Reference no: EM132731093

Assignment: Global Commodity Chains & Negative Externalities

1. The worldwide network of social relations and labor activities involved in the creation, distribution, consumption, and disposal of a commodity (as defined in Appadurai, p. 3)

• Social relations: labor, capitalists, nation-states, and consumers; society/nature

• Labor activities: product design and financing; capture/extraction/cultivation of raw materials; processing; transportation; distribution/sale; purchase/consumption; and disposal

• Impacts: socioeconomic, political, environmental

• Questions

• Culture of capitalism/global commodity chains

• Karl Polanyi's Paradox (as defined in GPCC)

• Negative externalities

• Internalizing negative externalities

• Example: "The coffee commodity chainis the linked sequence of activities involved in growing coffee, processing it, shipping it, roasting it, ... selling it to consumers" (John Talbot) and disposing it.

• Video example: Coffee.

1. Choose either a specific commodity or some aspect of a commodity chain (such as its labor and/or ownership/control conditions; social, economic, environmental, and/or health consequences; political violence/wars; etc.).

2. Emphasize relationships and activities of labor, capitalists, nation-states, consumers, and the natural environment.

• Global culture of capitalism

• Global commodity chains

• Negative externalities

• Karl Polanyi's Paradox (as defined in GPCC; not Michael Polanyi's Paradox)

• Challenges of internalizing externalities (more or less = "sustainability")

3. 1000 or more words of narrative text (no maximum word count); college standards of writing;

4. single spaced 11 or 12-point Times New Roman font; in-text citations; references section; Chicago, MLA, or APA format.

1. If you want to focus on Covid-19 (or any other "signature" disease):Covid-19

• Briefly describe and explain the principal relationships within the global culture of capitalism, including global commodity chains.

• What are "negative externalities"?

• What is "Karl Polanyi's Paradox" (as defined in GPCC; not Michael Polanyi's Paradox)?

• What are the basic questions to ask about patterns of disease at any point in time and space?

• What defines a "signature disease" of a specific historical time and pattern of geographic connections?

• Describe the possible cause and transmission of Covid-19 in terms of the relationships between (1) culture and disease; (2) cities and disease; (3) environmental change and disease; and (4) human ecology and disease.

• Within this framework, how is Covid-19 a "signature disease"? And how does it reflect negative externalities and Karl Polanyi's Paradox?

• What are arguments for healthcare as a global public good (and as a human right), as opposed to healthcare as an individual, commodified choice?