STS 273 - The New Economy

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

(Same as SOCI 273) 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 and related organizational innovations. The logic of this new economy, as well as its consequences for society, are the subject of this course. Topics include the evolving role of technology in economic globalization; the precarity of today’s workplaces and labor markets; the question of the “creative class”; digital divides in technology access, education, and lifestyles; and the cutting edges of consumerism. Leonard Nevarez.