Sociology Self, Culture and Society
Project description
The essay writing process involves several stages.: consult Shea and Whitla chapters 10 and 11. You MUST use proper referencing techniques as outlined by your TA (consult Shea and Whtila, chapter 9). Failure to do so constitutes PLAGARISM and makes you subject to academic sanction. Use paragraph format and provide a title page (include your name, student number and TAs name) and a bibliography. Each page must be numbered.
1. The dominant view identifies ˜economics’ with markets, money and exchange. How does Heilbroner’s concept of the ˜economic problem’ challenge this view? Explore the different dimensions of this problem and elaborate on the ˜traditional’ solution using Polanyi’s principles of reciprocity, redistribution and householding.
2. Does the ˜division of labour’ lead to the ˜wealth of nations’ or the misery of the working class? Compare and contrast Smith and Marx’s view on this concept and how it increases the productivity of labour. Pay specific attention to what happens to the ˜surplus’ and the social consequences of the division of labour in capitalist society.
3. Did capitalism first emerge in the cities through the œnatural expansion of trade or in the countryside (Wood)? What ˜social property relations’ were necessary for the development of capitalism, why did they develop in agrarian communities and how do these differ from pre-capitalist relations? How did the abolition of old economic relations?through ˜enclosures’ generate new relations that?effectively turned serfs into a class of landless proletarians, according to Marx?
4. Compare and contrast the colonial ideal of ˜bringing light (civilization) into darkness (savagery)’ with the colonial reality of œtear[ing] treasure out of the bowels of the land in Conrad’s work. What does Wolf’s historical analysis of the slave trade tell us about the ˜people without history? What social and political effects did the slave trade have on its victims and the inner life of these civilizations?
5. How does Rinehart define work and why does he refer to it as a ˜social problem’? How does he define alienation and what are its deeper structural causes? Compare and contrast a structural explanation of Mr. Zero’s alienation with a subjective and/or technological one.
