Media & Modernity

Placing Modernity Within the Indefinite

            To place modernity within a specific timeframe or to give it a specific name or conception would be to objectify modernity in a way that would lose its meaning. Modernity is more than the “end of the Middle Ages or Charlie Chaplin movie;” it is a “mysterious essence” that invokes a set of values or spirit that transcends one particular date in time or technological progression.[1] Therefore, modernity is continuous in its rupture, containing “several beginning and several endings” that can only be identified based on one’s particular subjectivity.[2] This paper will compare and contrast three authors and their perspectives on modernity: Louis Aragon’s social deterministic view of the modern, Henri Meschonnic’s explanation of modernity as discourse, and Max Weber’s existential theory of modernity. All three authors attempt to place modernity within a certain timeframe and give it a common theme, but they all illustrate the paradox that arises from trying to define modernity explicitly.

            In his “Introduction to 1930,” Aragon defines modernity: “Modernity is a function of time that expresses the sentimental present of some objects whose essential novelty is not their distinguishing feature, but whose effectiveness stems from the recent discovery of their value of expression.”[3] For Aragon, modernity is not about bringing about the new, but rather the realization of the value in what already exists. Aragon’s definition of modernity emerges from his philosophical background in surrealism and the Dada movement post-WWI, and relates modernity with the post-Enlightenment consciousness of Parisian culture.[4] The Dada movement’s anti-war and anti-bourgeois attitude had an effect on Aragon’s philosophy; one can see this influence in his definition, as he writes, “The modern of today is not in the hands of the poets. It is in the hands of the cops.”[5] This disdain for the modern emerges from Aragon’s belief that social interactions affect how people confront modernity. For Aragon, social and cultural shifts caused the notion of modernity to saturate public consciousness to the point that he considers the modern to be too modern.[6] The social deterministic approach of Aragon’s “modernity” exemplifies man’s reconciliation of the present with the past, with the man revolting against history rather than history shaping man.[7]

            Like Aragon, Meschonnic’s definition of modernity is contingent on reconciliation with history, describing the modern as an ancient idea that always relates to the past, specifically the immediate past.[8] However, this relationship of past and present has no definitive point for Meschonnic, because modernity “is history as discourse… irreducible to historicism, which would enclose it within the conditions of production of a period.”[9] If one attributes modernity to a style or time period (e.g. art nouveau and the beginning of the 20th century), then that shift in culture is dated and no longer modern.[10] Meschonnic’s background in linguistics affirms this explanation of modernity as discourse, whose meaning is problematized by the fact that language, by definition, objectifies modernity in such a way that makes it no longer exist. The paradox of modernity should be seen through discourse because it is a fleeting idea that can only attempt to take form through language, although it fails to do so even then.

            The third view of modernity comes from Weber, who sees modernity as an existential dilemma, that is, a problem of meaning.[11] Weber, with a traditional German idealist influence, views modernity as a “liberal” version of value pluralism and decisionism that cannot be explained through religion or science.[12] The modern era emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries when man underwent a disenchantment with religion and entered a more secularized Protestant culture.[13] For Weber, science went beyond its limits in attributing meaning to life, and thus, is equally unable as religion to satisfy the problem of meaning in the newly intellectualized individual.[14] One must look at a shift in the individual’s values and beliefs to recognize modernity more clearly. Weber separates the premodern with the modern: premodern refers to a period of time where individuals shared a unitary worldview and belief system; the modern refers to a period of secularism, pluralism, and autonomous values.[15] If neither religion nor science on their own can make sense of life and the universe, then one must recognize a shift in social consciousness to define modernity.

            The paradox that the three authors face when attempting to define modernity lies in the conflict between the modern and its history. The contingent modernity they describe seeks to reconcile the present (i.e. the modern) with the past.[16] But, “How is one to be modern, that is, of the present, and be reconciled with history?”[17] The three authors all struggle with this problem and conclude that the term “modernity” faces a conflict of meaning, but they arrive at this conclusion through different interpretations.

            Although Meschonnic attempts to place modernity within a specific period and create an image of the quality that modernity invokes in society, he admits that any sort of definition of modernity is in itself contradictory. To consider oneself in modernity is to be a narcissist;[18] what makes us so special that we consider ourselves in this special period known as modernity? While trying to reconcile the present with the past, Meschonnic acknowledges that there is no meaning to the present because that present it instantly outdated. The contradiction of modernity and its inability to take concrete form makes Meschonnic’s modernity seem like the anti-modernity, or at least an infinite goal it does not meet. Aragon, on the other hand, places modernity in a post-WWI timeframe, reaching closer than Meschonnic to realizing a definitive place of rupture where modernity forms. Although Aragon describes modernity as a social phenomenon in relation to surrealism, his definition still recognizes a contradiction in assigning an objective framework to the vague conception of modernity. The modern “can be reduced to some constants,” but the content within it varies.[19] Despite the objectification of specific aspects of Aragon’s modernity, the content itself muddles the concept of modernity to the point it no longer materializes.

            Weber views modernity through a transformative shift in meaning caused by secularization.[20] Weber highlights the ideas of individuation, cultural pluralism, and differentiation as important contributors to personal meaning and freedom in modernity.[21] The problem with such an analysis of modernity is in the contradiction of collectively assessing the subjective belief system of the individual. Weber attempts to explicitly address a shift in the collective mindset of individuals—the mindset of individuals and their interpretations of meaning, however, is context-dependent. One cannot view a rupture in the religious establishment and the creation of a post-Christian world order as modernity because such an assumption is not shared as a collective consciousness by all individuals; if some do not experience this rupture, does modernity exist for some but not for others? Even if everyone shared the same shift in mental consciousness that Weber describes, it still does not solve the problem of meaning upon which modernity was founded.[22] The terms “culture”, “nature”, and “tradition” that developed at the same time as the rupture in Weber’s modernity stand in contradistinction to the same abstract notions of rationality and progress in Weberian philosophy.[23] The problem of meaning in Weber’s definition of modernity ends up contradicting itself in a similar fashion to the modernity that Meschonnic and Aragon grapple with. Whether “modernity” is a problem of existential meaning and values, a debate over semantics, or an attempt to objectify an intangible idea, one cannot conceive of it because it exists indefinitely and infinitely as the present always moves forward and away from its past.

 

Works Cited:

 

Aragon, Louis. "Introduction á 1930." La Révolution surréaliste, Vol. 12, 1929. 

 

Makela, Taisto H. “Modernity and the Historical Perspectivism of Nietzsche and Loos.” Journal of Architectural Education, Vol. 44, No. 3, 1991.

 

Meschonnic, Henri et al. “Modernity Modernity.” New Literary History Vol. 23, No. 2 The John Hopkins University Press, 1992.

 

Oakes, Timothy. “Place and the Paradox of Modernity.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 87, No. 3 Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 1997.

 

Seidman, Steven. “Modernity, Meaning, and Cultural Pessimism in Max Weber.” Sociological Analysis, Vol. 44, No. 4 Oxford University Press, 1983.

 

 



[1] Henri Meschonnic et al, “Modernity Modernity,” New Literary History, Vol. 23, No. 2 (The John Hopkins University Press, 1992), 413.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Louis Aragon, "Introduction á 1930," La Révolution surréaliste, Vol. 12 (1929), 58.

 

[4] Henri Meschonnic et al, “Modernity Modernity,” New Literary History, Vol. 23, No. 2 (The John Hopkins University Press, 1992), 412.

[5] Louis Aragon, "Introduction á 1930," La Révolution surréaliste, Vol. 12 (1929), 58.

[6] Ibid., 64.

[7] Henri Meschonnic et al, “Modernity Modernity,” New Literary History, Vol. 23, No. 2 (The John Hopkins University Press, 1992), 413.

[8] Ibid., 418.

[9] Ibid., 420.

[10] Ibid., 420-421.

[11] Steven Seidman, “Modernity, Meaning, and Cultural Pessimism in Max Weber,” Sociological Analysis, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Oxford University Press, 1983), 268.

[12] Ibid., 267.

[13] Ibid., 268-274.

[14] Ibid., 271.

[15] Ibid., 274.

[16] Taisto H. Makela, “Modernity and the Historical Perspectivism of Nietzsche and Loos,” Journal of Architectural Education, Vol. 44, No. 3 (1991), 138.

[17] Taisto H. Makela, “Modernity and the Historical Perspectivism of Nietzsche and Loos,” Journal of Architectural Education, Vol. 44, No. 3 (1991), 138.

[18] Henri Meschonnic et al, “Modernity Modernity,” New Literary History, Vol. 23, No. 2 (The John Hopkins University Press, 1992), 407.

[19] Ibid., 412.

[20] Steven Seidman, “Modernity, Meaning, and Cultural Pessimism in Max Weber,” Sociological Analysis, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Oxford University Press, 1983), 273.

[21] Ibid., 277.

[22] Timothy Oakes, “Place and the Paradox of Modernity,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 87, No. 3 (Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 1997), 512.

[23] Ibid.

 

 

 

Charge It to Modernity

 

            Scholars attempt to pinpoint the emergence of what they call “modernity” through a variety of channels that seek to invoke the spirit of a new world order: the rationalization of government in Napoleonic France, the promotion of progress and secularization during the Enlightenment period, the new mass society of the Industrial Revolution, and the 19th century modernist movement in painting and literature all provide examples for the sort of defining rupture that could separate the past from a clearly modern era.[1] While each moment or period in time provides glimpses into what one might conceive as the modern era, there is an underlying theme that many versions of modernity share in common—that is the idea of comfort. By comfort, I do not mean to imply a reassurance or certainty in one’s life, but rather a physical and mental state that one strives for by feeding into one’s material desires.  The credit card is an artifact of man’s quest for the unquenchable desire for accessibility and wealth, and symbolizes a new modernity that relishes in a present time that is only possible through an intangible promise to the future.

            Peter Taylor interprets modernity as “constituting practices to cope with the perpetual change deriving from the capitalist imperative to ceaseless accumulation.”[2] He argues that the Americanization of society propels the modern era into a life of unparalleled comforts never experienced in history, and thus leads us on a path of unsustainable growth and consumption.[3] What Taylor describes is the hedonistic and gluttonous frenzy of the modern world, one in which consuming more equates to greater comforts and a higher standard of living. This vast infrastructure of consumption is only possible within the complex system of exchange that capitalism offers—that is, a system of credit. The plastic credit card symbolizes modernity because it encapsulates the essence of society’s view of comfort: quick and convenient, impersonal and objective, and focused on the now in such a way that society’s future is promised in the form of an IOU.

            Mankind went through a natural progression to reach the capitalist imperative of the credit card. Although the first credit cards were not introduced into everyday society until the 1950s, the notion of credit as a means of payment predated the credit card by centuries. The gradual spread of credit money and bills of exchange by bankers throughout the Italian city-states in Europe signified a change in how business transactions would take place in the future.[4] In trade fairs across Europe, people no longer relied on the direct commodity value of paper money or immediate goods, but put their trust in the idea that they could later redeem credit for tangible commodities such as gold.[5] The innovation of credit was not only the promise of value in the future, but also the practicality of physical absence from a transaction.[6] With the attribute of physical absence, money could be put to work in multiple places at once, branching out the possibilities of one monetary transaction into an endless web of transactions that help to further the capitalist motive.[7] Because of the immaterial nature of credit, people can conduct transactions without being in the same room as one another, thus creating a system where one can accelerate the number of transactions one makes while simultaneously removing the intimacy of face-to-face commerce.

            Although individuals might view a lack of interaction as impersonal, it actually reflects an implicit trust between members of society. Our monetary transactions must be so fast and rampant that we have no choice but to assume that the credit system will succeed in containing all our wants and desires. In this version of modernity, there is no room for cynicism because the speed and convenience of society trumps any underlying pessimism that could threaten the entire capitalist framework. Georg Simmel argues that trust is a prerequisite for life in a society that fights to prevent anarchy.[8] Trust is not only necessary to prevent chaos, but also to keep up with the fast-paced and modern world. Society must find a way to increase the efficiency of its people by mitigating the risk of dealing with strangers. Trust in strangers, as Luhmann notes, reduces the complexity of our lives.[9] The credit card acts as a mediator between strangers, and unlike paper money, it also increases the speed of transactions—with a credit card you can make fewer trips to the bank, you only need to keep track of one item rather than many different bills of paper money, and you can quickly make guarantees on future payments.

            Ulf Strohmayer states that the system of exchange through credit gradually began to transform the environment we live in into one that characterizes modernity.[10] While his view of modernity is correct to assume that such a system began the steps towards modernity through a capitalist world, his often philosophical analysis does not fully link the credit system to a truly materially driven society. It is important not only to relate the credit system to its consequences for physical absence and anonymity, but also to its profound impact on the values of a society dependent on mass consumption. Taylor sums it up by saying that our, “‘Consumer society’ represents much more than the contemporary face of capitalism: rather, it is the culmination of a prime tradition of modernity intimately linked to world hegemony.”[11] Rather than being a wholly American invention of the 20th century, world hegemony has fostered the cultural traits of a consumer society over the last 400 years.[12] What the credit card developed out of this gradual progression into a mass consumer society was a sudden disconnect between the person and their money. With this disconnect, the credit card brought speed and efficiency to the consumer society by easing the fluidity and consistency of transactions unencumbered by paper exchanges or the physical trading of objects. Numbers on plastic dictated consumption, with the credit card morphing society into a machine-like state fraught by rapid (and rabid) shopping sprees and the search for easy comforts.

            If one is to assume that the credit card initiated a new perspective on the world and the consumer society, it must set itself apart from the idea of money in general. The difference between money and the credit card is a crucial distinction that frames the way one perceives modernity. Simmel claims that, “There is no more striking symbol of the completely dynamic character of the world than that of money…”[13] By this interpretation, money dictates the way the world works in all its forms. This interpretation fails to realize the difference between credit and paper money, because as Jeff Kintzele states, “Money influences human consciousness by the form it chooses to take.”[14] The idea of money alone only acts as an extension of barter and gift economies, and it does not share the same normative judgment and symbolism of the credit card. The money system revolutionized world trade by replacing the inconvenient and less scalable system of direct trade and barter; the credit card, on the other hand, symbolizes not only the convenience of money but also the comfort of consuming goods and services that one cannot pay for until later. The credit card takes on a completely new reality that the simple exchange of money does not account for: the implication that it is perfectly acceptable to live above one’s means.[15]

            The cash money system and the credit card system both assume a certain level of trust between those who conduct transactions, but in the latter case, those who sell goods and services must trust that they will be reimbursed in the future. This cultural norm in accepting future reimbursement in the same way one would accept a present material exchange is a notable attribute of modernity; because we are moving so fast ahead, the line between the present and the future becomes blurred, and we are unable to accept the problems of an unsustainable future by sacrificing our present comforts. It is thus not entirely accurate to say “the development from material money to credit money[,] is less radical than appears at first, because credit money has to be interpreted as the evolution, growing independence and isolation of those elements of credit which already exist in material money.”[16] This statement assumes that the credit system is not a completely new medium of exchange because it evolved from paper money and shares the same contribution to economies on a macro level. However, credit cards, unlike material money, let the individual decision-maker promote unsustainability. Governments could print more money to try to pay off mounting debts, but the value of their country’s currency would diminish. With credit cards, each individual can also make choices that will later affect the debt economy and have consequences on the sustainability of the consumer society.

            Living above our means is not only an accepted norm in society, but it is encouraged. Using the credit card for minute and mundane purchases promotes our burgeoning consumer society; because the credit card is available to every ordinary citizen, the volume of transactions is massive. The number of transactions is then magnified by the number of people who spend beyond their means. The question then becomes whether living beyond one’s means creates a society of comfort or an anxious society waiting to “max out” their existence. Perhaps debt is just a symptom of modern day happiness that is blatantly ignored as a potential destabilizing feature of our future society. On the other hand, the credit system might have created a modernity where the distinction between happiness, debt, and money has blurred because the speed of everyday life desensitizes us to the point of apathy. Kintzele states that obtaining anything immediately with one’s signature is a symbol of modern hedonism, with a future built on paying back the present.[17] Modern hedonism, in his view, does not result in happiness but rather an indifference that smothers any pleasure one might have gained from material acquisition.[18] This indifference helps to describe a society that does not relish in its consumption, but is numbed by the entire process. Mass production and consumerism has devalued the individual good. We are numbed by the spectacle of modernity that is facilitated by the arbitrary designation of the plastic credit card as the meaning of value. Instead of happiness as comfort, indifference and numbness has created society’s comfort.

            Unsustainability and other intangible effects of modernity are just one aspect of the transformation into a consumer society; there are also clear visual and tangible changes to the way society structures itself. The relatively new phenomenon of credit card purchases promotes modernity as comfort, reflected not only by individual material possessions but also in the way society is geographically organized. The mass-produced housing developments known as “Levittowns” sprang up in the post-WWII era, offering the promise of easy credit and the suburban sprawl quickly associated with the “American Dream”.[19] Suburbia is not an amalgamation of past living arrangements—it represents a new and distinct geographic phenomenon that Taylor dubs “spaces of concentrated comfort.”[20] With the credit card emerging as a key tool in this new modern lifestyle of suburbia, how can one reconcile these living arrangements with such massive consumerism? The two have forged a path that makes it impossible to go back, creating a feedback loop that makes the emphasis on consumption into a way of life. While the Industrial Revolution moved the West into a period of heightened technological and productive capabilities, it took the credit card to shift the psyche of the ordinary citizen into a consumer mode unprecedented in world history.

            Ordinary citizens were already accustomed to assembly line products that churned out indistinguishable products by the masses. The mass production championed by Henry Ford in the early 1900s combined with the baby boomer generation of the post-WWII era helped to solidify the American consumer society.[21] The stigma of using plastic to fuel consumption vanished from the mindset of the post-WWII generation.[22] The escalation of consumer debt was conveniently met with forgiveness from the business sector, sustaining a consumer society in a way that many think will eventually become unsustainable.[23] People feed into the American Dream with the belief that the credit card will keep the lifestyle alive, but “the future leaves no promises, only debts!”[24]

            In Edward Bellamy’s 1888 novel  Looking Backward, 2000-1887, Bellamy envisions a utopian way of life, where there are no banks, no income inequalities, no competition, and no unfulfilled needs.[25] Although this idea is no less far-fetched now from an idealist standpoint than it was back when it was written, his novel did introduce the phrase “credit card” into the English language and sparked some interesting comparisons between utopian ideals and the idea of “plastic” currency.[26] His story mentions the credit card, but the notion of a credit card system is, in its essence, contradictory to income equality and a utopian way of life. The credit card system assumes that some people will not be able to pay their debt back in a timely fashion, which creates the mounting interest that credit card companies profit from. The credit card system is only possible in a capitalist society if somebody can benefit from producing and maintaining such a system—in the case of the credit card, there will be winners and losers. Since income inequality is a given with the credit card system and the kind of modernity it espouses, the question then turns to whether the system can provide all the unfulfilled needs of Bellamy’s utopian society. In contrast to the idea of a utopia, the credit card exists in part because not all of society’s needs can be fulfilled. The lure of the credit card creates an unattainable comfort, one in which there are always unfulfilled needs because the constant need for consumption leaves society always wanting more. Modernity as comfort, in this sense, is a materialistic race to produce more and more needs that one can attempt to satisfy—often with the help of the credit card.

            As the Americanization of world culture progressed in the post-WWII era, the credit card merged with the consumer way of life to create a new modernity for the world defined by the American Dream. In his book, Expressing America: A Critique of the Global Credit Card Society, George Ritzer defines the American Dream as “the active participation and beneficiarity of the economic success with its consumption and material possessions and all the trappings that come with such affluence.”[27] The key word in Ritzer’s definition is  “trappings”, the consequence of a world that cannot escape the American Dream. Modernity is closely related to world hegemony,[28] and as the American Dream attempts to dominate every chasm of world economic and social culture, the consumer society becomes trapped in its hegemonic and dictatorial version of modernity. Whether the end result has positive or negative consequences, the credit card and mass consumerism confines society. Those with an anti-Americanization sentiment fear this modernity because of the threat of homogenization.[29] As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, differences between cultures blur and people slowly become the same. The credit card is the symbol of such a convergence of identity: removing the interpersonal relationships of social and economic transactions, the credit card assigns us a series of numbers and strips us of personality. The consumer society is not about people. The credit card modernity is about the homogenization of society, where everyone strives for the same unsustainable goal of material comfort.

 

 

Works Cited:

 

Alhabeeb, M.J. Rev. of Expressing America: A Critique of the Global Credit Card Society, by George Ritzer. 30 Mar 2010. https://www1067.ssldomain.com/afcpe/doc/Vol7B1.pdf

 

Kintzele, Jeff. “Man, Money, and Time. Logic of Credit: Logic of Modernity?” Design Issues Vol 4, No ½, The MIT Press, 1988.

 

Klein, Lloyd. It’s in the Cards: Consumer Credit and the American Experience. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 1999.

Simmel, Georg. The Philosophy of Money. New York: Routledge, 2004.

 

Strohmayer, Ulf. “Modernity and the Restructuring of the Present in Historical Geographies.” Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography Vol. 79, No. 3, Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography, 1997.

 

Taylor, Peter J. “What’s Modern about the Modern World-System? Introducing Ordinary Modernity through World Hegemony.” Review of International Political Economy Vol 3, No. 2, Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 1996.

 

Wolters, Timothy. “‘Carry your credit in your pocket’: the early history of the credit card at Bank of America and Chase Manhattan.” Enterprise & Society Vol 1, No. 2 Oxford University Press, 2000.

 

 



[1] Peter J. Taylor, “What’s Modern about the Modern World-System? Introducing Ordinary Modernity through World Hegemony,” Review of International Political Economy Vol 3, No. 2 (Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 1996), 261-263.

[2] Ibid., 260.

[3] Peter J. Taylor, “What’s Modern about the Modern World-System? Introducing Ordinary Modernity through World Hegemony,” Review of International Political Economy Vol 3, No. 2 (Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 1996), 260.

[4] Ulf Strohmayer, “Modernity and the Restructuring of the Present in Historical Geographies,” Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography Vol. 79, No. 3 (Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography, 1997), 157.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ulf Strohmayer, “Modernity and the Restructuring of the Present in Historical Geographies,” Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography Vol. 79, No. 3 (Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography, 1997), 157.

[7] Jeff Kintzele, “Man, Money, and Time. Logic of Credit: Logic of Modernity?” Design Issues Vol 4, No ½ (The MIT Press, 1988), 136.

[8] Ibid., 137.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ulf Strohmayer, “Modernity and the Restructuring of the Present in Historical Geographies,” Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography Vol. 79, No. 3 (Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography, 1997), 157.

[11] Peter J. Taylor, “What’s Modern about the Modern World-System? Introducing Ordinary Modernity through World Hegemony,” Review of International Political Economy Vol 3, No. 2 (Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 1996), 284.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Jeff Kintzele, “Man, Money, and Time. Logic of Credit: Logic of Modernity?” Design Issues Vol 4, No ½ (The MIT Press, 1988), 133.

[14] Ibid., 134.

[15] Ibid., 132.

[16] Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money (New York: Routledge, 2004),  179.

[17] Jeff Kintzele, “Man, Money, and Time. Logic of Credit: Logic of Modernity?” Design Issues Vol 4, No ½ (The MIT Press, 1988), 140.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Peter J. Taylor, “What’s Modern about the Modern World-System? Introducing Ordinary Modernity through World Hegemony,” Review of International Political Economy Vol 3, No. 2 (Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 1996), 278.

[20] Peter J. Taylor, “What’s Modern about the Modern World-System? Introducing Ordinary Modernity through World Hegemony,” Review of International Political Economy Vol 3, No. 2 (Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 1996), 278.

[21] Lloyd Klein, It’s in the Cards: Consumer Credit and the American Experience (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 1999), 10.

[22] Ibid., vii.

[23] Ibid., viii.

[24] Jeff Kintzele, “Man, Money, and Time. Logic of Credit: Logic of Modernity?” Design Issues Vol 4, No ½ (The MIT Press, 1988), 139.

[25] Timothy Wolters, “‘Carry your credit in your pocket’: the early history of the credit card at Bank of America and Chase Manhattan,” Enterprise & Society Vol 1, No. 2 (Oxford University Press, 2000), 316-318.

[26] Ibid., 316.

[27] M.J. Alhabeeb, Rev. of Expressing America: A Critique of the Global Credit Card Society, by George Ritzer. 30 Mar 2010. https://www1067.ssldomain.com/afcpe/doc/Vol7B1.pdf

[28] Peter J. Taylor, “What’s Modern about the Modern World-System? Introducing Ordinary Modernity through World Hegemony,” Review of International Political Economy Vol 3, No. 2 (Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 1996), 284.

[29] M.J. Alhabeeb, Rev. of Expressing America: A Critique of the Global Credit Card Society, by George Ritzer. 30 Mar 2010. https://www1067.ssldomain.com/afcpe/doc/Vol7B1.pdf