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AbstractThis essay revisits the question of mass destruction through the perspectives offered by postcolonial thinkers.

The dichotomy of popular vs elite art is explored. During the eighteenth century, previous concepts of specific arts were replaced by a concept of art as a unity seeking a new integral mythology, a concept shaped by Romanticism. This movement has a central image: the artist in conflict over whether to follow his own inspirations or the demands of the market. Low culture, based on mass production, confronts high culture, & the two mutually deny one another. Rejections of mass culture tend to take the form of movements; rejections of the avant garde generally take the form of affirmations of isolated great works. The recognition that art can become mass culture implies the unexplored possibility that mass culture can become art. In the struggle to emancipate works of art from religious values, art has become an expression of a religious impulse. There is a need to recognize the finiteness of art works & to include the nonelite arts in a concept of art that includes all expressions of the impulse to artistic creation. The ultimate direction of this is reduction of the differences between life & art. W. H. Stoddard.

Mass customization presents a paradox to traditional manufacturing practices. Historically, companies chose to produce either customized, crafted products or mass‐produced, standardized products. Thus, mass customization presents a paradox by combining customization and mass production, offering unique products in a mass‐produced, low cost, high volume production environment. If mass customization is truly a combination of mass production and craft manufacturer, how does a manufacturer become a mass customizer? Are the key principles of mass customization rooted in customized product knowledge or mass production techniques? Does the path to mass customization impact financial performances? This paper begins to answer these questions by exploring the total product mix of mass customizing plants using data gathered from 126 mass customizers. This study shows plants that choose mass customization approaches that match the non‐mass customized product line characteristics have higher financial performance than those firms without a matched product line.

The topic of this scientific work is social masses and the mass society. The subject of research will be reduced to the definition of the notions of "social mass" and "mass society" and finding similarities and differences between them. The author starts from the initial assumption that social masses and mass societies are two similar, but also quite different notions. The following methods were used in the paper: observation, content analysis, developmental method, structural approach, comparative method, analytical approach etc. The scientific justification of the research derives from the establishment of similarities and differences between these two notions, which makes a significant contribution to the construction of the Sociology of the Masses as one of the scientific disciplines of Sociology. The social reach of the research is founded on questioning social masses and the power of the impact of the mass society on contemporary social trends.