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Topic:
Technology and Consumption: The Transformation of Capitalism in the Global Economy
Abstract:
In the past fifty years, the physical appearance of Asian cities has changed tremendously. In the 1960s, cities in most of Asian societies resembled how they looked fifty years previously, in 1910. But in the most recent fifty years, the changes have been transformative. Unless one actually observed the changes as they were occurring, what Asian cities looked like in 1968, would be unrecognizable today. This statement is certainly true for Singapore, but it is equally true for most other Asian cities as well. The same statement could be made about the inhabitants of these cities. In the last fifty years, changes in housing, dress, cuisine, entertainment, even language have been amazing. Based on my forthcoming book (Making Money, Stanford University Press), this lecture will argue that these changes are less about government policy than they are about changes in the organization of global capitalism.
From its inception until the late 1960s, capitalism was organized around the manufacturers of intermediate and final products. The mantra in the United States from the 1950s was “What is good for General Motors is good for the US.” We could make the same claim for other industrialized countries at that time, citing Daimler Benz and Mitsubishi, respectively, for Germany and Japan. Beginning in the 1970s, however, capitalism started to be reorganized around selling products and not making them. Such merchandisers as Apple and Nike, and such retailers as Carrefour and Walmart, eclipsed the mostly anonymous companies that actually manufacture the products that they sell. Even the most prominent manufacturers today—those making automobiles and airplanes--get a great many components for their products from companies that they do not own. Indeed, this has become the age of demand-led merchandizing and retailers, on the one hand, and contract manufacturing, on the other hand. This lecture will account for, and give the sociological implications of, these changes for societies today, changes that suggest we are entering into a new and different age of consumption and differentiation.
Speaker:
Professor Gary G Hamilton
Professor Emeritus
Department of Sociology and Jackson School of International Studies
University of Washington