Fall 2007 - Kessler
The exam will cover the following materials:
DSC: Chapter 3; pp 129-139; Chapter 5; Chapter 6
GP: Chapter 2; Chapter 3
Life and Debt (film)
Gender and Development articles (handouts):
Culture, Social Class…
Women Workers and Precarious Employment…
Capitalism, Imperialism…
Gender and HIV…
The Care Economy…
Gender-Based Violence…
You may bring the Gender and Development articles to consult during the exam.
Regarding definitions: please keep in mind that examples and definitions are not synonymous. Examples are good support material for, but do not replace, definitions. Also, be careful not to define a word with another form of itself – example of what not to do: “Anger is what people feel when they get angry”
DSC, Chapter 3
For this chapter, you are responsible for pp 79 to 103 only. Be able to explain the differences between ISI and EOI, and what it means to industrialize via ISI versus EOI in terms of a country’s development trajectory. Define/describe the New International Division of Labor. Be familiar with the defining characteristics of the Global Production System and their relationship to the New International Division of Labor. Be familiar with the characteristics and functions of export processing zones (EPZs), of which Mexico’s Maquiladora Program, China’s Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, and Kingstown’s Free Zone are examples, and the extent to which they do or do not contribute to domestic development. Be able to discuss the incorporation and role of Third World women into EOI strategies worldwide (also refer to your Gender and Development articles).
DSC, pp 129-139
By the 1970s, the world economy, rather than the nation-state, was emerging as the unit of development. By the 1980s, production was becoming increasingly global in organization, disparities in wealth and economic growth among the Third World countries became more defined, and, largely due to the debt crisis of the 1980s, international lending institutions were assuming an increasingly powerful position relative to the debtor nations of the Third World.
Be able to discuss the events that precipitated the debt crisis, the resulting economic state of the Third World, and the way in which the crisis was managed by First World lending institutions. How did the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank structural adjustment loans, programs (SALs/SAPs) and accompanying austerity measures impact Third World countries? Who benefited? Who didn’t?
DSC, Chapter 5
The globalization project, an alternative way of organizing economic growth, became the dominant discourse and direction of development subsequent to the debt crisis of the early 1980s. Development, once a national project, became redefined as ability to compete in the global market according to the laws of the market. Although ostensibly uniform in its prescription for development, the globalization project was anything but universal in its consequences.
What are the elements and strategies of the globalization project? How has the globalization project (of which regional free trade agreements are a part) changed the traditional roles of the nation state? What are the new institutions of global and local governance and what roles do they play? Be familiar with the roles and functions of NGOs, the GATT/the WTO, and regional trade agreements, such as NAFTA in terms of their scope of influence and the vested interests they represent.
DSC, Chapter 6
Chapter 6 considers the “disharmonies” of globalization and the global integration of national economies. Be able to discuss in some detail the five disharmonies presented by McMichael, in terms of their destabilizing effects on social and political institutions as well as their tendency to intensify regional and global inequalities.
GP, Chapter 2
Understand the relationship between types of societies (hunting and gathering, agricultural, and industrial, for example), technology, and the division of labor. Be able to discuss what social scientists Adam Smith, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx had to say on the subject of work in industrial capitalist society and the division of labor. Be able to give examples of, and explain what is meant by, “The New International Division of Labor.” What is meant by “post-industrial society”?
GP, Chapter 3
This chapter presents an overview of major transformations around the world in the interactive dynamics of family and work, and gender and work, as a result of global economic integration.
Be able to discuss “women and motherhood” and “men as good providers”, the dominant gender roles in the West for the past 2 centuries, and how they shaped work, family, and the economy. What is meant by “the feminization of poverty”? The “feminization of migration”? What is meant by “the double shift”? How have these trends affected women’s situations in the Global North and the Global South? How have notions of and reasons for marriage changed from hunting and gathering society to agricultural society and then to industrial society? What has been the gendered impact of these changes? Be able to discuss why women are often disadvantaged, relative to men, in a marriage relationship and also subsequent to divorce.
Life and Debt – refer to your notes to prepare
Terms/Concepts:
The Globalization Project
Export Oriented Industrialization (EOI)
Export Processing Zones (EPZs)
New International Division of Labor (NIDL)
Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs)/Structural Adjustment Loans (SALs)
Austerity Measures
Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)
Comparative Advantage (Ricardo)