Conformity and Conflict
Part 4: Economic Systems
15th Edition David W. McCurdy | Dianna Shandy | James Spradley
Topics
Components of the economy
Kinds of exchange
Types of economies
Articles #12,13,14 & 15
Components of the Economy
Economic system refers to provision of goods and services to meet biological and social wants.
Production refers to the process of rendering material items useful and available for human consumption.
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Components of the Economy (cont.)
Allocation of resources refers to the cultural rules people use to assign rights to ownership and use of resources.
Technology is the cultural knowledge for making and using tools and extracting and refining raw materials.
Core concept….
Division of Labor
refers to the rules that govern the assignment of jobs to people.
Hunting and gathering (gender and age)
Industrial society (highly specialized or focused)
Division of Labor
Unit of production defines the persons or groups responsible for producing goods and services.
Kinds of Exchange
There are three basic modes of distribution:
market exchange,
reciprocal exchange, and
redistribution.
Market exchange
the transfer of goods and services based on price, supply, and demand.
Money is often used in market systems.
It is well suited for exchange between strangers who make up larger and more complex societies.
Reciprocal exchange
is the transfer of goods and services between two people or groups based on role obligations.
Example: Birthday and holiday gift giving
Redistribution
refers to the transfer of goods and services between a central collecting source and a group of individuals.
Example: Taxes in the United States
Types of Economies
Subsistence economies occur at a local level and are organized around the need to meet material necessities and social obligations.
They depend most on reciprocity and redistribution.
Their members are occupational generalists.
Market economies
are driven by market exchange and are characterized by high economic specialization and impersonality.
Most subsistence economies will be absorbed into national market systems.
Best ways to do this?
Neoliberal policies of the 1980s (Life and Debt)
Neo-liberalism
is a philosophy adopted by capitalist countries that emphasizes free movement of goods, capital, and services with cuts to public expenditure for social services.
The essays in the chapter illustrate these abstract terms and concepts in grounded ethnographies.
Types of exchange:
Market exchange, reciprocal exchange, redistribution.
Shifts in economic systems
Agricultural economies to industrial
“Industrial” to “post-industrial” economies
Formal and informal economies
Commercial logging vs “illegal” logging
Office employment vs the selling crack on the streets
Part 4 Articles
# 12—Reciprocity and the Power of Giving (Lee Cronk)
# 13—Poverty at Work: Office Employment and the Crack Alternative (Philippe Bourgeois)
# 14—Women in the Mine (Jessica Smith Rolston)
#15—Malawi versus the World Bank (Sonia Patten)
Article 12 – Reciprocity and the Power of Giving (Lee Cronk)
From the Table of Contents: Gifts not only function to tie people together, they may also be used to “flatten” an opponent and control the behaviors of others (vii)
Article 12—Reciprocity and the Power of Giving
1930s…Rockies. Gift of a horse to a U.S. Army Captain from a Nez Perce chief
1700s Colonial New England
Cross-cultural misunderstanding
“Indian giver”
Ideas of individuality vs cooperative group economics/ relationship to the group
How do you interpret? What relevance to examples about “reciprocity” offered in the essay? (What IS reciprocity, and why is this covered in a chapter on “economic systems”?
“We don’t trade with things, we trade with people”
!Xoma (Richard Borshay Lee)
Serves as an example of exchange
Uses examples from several societies
Nez Perce
New England “Indian Gift”(artifact vs relationship)
Lee’s Christmas gift of the “ox”
!Kung in the Kalahari, Turkana & Mukogodo (Kenya)
New Guinea “Kula” rings
The Flats in All Our Kin
Kwakiutl “Potlatch”
“The time for fighting is past;
we do not fight with weapons, we now fight with property!”
Functions of gift giving including creating mutual and asymmetrical obligations
Cites the potlatch as a way to “flatten” opponents with generosity
Tribes of New Guinea use a gift giving system called “moka” to gain prestige and shame rivals
Interesting contemporary examples:
Sociologist Warren Hagstrom
Academics …mathematicians, scientists
Profit/ not profit “contributions” made
Citation …… cultivate associations; desire for recognition
Cronk reports on a study by anthropologist Grace Goodell and notes that
monetary support of an irrigation project by the World Bank served to crush local-level political organizations in Iran.
Gift giving…. Unconditional gift, or a vehicle for developing reciprocal social relations?
Benevolent gift giving
Giving to intimidate
Govt foreign “aid” as gift-giving….exchange as a political device
Benign …or ulterior motive? (manipulative)
Critical thinking question:
The “title” of this essay is “Reciprocity and the Power of Giving.”
Do you think “reciprocity” has played any role in the creation and establishment of the newly-forming Trump Administration?
For instance, Cabinet picks?
Gift-giving practices in your own life…role and status. In what ways is reciprocity present? (What happens if/when it is not?)
# 13—Poverty at Work: Office Employment and the Crack Alternative (Philippe Bourgeois)
How does this essay illustrate matters related to the topic of economic systems?
What is this essay about?
What structural changes in NY’s formal economy on the last 40-50 years? How have these changes shaped the lives of young men in Spanish Harlem?
What kinds of jobs in the informal economy?
How do formal jobs challenge men’s self-respect?
Why do Puerto Rican men in El Barrio take pride in their street identities?
Why does Bourgeois claim that the Puerto Rican men’s resistance to work in the legal economy leads to “self-destruction” and “wider community devastation”?
Formal & informal economy
Illustrates a part of a shadow economy
Describes what it is like to be a small-scale crack dealer in New York’s Spanish Harlem, El Barrio
Street culture
Describes shift from “industrial” to “Post-industrial economy” Details the change from manufacturing to banking and service industries, and ties this in with the loss of acceptable jobs for uneducated Harlem residents
Argues that selling crack is the alternative
Industrial to Post-Industrial Economy
Loss of manufacturing jobs…NY same number of jobs that it did in 1963 but more of these are located in offices
48.3% of men living in Spanish Harlem “officially employed.”
Many second generation Puerto Rican men failed at entry level jobs in the new economy. Why?
Lack of education, lack of respect
Failed at entry-level service sector jobs because the way they looked and walked often frightened middle-class Anglos on the job;
find it unpleasant to work in New York City’s professional offices…treated with disrespect;
Primo… failed at his office job because he could not alter his street identity and mimic professional office culture (expected behaviors)
# 14—Women in the Mine (Jessica Smith Rolston)
What draws women to work in a coal mine?
Gives examples of how women fit into a working culture known to be hostile to females
Illustrates how women miners shift between identities to adapt to the workplace
What are some of the different “types” of women workers in this industry; which is most successful? Why?
“Women in the Mine”
Tomboys
Ladies
Girly-girls
Bitches
One of the more successful gender identities in a coal mine is the tomboy, defined as a women who departs from the conventional notions of femininity, does not mind getting dirty, does not get worked up about things
Women who work in the coal mines in the Powder River Basin operate all of the heavy equipment used to extract the coal
A key way for women in the mines to build workplace relationships with their males coworkers is to engage in practical jokes
Of the many stereotypical personas active in the coal mining industry, ultra macho men comprise only a minority of the workforce.
Rank in the coal pits correlates to hierarchy of the machines used to expose the coal
The author of this essay compares risks, uncertainties, and rewards of all gendered positions in this workforce
Specific ways technological changes have shaped the gender division of labor over time in the coal mine
How do you interpret the last line of the essay:
“Gender, therefore, is best understood less as a stable identity and more as a shifting performance.” (135)
Article 15—Malawi versus the World Bank
Macro-level & micro-level socio-economic decisions and events
95 % of the Malawian population lives on small farms 1 to 4 acres in size
Main crop of subsistence …maize
Washington Consensus?
5 points of the Washington Consensus structural adjustment program (SAP)? What is the economic theory behind that?
What is the history of farm support in Malawi and how did taking loans from the World Bank and IMF change that history?
Why is chemical fertilizer so important to farming in Malawi?
The World Bank and International Monetary Fund, along with approval of the U.S. Treasury, adopted a “Washington Consensus” designed to institute capitalism in poor countries
Required countries that borrowed money from the World Bank and IMF to privatize state-owned enterprises
The World Bank loans require a market approach of recipient developing nations
The bank insisted that the government cease subsidizing the cost of fertilizer required to grow corn (maize)
Officials of the World Bank thought that fertilizer subsidies were the reason why Malawi experienced a balance of payments problem in the 1980s.
When it followed SAP guidelines, the government of Malawi failed to provide fertilizer for its farmers. How did that effect the country’s people and agricultural output?
Starter Pak Inititiative
Targeted Input Programme
Road Building programs
What happened when the govt of Malawi recently again began to provide fertilizer for its farmers?
Bingu wa Mutharika
(President 2004-2012)
What does that say about World Bank and IMF policies?
The effect of the World Bank loans on the people of Malawi was to lower the amount of maize produced
Because farmers had no money to buy fertilizer, production dropped and famine ensued
Malawians responded to the lower maize yields that occurred when fertilizer was no longer subsidized by skipping meals
When the president of Malawi reinstituted the subsidized fertilizer program
Farmers produced “bumper crops”
Maize yields grew substantially enough for Malawi to begin exporting again
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