What is the new economy? In one sense, it is a very old concern of sociology. Since the discipline's 19th century origins, sociologists have traditionally studied how changes in material production and economic relations impact 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 made possible by information technologies and related organizational innovations. The logic of this new economy, as well as its consequences for society, are the subject of this course.
The course entails two related topics. The first is conventionally "sociological," as we review the changing values, social structures, and supporting institutions that accompany the new economy. Over the last few decades, community, family, race, gender, education, and consumerism have affected work and business in ways that earlier scholars could not anticipate. In turn, the new economy has dramatically transformed these social relations, giving them new emancipatory potentials while simultaneously rearranging them into new inequalities. To understand these developments, students will read the relevant literature and write several essays.
The second topic is apparently "economic," as we examine in depth how technological and organizational innovations drive the new economy. However, debates concerning flexible production, information networks, self-programmable labor, and the outsourcing of production are especially sociologal, insofar as they relate to changes in how we obey authority, cooperate and compete with others, and accept responsibility for our livelihoods amidst uncertainty and inequality. To this end, students will undertake a research project modeled on flexible production -- involving collaborative teamwork, specialized tasks which students will divide within and bargain/outsource among teams, graded evaluation by fellow classmates (and not the instructor!), and a final assessment of flexiblity's social consequences and pedagogical value.