Search

A profusion of jobs has arisen in contemporary capitalism involving 'connective labor', or the work of emotional recognition. Yet the expansion of this interpersonal work occurs at the same time as its systematization, as pressures of efficiency, measurement and automation reshape the work, generating a 'colliding intensification'. Existing scholarship offers three different ways of understanding the role of emotions in connective labor – as tool, commodity or vulnerability – depending on their view of systematization as useful, inseparable or dehumanizing. Based on 106 in-depth interviews and 300+ hours of observations, I found that vestiges of all three models lurked in the experience of providing connective labor, yet none fully captured the profound meaning practitioners reported finding in their work. Systems varied on three dimensions, reflecting the relative worth of worker, recipient or the work, extracting value from the forged connections, while the meanings workers derived shaped their perspective on its systematization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to investigate, based on the ideas of Max Weber's Protestant Ethics and the "Spirit" of Capitalism, the relationship between the disenchantment of the world and the Protestant Reformation, as well as the hypothesis that disenchantment generated, at the same time, a new enchantment in capitalism and its nascent labor society. According to Weber, as the daily life, in modern times, was taken over by a cultural and social rationalization, traditional forms of life also dissolved. In Protestant ethics, salvation is linked to the intramundane vocation and the sanctification of everyday life through work. Hence, we speak of a disenchantment, as Weber conceptualizes, and at the same time, a re-enchantment in light of a new religiosity active in the world of capitalist labor. It is precisely this process that allowed Walter Benjamin, in turn, to consider capitalism as a religion, with its cults, rites and symbols, taking the Weberian analysis forward, emphasizing capitalism as a religion. We aim thus to investigate the hypothesis that Weber's thesis of the disenchantment of the world also culminates in its reversal, when we speak of a re-enchantment of the world, now under the umbrella of the capitalist labor and its economic rationalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Estudios de Filosofía is the property of Universidad de Antioquia, Instituto de Filosofia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The marginalist revolution in economics became the foundation for the modem regulatory State with its "mixed" economy. For the classical political economists, value was a function of past averages. Marginalism substituted forward looking theories based on expectations about firm and market performance. Marginalism swept through university economics, and by 1920 or so virtually every academic economist was a marginalist. This Article considers the historical influence of marginalism on regulatory policy in the United States. My view is at odds with those who argue that marginalism saved capitalism by rationalizing it as a more defensible buttress against incipient socialism. While marginalism did permit economists and policy makers to strike a middle ground between laissez faire and socialism, the "middle ground" tilted very strongly toward public control. Ironically, regulation plus private ownership was able to go much further in the United States than socialism ever could because it preserved the rhetoric of capital as privately owned, even as it deprived firms of many of the most important indicia of ownership. Marginalism upended many of the classical conceptions about the market, including assumptions about their robustness, as well as the need for government intervention and the optimal type. For regulatory policy the most important issues were: (1) The fixed-cost controversy and the scope of natural monopoly; (2) cost classification, incentives, and ratemaking; (3) the changing domain of market failure, and regulation and Pigouvian taxes as correctives; (4) market diversity and the rise of sector regulation; (5) deregulation; (6) concerns about the distribution of wealth; (7) the development of cost-benefit analysis; and (8) the assessment of risk. The final section examines risk management under marginalism by looking at two diverse but important areas: negligence and products liability in tort law, and administrative review of patents by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Lego Movie is analysed as a consumer-capitalist myth reworking audience expectations and frustrations under contemporary capitalism into a comforting and consumable story. It does so by summoning two heterogeneous mythical topoi which are available as slates in the Western cultural repertoire, namely that of Plato's demiurgic cosmogony and Erotic anthropology to represent a producerist engineering ethos, and the Native American Coyote stories to represent a consumerist ethos of bricolage. Posing as a narrative of empowerment, it promotes the activation of consumer inventiveness in 'prosumption' as a solution to the Simmelian tragedy of culture while containing the subversive potential in the recognition of extra-organisational creativity. The ideological 'function' of the Lego myth is a contribution to the legitimacy of a system whose modus of existence is that of permanent crisis against a nostalgic yearning for bygone certainties. For its audiences, it provides a therapeutic narrative that facilitates the interpretation of their experience of continuously contradictory role expectations as meaningful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capitalism plays a significant role in the process of commercialization of sport. $e bureaucratization, professionalization, politics and policy change legitimate organizational activities (Oliver 1992). The external process of bureaucratization, which is 'the organizational manifestation of the rationalization of social life' (Slack & Hinings 1994: 806) transforms sport organizations. $e new environment of sport organizations moves them from voluntary organization to formal organizations with professional staff. This work identifies impact of external processes such as bureaucratization, professionalization and commercialization on sport organization. $e focus is on the environmental pressures which change practices (procedures) in sport organizations. $e article shows the changes in the field of sport and the processes of excluding voluntary, non-profit sport organization from competitions in elite sport. The last section of the article presents an alternative point of view on volunteers in sport industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the “classic” diagnoses of modernity, the German scholar Max Weber is often ascribed the role of the creator of a “theory of rationalization.” If there had to be one keyword for which Max Weber is constantly mentioned today, it would probably be “rationalization.” This term denotes the vast context in the history of ideas which comprises Weber’s alleged “theory” of a universal, occidental “rationalization.” I myself do not really place this “theory,” which has been attributed to Max Weber, into the portfolio of sociological theories in the strict epistemological sense, but rather into the reservoir of “Great Narratives,” as Jean-François Lyotard has called them, “Les grands récits.” Max Weber has bestowed his great narrative of universal, occidental “rationalization” upon the self-understanding of humanity by sociology as a discipline during its roughly 150 years of history up to the present day. Whoever wants to refer to this Great Narrative by Max Weber cannot forbear to reconstruct it from his texts. At best, only the outlines of this Great Narrative can be indicated here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasingly voluntary quality of religious expression has prompted many faith-based entities to embrace ‘secular’ means of evangelism. This is evident within the Sydney-based Hillsong Church, which has grown rapidly in attendees, capital resources and global reach. This ‘seeker-friendly’ strategy, however, raises questions around whether the ‘megachurch’ can sustain itself in offering respite from wearying Weberian processes of rationalisation and disenchantment. Hillsong’s resolution of this dilemma has been to create an encompassing arena of enchantment for constituents, a contemporary Goffmanian ‘total institution’ by reproducing the unalterable mechanisms of the economic order in a way that imbues them with greater meaning. Loyalties are sought by aligning desires for both personal reinvention and collective subsumption with the overarching evangelical aims of the Church. Thus for the committed devotee the transcendent and pragmatic may become synonymous and imbued with wonder, so that any gnawing dissonance felt as characteristic of late capitalism may be reconciled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explains the discursive similarities between Takeuchi Yoshimi and Wang Hui's respective interpretations of Lu Xun with respect to the recurrent problematics of a global capitalist world. It cites Takeuchi and Wang's use of Lu Xun to combat the rationalization and bureaucratization associated with capitalism and the commodity form as they invoke a feeling or experience associated to a transcendental source to develop a new vision of politics.

Although it is often condemned as an imprecise concept, alienation continues to flourish as critique in contemporary philosophy, theology, and psychology, as well as in sociology. Historically originating in Roman law, where it referred to the transfer of land ownership, alienation has since been applied extensively to analyses of labor relations, politics, and culture. In the 19th century, Marx showed that workers’ alienation, their dehumanization and estrangement, was a consequence of the structure of exploitation in capitalist industry. The concern was echoed in Weber’s metaphor of the ‘iron cage’ as an outcome of rationalized structures, as well as in Durkheim’s conceptualization of anomie as a variant of alienation causing socially induced psychological states. Today, while research in the structural tradition does not assume that people necessarily are aware of their condition, researchers who assume that alienation is a conscious experience have invented scales to measure its intensity. Continuing both the structural and the psychosocial traditions, researchers now study alienation in relation to uses of digital technologies and new forms of exploitation in work, as well as in politics and popular culture. Alienation is also studied in families, especially in investigations of parenthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the economic rationalization and moral justification of capitalist systems in England and America between the 17必1 and 19出 centuries within the framework of modes of exchange. On the surface, there existed a shared sociopolitical outcome which legitimized personal wealth, individualism, and political liberty. But contrary to conventional understanding, early English and American socioeconomic underpinnings of the market economy created different, if not divergent, motivational bases among the state, aristocracy, and the masses. Specifically, the English landed gentry formed a leisure class that shaped a culture of "gentlemanly" capitalism and enjoyed conspicuous consumption, while early American capitalists championed labor and hard work in tandem with a marked Puritan ethic. Thus, even for seemingly similar modes of exchange, very different patterns of ethical justifications of business practices existed. This supports the broader hypothesis that the evolution of modes of exchange requires geographicallyand historically-specific moral or ethical justifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics related to sociologist Max Weber studies including Weber's definition of capitalism, Weber's writings on Confucianism, and Weber's works on rationalization.

The social and solidarity economy (SSE) is a viable strategy in dealing with some contemporary problems known both in industrial and developing countries. SSE is contextualized against the background of recent developments: the liberalization of goods and capital flows worldwide, continued industrialization, and the increased global division of labour. Addressed is how local populations could reach certain objectives and satisfy certain needs using techniques characteristic of SSE and, thus, carve out a social and economic space of their own vis-à-vis anonymous markets, global actors, and local and national elites. Within this self-governed space, it is suggested, a path can be laid for the necessary transition towards local, social, and ecological sustainability. The Social Economy Basel (SEB, founded 1996) will serve as an example to suggest how SSE principles could be operationalized into organizational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Max Weber was considered by Karl Jaspers as “the clearest consciousness our time has of itself”. Yet the full understanding of his system of sociological and historical interpretation is tied to a conceptual question: how does his concept of vocation differ from similar concepts in other systems of thought? Following the lead of earlier critics like Groethuysen and Robertson, it can be demonstrated that the “Berufsethik” is in essence the same as the “éthique du devoir” which was current among French authors in 17th and 18th centuries. But in spite of this and of other possible conceptual shortcomings, Weber remains as an outstanding analyst of the process of rationalization that has engulfed the whole planet, the “philosopher”, or even the “prophet”, of a modernity that he and many of his interpreters have conditioned to the acceptance of the “Protestant ethic”, at least in secularized forms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In view of the specificity of the nineteenth century Germany, Weber tries to explain the world in his perspective and he provides many tools that help us to understand not only his era but also today's. His conceptions like the typology of authority, routinization of charisma, disenchantment of the world, rationalization, bureaucracy, capitalism are the main concepts that is referred to Weber by the people who are in the area of management and polititics. Therefore, understanding Weber is very important to understand many concepts that have still been discussed today but rooted in the past like modernity, rationalization, capitalism, bureaucracy. Thus study aims to make a little contribution to this process of meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the new interpretation of sociologist Max Weber's works. Scholars have that several underlying themes penetrate his entire opus and that their comprehension reveals a theorist of far deeper profundity. These proponents of a "new Weber" have, on the one hand, generally taken the theme of "rationalization" as their focus and, on the other hand, sought to banish at last the erroneous though persisting notion that Weber's view of societal change remained primarily "idealist." The interpretations that have introduced a "new" Weber have, however, unquestioningly pursued further one aspect of the traditional view, namely, its conception of Weber as a theorist interested primarily in the modern West and the issue of its uniqueness. The treatise "Economy and Society" offers an analytical framework far more complicated than that which would have been necessary had Weber sought only to provide with analyses of the rise of modern capitalism and Western rationalism. This comprehensive analytic seeks instead to do nothing less than identify the major theoretical possibilities for social action as well as their sociological loci on a universal-historical, or civilizational, scale.