Malawi versus the world bank

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.

3

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

On to Chapter 5 next week – “Kinship and Family”

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