KRLS304 Midterm Flashcards
Epistemology
Theory of how we know things; test it, hypothesize, religious, etc.
Ontological
What is reality that we know stuff about, making claim about the nature of knowledge, objective reality & subjective reality
Objectivity
Uncovering truths without influence from personal feelings and prejudices
Psychological thinking
Individualistic
Social psychological thinking
Smaller groups
Sociologic thinking
Larger groups
Sociological Imagination
Relationships between personal biography, history, and social forces beyond the control of the individual
Common sense approach (neoliberal view)
Look at all these overweight people
How can we explain this?
Because they are lazy, weak willed, and a failure, which is why we have an epidemic in today’s society.
Sociological imagination approach
Look at all these fast food joints, loopholes in food labeling, wealth gap, etc.
What effect could these be having?
Producing obesity
TBL contains 4 themes that reinforce an individualized view
Only the strong survive
Pulling big numbers
Deserving and needing
Making the right choices
Neoliberalism political beliefs
Free market is natural, perfect.
Supports private property rights and individualism.
Wants to keep the government intervention small and out of the markets.
Reduction of the social safety net.
Belief in trickle down economics.
Neoliberalism set of practices
Deregulation
Privatization
Trade barrier reduction
Roll-back and roll-out
Globally today one of the most common forms of government
Neoliberalism
Corporations
A type of company. Legal entities that are separate from their owners (the shareholders)
Advantages of a corporation
Corporations can own things for longer than a human lifespan.
Protects the individuals because lawsuits are directed at the corporation not the shareholders.
Safer than partnerships because if one partner dies, so does the partnership.
Ableism
Beliefs, processes and practices that produce a an ideal body standard
3 categories of classification
Physical, visual, and intellectual
What is the benefit to having less categories for classification?
Cost goes down, revenue goes up
Sustainable development
Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs
Fictitious commodities ex.
Selling land and carbon credits as a commodity
P3s definition
A process in which the government facilitates the delivery of services rather than delivering them directly (3rd party)
P3s
(Public Private Partnerships)
Can be longer than any government term.
Require binding contracts (often drafted based on corporate expertise).
Designed to protect the company from losses, not to deliver the best product to the public
Capitalism
An economic system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state
According to Chen capitalism has the following key elements
Private ownership of the means of production
Goods and services exchanged as commodities in markets
Producing profits for capitalist enterprises
Means of production refer to
The way in which commodities are produced
Commodities are
Sellable items. They are fungible (can be exchanged in the market for currency)
Crisis of overproduction
There are too many commodities unsold in the market. The capitalist now cannot earn as much profit and in fact generates additional costs by having to store all the unsold goods
Capital-Labour Contradiction
If the capitalist suppresses wages, then profit increases in the short term.
However, if all capitalists succeed in doing this, then workers across society will be paid less and have less money to spend buy other commodities.
Capitalism contradiction:
Spatial fixes
Create a new market for your commodities. This can forestall the crisis of overproduction.
Ex. opening up a geographically new market or creating a new niche inside an existing market
Capitalism contradiction temporal fixes:
These generally speed things up. If I produce 2 in a day today but 3 tomorrow with the same costs, I have increased profit. These fixes are often efficiency types of speed ups where more is done with the same inputs or less. Loans fall into this category as well. Getting money now that you pay back in the future is much faster than waiting for the future to arrive
Spatio-temporal fixes
A combination of the two. A loan is a temporal fix already, but when it is used to open a new market, it becomes spatial as well.
A temporary fix.
2 classes of people in capitalism
Alienated (proletariat or worker) and those in control (capitalist or bourgeoisie)
Accumulation through dispossession
Massive amounts of wealth and power have accrued to a small group of people over the centuries as whole geographic areas were appropriated.
ex. taking land from indigenous
slaves
The two significant ‘offshoring’ processes to the South
The relocation of manufacturing work by the transnational sportswear corporations
The conferring of rights / cost to host mega sport events by the transnational sport governing elites
Commodity
Material from the land, mixed with a person’s labour, and sold for money
Commodification
Turning something historically unsellable into something you can sell. Selling this thing is a new idea
Three fundamental non-commodities
Land, labour, and money
Why can’t you commodify land
By mixing your labour with raw ingredients (like a tree), you make commodities you sell (like a chair). The raw ingredient is not sold. It is not the commodity
Why can’t you commodify labour
Owning this means owning a person. It is slavery to own someone’s labour
Why can’t you commodify money
This is what commodities are exchanged for. Taking what it is exchanged for back into the market as a commodity to exchange it for more of itself is a paradox
Fictitious commodity
Commodifying land, labour, and money. Conservation example: People will pay to visit places where nature is protected. Protected nature is a fictitious commodity
2nd inherent contradiction in capitalism: environmental
Infinite growth on a finite planet is a contradiction in terms.
We will run out of fossil fuels, no matter how slowly and carefully we use them
Diminishing supply of an essential resource for a growing population base causes prices to skyrocket