Credit Cards

Credit cards are a popularized economic instrument enabling the consumer acquisition of goods or services in exchange for assured merchant or provider payment through financial institutions. The resulting transfer of funds was enabled through a change in the cultural view of thrift and systematic savings. Much of the pattern was driven by a transformation from ideological values associated with savings into a culture focused on consumer acquisition. Max Weber's view of social change stressed an intensified neutralization of the “Protestant Ethic” into a more vigorous consumer orientation. In Weber's analysis, credit was viewed as more culturally acceptable beginning early in the twentieth century. This trend gave way to the “democratization of credit” and the increasing acceptance of consumer credit in the form of credit cards and other financial mechanisms

Business · Commerce · Credit card · Credit history · Economics · Financial services · Financial system · Ideology · Payment · Payment card · Political science · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Law · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory · Finance

• Expressing America

  George Ritzer•Expressing America: A Critique of…•1995

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