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The foundation of sociology coincides with the uprooting of traditional society during the emergence of industrial capitalism. Durkheim (1964), Marx (1992) and Weber (1978) each had a take on the disruption created by early capitalism. Polanyi’s (2001) “double movement” brought a new stability after decades of strife. This reaction emerged spontaneously at the local and national level. Ultimately it had to be institutionalized in the post war order (Kalleberg 2011). In her new book on Surveillance Capitalism, Harvard Business School emeritus professor Shoshana Zuboff introduces us to a new wave of modernity, equally disruptive, but uniquely difficult to overcome. According to Zuboff, this new wave capitalism is not content to commoditize our experiences, but seeks also to control and direct or behavior by channeling those experiences through predictive analytics. Zuboff argues this is what makes the current iteration of capitalism so insidious, where “…the means of production are subordinated to an increasingly complex and comprehensive ‘means of behavioral modification.” (Zuboff 2019:8). What will inform the double movement this time, if the exploitation system itself is so thoroughly controlling us?
Joseph R. Bongiovi (Wed,) studied this question.