Consider the article, "Getting in (and Out of) Line"1, from a summer 2010 edition of the New York Times. It points us toward most of the issues and ideas that will emerge in this course on social theory. Just to list a few:
Personal space, gender, social control
Interaction
Business involvement in enforcing queues
Middle class less inclined to engage in cutting
Line etiquette and modernity
chaos -> order, whim -> rule, brutality -> gentility, scarcity -> abundance
queuing as intermediate "social" step on the way to markets
scrums, queues, markets
Suggests: Hobbes (scrum), Rousseau (queue), Smith (market)
queues as "hallmark of Hong Kong's cosmopolitan middle-class culture"
mental/cultural link: globalization ~ rationalization of waiting
Counter example: bread lines and dole lines and the like represent shortage and scarcity AND devaluation of the time of those who wait
Waiting Time as Deadweight Loss

Note: reposted here: http://indefenceofliberty.org/story.aspx?id=3487&pubid=3461

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