Social Science Test 2

Front 1

h).

What is the “economic problem” every society must solve? According to Heilbroner, what considerations must be made to solve the “economic problem”?

Back 1

-The economic problem every society must solve is how to produce and distribute goods in order to survive.
-The struggle for existence is the economic problem itself, and this problem derives from nature
-In order to solve the economic problem, according to Heilbroner, we need to organize a system to guarantee the production of enough goods and services in order to survive, and find out a way to distribute the goods so that more production can take place.
-These two tasks of economic stability seems very simple, but is actually very confusing and complex.

-First you must decide what your going to produce, who is going to make it, and how these individuals are going to produce these goods.
-Once you figure out your means of production, you need to figure out mechanisms and ways of distributing.
-In order to do this correctly, a society needs to distribute its production in a manner that will maintain not only the ability but also the motivation to go on working. A set of social behaviors can decide how all of these decisions will be made and organized. An example from the reading illustrates that when all workers are not paid equally, or their ways of getting paid and the amount they are getting paid changes, they will lose incentive to work.
-When this happened, there was a threatened breakdown in industrial production.
- You have to institue an equal amount of pay and keep it that way or else people will act out.

Front 2

What are the major forms of economic organization? How do they each solve the economic problem?

Back 2

-The economic problem is figuring out a way that a society can organize a system of production and distribution.
-In order to solve the economic problem, there are three important and different forms of economic organization that are used.
-These economic organizations are tradition, command, and market economies.
-There are different characteristics in each of these forms of organization and different ways in which they each solve the economic problem.

-Traditional economy runs according to customary practice. People do things the way they have in the past. The way this economy solves its economic problem is by using or following a path of tradition in its regulation of economic affairs.

-Command economy relies on a central authority that involves the government makes decisions on behalf of the people.
-An example of this is Stalins economy. He utilized a huge number of slave laborers and had people performing economic tasks at gunpoint. what he was able to do was take a backward dysfunctional economy and during the middle of the great depression and turn it into a major industrial power.

-Market economy has any individual make their own economic decisions. They leave most production to the market place.
-Economy runs on the collected decisions of individuals.
-They are acting on their own economic self interest.

Front 3

What is culture? How do conflict theorists and functionalists interpret culture?

Back 3

-Culture is "the taken for granted but powerfully influential understandings and codes that are learned and shared by members of a group," james peacock.
-culture is a complex whole of a society which includes, knowledge, beleifs, art, laws, morals, and costumes that are all apart of being a member of any society.
-Culture is a learned behavior, that includes norms and values, which are needed to follow in order to fully understand a certain culture.
-Its very hard to pull apart a culture into separate pieces. Even if you try to pull it apart, your pulling apart something that is supposed to be whole.

Conflict theoriest argue that individuals and groups(social classes) within a society have differing amounts of non-material resources which is why there is wealthy vs. pour. The more powerful groups use their power in order to exploit groups with less power.
-They thought that culture was influenced by materialistic values and social structures that were all unequal.

-Functionalist are more idealist. They see culture as a set of value. they beleif social structer is set in terms of the function of its elements, namely norms, costums, traditions, and institutions.

Front 4

What do anthropologists mean by “ethos”? Provide an example of how the ethos of the BaMbuti shaped their social structures.

Back 4

-Ethos is a fundamental charachter or spirit of a culture.
-Its is the underlying sentiment that informs the beleifs, customs or practices.
-Ethos is when you understand what the cultures emotional mainstreams are.
-at first one might not understand ones culture, but when you discover a cultures ethos it allows you to understand why a culture does certain things.
-anthropologist try to understand a cultures ethos so they can fully understand why they do certain things.

-The ethos of the BaMbuti was there motivation towards the want of happiness.
-Because of their ethos of happiness, they didnt beleive in greiving over a death for a long time.
-If one doesnt understand their ethos, they might think the pygamies were bad people with no feelings. When an outsider understands there ethos, they would know the reason the bambuti doesnt grieve for a long period of time is becuase their ethos drives them towards simply wanting happiness, not becuase they dont care.
they dont feel it is necessary to grieve and be unhappy for a long peroid of time, becuase that would take away in their beleif of happiness