Mobile Sociology et al.

Urry article: The idea that there is no such thing as society is interesting, although I agree with him that it's almost impossible to pinpoint just because nobody has the same definition of "society." I don't necessarily agree with him when it comes to connecting the nation-state to society, as I believe society is a lot more personal than something as large as a nation-state. The three metaphors he uses for transformations seem well-founded, but I don't really understand the fluid one. Also, it seems much of his conclusion does not correspond much with the rest of the article, especially the part about mobilized groupings.

Reich article: I think Reich goes a little too far with his part about symbolic analysts, especially the line "real status is inversely related to length of job title." Life is not that cut-and-dry. Much of what he says about the jobs of the future seems right, but again, it seems he thinks that somehow agriculture and manufacturing jobs will almost completely disappear. Also, there are a lot of jobs that fall in between the in-person service/routine production and symbolic analysts.

Stehr article: The shift from manufacturing is certainly a marked one, but perhaps is not as marked as Stehr makes it out to be. While knowledge based industries have taken over many jobs, there will always be manufacturing to be done. I don't really get the difference between the employment society and the consumption society, they seem to go hand in hand. The emergence of the symbolic economy is obviously an important one, and the globalization of the economy is an interesting one.

Balsamo article: To tell the truth, I understood little to none of this article. The analogy to the sci-fi book made no sense to me and I don't understand the connection that she's trying to make. The article was completely Greek to me.