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Description

The new economy is, in one sense, a very old concern of sociology. Since the discipline's 19th-c. origins, sociologists have asked how changes in material production and economic relations alter the ways that people live, work, understand their lives, and relate to one another. However, current interests in the new economy center upon something new: a flexible, "just in time" mode of industry and consumerism made possible by information technologies (not only the Internet) and organizational innovations. The social logic of this new economy, as well as its consequences for society, are a focus of this course.

Public concerns about the new economy — What is becoming of "good jobs"? Who is empowered by changing technologies? What room does work leave for having a life? — have long boiled in modern society. Since the pandemic, they have taken shape as some people lose their jobs, others labor in difficult circumstances as "essential workers," and citizens question the normalcy of pre-pandemic work and its corollary, a stingy public safety net. In this way, how people think about the new economy, separate from its objective reality, is itself a context for economic change, as it motivates acceptance, backlash, and change via individual response and institutional action. Popular, political, and scholarly theories of the new economy are thus another focus of this course.

 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. To analyze contemporary inequalities in wealth, job quality, career advancement, lifestyle patterns, and consumer engagement through the lens of economic restructuring.

2. To explore how the new world of work reveals important changes in capital's pursuit of profits and labor control.

3. To investigate how, for better or worse, market cultures frame our contemporary impulses for techno-economic innovation, individual well-being, and social experiences.