ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic is, of course, often compared to the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 1918, or Spanish flu. At the hub of the 2008 credit crunch was the sub-prime mortgage crisis – which came to light towards the end of 2007 and pretty soon thereafter went global in its economic consequences. Gemma, like countless people successful in business, relies on social networks to significantly enhance the power, influence and impact of her financial services firm. Castells’s work is a suggestive conjuncture of social theory, communications studies and network-analysis, involving an enriched critique of globalization which examines the uprooting of identities and social relations in networks, nodes and cosmopolitan-inspired nomadic lifestyles. The relevance of Beck’s ideas on risk to social theory is remain evident on a global scale. Bauman’s sociology of modernity has received extraordinary attention in the social sciences. Few today would dispute the importance of Bauman’s writings to social theory.
