Sociology, cyberbots, and the three jobs of the future!

Mobile Sociology (John Urry)

As a student who has often contemplated a Sociology double major here at UW, I was very interested/slightly troubled in seeing an alternative view of the “society-centric” model of sociology with Urry’s argument for a mobile sociology. That was a nice way to put it – it actually really pissed me off. As a whole, what troubled me the most with this selection was how Urry’s idea of mobile sociology seems focused not on globalization, but rather on a Westernization of cultural practices in lands that far different from the Americas. I’m sorry, Mr. Urry, that some of these practices have proven to be inconvenient for your view of how the world should run, but missing in this argument is the idea of celebrating diversity.

Additionally, I would guess that he is a heterosexual, upper- to middle-class white man, because from that standpoint, it is much easier to say things like “sociology has a tendency to treat what is ‘outside’ the society as an unexamined environment” (193) and that we need to leave the “relatively safe boundaries of bounded societies” (200). Sociologists don’t typically examine what is “outside” the society, because there really is nothing that exists in such a way. Our entire being from the moment we were born has been socialized and is the product of centuries of social practices – I agree with Urry when he says that these are not necessarily set in stone, but it is extremely difficult for change to occur quickly. Additionally, I would love to hear his explanation of how bounded societies’ oppression of racial, sexual, or religious minorities (in examples such the Darfur struggle, the Stonewall riot, or the Holocaust, to name a few) were “relatively safe.” Pffffff.

The Three Jobs of the Future (Robert Reich)

It was fairly clear from the onset that this was an older text, but it turned out being from 1992, when I really thought it could have been about ten years older. With statements like “we are increasingly in different, smaller, boats” (205). Americans’ economic independence is not a new concept at all, I would argue – it doesn’t matter how wonderful the economy is doing, there will probably still be some people without a bed to sleep in at night, and that has been the case for some time.

As for Reich’s definition of the “three jobs of the future”, it all seemed fairly straightforward, although it seems like he had some sort of thing against symbolic analysts/academics, which is somewhat ironic to me because this is his own profession. He points out how repetitive and meaningless what some of these analysts do, and seems to think that most are somewhat overrated in that they are not true “professionals.” I’m not sure if he was using this example to further his example about the growing challenges facing the job market with the global economy, but it seemed a little

Economic Structure of Knowledge Societies (Nico Stehr)

Stehr’s piece was almost like a continuation of Reich’s, written two years later, emphasizing the increasing symbolism behind jobs in the knowledge society. I’m not sure I totally buy a lot of his analyst about how ground-breaking some of the changes being seen truly are, and in all honesty, this reading was the least engaging of the four for me to read this week, so it was difficult to stay totally focused on the point he was making. One thing that did stand out to me was his thought that there would be a decline in the overall quantity of jobs with the knowledge society, and I’m curious to know what the statistics today say about this – I’m not so sure it’s fully come to be.

Forms of Technological Embodiment (Anne Balsamo)

Balsamo had me at the beginning, and then the cyberbots came up and I was totally lost. I think that it is completely true that technology is slowly infiltrating our bodies and our true being in the same way that it is greatly influencing the way we go about our every day lives, but some of the exact terminologies that she used seemed extremely abstract and a little bit vague. As a pseudo-sociologist, I enjoyed the mention of the marked body, and this has always been a concept that was very interesting to me. Our bodies are increasingly technologically determined and this will only become more of the case in the future.