Tagged: implosion

Political & Economic Sociology / Science & Technology / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work / Video Resources

Conference Summary Part I: The Internet as Playground and Factory

The New School held a conference last week that may be of interest to many Sociology Lens readers, so I have decided to devote this week’s entry to sharing some notes from the conference. The implosion of work and play was the most recurrent theme in the panels that I attended.  The term “playbor” was frequently used to describe the product of this implosion.  Panelists generally seemed to assume that playbor was a relatively new and increasingly prevalent phenomenon.  However,...

Class & Stratification / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

George Ritzer Guest Post: Are Today’s Globalized Cathedrals of Consumption Tomorrow’s Global Dinosaurs?

By: George Ritzer Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland A decade ago I wrote a book dealing with what I called the “cathedrals of consumption”. These are consumption settings that had, in the main, come into existence in the United States in the post-WWII era. Of particular interest were the most grandiose of these consumption settings including major indoor shopping malls, mega-malls (e.g. Mall of America), theme parks (especially Disneyland and Disney World), cruise ships, and above all the themed...