The Economy
Reading
- Every society has political functions that must be fulfilled
- The various functions can be encapsulated into social order and social control
- Social control is achieved by
- Externalized controls
- Internalized controls
- All members of a society are informal agents of social control on each other
- Politics is the exercise of power, with different sources and differ qualities
- Authority
- Persuasion
- Coercion
- Depending on the different level of political integration, political systems may be distinguished:
- Band
- Tribe
- Chiefdom
- State
- Socialites must meet and solve recurrent social problems, 2 boarder lines
- Determination and punishment of guilt
- Restoration of social harmony
- Politiical independence sometimes bring economic independence (no always)
- Relations of ownership, control, production, and export did not change hands
- Consequences of economic dependence
- Poverty, low standards of living, and mainly rural populations and agricultural production
- General approach of development: modernization theory, dependency/word system theory
- Draw back: displacement of people, social disorganization, declining health and living standards for some, acculturation and deculturation, destruction of the environment
The base and superstructure
- Human survival requires ways to provision people with food, clothing and ways to change the environment to support human
- Human work in groups to accomplish this
- Interested in how specific policies function in “the field” and their pursue of ethnographic method
- Results are less generalizable, but ore true to life
- Marxist Model
- Base (relations of production, means of production)
- Natural resources, tools, mines, factories, offices, infrastructure (concrete things )
- Superstructure (government, family, religion, education, culture)
- Social relationships required by the economy, different relations of production in different economic systems (system of production)
- Base and superstructure is always correlated
- Each economic system correlates with a different kind of superstructure
- Economic systems can be arranged historically in terms of appearancez
- Base (relations of production, means of production)
Economic systems and their history
Foraging (hunting, and gathering)
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Minimal manipulation of the environment [50-40,000 ago]
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Superstructure - egalitarian(平等主义), informal authority
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Rudimentary(mainly gender) division of labor
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Flexible gender roles and free sexual behaviour
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Religion: focuses on nature, natural objects may be imaged as living
- Ojibwa - the story telling stone
- Rocks in Inuktitut may be grammatically animate (he/she) rather than “it”
Buffalo hunt before contact with Europeans
Today: Inuit, Indigenous Australians
Horticulture (slash and burn) [园艺]
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Somewhat greater manipulation of environment[10,000 ago]
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Superstructure - chief and hierarchy
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Religion: focus on natural cycles, seasons
- Harvest rituals
- Knowledge of solstices; may have a calendar
Wendat of southern Ontario; Haudenosauneee Confederacy (Quebec); Central and South American rain forests; tribal Indians; Indonesian forest
Pastoralism (herding, nomadism) [游牧]
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Predates horticulture[12, 10,000 ago]
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Nomads - moving over large territory
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Depending on domesticated animal, expands size fo settlements, society produces surplus
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Individual groups(as opposed to the entire community) own more of the means of production
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Superstructure: male domination, unequal social status, chief or states and empires
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Can be conflicts with neighbours
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Religion: powerful god(s), often imagined in the sky
- Abraham/Ibrahim: a pastoralist
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Horsemaznship
Mongols (Genghis Khan; Ottomands); Ottomans (Turks)
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Indigenous culture has elements of foraging, horticulture, and pastoralism
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Contact - equal encounter between indigenous plans people and Europeans
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(Intensive) agriculture - relies on tools, environments is actively manipulated [5-6,000 ago]
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Produces unprecedented surpluses
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Centralizes accumulation of wealth
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Peasants - and land loads makes up the society
- Slavery or serfdom
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Developed long-distance trade
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Superstructure: rigid, legalized social stratification = differential access to power and resources
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Estates(nobility, townsfolk, clergy) and.or casts(endogamous)
Feudalism(封建) and vassalage(封臣)
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Why Agricultural & pastoralism can be in conflict with each other, and they cold also corporate
Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan
Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda before being colonized
Industrialism - relations of production (the class system)
Industrial revolution - began in 1760 in England
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Completely changed the world
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Means of production include machines and factories (that produces goods)
- Workers used to protest, thinking machines are replacing their jobs
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Relations of production: manufacturing, wage labour
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Unprecedented surpluses - as a whole, its much richer, but inequalities are severe
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Large cities (megalopoles)
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==Superstructure: capitalism & money==
- Capital - anything one owns that can make them wealtheir
- Money - financial capital (money makes the world go round)(only starting with industrialism)
- In austral, capitalist society, (almost) all value cane expressed as money
- Capital organizes society, its an impersonal force
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Old: gift exchange; New: market exchange
- Gift: a way to cement society, its an obligation and establishes relationship
- Market exchange: items are battered for purely economic value (typical capitalism)
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Classes are more permeate, and more directly based on money rather than family
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Differences is relative - bering born to privilege or poverty makes a huge difference
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Thomas Piketty - Capital in the Twenty-First Century
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==Classes includes economic and social capitals well (networks, birth, religion, education)==
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Upper class: capitalists or (high) bourgeoisie
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Upper middle class (“doctors and lawyers”)
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(Lower) middle class (“while-collar”)
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The working class (“blue-collar”) - the largest class in industrial
- Woking-class organization (unions, socialism)
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Industrial superstructures:
- Market ideology (liberalism[free market]), individualism, nationalism, love marriage
- Liberalism vs ==neo-liberalism== (take away features of socialist[neoconservative])
- Influence of the family is much less
- The market - an impersonal, abstract exchange mechanism
- The meet orders society: the invisible hand (Adam Smith)
- Limit government interferences
- Market ideology (liberalism[free market]), individualism, nationalism, love marriage
Post-industrial society [1970s]
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Money- powerful personal force
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Means or production: knowledge technology (not just factories or agriculture)
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May require frequent re-educaiton
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The largest class is the middle class
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Added consumer society value
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The rise of “youth culture”
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Globalization (not protection from national state)
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The rich (“developed”) countries, services sector as important or more important than manufacturing
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Increasing income disparities
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More unemployed or underemployed “surplus” population
- Homeless people, urban slums
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Internationalized actives by investors
- Pros: more efficient production, rise of middle class, uncontrollable migration with others
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All above still exists today
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Indignity - a condition of indigenous people, with similarities world-wide