This week Theme Thursday focuses on a globalization and technological revolution.
The world is in the throes of a technological revolution that differs from the periodic waves of technical change that have marked the progress of industrial society since its origins 200 years ago. A shift is occurring in the sociotechnological paradigm that underlies our current sophisticated industrial structure. This old paradigm consists of the mass production of essentially standardized goods in ever-larger units; an emphasis on quantitative goals for production, requiring ever higher inputs of capital, energy, and raw materials to produce more and more; and little attention to environmental impact, resource use, and conservation issues.
In contrast, the new paradigm taking shape is identified with an emphasis on quality and diversification of products and processes, diffusion of small but highly productive units that rely on new technologies and are linked to a process of decentralization of production, adoption of process and product choices requiring far less energy and materials input per unit of output, and a greater awareness of the need to preserve the quality of local and global environments.
Interested in reading more? Check out these books from Ames.
Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems
Provides an exciting approach to some of the most contentious issues in discussions around globalization—bioscientific research, neoliberalism, governance—from the perspective of the “anthropological” problems they pose; in other words, in terms of their implications for how individual and collective life is subject to technological, political, and ethical reflection and intervention.
- Offers a ground-breaking approach to central debates about globalization with chapters written by leading scholars from across the social sciences.
- Examines a range of phenomena that articulate broad structural transformations: technoscience, circuits of exchange, systems of governance, and regimes of ethics or values.
- Investigates these phenomena from the perspective of the “anthropological” problems they pose.
- Covers a broad range of geographical areas: Africa, the Middle East, East and South Asia, North America, South America, and Europe.
- Grapples with a number of empirical problems of popular and academic interest — from the organ trade, to accountancy, to pharmaceutical research, to neoliberal reform.
Technology, Globalization, and Sustainable Development: Transforming the Industrial State
In this work, the authors offer a unified, transdisciplinary approach for achieving sustainable development in industrialized nations. They present an insightful analysis of the ways in which industrial states are unsustainable and how economic and social welfare are related to the environment, public health and safety.