Creative Destruction and Cultural Lag in the Digital Age

Recently, there has been renewed interest in the two ideas of \u201ccreative destruction\u201d and \u201ccultural lag\u201d both brought together in this article to analyze cutting-edge changes in the digital world, especially as they relate to consumption. Several studies have documented that we are increasingly living in a hybridized environment of swiftly evolving devices and technologies. Within this context, cultural lag refers both to the conflict between digital versus material consumerist developments, as well as to the subsequent delays in social understanding. Creative destruction describes the introduction of new forms of consumption that eliminate existing ones. However while all destruction tends to lead to cultural lag, this is especially true in the case of creative destruction. The article will also suggest at the end that not all destruction, especially, but not exclusively, as it relates to the environment, is necessarily creative. It can also be mainly, if not exclusively and totally, destructive

Occupational Myths

http://web.ku.edu/~starjrn

I Never Metatheory I Didn't Like

The invitation to write autobiographically for the Centennial Celebration of the Department of Sociology at the University of Kansas arrived at an opportune moment for me. First, I was in the midst of book in which I was writing about the role of biography and autobiography in metatheoretical work in sociology (Ritzer 1991a). Second, I had just finished a review essay in which I analyzed three recent biographical and autobiographical works from (hat point of view (Ritzer 1991b). Third, I'd been reading a hot new autobiographical expose on drugs, booze, sex, and glitz in Hollywood, You'll NeverEat Lunch in ThisTownAgain byJulia Phillips (1991), that had startling similarities to my experiences at Kansas in the early 1970s. It is the fact that biographical work is of intellectual and personal concern that I am able to overcome the natural embarrassment about writing autobiographically and to deal with my "Kansas years.

Occupational Myths

http://web.ku.edu/~starjrn

The “New” Prosumer: Collaboration on the Digital and Material “New Means of Prosumption”

Many of “cyber-utopians” have lauded the Internet, especially social networking sites, for a variety of reasons, including making possible a dramatic and revolutionary increase in social collaboration (Benkler, 2007; Tapscott and Williams, 2006). The goal of this essay is to examine- and, at least in part, debunk- this claim from a new and unique sociological perspective- the relationship between collaboration and the “new means of prosumption”. Such an examination is suggested by the fact that collaboration is, by definition, a form of prosumption. That is, it involves one or more parties “producing” and other(s) “consuming” something of mutual interest and importance. However, the collaborative process, like prosumption more generally, is not as separable as all that. In fact, collaboration is a dialectical process in which those involved are continually changing their positions on the prosumption continuum (see below), sometimes they are mor

A Metatheoretical Analysis of Socioeconomics

A good portion of the current debate over socio-economics and economic sociology has been framed in metatheoretical, particularly paradigmatic, terms. Having done a good deal of work in metatheory in general (Ritzer 1988, 1989b, 1990c), and paradigm analysis in particular (Ritzer 1975, 1981), I would like to address the current work in socio-economics, especially Amitai Etzioni's (1988) The Moral Dimension: Towarda New Economics, from those points of view. Such a metatheoretical examination should allow us to better understand these works, their objectives, and their strengths and weaknesses

Hospitality and prosumption

Hospitality and the hospitality industry need to be reevaluated in the era of the new prosumer and smart prosuming machines. Traditional notions of hospitality hearken back to an earlier era and ongoing changes are forcing us to reconsider them. Among those changes are the decline of settings that offer hospitality; the decline of employment opportunities for workers in that industry; the decline in the opportunities to offer hospitality for the workers that remain; a decline in interest in hospitality on the part of consumers; the automation of hospitality; and the increasingly stratified nature of the hospitality industry. Overall, given the increasing affluence of the developed world, and of the elites in all parts of the world, the hospitality industry will survive. However, it will increasingly be bifurcated into a small number of settings that offer elites the kind of hospitality we traditionally associate with the industry and a vast majority of settings that offer what is best described as inhospitality to everyone else.Keywords: Hospitableness, inhospitality, prosumption, smart prosuming machines, McDonaldisatio

The Globalization of Nothing

In this essay, we will argue that we are witnessing the globalization of nothing. 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