Glossary:
Look these words up at the following web site: Glossary of Social Science
| Rationalization | appropriate technology | genetic engineering |
| Underclass | Bureaucracy | Science |
| split labor market | Bioethics | structural unemployment |
| Luddites | Alienation | Modernization |
| created environment | cultural lag | social mobility |
| division of labor | Intensification | Class |
| postindustrial | futurists | class consciousness |
| Mechanization | Automation | Stratification |
| Technology | Industrialization |
Please Note: | Causes of workplace transformation |
| Symptoms of workplace transformation |
| Consequences of workplace transformation |
| Education and income |
| Higher education and standards |
| Liberal arts and democracy |
Max Weber
Karl Marx
Essay Questions:According to Elwell (Industrializing America), how has globalization affected the American workplace?
Discuss human relations management and automation as a form of rationalization.
What technological advances have made the current rationalization of work feasible?
What are some of the major symptoms of the rationalization of American higher education?
What are some of the major causes of the rationalization of American higher education?
What are the major consequences of the rationalization of American higher education?
According to Bluestone and Rose (Overworked and Underemployed), what is "overwork" and what is "underemployment"? How do they interrelate?
What is "capitalism's squirrel cage"? How is it related to overwork?
What factors contribute to overwork and underemployment?
What does Freeman (Toward an Apartheid Economy) mean by an "apartheid economy"?
Who has suffered the most in the distribution of wages? What factors have contributed to this situation?
How does the situation of U.S. workers compare to that of their European and Canadian counterparts?
Describe some of the costs that societies bear because of income inequality.
Links:Verstehen: Max Weber's Home Page
Bibliography:Ellul, Jacques 1970 [1964] The Technological Society. Translated by John Wilkinson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Fayol, H. 1949. General and Industrial Management. London: Pitman.
Gayer, F. and Schveitzer, D. (eds) 1981. Aliention: Problems of Meaning, Theory and Method. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Howard, Robert. 1985. Brave New Workplace. New York: Viking.
Huxley, Aldous. 1959. Brave New World Revisited. New York: Bantam.
Israel, J. 1971. Alienation: From Marx to Modern Sociology. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Menosky, Joseph A. 1984. "Computer Worship," Science 84 (May): 40-46.
Naisbitt, John. 1982. Megatrends. New York: Warner.
Toeffler, Alvin. 1981. The Third Wave. New York: Bantam.
Winner, Langdon. 1984. "Mythinformation in the High-Tech Era," IEEE Spectrum (June): 90-96.
Index | Syllabus
| Course Outline
Continuously updated. ©Frank Elwell