POL 32700 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Resource Curse, Capacity Building
10 Jan 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Lecture 12:
1. What is commodification
a. Transforms goods, services, ideas, and people into commodities or objects of
trade. People are commodified when selling their labor. Refers to things that
shouldn’t, like fish or meat.
2. What does the “social embeddedness of consumption” mean?
a. People buy based on social pressure, ie “you’re not cool if you don’t buy it!”
3. How does the author describe the traditional understanding of commodity chains? And
what is wrong with this traditional understanding?
a. What is it: Process used by firms to gather resources, transform them into goods
and services, and distribute them to consumers.
b. Problem is that they don’t consider where the resource came from, and that each
stage has its own commodity chain.
4. What are the 3 types of commodity chains discussed in the chapter? What are the
environmental and humanitarian impacts associated with each?
a. Agricultural commodities, extractive industries, finished consumer goods.
i. AG: Comes from authoritarian regimes, child labor, women are exposed to
chemicals, overuse of water, deforestation, etc.
ii. EX: Health risks in pollutant releases, corporations taking over indigenous
land, moving large amounts of the earth can destroy the ecosystem
iii. C: Waste, and people are dependent upon them to live
5. What is the resource curse?
Document Summary
Lecture 12: what is commodification, transforms goods, services, ideas, and people into commodities or objects of trade. What are the environmental and humanitarian impacts associated with each: agricultural commodities, extractive industries, finished consumer goods. i. Ag: comes from authoritarian regimes, child labor, women are exposed to chemicals, overuse of water, deforestation, etc. ii. Ex: health risks in pollutant releases, corporations taking over indigenous land, moving large amounts of the earth can destroy the ecosystem iii. Direct regulation of an industry or activity by legislation that states what is permitted and what is illegal: adjust subsidies i. Subsidies can be used to encourage research and development in cleaner technologies as well as investment in purchase of efficient technologies: taxation i. The more we tax people based upon things like pollution, the less likely they are to do so: certification and labeling schemes i.
