Midterm Theories Flashcards
(102 cards)
1
Q
The Metabolic Rift is observed between…
A
1) Towne and country
2) Colonizer and colonized
2
Q
What is the Malthusian argument?
A
Unchecked population growth leads to hunger, misery, and increased natural resource scarcity
3
Q
What is the inequality critique of the Malthusian argument?
A
Poverty and hunger cause environmental decline and population growth, as the poor struggle to make a livelihood
4
Q
What are the three arguments of the inequality critique: take 1?
A
1) Rich and powerful nations have been able to develop by utilizing the resources of other countries
2) This has left the poor countries without natural resources and power, and thus in a state of perpetual underdevelopment
3) The link to population…
a) lack of economic development inhibits places from experiencing the “demographic transition”
b) for impoverished people, more children can create greater economic security
5
Q
How does the inequality critique: take 1 relate to population
A
a) lack of economic development inhibits places from experiencing the “demographic transition”
b) for impoverished people, more children can create greater economic security
6
Q
What is the underlying premise of the inequality critique: take 1?
A
Need to account for a place’s history and their position within global hierarchies
*“development of underdevelopment”
7
Q
According to the inequality critique take 2, malnutrition is a problem associated with…?
A
Distribution and access; power and wealth
8
Q
What are the three main facets of the inequality critique take 2?
A
1) little correlation between population density and hunger
2) More than enough food is produced to feed the world
3) Malnutrition and starvation are linked to power and wealth
9
Q
The inequality critique take 2 says that famines are not usually caused by a lack of food availability, but by a lack of _____.
A
access
10
Q
What is the basic argument of the technological critique of the Malthusian argument?
A
Human innovation will overcome the environmental problems associated with population
11
Q
According to the demographic critique, how do we need to empower women by?
A
1) More closely recognize the value of women’s work
2) Providing greater opportunities for education
3) Providing greater opportunities for participation in paid work
12
Q
Why does the demographic critique argue that we need to empower women?
A
Education and participation in the paid economy is the most consistent factor in reducing fertility rates
13
Q
What is the conundrum of consumption?
A
Limiting the consumerist lifestyle to those who have already atained it is not politically possible or morally defensible. But extending it to all people may lead to ecological collapse.
14
Q
What are the four reasons we consume?
A
1) a need
2) a means to connect and belong
3) part of one’s identity
4) a means to demonstrate power
15
Q
What is the work and spend cycle (Schor)?
A
- We have created a society where we have to work, we have to spend and consume, just to live.
- The work-and-spend cycle is very difficult to escape in the US. Looking at the things that are necessary to work (addresses NEED factor of consumption)
- people work more so they can consume more
16
Q
How does the work and spend cycle affect the environment
A
Forced to keep consuming just to live and maintain a job, results in higher resource extraction, consumption, and environmental degradation
17
Q
What is the basic idea behind Veblen’s theory of the leisure class?
A
modern culture revolves around attempts to signal our comparative degrees of power (social and environmental). It’s not enough to be wealthy, you have to display your wealth and power (conspicuous consumption, leisure, waste)
18
Q
What four factors led to the demise of old consumerism?
A
1) growth of income inequality
2) primary social site shifts from neighborhood to workplace
3) workplace socializing changes
4) influence of television and media
19
Q
What is the new consumerism?
A
shift in operational reference groups and a rise of competitive consumerism
20
Q
What are the three facets to Veblen’s theory of the leisure class?
A
1) conspicuous consumption
2) conspicuous leisure
3) conspicuous waste
21
Q
What is conspicuous consumption?
A
- Fancy cars, houses, and other goods
- Show you control both social and natural dynamics of your life
22
Q
What is conspicuous leisure?
A
- non-productive consumption of time
- People who have more power over the world (don’t have to grow food or work to buy food) are the ones who can exercise conspicuous leisure (wealthy people)
23
Q
What is conspicuous waste?
A
- Buying new goods and getting rid of old ones on a whim: waste goes somewhere else where you don’t have to worry about it being in your environment
- Replacing out of desire not out of necessity, unnecessary waste
24
Q
What is vicarious consumption, vicarious leisure, and vicarious waste?
A
When you display the three through others (like, your kids): added level of complexity, but it’s the same idea
25
What is the rational risk assessment?
As individuals we make decisions by comparing our best knowledge about the rates and probabilities of hazards and choose the least dangerous ones in order to best navigate risk
26
What is the problem with rational risk assessment?
individuals do not always act in calculated "rational" ways
27
What are the four ideas of the risk society?
1) shift from class-based society to risk-based society
2) contemporary conflicts not over distribution of "goods," but over the distribution of "bads"
3) the "bads" are more universal and hard to escape
4) shift to risk society fed by distrust in science
28
What is the idea of reflexive modernization?
concerns and fears will lead to a democratization of science
29
What is a critique of the risk society?
Environmental risks are not equal
30
What is normal accident theory (Perrow)?
Accidents in complex systems are unavoidable because innocent and seemingly unrelated events accumulate and align to create major malfunctions with disastrous results
31
What is an incident? What are parts and units?
Incident: an event that disrupts a system
Parts: smallest component of a system
Units: collection of parts
32
What is an accident? What are subsystems and systems?
Accident: an event that prevents the system from functioning
Subsystem: collection of units
System: collection of subsystems
33
What is the difference between incidents and accidents?
Incidents disrupt the system without shutting it down completely, while accidents prevent the system from functioning
34
Parts --> units --> subsystems --> system
Parts --> units --> subsystems --> system
35
How are humans viewed in normal accident theory?
humans are pieces within the system
36
What are the four kinds of victims in normal accident theory?
1) First party victims: The operators of the system
2) Second party victims: non-operating systems personnel. Users of and worker in a system who exercise no control over its operation
3) Third party victims: innocent bystanders
4) Fourth party victims: fetuses and future generations
37
What is a first party victim?
operators of the system
38
What is a second party victim?
non-operating systems personnel who exercise no control over its operation
39
What is a third party victim?
innocent bystanders
40
What is a fourth party victim?
fetuses and future generations
41
What is a linear interaction?
expected and familiar production and maintenance sequence
42
What is a complex interaction?
unfamiliar, unplanned, or unexpected sequences
43
What is a linear system?
components are easy to separate, substitutable, and have little feedback
44
What is a complex system?
components are hard to pull apart, not substitutable, and have lots of feedback
45
What is a loosely coupled system?
if one piece fails, the system still operates with little loss in efficiency
-- if you took out a part, system would still function/you wouldn't have to replace part right away
46
What is a tightly coupled system?
if one piece fails, significant stress is put on other parts of the system, and perhaps the whole system?
47
What combination is riskiest/most likely to fail?
Tightly coupled, complex systems
| -- will lead to more normal accidents
48
How do you reduce risk in systems?
Make systems more liner and loosely coupled
49
What are the three factors of a normal accident?
1) interaction of multiple failures that are not in a direct operational sequence
2) the failures have a significant degree of incomprehensibility
3) inherent in complex systems with tightly coupled interactions
50
What do concentrated systems lead to?
Catastrophe (the next catastrophe)
51
What are three examples of concentrated systems that lead to catastrophe?
1) concentrations of energy
2) concentrations of populations
3) concentrations of economic and political power
52
What is the underlying premise of the "contradictions of capitalism" theory?
Capitalism is inherently a crisis ridden form of socioeconomic organization
53
What are the four aspects of the first contradiction of capitalism?
1) Arises in the relationship between business owners and workers
2) Businesses attempt to maximize profit by getting the most from their workers for the least amount of money
3) Workers produce lots of goods for little compensation. As a result, businesses are unable to find anyone to buy the produced good
4) Results in crisis of overproduction
54
What are the three conditions of production in the second contradiction of capitalism?
1) material inputs
2) the reproduction of human labor power (i.e. human health, reproductive capacities, etc.)
3) infrastructure
55
How can we overcome crisis and the second contradiction of capitalism?
New technologies and new supplies
56
If nature is socially constructed, how does that contradict the basis of scientific knowledge?
1) its existence is not independent of our knowledge
2) therefore nature cannot provide an independent foundation against which to test our knowledge claims
3) even if an independent physical world exists, our empirical observations are still biased by our socially constructed perceptions of it
57
How could seeing nature as a social construction be a good thing?
- Some argue that it is politically progressive and empowering
- Allows us to see the power structures and hierarchies that define nature and the natural in ways that favor certain interests over others
58
How could seeing nature as a social construction be a bad thing?
- could lead to denial that nature and environmental problems are real
- cause us not to push science forward to solve our problems
59
What are two critiques of social constructivist approaches to nature?
1) often fail to represent active or generative capacities of biophysical processes of nature
2) move too quickly from concrete to universal and often rail to differentiate between different types of nature
* failing to see the differences between nature causes people to overlook why nature comes to enter political and economic life
60
What is the basic purpose of the sociomaterial approach?
Examine how the natural or the material affects the social
| -interplay between natural and social whereas constructivist approach focuses only on how social impacts natural
61
What are the three areas that the sociomaterial approach examines/focuses on?
1) physical and mathematical laws (universal laws that are usually unobservable in normal circumstances-- gravity, inertia, etc)
2) material processes (seasonal cycles, evaporation, etc)
62
What is the basic argument behind the treadmill of production?
The growing level of capital, or money, available for investment and the changing ways in which this money was and could be used led to substantial increase in
1) the demand for products
2) the natural resources to make the products
3) pollution
63
How does the treadmill of production relate to the environment? (4 reasons)
1) New technologies require more energy, more raw materials, and more chemicals
2) sunk capital: need to recuperate cost of technology drives producers to use it as much as possible
3) increases in production have historically led to increases in pollution
4) as firms seek to maximize profits, they sometimes seek to change or manipulate policies that deter their profit making capacities
64
What are the material aspects of the social construction of nature?
- Challenge the idea that nature and the physical environment are pre-given things with fixed physical properties
- Disrupt idea that there was a natural abundance of resources when settlers came from Europe
65
What is the fundamental idea behind the constructivist approach?
Nature and society are continually interacting and society is continually constructing nature both materially and ideologically
*empirical observations are biased
66
What are some critiques of the pure constructivist approach?
- Fails to acknowledge how nature may be transforming human society
- While nature may be produced or constructed by humans, nature resists our constructing it, it doesn't always work so nicely and makes social construction difficult
* * Nature is in a perpetual state of flux, not always easy to mold
- - With regards to agriculture, although we can cross breed corn to construct a desirable breed, we can't change everything about nature-- a plant is still going to need sun and water no matter how much we construct it
* * there's still something "natural" about it that can't be socially constructed
67
Why might it be important to differentiate between different types of nature?
- - different types of nature require different levels of input
- - failing to see the differences between nature causes people to overlook why nature comes to enter political and economic life
- - if we aren't differentiating between nature we can't really see how nature enters these social dynamics
68
How might a wolf be ideologically constructed, materially constructed, and looked at through the sociomaterial approach?
Ideologically constructed as a predator (in wild ecosystems and with regards to livestock)
materially constructed: little red riding hood (wolves = enemy), WWF (wolves = deserving of protection)
sociomaterial interaction: how wolf is constructed and how wolf affects us--> wolves are constructed as predators and that affects politics because farmers don't like wolf protection b/c they're a threat to livestock
69
How have all the great global hegemonies come to power?
figure out how they could best control materials, overcome obstacles of nature, understand how nature and society work together
70
Capitalism is inherently _______
crisis ridden
71
What underpins the capitalist system?
growth
72
What does the IPAT formula stand for?
Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology
73
Treadmill of production focuses on what three parts of IPAT?
I=AT
| focuses on affluence and technology
74
In the treadmill of production theory, the goals of businesses are to ______ and _______. What are two ways that businesses produce goods at a cheaper price than their competitors?
maximize profits; satisfy investors
- Externalize pollution costs
- Reduce labor costs
75
How do businesses make more money in the treadmill of production?
In vest in more technology, create more goods, which increases profits so businesses can invest in more technology
Technology allows businesses to produce more for less, hire less people, reduce labor costs, and leads to greater profits for firms as a result
76
Why is investing in technology a necessary step in the treadmill of production? How does it help increase profit?
Technology allows businesses to produce more for less, hire less people, reduce labor costs, and leads to greater profits for firms as a result
77
What is sunk capital?
The need to recuperate the cost of technology development
in order to make back the money you invested in technology, you want to use the machine as quickly as possible in high quantities
78
How does sunk capital negatively affect the environment
Sunk capital drives businesses to use new technologies as much as possible as quickly as possible in order to recuperate the cost of investing in that technology, and doing so requires more energy, extraction of more resources, and the use of higher quantities of chemical inputs
79
In what ways have firms sought to change or manipulate policies that deter their profit making capacities?
lobbying against environmental regulations, labor laws, minimum wage laws, and export tarrifs
80
What is a contemporary case of firms seeking to change or manipulate policies that deter their profit making capacities?
Negative externalities and the Clean Water Act
- - Businesses often externalize environmental costs of production so they don't have to pay for it (negative externalities increase business profit)
- - Businesses oppose the clean water act because it limits their ability to utilize negative externalities as a means of offsetting production costs and increasing profit
81
What is the basic progression in the treadmill of production?
• Increasing levels of economic growth → enough money to invest into new technology because they’re trying to produce more and maximize profits → higher demand to extract more raw materials → produce more goods → higher levels of pollution → increasing levels of economic growth
82
How is capitalism an inherently crisis ridden form of socioeconomic organization?
- - encourages exponential growth (treadmill of "accumulation," you can't have stagnant capital without losing growth)
- - crisis of accumulation: if you have too much capital and you're not able to reinvest you'll lose money
- - crisis of overproduction: arises in the relationship between business owners and workers
83
How does the crisis of overproduction address owner - worker interactions?
One way to maximize profits is to get people to work harder for the same or less money
- - low wages, high output = maximum profit
- - allows owners to capture surplus output
84
What is surplus output?
the difference between what worker gets paid and what owner makes off of the workers labor after they account for other costs
85
How does the business technique of minimizing labor costs relate to the first contradiction of capitalism?
workers produce lots of goods for little compensation, and if businesses continue to reduce labor costs in order to maximize their own profit, eventually no one will be able to earn enough to buy their products
** When you pay people less you undermine their ability to buy their products
86
What is the contradiction (crisis) associated with the first contradiction of capitalism?
When you pay people less you undermine their ability to buy their products, but the capitalist system drives business owners to minimize worker pay and maximize profit
87
What does the second contradiction of capitalism focus on?
conditions of production
* Underlying necessities of production
* Things that you need to build something
* “Givens” not always incorporated into the underlying cost
88
What does the first contradiction of capitalism focus on?
owner/worker relations
89
How do material inputs relate to the second contradiction of capitalism?
* Production of commodity usually requires some level of raw material inputs
* In order to maximize profits, businesses enter into a system of mass production
* Mass production eventually leads to a massive decline in availability of natural resources necessary to produce
* The more you produce, the higher the price of the material inputs will be as availability decreases
90
What are two types of scarcity in the second contradiction of capitalism?
finite scarcity (limited total amount of resources) and geopolitical scarcity (caused by war and conflicts)
91
What is the "given" in a business model and how might negative externalities affect the "given"?
the "given" is the healthy worker, but if we don't account for negative externalities then you're endangering the human labor supply that your profits are dependent upon
92
What is the contradiction related to infrastructure and capitalism?
Businesses benefit from communal constructural goods (workers need roads to get to work and businesses need workers) but they don't pay in full for the production of the goods
Ex: businesses push for lower taxes in order to maximize profit, but that decreases the ability for infrastructure to be properly maintained
93
What were some of the opinions of Ricardo and Malthus?
o Focused on overpopulation
o Saw nature as external, separate from humans
o Didn’t acknowledge reciprocal affects of nature on humans
o Soil fertility as a given
o Productivity decline in agriculture due to increasing demands for land and of due to increasing population levels
o Best land gets farmed first, eventually bring more marginal lands into production
o Over time land deteriorates in its soil fertilities and eventually we’ll have increasing population and decreasing soil fertility and we’ll have a food crisis
94
What did Marx and Engles think about population and soil fertility?
o Ricardo and Malthus don’t give much credence to the fact that land fertility could be improved by changing human behavior
o Accounted for social construction and science
95
What was Liebig's important agricultural discovery and how does it relate to sociology?
soil science; soil fertility does decline, but human behavior can change it in a way to allow field to be more fertile for longer periods of times
96
Marx's theory of metabolic interaction states that capitalistic production "____"
o Capitalistic production “disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth”
97
What two ideas is unequal exchange based in?
wage differentials and surplus value
98
How do the global north and south differ?
* Places in the global south export agricultural goods and raw materials-- low value, low price, but require a lot of labor (cheap)
* Places in global north, industrial products embody relatively small amounts of expensive labor
* Auto factory—doesn't take as much time to make a car as it does to grow corn, mine ore
* Places in global south end up selling their labor value for less than it’s actually work
* Labor time—time to produce good
* Places in global north sell labor value for more than it’s actually worth
99
In what ways does unequal exchange disagree with neoclassical economics?
international trade makes poor countries poorer and rich countries richer
comparative advantage is actually a DISadvantage because of unequal exchange
100
What is the basic idea behind unequal ecological exchange?
What happens if we account for the environment in the process of international trade?
How is it that extractive processes affect inequality and development?
101
What three things does unequal ecological exchange focus on?
1) If you are specializing in the export of a raw material, you never actually have a chance to earn the profits from higher value added goods
• You no longer have the raw material to make the good in your country yourselves
2) If you’re just operating in a global economy you never get to determine your own development trajectory—particularly if you export raw materials
• Always subject to secondary demand of primary producers (people who make manufactured goods)
• Control supply, but not when people want it
• When countries drive the price up, people just create their own substitutes to avoid succumbing to supplier price
3) Result is that if you can’t control your own development trajectory, you can’t move up power hierarchies
• Never producing value added good (kind of like periphery/core)
102
How do the dynamics of unequal ecological exchange affect the environment in the place where the ecological flows start and end?
1) Developed nations externalize portions of their environmental cost
• Consume stuff that is highly detrimental to the environment, but we don’t deal with that here—other people produce it for us
2) Making it more difficult for people to live and be healthy in places where the ecological flows start
