they currently perform for free will eventually have an economic payoff. One person (known as PewDiePie) played video games on YouTube. By early 2019, he had garnered nearly 100 million subscribers and almost 21 billion views. He reputedly has earned millions of dollars per year (Jacobs 2014). Playing video games has become big business—one tournament drew 11,000 fans to a stadium and offered $11 million in prize money. Many hope that their work as bloggers or on YouTube will lead to full-time jobs.
These are a few of the many social changes to be discussed in this book. The essential point is that the social world (people, groups, organizations, and so on)—your social world—is continually changing. Sociology is a field that is, and must be, constantly attuned to and involved in studying those changes.
Central Concerns for a Twenty-First-Century Sociology
While the social world has been changing dramatically over the last two centuries or so and sociology has adapted to those changes, sociology has continued to focus on many of its traditional concerns. We have already mentioned industry, production, and work as long-term sociological interests; others include deviance and crime (see Chapter 6), the family (see Chapter 10), and the city (see Chapter 14). Of particular concern to many sociologists has been, and continues to be, the issue of inequality as it affects the poor, particularly racial and ethnic groups, women, and gays and lesbians (see Chapters 8 and 9). The bulk of this book is devoted to these basic sociological topics and concerns, but the discussion also encompasses the nontraditional and very contemporary issues of globalization, consumption, and the digital world.
Globalization
No social change is as important today as globalization because it is continually affecting all aspects of the social world everywhere on the globe. A date marking the beginning of globalization cannot be given with any precision, and in fact, it is in great dispute (Ritzer 2012b; Ritzer and Dean 2019; Steger 2017). However, the concept of globalization first began to appear in the popular and academic literature around 1990. Today, globalization is a central issue in the social world as a whole as well as in sociology; globalization and talk about it are all around us. In fact, we can be said to be living in the “global age” (Albrow 1996). However, this fact as well as the advantages of globalization for the United States have been questioned by Donald Trump. Such questioning has led to talk of “deglobalization” (however, see my blog post “Deglobalization? Not a Chance” [Ritzer 2016]). Deglobalization was also behind the vote in the United Kingdom to exit the European Union (called Brexit), as well as actions taken by other European nations to create border restrictions. However, none of these actions are going to have much impact on globalization as a whole or in such areas as the internet, the media, and culture.
A major component of any past or present definition of sociology is society. There are about 200 societies in the world, including those that encompass the United States, China, and South Africa. Society is a complex pattern of social relationships that is bounded in space and persists over time. Society has traditionally been the largest unit of analysis in sociology. However, in the global age, societies are seen as declining in importance (Holton 2011; Meyer, Boli, and Ramirez 1997). This is the case, in part, because larger transnational and global social structures are growing in importance. These include the United Nations (UN); the European Union (EU); the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC); multinational corporations (MNCs), such as Google and ExxonMobil; and multinational nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), such as Amnesty International. In at least some cases, these transnational structures are becoming more important than individual societies. OPEC is more important to the rest of the world’s well-being than are the organization’s key member societies, such as Abu Dhabi or even Saudi Arabia. However, this emphasis on the transnational and global has led to a counterreaction in which the focus has shifted back to one’s own society (e.g., “America First”).
Social processes, like social structures, exist not only at the societal level but also at the global level, and these global processes are increasing in importance. Consider migration (see Chapter 14). People move about, or migrate, within and between societies. For example, many people have moved from the northeastern United States to the West and the South. However, in the global age, people are increasingly moving between societies, some halfway around the world. The United States now has a higher percentage of immigrants than it has had in almost a century (see Figure 1.1). Many have migrated from and through Mexico to the United States (Massey 2003; Ortmeyer and Quinn 2012). More generally, large numbers of people are migrating from a number of predominantly Islamic societies in the Middle East and Africa to the West (Voas and Fleischmann 2012). In many cases, they were fleeing from war-torn countries such as Syria, Iraq, and Libya (Yeginsu and Hartocollis 2015). In addition, the movement of thousands of people from the West to join radical Islamist organizations (such as the Islamic State), especially in Syria and Iraq, has been of major concern to Western governments. Some fear that at least some of those involved in radical Islamist activities there will migrate back to the West and engage in terrorist acts.
Figure 1.1 Number of Immigrants and Their Share of the Total U.S. Population, 1850–2020
Source: Migration Policy Institute (MPI) tabulation of data from U.S. Census Bureau, 2010–2016 American Community Surveys (ACS), and 1970, 1990, and 2000 Decennial Census. All other data are from Campbell J. Gibson and Emily Lennon, “Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-Born Population of the United States: 1850 to 1990” (Working Paper no. 29, U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC, 1999).
There have always been large-scale population movements. However, in the global age, and even with recent restrictions, people generally move around the world far more freely and travel much greater distances than ever before. Another way of saying this is that people—and much else—are more “fluid.” That is, they move farther, more easily, and more quickly than ever before. Younger people, especially millennials (or Generation Y, those born from the early 1980s through the late 1990s, as well as the following Generation Z), are likely to be especially mobile, including globally. Their greater fluidity is reflected in, among many other things, the fact that they are more likely to book airline tickets and to check in for flights online and to use boarding passes sent directly to their smartphones (Lee 2013).
The movement of products of all types is also more fluid as a result of massive container ships, jet cargo planes, and package delivery services such as FedEx and UPS. Even more fluid is the digital “stuff” you buy on the internet when you download music, videos, movies, and so on. And in the realm of the family, tasks once confined to the home, such as caregiving and housework, have become increasingly fluid, as those who can afford to do so often outsource domestic labor (van der Lippe, Frey, and Tsvetkova 2012; Yeates 2009). More generally that greater fluidity is manifested in the information that flows throughout the world in the blink of an eye as a result of the internet, texting, e-mail, and social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter.
Ask Yourself
Have you ever thought of your posts on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or Twitter as part of a global flow of information? In what ways do they actually fit this description? What does your position in this global flow of information reveal about you?
These flows can be expedited by structures of various types.
• Air cargo delivery will increasingly be facilitated by the development of the “aerotropolis” (Kasarda and Lindsay 2011), a preplanned “city of the future” developed because of proximity and access to a large, modern airport (Kasarda 2016). The “smart city” of New Songdo, South Korea, is being built (it is