Deck 13: Connecting the People to the System

Question 1

The tragedy of the commons is important because it shows:

A) people can't manage their own resources
B) why everything should be private property
C) why faith is important in economic life
D) that economics is wrong
E) that economists don't know about sheep management

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Economists were wrong about Gulf Coast shrimpers because:

A) they hadn't done the ethnography
B) shrimpers didn't make any of the big decisions
C) they didn't look beyond the shrimping industry
D) all of the above
E) none of the above

Answer 2

D

Question 3

In the U.S. there's a law that sets a quota on the catch of tuna fish because catching tuna:

A) kills porpoises
B) kills baby seals
C) depletes the tuna
D) destroys the ocean environment
E) kills sea turtles

Answer 3

A

Question 4

Tuna processors purchased their own boats to:

A) employ more fishermen
B) keep the supply of tuna constant
C) increase the amount of tuna they could catch
D) deplete the tuna faster
E) contribute to global warming

Question 5

Tuna processors sold their boats when:

A) they didn't like the fishermen any more
B) they didn't want to kill more porpoises
C) interest rates and insurance rates for boats increased
D) the skippers wanted to take over the boats
E) Americans quit eating tuna

Question 6

Most of the labor cost in processing tuna is from:

A) slicing off the meat
B) putting it into the cans
C) labeling the cans
D) cooking the meat
E) keeping everything clean

Question 7

The factories in the special zones in Mexico were like the Enclosure Acts in England because they:

A) forced people out of their household economies
B) forced people to work in factories
C) forced people to work for low wages
D) all of the above
E) none of the above

Question 8

Young women work in the factories in:

A) Indonesia
B) China
C) Mexico
D) all of the above
E) none of the above

Question 9

Tuna sold as a product of the U.S. is actually mainly processed in Thailand.

Question 10

American brands of tuna are often imported.

Question 11

Ethnographers feel comfortable on docks and boats and in bars and coffee houses.

Question 12

Corporations, agencies and nations are in places we can locate.

Question 13

Most anthropologists feel comfortable moving with "suits."

Question 14

Most low wage workers in factories around the world are young women.

Question 15

After the Mexican peso was devalued, the value of Mexican workers' were wages suddenly worth 1/100 what they had been.

Question 16

All of the jobs that left the U.S. to go to Mexico benefitted Mexican workers.

Question 17

Between 1987 and 1998 Mexican workers had to work nearly four times as much to buy the same amount of food and other goods for their families.

Question 18

Mexico needs to continually drive down living standards and wages to pay the interest on its debts.

Question 19

Factories in developing countries take precautions to protect their environments.

Question 20

Working people in the global system make the decisions that are important in their lives.

Question 21

To gain any agency in this system, workers must join groups like the Zapatistas.

Question 22

The Zapatista Revolution that started in 1994 is pretty much over now.

Question 23

Young rural women who go to work in factories in Bangkok live well on their wages.

Question 24

The Thai government encourages workers to organize into unions.

Question 25

In China, your birth place is important for your official identity.

Question 26

In China, your birth place is important for your personal identity

Question 27

In China, the working class was a reality brought about by the development of industry after the revolution.

Question 28

In China, the Communist state promotes class struggle.

Question 29

In China, state propaganda denies that there is any working class.

Question 30

In China, business people and capitalists belong to the Communist Party.

Question 31

Patriarchy in China is compatible with capitalism but not communism.

Question 32

In Israel, Israeli clothing factory managers cooperate with Arab men to subjugate Druze and Arab women.

Question 33

The union structure of Israel is effective in representing Arab and Druze women workers.

Question 34

Arab and Druze women workers in the Israeli garment industry are subservient and fatalistic.

Question 35

Neoliberal economic polices led to the destruction of the Icelandic economy.

Question 36

The Icelandic experience with ITQs shows that economists were right that everything should be private property.

Question 37

The experience of Iceland shows that it really is possible to create wealth out of nothing.

Question 38

The U.S. economic crisis showed that, if done correctly, you can create wealth out of nothing.

Question 39

Experience shows that neoliberals are correct and should control all national and the global economies.

Question 40

No one ever pointed out that ITQs could be dangerous in Iceland.

Question 41

The Icelandic Constitution grants equal employment rights to all citizens.

Question 42

When Icelanders found out that neoliberals were wrong, they changed their government.

Question 43

Icelandic novelist Einar Már Guðmundsson says the neoliberal concept of the market is religious.

Question 44

List nine anthropologists named in this chapter:

Question 45

List three systems young rural Chinese women are caught up in:

Question 46

Discuss how ethnography becomes a weakness rather than a strength of anthropology when we start describing aspects of the global system. Use either the tuna industry or the Mississippi shrimping industry as an example.

Question 47

Discuss how tuna processors increased production to the point that they destroyed their own market and why U.S. processors had to leave the market while others could stay.

Question 48

Explain how a country can get involved in a debt to the World Bank, a readjustment program, cancel most of its social programs, and get into a race to the bottom with other countries and wind up making conditions worse for its own people.

Question 49

Discuss how after the revolution in China it was OK to talk about the working class when there wasn't one but now that there is one, it's not OK to talk about it. How is this an example of state mind control?

Question 50

Discuss how the idea of private property, worked into neoliberal economics, destroyed the Icelandic economy.