GEOG 240: Day 9

1. GEOG 240: Day 9 Mid-term Review

2. I will return your outlines. I’m sorry I spilled coffee on many of them. Please note: I would like you to return them with your final project so I can see if you took my comments into account. • There are some very interesting projects and I am looking forward to seeing the final products. • I came across a recent book that claims that women are the key to successful Third World development: Half the Sky: Turning Women’s Oppression into Opportunity Worldwide (Vintage 2010). There’s also a web site: http://www.halftheskymovement.org/. • I will present the notes for the first part of Chapter 5 today (digest 97-117 on your own). The mid-term will cover Chapters 1-5, with short answers and essays, and maybe some T/F and multiple choice. Housekeeping Items

3. What is the focus of economic geography? • Major foci for authors of the text? • Three concepts from Geography that they make use of? • What is “time-space compression”? • Why has globalization intensified so much in recent decades and what does it consist of? • What is the concept of the commodity chain? • What are some of the global economic institutions that have been influential in recent decades? • What is the “counter-globalization movement?” Mid-term Review

4. How would you define unevenness in development? • Does being rich in natural resources always ensure that a country or region prospers? • What are some other geographical factors that might affect how well a region or even city does economically? • Can this change over time and, if so, how? • Are countries moving closer together or further apart in terms of prosperity? • What are some examples of workers migrating from have-not regions to have regions? Mid-term Review

5. How have our images of specific places been influenced by dominant industries or economic sectors, even if these associations are no longer based on reality? • What are main phases of economic geography and what influenced their development? • What are some examples of German locational theory? • For the political economists, what are the means of production and why are they so important? Mid-term Review

6. What makes capitalism so dynamic, in contrast with previous modes of production? • Why was Marx ultimately wrong about the demise of capitalism, at least in the short run? • What does ‘fixity’ vs. ‘mobility’ of capital refer to? • What is the relationship between capitalist investment and space, in a dynamic sense, and what are some examples? • What are modes of regulation and what are examples of one or more? Mid-term Review

7. What has replaced Fordism? Fordist ‘Mode of Regulation’

8. What are some of critiques of the political economy approach, and what are some of the approaches that have at least partially replaced it? • Are people always rational, self-interested “utility-maximizers,” as neo-classical theory suggests? • How has the world changed since the time when Adam Smith and David Ricardo wrote their texts? • According to the political economists, what is the process that enables capitalists to make profit? • In marketplace competition, what is the role of core competencies and its internal organizational culture? Mid-term Review

9. How are capital markets different from 100 years ago? • What is the relative mobility of the three factors of production: land (natural resources), labour, and capital? • What is creative destructionin the economy and who coined the expression? • What are Kondratiev cycles (or waves), and what are a couple of examples? • What are the four sectors of the economy? Mid-term Review

10. How does labourdiffer under capitalism from other modes of production? • How has division/ specialization of labour affected the labour process? • What is Taylorism? • What does the reproduction of labour refer to? • How has globalization affected the production of goods and services? • How has retail been affected by concentration? Mid-term Review

11. What is consumerism and how has it been influenced by marketing? • What had to change for it to take hold? • What is the relationship between consumerism and human needs? • What are a few of the changes that consumerism has gone through? • How have the sites of retail consumption changed? • What impact has the growth of retail and the service sector had on labour? Mid-term Review

12. How did the increasing productivity of capitalism help fuel colonialism? • What is (was) the international division of labour? • What is the doctrine of comparative advantage, and what are its strengths and weaknesses? • What are core-periphery relationships and what mechanisms are involved? • In what way can regions become ‘victims of their own success’? Mid-term Review

13. Is the world, in the words of Thomas Friedman, ‘flat’ in an economic sense? • In addition to deindustrialization of traditional industrial areas, what are some new (and not-so-new) industrial spaces that have emerged, and what is the role of agglomeration? • Is globalization a two-way flow, and can Western consumerism be successfully assimilated (in a positive sense) into a new cultural context? • With globalization and increased mobility, how has the notion of ‘place’ changed? Mid-term Review

14. What are some of the roles of the state in relation to the economy, and what are some of the key ideological debates and shifts around this? • In what sense is the nation-state a relatively recent development, and what is the difference between a single-nation state and a multi-nation state? • In what sense is the state constantly changing? • How are state policies to some degree dependent on culture? Mid-term Review

15. What are the key tenets of Keynesianism, and what contributed to its undoing? • Any other points you would like to go over? • When doing short answers and essays, always use specific examples and ground your ideas in evidence. Mid-term Review