Applied Sciences homework help

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lobal Commodity Chains & Negative Externalities

  • 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 https://u.osu.edu/commoditychain2015/ (Links to an external site.)

Assignment

  • 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.).
  • 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”)
  • 1000 or more words of narrative text (no maximum word count); college standards of writing; 
  • single spaced 11 or 12-point Times New Roman font; in-text citations; references section; Chicago, MLA, or APA format.
  • 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?