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This innovative text focuses on an American icon, central to United States culture, that is rapidly becoming a global expression of prosperity - the credit card. George Ritzer explains what the credit card tells us, both good and bad, about the essence of the modern US and why and how the credit card is helping to transform much of the world. Drawing on the insights of both classic and contemporary social thinkers, including Georg Simmel, C Wright Mills, Karl Marx and Max Weber, as well as micro-macro, agency-structure and Americanization theories, Ritzer also reveals to students the powerful insights gained from using the sociological `imagination' applied to a topic that students know about and are interested in.
Credit Card Debt: Beware the Plastic Loan Shark1
Credit Card Debt: Beware the Plastic Loan Shark1
We generally have a very intimate relationship with money in the form of currency or even the sum at the bottom of our monthly bank statements. However, as Georg Simmel recognized, the advent of credit tended to distance us from money. Money that exists in the form of a line of credit (to take an example from Simmers day) seems more distant from us than cash in our wallets or in our bank accounts. Because it is far more removed from us and far less tangible, credit, in Simmel's view, leads to a strong “temptation to imprudence.”2 In other words, when we have credit available to us, we are far ...
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