Essay I: Write a long essay: {70 points; double spaced 9 pages)
Discuss the impact of digital and mobile communication technologies, government and police surveillance on Post 9/11 American society. Your task will be to use your sociological concepts (ideology, class, opiate of the masses, charismatic authority, the Panopticon, norms, institutions, bureaucracy, etc. along with the theories of Marx, Foucault, Bourdieu and Weber from the readings and critically evaluate George Orwell’s 1984, (including a comparison of Winton Smith with the real life Edward Snowden) while you compare 1984 to 2019 America. How do Edward Snowden and Winston Smith face similar dilemmas? Are Snowden and Winston both trapped in a digital iron cage? Are there any sociological lessons we might apply from the documentary The Fog of War? Make sure you also address the timely question regarding the impact of government surveillance on American society in a post-9/11 world.. Ie: Prizm and the Bumblehive facility in Bluffdale, Utah. Should we worry about who controls metadata? What about the problem of surveillance capitalism?
Essay #2 {30 points double spaced 2 pages}
Discuss Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. What do religious ideas and rationalization have to do with economic action and a better form of capitalism in Dutch New Amsterdam?