21st century society
A01=Frank W. Elwell
Author_Frank W. Elwell
automation and society
bureaucracy and technology
Category=JHB
Category=QDTS
critical sociology
digital age critique
efficiency and productivity
Ellul interpretation
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
human agency and technology
industrial society
Jacques Ellul
Max Weber rationalization
media influence
modern society critique
modernity critique
organizational theory
political polarization
propaganda and media
social change
social evolution
social theory
sociological analysis
sociology of technology
surveillance society
technique theory
technological determinism
technological society
technological systems
technology and society
technology ethics
Product details
- ISBN 9781771994491
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 31 May 2026
- Publisher: AU Press
- Publication City/Country: CA
- Product Form: Paperback
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Jacques Ellul was a prolific writer and brilliant sociologist whose work on technological society and propaganda remains relevant today, despite coming from a distinctly French, postwar perspective. Technique and Control re-introduces Ellul's main body of work to social scientists and readers curious about technology and social life. Frank W. Elwell has updated and supplemented Ellul's examples of lifeworld domination through physical technology, organization, and an underlying mindset of technique that prioritizes efficient goal-oriented behaviors guided by experience, empiricism, calculability, predictability, and logic. Particular attention is given to the development of human techniques of control such as education, propaganda, and other modes of socialization. By re-invigorating these writings for contemporary readers, Elwell illuminates an important body of sociological work for a new generation of social scientists, students, and those interested in modern society and its continuing evolution.
Frank W. Elwell is a professor of sociology at Rogers State University, in Oklahoma. He is the author of Sociocultural Systems: Principles of Structure and Change, among several other works.
