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Chapter 15: How is the world organised economically?

This chapter examines how the world is organised economically. Rather than assuming that the current economic structure is somehow pre-ordained, the chapter traces how the global economy is continually structured by competing visions about what makes a good life and who is able to pursue it. Focusing on the role of essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, this chapter tries to decipher the underlying logics to how lives and labours are valued differently and how such differentiation shapes what gets measured and who benefits as part of the economy. In doing so, this chapter attends to the classed, gendered and racialised logics that infuse the economic order, which work to deplete, dominate and dispossess certain groups so that others might benefit.

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Chapter Abstract

How is the world organized economically? We know that ‘economic realities’ shape our personal consumer options and employment opportunities, as well as who gets elected and how governments spend money and participate in global politics. Underpinning these decisions and priorities are what we – as individuals, communities, businesses, nations, ‘humanity’ – value (what we want and will ‘pay for’) and believe (what we assume to be true and expect to happen). But how do we come to value some goods, jobs, people and outcomes over others? And do we understand how power shapes what we believe to be true about economics? This chapter explores historical changes in ‘economics’ as activity and theory, how formal (regulated, paid) work is related to the less visible but vast informal work done worldwide, and how today’s predominantly neoliberal economic policies promote values and beliefs that warrant close, and arguably, critical attention.

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Additional web content and audio-visual materials

1. The Rules: This short video suggests what is problematic about our ‘common sense’ rules and introduces a global network of researchers and activists analyzing inequality, poverty and climate change: https://therules.org/#/about

2. Global Wealth Inequality: Using effective graphics and brief explanations, this video provides an overview of global wealth inequality, including the effects of tax avoidance, debt servicing and trade policies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWSxzjyMNpU

3. Global Inequality and ‘the 1%’: Presenting data on the 1% and 99%, this video offers a balanced depiction of those who favor and those who criticize current global economic arrangements: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaIUGm9_ag0

4. Crash Course World History - Capitalism and Socialism: A very fast paced, effective ‘crash course’ that races through a world history of trade, the industrial revolution, capitalism and a bit of socialism. Entertaining and also informative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3u4EFTwprM

5. Culture in Decline – Consumerism and Advertising: This excerpt from Peter Joseph’s series Culture in Decline documents how consumerism and advertising began in the 1920s and offers an in-your-face ‘reality perspective’ on what it is we are buying into: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74ofI3Zz8hM [Note: includes swearing and penis references]

6. The UC Atlas of Global Inequality: Designed by researchers at UC Santa Cruz, the Atlas of Global Inequality explores the interaction between global integration (globalization) and inequality, providing maps, graphics and data: http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/index.php

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Global Politics Film Club

Capitalism: A Love Story (2009), dir. Michael Moore
Michael Moore’s documentary examines the events leading up to the 2008 global financial crisis. Includes rarely covered topics and unsavory practices of profit-seeking individuals and companies.

Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? (2012), dir. Frances Causey and Donald Goldmacher
A US-focused film with wider implications. It covers in detail the implementation of the 1971 ‘Powell Manifesto’, considered by many a blueprint for the demise of US democracy through expanding ‘corporate control of the media, academia, the pulpit, arts and sciences and destruction of organized labor and consumer groups.’
Additional information available at: https://www.heist-themovie.com/index.html

War by Other Means (1992), dir. John Pilger and David Munro
John Pilger’s film examines how First World banks urged loans on Third World countries and the effects of this indebtedness, revealing who wins and loses, how and with what enduring effects on global inequalities.

Life & Debt (2001), dir. Stephanie Black
Stephanie Black’s film foregrounds the stories of individual Jamaicans ‘whose strategies for survival and parameters of day-to-day existence are determined by the U.S. and other foreign economic agendas.’ The documentary includes how IMF lending and World Bank policies affect the everyday of people living in poor, ‘indebted’ countries.

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Seminar room activities

Activity: In small groups (or as a take-home project) students are asked to share information regarding:

  1. Where the clothes they are wearing and items they are carrying (electronic devices, purses, water bottles, etc.) were made;
  2. What consumer goods they are most focused on and where they most often shop;
  3. How/where they get info about what consumer items are desirable (express their identity; are trendy, healthy, and/or ‘make a statement’) and ‘what looks good’ (to/for them personally). Ask them to assess how much their purchases reflect ‘real needs’ or ‘constructed wants,’ and how this effects their personal budgets.

Becoming aware of where so much of what we buy, use and wear is produced internationally also raises questions regarding which countries export what products and how labor relations operate at these sites: are workers in safe, healthy environments, earning decent wages, provided benefits (including childcare, parental leave), able to unionize? How do consumption patterns in rich countries affect what is produced, and under what labor conditions, in poor countries?

In the context of the family/household in which you grew up, identify how, where and what informal work occurred (include emotional care-taking, planning and shopping for family needs, transporting family members) and who did this work (include yourself) and how it affected their own and the lives (including work and payments expectations) of others in the household. Who benefits most, and how, from this labor? If possible, students who are employed in informal work should share why they do this work, how they feel about doing it, and whether they would continue doing it if someone else did it for them or if they had a formal work alternative.

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Assessment Questions

  1. Economics is only a system of values. Discuss.
  2. How do popular culture and ‘mass media’ (including print, television, and digital) shape what we value and believe? How does this in turn shape national and global economics?
  3. Critically engage with the comparison between neo/liberal capitalism and (democratic) socialism.
  4. Who are the primary winners and losers in our current global economic system?