(Tuesday) Max Weber notes "this peculiar idea of a duty to have a vocational calling, so familiar to us today but actually not at all self-evident, is the idea that is characteristic of the "social ethic" of modern capitalist culture" (81). What is the "ethic" or "spirit" or "frame of mind" that Weber tried to describe in these chapters? How is this ethic central to the rise and triumph of capitalism?
(Thursday) Jean and John Comaroff write about a new moment in the history of (global) capitalism which they describe as "millennial capitalism". What are some of the distinctive features of millennial capitalism? What are some of the economic structures (think Marx) and the ethos (think Weber) that characterizes millennial capitalism?
