area of race, we lend some conceptual clarification to the nature and dynamics of race and racial domination so that students of the subjects—especially those seeking a general (if economical) introduction to the vast field of race studies—can gain basic insight into how race works as well as effective (and fallacious) ways to think about racial domination. Focusing primarily on the American context, we begin by defining race and unpacking our definition. We then describe how our conception of race must be informed by those of ethnicity and nationhood. Next, we identify five fallacies to avoid when thinking about racism. Finally, we discuss the resilience of racial domination, concentrating on how all actors in a society gripped by racism reproduce the conditions of racial domination, as well as on the benefits and drawbacks of approaches that emphasize intersectionality. Keywords: Race, Race Theory, Racial Domination, Inequality, Intersectionality INTRODUCTION Synchronizing and building upon recent theoretical innovations in the area of race, we lend some conceptual clarification to the nature and dynamics of race and racial domination, providing in a single essay a source through which thinkers—especially those seeking a general ~if economical! introduction to the vast field of race studies— can gain basic insight into how race works as well as effective ways to think about racial domination. -
Response: Public Sociology: Populist Fad Or Path to Renewal?1
The British Journal of Sociology 2005 Volume 56 Issue 3 Response: Public sociology: populist fad or path to renewal?1 Michael Burawoy Christine Inglis writes that ‘For Public Sociology’, was itself an act of public sociology. True enough, it addressed professional sociologists, urging them to see themselves through a particular classificatory lens. It was a small part of a wider collective call to public sociology, attracting over 5,500 sociologists to San Francisco for the best attended annual meeting in the 99 year history of the American Sociological Association. But its success seems to have also aroused suspicion. While broadly endorsing the project of public sociology, Craig Calhoun is apprehensive about its popular appeal to non-elites – soci- ologists laying siege to the commanding heights of our discipline – when we might be better served protecting university autonomy from outside imposters. He wonders whether public sociology is but a ‘current fad’ rooted in ‘feel-good populism’, the last hurrah of 1960s baby-boomers. In responding to him and my other critics, I will defend the seriousness and coherence of public sociology as a distinct realm within a national and global disciplinary division of sociological labour, and as an antidote to external subversion. To give a better sense of the public sociology project and the source of Calhoun’s ambivalence let me set the immediate context of the address. The 5 days of debates and discussions in San Francisco opened with an interdisci- plinary plenary on the significance of W.E.B. Du Bois, perhaps the greatest public sociologist of the twentieth century.