Social Science 1000: Study Questions. Part A: 50% - 50 Minutes

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1 1 Social Science 1000: Study Questions Part A: 50% - 50 Minutes Six of the following items will appear on the exam. You will be asked to define and explain the significance for the course of five of them. (10% each) 1. Thomas Hobbes: Studies human behaviours Believed society began with a social contract Before Hobbe s time, human behavior was taken for granted Survival of the fittest, he speculated how human act in the state of nature. He thought they would all compete strongly against each other. Only subjecting themselves to a common power could they live in reasonable security. According to Hobbes, peace was achieved when human finally said, I convey my right to this party, upon conditions that you pass yours to the same In other words; people said Let s make a contract. Each of us will limit our personal freedom in order to have some social stability. Limiting own power 2. Immiseration: You are making other s lives miserable Rich is richer Poor is poorer The value of goods and services is determined by the amount of labour required for their production. However, in a capitalist society the workers never receive this true value because the property owners retain some of if (surplus value) The workers were exploited, and their exploitation was made worse by the practice of hiring workers at the lowest possible wages to work the longest possible hours. Because of competition, they had to pay their workers the wages determined by the labour market; to compete successfully; they had to invest their capital in new equipment in order to raise production. Examples: How Mexico was a job zone and had a population of 90 million, many of them have to work hard just to get by, they are marginalized but a better way to describe them is immisrise (a de-humanized workforce providing labour for sweatshops and farms) Heilbroner (Page 41) Talking about England and how there was land that were the commons that meant anyone can go and build the huts and grow vegetables, taken over by the land owners, the people who relied on the commons had nowhere to go, Heilbroner called it the immiseration process (don t have stable employment and have to work with low level workers) Immirised workers, people who found the abandoned farm and took it over, the women who worked in the factory who were making barbies, were not working under

2 2 safe working conditions and a fire broke out and many died (in a movie called TURBULANCE) Westray is also an example. 3. Dominant Ideology: Values and beliefs is commonly shared Our society is dominate ideology is capitalism Most political ideology at the time is the one that is accepted. Columbus s story, Holmbergs mistake, justifies exercise of power, acts as a guide to what s the right thing to do and why you did it, if everyone accepts it, the ideology will never change. Social reality doesn t appear to us directly. It is revealed to our understanding through a screen of assumptions, beliefs, explainations, values and unexamined knowledge. Ideology directs our attention to some realities but not to others, interprets what our senses transmit to our brain, evaluates information not on its own merits but in terms of what is already accepted as the truth. Some parts of it are deliberately transmitted from childhood. Some parts are deliberately transmitted by parents, schools, the media, and the other institutions of our society. Some aspects of an ideology are about political/ public world events. The definition of ideology is: shared ideas, perceptions, values and beliefs through which members of a society interpret history and contemporary social events and which shape their expectations and wishes for the future. Example(s): The Dominate Ideology in Columbus s time was based on the ideologies of the upper class and what historians see as a positive accomplishment in their society. 4. Aggregate Demand: Goods wanted in a certain society to a given time. 5. Holmberg s Mistake: Recent realization that assumptions made about natives were wrong 6. Westray: Deaths, significance: Rinehart and alienation related to safety policies and how the worker is treated and how the government influenced decisions. 7. Mythistory: Mythistory is what we actually have a useful instrument for piling human groups in their encounters with one another and with the natural environment. A mingling of truth and falsehood, blending of history with ideology results.

3 3 8. Dissenters: Challenging opinion, opposite opinion. 9. Creative Destruction: Centered on how we view our modern capitalist societies, negative aspect of capitalism, ties into moral economy. Creative Destruction, specified by Heilbroner: Newer creations of technology and products replace the older and lets the people continue to want and consume more and more. Capitalism would benefit from it (the state) 10. Classical Liberalism: A political belief in which primary emphasis is placed on securing the freedom of the individual by limiting the power of the state. In its economic form, it advocates a respect for private property and free markets. Society does not exist in and of itself, it is not an organic whole. Collectivists; begin with the argument that the society is an organic whole. Social democratic; accept the basic values of liberalism but place more emphasis on equality. Socialists; perceive capitalism as a system where a ruling class extracts wealth. 11. Moral Economy: From a traditional view there was no economy. It s important because it shows that social significance of growing socialism. Bread riots in England, scarcity and high price of bread, changes between economic and political forces, peasants used to fair price, peasants revolve and cling to moral economy (if you are poor, you should be able to afford bread) Explained as collective action representing the moral economy of the era argues that the riots were symptomatic of society caught between changing economic and political forces. From a mercantilist, feudal economy system to one of laissez-faire market capitalism. Market economy (demand and supply) You can cheat, free market economy. Working hard and making money. 12. Marilyn Waring: Feminist economist Unpaid work being ignored no nonsense point of view, took another view at the economic structure, was an economist as well. Significance: encouraged to take another look, in reality of life of women and inequality and gender roles in different groups, simplified basic concepts of economy, asked important questions, what counts as growth (in Columbus

4 4 reading, growth and progress and how its sometimes doesn t consider human cause). Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 13. Honour: Honour is concerned with strength or prepotency rather than justice. Honour and dignity of girls. Comes from wealth and knowledge Comes from tradition You have to be polite. 14. New International Division of Labour: People are designated to your tasks, division of your levels Division of labour to different parts; to make life easier (For Example: The Production of a Pen, someone makes a cap, ink, style of the container etc.) It is faster and efficient. Making their products in 3 rd world country is cheaper and has more raw materials. 15. Legitimation Function: 16. Just in Time Workforce: Fordism: A stage of capitalism based on mass production of industrial goods through regiment control of workers in a high degree of division of labour. Conditions of Mass Consumption Fordism: Pro Stable employment Collective Bargaining Increase Wages Social Benefits Conditions of Mass Consumption Fordism: Con Alienation Post- Fordism: A stage of capitalism characterized by flexible accumulation processes, these revolve around new management, and decline of scientific management. Conditions of Mass Consumption Post- Fordism: Pro Flexible manufacturing Flexible work Flexible work arrangements (Financial flexibility, functional and numerical) Financial: Cutting costs wherever possible (Eg. Number of employees)

5 5 Functional: Efficient with remaining workforce (Less workers but greater production) Numerical: Non- standard employment, no weekends off, invading employment legislation Part B: 50% - 50 minutes: Two of the following questions will appear on the exam. You will be asked to answer one of them. 1. Outline the content, origins and evolution of conservative, liberal and socialist ideology. 2. Compare and contrast the views of capitalism contained in the theories of: a) Adam Smith, b) Karl Marx, c) Joseph Schumpeter, and d) John Maynard Keynes. - What is Capitalism: - An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit. - Adam Smith: - Proposed that ethics grew out of individual actions - Individual self-interest was the basis for economic growth - If everyone set out to maximize his/her own benefits, all would benefit. - EXAMPLE: I have something you want and you have something I want. I give up something that has lesser value to me; you five up something that has less value to you. Therefore both parties increase their value. - Karl Marx: - Men, women and children worked long hours at jobs that were dangerous - Stage was set for the socialists, who contradicted all earlier economic theories. - Argued that society was not a proud individual actions but an organic whole composed of several social classes. - In 1848, convinced of the need to over throw capitalism - Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto - The creed caught on, and a number of revolutions were attempted - None were successful, Marx was forced to flee to England - Like several earlier writers, Marx believed that the course of history was inevitable - Humans have passed through the states of primitive communism, slaveholding society, Asian society, feudal society and capitalism.

6 6 - Joseph Schumpeter: - Rejects Keynesianism, agreed with Karl Marx and how it won t collapse and be replaced by socialism, it will not come about the way Marx predicted. - Analytical optimist, he doesn t think capitalism will survive. - John Meynard Keynes: - Revolutionzed the way. - Have to spend to keep the economy alive. - The government should spend to keep people at work. - The welfare state. 3. Evaluate the Industrial Revolution from the perspectives of EP Thompson and James Burke. - EP Thompson: - About the negative effects of the industrial revolution on the worker, modernity doesn t necessary = progress and is not always good. - The children always worked, before the industrial revolution. - Children would work with their families and after they would be working in factories. - The Industrial Revolution also created a new middle class of merchants and businessmen. - Once a respectable and well paid trade, after industry replaced people with machines, weaver trade was poorly paid and dishonorable. - Positions opened up for women and children to work in factories. People moved to more urban areas. - Thompson argues though, that these modes of urbanization were already in place and were not affected by industrialization. - James Burke: - Technology and means that fueled the industrial revolution in England, trade helped Capitalism. - The progress was a huge benefit to any nation that was taking part of it. - The factory and the marketplace revolution. 4. Why does James Rinehart believe that work is a social problem? Outline the four aspects and three sources of alienation he discusses. In what sense is alienation structural?