Final Exam

Question 1

Factors shaping changes in the retail sector

Answer 1

online retailers, 
debt, 
oversupply of retail, 
increasing income inequality and 
decline of middle class

Question 2

What are some factors influencing JCP store closings?

Answer 2

manufacturing dependency,
adjacency to metropolitan,
rate of population change since great recession
nonHispanic black population

Question 3

What are some issues for small towns?

Answer 3

jobs and regional economies,
use of buildings
public space and social interaction

Question 4

What happened in post industrial society?

Answer 4

shift from manufacturing to service sector
rise of professional and technical class
centrality of technical knowledge

Question 5

T/F: Employment rate higher for movers than stayers

Answer 5

false!

Question 6

T/F: Displaced movers have larger earnings loss

Answer 6

true

Question 7

There’s a decline in storing serving _____ consumers

Answer 7

middle class

Question 8

Many small towns will be left behind due to _____ and retail ______.

Answer 8

deindustrialization, apocalypse

Question 9

What is the Walmart effect?

Answer 9

Walmart’s size and the scope of its operations make it an important presence in the market in its own right, but also changes the playing field for its competitors, leading them to adopt Walmart’s practices.

Question 10

What’s a template firm?

Answer 10

in each era a prototypical enterprise embodies a new and innovative set of technological advances, organizational structures and social relationships. These template businesses are emulated because they have perfected for their era the most efficient and profitable relationship between technology, the organization of work, and market conditions.

Question 11

What is Walmart’s business template?

Answer 11

always low prices, low labor costs, supply chain innovations

Question 12

What are some of Walmart’s supply chain innovations?

Answer 12

Bar codes/scanners
Electronic point-of-sale data collection
Real-time Internet-based transactions
Just-in-time purchasing
Automated distribution centers

Question 13

___ gives Walmart the upper hand in negotiations with suppliers, allowing them to dictate the price point, speed of production, and to require quality improvements and investments in supply chain modernization. It causes them to have such low prices.

Answer 13

size

Question 14

T/F Walmarts correlate with poverty

Answer 14

true

Question 15

Why does Walmart correlate with poverty?

Answer 15

by offering jobs at a low wage, the company drives down competitors’ wages, or at least keeps them from rising. But anti-union tactics and driving firms with unionized or higher-paid workers out of business also play a role.

Question 16

site-fights: does Walmart hurt the economy of a town?

Answer 16

If there is an oversupply of retailers, Walmart will crowd out smaller businesses. If there is an undersupply—not enough retailers to meet local demand—the effect on small businesses is less.

Question 17

What is Fordism?

Answer 17

The idea that for workers to constitute a market for cars they needed income to buy them and leisure to use them

Question 18

What was the idea behind the kitchen debates?

Answer 18

the consumer is the motor of the economy

Question 19

hourly wages have stagnated as ____ increases

Answer 19

productivity

Question 20

Which factors are most important in causing labor’s declining share of national income?

Answer 20

1) Growth of global financial markets
2) Declining strength of labor market institutions (including unions)
3) Economic globalization
4) Technological change

Question 21

What is the great risk shift?

Answer 21

Over the past 40 years or so, employers have backed out of the social contract forged in the past (to provide benefits and stable employment).At the same time, cutbacks to government spending have weakened the social safety net. With both public and private support eroding, workers and their families must bear a greater burden of risk.

Question 22

What is chain migration?

Answer 22

Once a migration stream is established, push and pull factors become less important influences on the decision to migrate and the presence of family and friends in the destination becomes a more important factor

Question 23

What is the bracero program?

Answer 23

Diplomatic agreement between the U.S. and Mexico that brought up to 75,000 Mexican workers per year into the U.S. to work in agriculture and industry, sponsoring over 4.5 million border crossings

Question 24

What is human trafficking?

Answer 24

he recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion…to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation

Question 25

What is structural adjustment diaspora

Answer 25

Structural adjustment refers to a set of policies used by the International Monetary Fund and other development banks. When developing nations cannot repay loans, the banks agree to restructure them in return for certain “reforms” in the nation’s monetary and fiscal (i.e. budgetary) policy. Most significantly, lenders require reduce spending on social programs like health, education and community development in order to speed up debt repayment. Critics argue that lenders are demanding that poor nations lower the standard of living of their people.

Question 26

What is One Big Labor Market?

Answer 26

The world used to be divided into many, many local and regional labor markets. A labor market is basically a recruitment areas for different kinds of jobs. Today, increasingly workers in different parts of the world compete against one another. Companies say “take a cut in pay or we will make the garments/autos elsewhere. Putting workers in different countries with different wage scales and job quality in competition with one another shrunk the gap between jobs in different places. The wages of Honduran and Bangladeshi workers came up a little bit. The wages of U.S. workers went down. The safety standards in the developing world improved and those in the U.S. declined. One big labor market has winners and losers.

Question 27

What is the autonomy myth

Answer 27

As children, we all require protection and care, as we do when we are ill, disabled and elderly. Historically, the long working days and relentless schedule of industrial work were enabled by the presence of someone in the home to restore the laborer on a daily basis. Today we get more of those services on the market .

Question 28

Examples of “respatializing” social reproduction and the life cycle

Answer 28

return to communities of origin for care

Question 29

assimilation

Answer 29

suggests that migrants acquire new customs and attitudes through contact and communication. At the same time, immigrants contribute some of their own cultural traits to the new society.

Question 30

politics of propinquity

Answer 30

the intense, everyday, face-to-face negotiation of difference

Question 31

Mediating institutions

Answer 31

places outside the plant that provided opportunities for interaction and emerging interracial, intercultural dynamics

Question 32

Multi-stranded relationships

Answer 32

social ties based on knowing an individual through multiple channels

Question 33

What does it mean to be political?

Answer 33

democratically making decisions about how we should live together

Question 34

What is common sense?

Answer 34

Unexamined beliefs, what we take for granted

Question 35

What is an organic intellectual

Answer 35

a person who is continually learning and critically examining their beliefs in order to change society