POL101Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Political Ecology, Intensive Farming, Cold War
Week 8: Extractivism
● The structure-agency debate
○Agency: capacity of individuals to act freely and autonomously to influence
others, enact change, and determine their own lives
○Structure: historical, institutional, “macro” realities that shape, limit, and
determine the perceptions, abilities, and actions of individuals
○ Structures are made up of individuals, and individuals are made by structures
■ Rosa parks wasn’t the lone individual that kicked off the civil rights
movement, but a network of individuals that made structures and
challenged other structures, fought against structures of white supremacy
● Building a new global political economy
○Structural adjustment: transition from ISI in Global South, De-Soviet-ification in
Eastern Europe
■ Role of crisis, ‘shock therapy’
○ Creating conditions for globalized market to pursue economic growth (and
human development)
■ Economic reform + ‘governmentality’ (Wendy Brown)
● System of surveillance, system of production, aimed to produce
rationalized economic actors
○ Key aspects of neoliberalism (this is a very schematic list)
■ Privatization: state privitizes its role in businesses by selling industries,
auctioning off public services (health care, education, etc)
■ Deregulation: neoliberals argue that these are ways at which states put
artificial constraints on markets (equity laws, minimum wages,
environmental regulations, taxes, etc) and should be removed
■ Liberalize foreign trade: to return us to an era of comparative advantage,
to open up national markets for foreign investment, for repatriation of
profits, allow companies move in and out of localities without making
much contribution to local revenues, taxes, etc.
■ Austerity (rollback of welfare regime): result of struggles of organized
labor for higher wages, more support for education, housing, etc. means
we need to cut welfare payments because the poor are lazy, they have no
incentive for work because of the money they get from the state, puts
downward pressure on prices for wages, etc, has allowed for less taxes to
be extracted from the private sector, so regular people are working more
for less, leads to net distribution of wealth upward
■ Security (law enforcement, strong property system)
● The great acceleration
○ See a spike in Anthropocene after WWII
■ Begins during industrial revolution, but after WWII, saw a strike upwards
○ In the cold war era, we have an arms race with the US and Soviet Union that led
to military industrial complex, intensified during this era
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Document Summary
Agency: capacity of individuals to act freely and autonomously to influence others, enact change, and determine their own lives. Structure: historical, institutional, macro realities that shape, limit, and determine the perceptions, abilities, and actions of individuals. Structures are made up of individuals, and individuals are made by structures. Rosa parks wasn"t the lone individual that kicked off the civil rights movement, but a network of individuals that made structures and challenged other structures, fought against structures of white supremacy. Structural adjustment: transition from isi in global south, de-soviet-ification in. Creating conditions for globalized market to pursue economic growth (and human development) System of surveillance, system of production, aimed to produce. Key aspects of neoliberalism (this is a very schematic list) rationalized economic actors. Privatization: state privitizes its role in businesses by selling industries, auctioning off public services (health care, education, etc)
