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Discussion Leader Assignment: Economics

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Discussion Leader Assignment: Economics A subdiscipline of anthropology, economic anthropology is concerned with how people make, share, and buy goods and services by studying how people make decisions about how to earn a living, what they do when they work, and the social institutions around these aspects. Through analyzing these relationships economic anthropologists attempt to discern what is value. Often times Westerners associate the idea of money as the measure of all things and the price an object hold reflects its value. However, value, or the worth of something, is a variation amongst and between cultures. Culture shapes the character of any economic transaction so it is important to understand the diversity of economic systems …show more content…

In Neoclassical economies, workers cooperate to divide labor and exchange goods and services in a market setting. From this system, value and wealth are created by competition between buyers and sellers. In Substantivism, the economy is rooted in social institutions such as the state, religion, and kinship relationships where people engage in transactions to get what they want. From this, value is relative, created by particular cultures and social institutions. In Marxism, people participate in capitalism by selling their labor and this private ownership of means of production results in wealth for a few and inequality for the masses. From this system, labor is a major source of value. Finally, in cultural economics, the economy is a category of culture and economic acts are guided by local beliefs and cultural models tying in to a community’s values. From this, value is created by symbolic associations people make between an activity, good or service and its community’s moral …show more content…

Although coolness is hard to define, it is developed by marketing and advertisement. In an article from the Atlantic, they attempt to study the concept of coolness scientifically by defining it as “a subjective, positive trait perceived in people, brands, products, and trends that are autonomous in an appropriate way.” This article suggests that people advertise to create desired things outside of social norms to make them feel impressive or superior to other people. Anthropologists also look at consumption to build cultural meaning, social relationships, and identities beginning with appropriation of the

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She discusses how there is a need for a new demographic of shoppers, and marketers are turning to the youth demographic. Klein uses “cool” to describe what is currently popular, or how Walker would describe salience. “Cool Hunters” study what the youth demographic considers cool to create a market. She explains how most teenagers are constantly wondering if they are cool or not. Klein focuses on how brands stick to the consumer’s mind.

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Karl Marx was the first theorist to attempt to analyse modern and postmodern societies. According to Marx, the capitalist mode of production helped to create a new form of modern society. This new form of modern society was built around the production of commodities and the collection of capital. According to Marx, capital created its own world and the commodities that were created became a norm of social organization (Best and Kellner, 1997). Capitalism has become a norm within society due to the attachments that society has given it.

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Therefore, much of certain beliefs in economics, social science, business, and religious practices, contain various intangible elements and questions regarding values, can be dealt with using philosophy. Often, many people fail to recognize that such areas are mainly philosophical and that they require deeper sustained thoughts than they are usually allocated and as a result, they end up not withstanding scrutiny or accepting any new beliefs being introduced. It is important to note that the philosophy also enables

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The definition of microeconomics is, “The study of the economic behavior of individual units of an economy such as a person, household, firm, or industry and not the aggregate economy” (Business Dictionary). We find that the idea of microeconomics holds its highest concern with certain factors that individually affect economic choices, how they factor into an economic market, and how prices are determined in each individual market (Business Dictionary). Over the course of this semester in our Intro to Economic Inquiry class we have studied, discussed, and analyzed a number of different economists from the past who have developed their own theories to which an economy thrives and suffers, how prices are set, and how problems in an economy such

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Marx explains that: “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes a cheaper commodity.” In essence, the worker loses value the more labor he uses to go into another’s product. The bourgeois (working class) man’s value is placed in the exchange value of a product. This value has been declared by the owner or employer of the worker.

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Capitalism is built on the existence of private firms, where in Karl Marx’s opinion, the income generated is a result of the exploitation of workers. In private firms, workers do not own factors of production and Marx believed that this would inevitably lead to the alienation of workers from their environment and themselves. Unlike in traditional societies, where workers gain satisfaction from creating products of their own chosen specialized fields, in the current context, workers see their work merely as a form of survival. Marx believed that in a capitalistic economy, the rich have power over the middle and lower income classes and that the oppression of the middle and lower classes by minimizing wages to reducing cost of production, will eventually lead to a revolution against the rich and hence resulting in the economy producing products for the needs of the general mass rather than for boosting profits. (Marx, K., & Engels, F. 1948) Adam Smith on the other hand, believes that capitalism is the most ideal economic model that should be adopted by all nations.

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Capitalism is understood to be the “economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.” In modern society, capitalism has become the dominant economic system and has become so integrated that it has resulted in a change in the relationships individuals have with other members of society and the materials within society. As a society, we have become alienated from other members of society and the materials that have become necessary to regulate ourselves within it, often materials that we ourselves, play a role in producing. Capitalism has resulted in a re-organization of societies, a more specialized and highly segmented division of labour one which maintains the status quo in society by alienating the individual. Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim theorize on how power is embodied within society and how it affects the individuals of society.

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In the 19th century, the Industrial age began and people began to rethink the way the economic system worked. Two major systems rose, socialism and capitalism, both of which have positives and negatives. Some people felt that capitalism was unfair and they were being oppressed whereas others felt the lack of the government’s influence gave them a sense of liberation and hope. Some believed that humans wanted to work for the greater good, whereas others believe humans were selfish. Both factions of people commonly agreed that each system was to benefit the greater good of the people.

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For Marx, capitalism refers to commodities for sale that in-turn makes a vast profit above wage-labour and costs. The industrialisation led Marx to his idea that the most prevalent relationships in society were formed as part of a structure based around how goods and services were produced. Marx viewed capitalism as an exchange market. Production was for exchange not for need. Marx discussed the relationships between the modes of production and the workforce and sees this as the base of society within his superstructure of society.

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This idea of social creation based on class conflict, economic repression, and the series of epochs creates the overarching theory of Marxism. The emphasis on the economic relationship in regards to human philosophy becomes the fundamental differing shift in historical approaches. The focus on the laboring class, a subject often left out of past historical dialogues makes Marxism an important school of theory in historical writing. By creating the stages of societal development that each eventually end in its collapse, Marx in such creates his

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Social conflict theory in its classical form is the struggle between different parts of the society over valued and scarce resources in a sense that they have been centralized and controlled by a few elites (Allman, 2001). As a result of social conflicts, scarce resources turned a small group of people into capitalists in the nineteenth century. Capitalists are people who are in possession and control the factories and other businesses in pursuit of profits gains. For this reason, capitalism turned most people into industrial workers, whom Karl Marx refers to as proletarians (Allman, 2001). Proletarians are people who sell their labour for wages.

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1351 Words | 6 Pages

Marx understood capitalism to be founded upon a class division between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. He believed society goes through five changes; Primitive, Ancient Slave owning, Feudal society, Capitalist and Communism being the final stage. A Capitalist society was considered to be the modern society where there will be conflict due to people striving for things that will benefit themselves, hence persons are self-interested. The devaluation of the human world increases in direct relation with the increase to the value of the world of things. Thus there is the alienation of the worker in the capitalist economy; the worker lacks control over the' disposal of his products, since what he produces is appropriated by others, so that he does not benefit from it.

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998 Words | 4 Pages

However, I believe that the cultural industry has also led to new ways of value. The cultural industries are not only about cultural value, but also symbolic, economic and social value. For instance, culture has become valuable for consumers and businesses as source for showing their identities and for creating connections with people all over the world. I mean it is not only a bad thing that culture is commodified. It has opened ways for new exciting directions and innovations of the capacity of culture.

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Marx thinks to affirm social relations as founded on equality and freedom, so modern capitalist society is destructive of true sociality (Little, 2008). Overview of economics(2003) Marx once believed that once the capitalist (the guy with the money and the organisational skills to build a factory) has set up the means of production, all value is created by the labour involved in producing whatever is being produced. In Marx 's view, presented in his 1867 tome Das Kapital (Capital), a capitalist 's profits come from exploiting labour—that is, from underpaying workers for the value that

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1138 Words | 5 Pages

Learning some basic economic principles such as voluntary exchange and real-nominal principles will prove helpful when making economic choices for one’s self or being a part of the democratic

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