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Rafa 1
Rafa 1
Human societies have tended to organize and structure their economic activities
through overarching modes of production. These can be defined as economic
and social systems that determine how resources are deployed, how work is
organized and how wealth is distributed. Economic historians have identified a
number of modes of production, principally subsistence, slavery, feudalism,
capitalism and socialism. Each of these creates distinctive relationships
between the main factors of production. Capitalism is clearly the dominant
mode of production in the world today, operating at an increasingly global scale.
It is defined by individual ownership of the means of production – factories,
equipment and money capital – and the associated need for most people to sell
their labour power to employers or capitalists in order to earn a wage. This
allows them to purchase commodities produced by other firms, creating the
market demand that underpins the capitalist system. Compared to earlier
modes of production, production and consumption are often geographically
separate under capitalism, creating a need for extensive transport and
distribution networks.
A key underlying point here concerns the fact that the principal features of the
modern capitalist economy – such as the role of the market, profits and
competition – are not natural and eternal forces that determine human
behaviour, as mainstream economists and business commentators tend to
assume. Instead, capitalism is a historically specific mode of production that has
emerged from its roots in early modern Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries to encompass virtually the entire globe today. It has been
superimposed on a complex mosaic of pre-capitalist societies and cultures,
resulting in great regional variation as pre-existing local characteristics interact
with broader global processes (Johnston, 1984).
While capitalism is clearly the dominant mode of production in the world today,
it does not follow that all economic activity is capitalist in nature. In reality, the
formal, capitalist economy based on striving to maximize profits or earnings
coexists with a range of other economic activities and motivations such as
domestic work, volunteering, the exchange of gifts and cooperatives. Gibson-
Graham (2006) represents this in terms of an ‘iceberg’ model with the capitalist
economy masking a wide range of other forms of economic activity (Figure 1.9).
The two categories are not separate in practice, however, with non-capitalist
activities interacting with capitalism in a variety of ways. Think of the
relationship between domestic work and paid employment, for example, or the
role of gift-buying within capitalism. Gibson-Graham (1996) emphasizes the
existence of diverse economies, criticizing the preoccupation with the formal,
capitalist economy among economists and economic geographers. This critique
has informed a number of studies of ‘diverse’ or ‘alternative’ economies such as
informal work, local currencies and cooperatives (Leyshon et al., 2003).
Three key themes emerge from this: a) The geographical distribution and
location of economic phenomena. Figure 1.10 provides an example of such a
distribution, showing variations in employment in financial and business
services – a key growth sector in developed countries over the past 25 years –
across the UK. Describing and mapping distributions of economic activity in this
way can perhaps be seen as the first task of economic geography, addressing
the basic questions of ‘what’ and ‘where’.
Social relations provide the general link between the economy and society. In
contrast to mainstream economics, which is underpinned by the assumption of
individual rationality, political economists believe that economic activity is
grounded in social relations. These simply refer to the relationships between
different groups of people involved in the economy such as employers, workers,
consumers, government regulators, etc. A key defining social relationship is that
between employers and workers, structuring activity within the workplace. The
two groups are commonly regarded as different classes within society, a
position set out with particular force by Marx, although for some commentators
the growth of a large middle class of ‘white collar’ workers has blurred the
distinction considerably. Other important social relations are those between
producers and consumers, different firms (e.g. manufacturers and suppliers),
different groups of workers (e.g. supervisors and ordinary employees) and
government agencies and firms. As our case study of the banana indicated
(Box 1.1), the production of a simple commodity creates complex social
relations between people based in different places. Even if some of the parties
– for example, consumers at large supermarkets in the UK or US – are not
aware of such relationships, they still exist.
The ‘secret life of a banana’ (Box 1.2) indicates how the social relationships
between different groups of people located in different places are structured by
power. At a very basic level, it is clear that some actors in the chain, particularly
the supermarkets and the multinational firms that coordinate the production and
distribution processes, are in a more powerful position that the small Caribbean
farmers or the labourers in the large Central American plantations. Unequal
power relations in this sense are central in understanding the concept of uneven
development.
1.4.2 Potência/poder
A “vida secreta de uma banana” (Caixa 1.2) indica como as relações sociais
entre diferentes grupos de pessoas localizadas em diferentes lugares são
estruturadas pelo poder. Num nível muito básico, é claro que alguns
intervenientes na cadeia, particularmente os supermercados e as empresas
multinacionais que coordenam os processos de produção e distribuição, estão
numa posição mais poderosa do que os pequenos agricultores caribenhos ou
os trabalhadores das grandes regiões centro-americanas. plantações. As
relações de poder desiguais, neste sentido, são centrais para a compreensão
do conceito de desenvolvimento desigual.