Anthony Giddens:

The Juggernaut of Modernity

- described modern world as juggernaut (engine of enormouse power that can be directed to some extent, but which also threatens to run out of control)

4 basic institutions that define modernity

(Anthony Giddens)

1. Capitalism: private ownership of capital, class system

2. Industrialism: use of inanimate power sources to produce goods; affects transportation, communication, and everyday life

3. Surveillance: supervision of activities of subject populations in political sphere

4. Control of the means of violence by the state

3 processes that give modernity dynamism

(Anthony Giddens)

1. Time & space distanciation: modern relationships are increasingly distant

2. Disembedding: lifting out of social relations from local contexts of interaction and restructuring

3. Reflexivity: social practices are constantly reexamined and reformed in light of incoming information

Modernity Risk Profile/Culture

(Anthony Giddens)

- individuals make decisions in 'rational' and secular manner, faced with 'manufactured uncertainties'

- traditional societies confronted by natural risks; modern societies faced with social risks

- We no longer live in an industrial society and are moving toward a risk society.

- form of reflexive modernity in which the central issue is how risks can be prevented, minimized, or channeled

- risks produced by sources of wealth (example: industry)

George Ritzer:

McDonaldization

4 new means of consumption

- highly rationalized way for people to acquire goods and services and simultaneously be controlled and exploited as consumers

1. Efficiency: search for best means to an end

2. Predictability: world of no surprises

3. Calculability: emphasize quantity over quality

4. Control through nonhuman technology: tight control exercised over all aspects (temp, lighting, merch) in order to control consumers

Zygmunt Bauman:

Holocaust

- Holocaust = product of modernity because mass extermination required highly rationalized and bureaucratized operation

- conditions that created Holocaust have not really changed; only strong morality can prevent recurrence

Manuel Castells:

Network Society

- new society, culture, and economy in light of revolution in information technology

- new global info economy accompanied by network enterprise

network enterprise

(Manuel Castells)

- flexible production, new management systems, organization based on horizontal rather than vertical model, intertwining of large corporations in strategic alliances

- state is losing power because of global capital markets