[Week6] Transforming societies

This week's readings deal with the changing elements of the society. Urry argues that sociology should be redefined in a era where a multitude of interactions of both physical and social systems occur. In his view the flow of networks and mobility is the prime concern. However, more often than not he tends to ignore or underestimate the role of existing social bonds and boundaries such as nationstate, ethnicity and cultural clusters. Even today as we are talking about the new mobile sociology, some hermit dictatorship has launched a nuclear explosion test due to nationalistic reasons. I think that the concept of mobility is only valuable when the still existing fixed structures are taken into account as part of the interacting element.

Reich's three jobs - routine production services, in-person-services, and symbolic-analytic services - are helpful for young people looking for employment in today's service job market, but don't contribute much to the job structure of the society in whole. I wish there was more talk on how those new forms of services combine and interact with the traditional forms of jobs including manufacturing and farming, instead of simply showing us what new future jobs emerge.

Stehr notes that the changes in economic structure of 'knowledge societies' will be the shift into the symbolic interactions. I'm glad that somebody finally mentions that the manufacturing sectors are not declining in importance. However, contrary to his argument that the system of industrial production is changing via the knowledge paradigm, in fact it is only being pushed away to somewhere else (such as China) - out of the sights of the 'service workers of the information society'. Instead of only looking at macro numbers, he should probably look into what kind of industrial labor is required to provide the daily commodities of the service worker. It has grown in global scale - that is, the 'developed' nation as the big spenders who make big money with some patents and copyrights while the rest of the world is cleaning up after them. (Look at this map: http://www.sasi.group.shef.ac.uk/worldmapper/display.php?selected=99 )

Finally, Balsamo emphasizes the role of the body in the technologically advanced society. Her argument that gender identities are reconstructed in the technology contexts is a continuation of the body discourse that has been in circulation in media cultural studies. Though using the term body, it refers more to the individual 'being' in physical terms: if societies can be redefined in the information paradigm, so can the basic units that constitute the society. Though Balsamo mainly sticks to gender identities, in this light all physical identities can be viewed as important constructs that are actively defined in technology and information contexts. And until the day we become some kind of pure information life forms, the body politics will prevail.