Economic Anthropology Assignments | Get Paper Help

I had an article review written about the article “Livelihood, Market, and State: What does A Political Economy Predicated on the ‘Individual-in-Group-in-PLACE’ Actually Look Like?” by Stephen Quilley and Katharine Zywert.

I will have the article and article review attached.

My professor wants me to take the concepts in that last paper (the article review) and add to them “my” reflections upon the actualities of our current situation (COVID-19 pandemic).

Here are the instructions:

1) Participants will conduct independent research and write a short, thoughtful, and scholarly paper (5-8 pages) pertaining to anthropological theory and/or to a prominant theorist.
2) Also, prepare a short abstract of your paper which I will post on Moodle to share with our class. Your abstract should be a single paragraph, double-spaced, around 250 words in length. You may also list a half-dozen keywords from your paper at the bottom of your abstract.

Here is an email from him (a response from the article review):

Candice, I hope to have some feeling for why I assigned such an article. There is really no article that addresses this level of economic anthropology in our textbook. But, and especially in the throes of COVID, we all need to get a thorough grip on what we are facing. Do you agree? The market has crashed and it will crash further, and further, and …. The State (USA) is unable to deal with a dropping market and an economy that is in the process of blowing up! The third leg of the stool – livelihood — the stool leg we are most interested in as living humans, and an anthropologists, is incredibly vulnerable at this time. If the economy tanks, and if the collapsing market causes the state to panic, there will be no support for “livelihoods.” No jobs, no further state-funded bailouts, no retirement funds, no rent payments, no health care, no state institutions, no food distribution, no old folks (like me), no shopping …..

This article was the most important one we have looked at this semester. Even if we are not much interested in economic anthropology, we will absolutely be forced to become experts at it. If the virus doesn’t get us, the economy will – unless some deep understandings and flexible actions are employed. At the World Economic Summit in Davos (21-24 January 2020; before it was known that the pandemic would upend the world) the conference participants attempted to define the term “stakeholder capitalism.” Think about it! The world’s most powerful economic planners (excluding the US Trumpists) all called for a transformational change from a focus on the “Stock Holder” to a focus on the “Stakeholder.” The capitalistic Stockholders own the stock market, they control and benefit from the excesses of capitalism, they are the rich who continue to become richer, and richer, and richer …… The Stockholders are responsible for jacking up the intolerable levels of inequality that plague the world. The greedy lust for money, the hoarding of capital, denies equitable sharing of wealth, it denies health care for all, it causes famine, it directs war and war industries ….. The Stakeholders, on the other side, are all peoples of earth who are (usually negatively) affected by the capitalistic schemes of the Stockholders. The Stakeholders are us! Yet, economic planning in a global economy always supports the Stockholders and their Market with little concern for the people who are affected by the economic schemes. This year, in January, there was recognition that this economic trend will lead to catastrophic world crisis – unless the Stakeholders are considered in economic planning. Imagine this: what if the development corporations began to make decisions based on what is best for those whose livelihoods are affected by the development instead of how much profit could benefit the investor class. In 2020, in Davos, there was actual support for the third leg of the stool – the Stakeholders and their livelihoods !

And then the butter hit the fan. Now look what is happening in the face of COVID in our own country. Prior to COVID, the stakeholders would never support health care for all, public health initiatives, planning for pandemics, science education and research, etc. These expenditures cut into the Stock Holder’s profit. So now that the pandemic is kicking our tails, what do the Stockholders want? We know that shutting down the economy and staying home helps prevent the spread of death. But the stockholders and their “states” are clamoring to open the economy. The Texas governor says, “There are worst things than death.” Of course, he was talking about the complete crash of the Market and economic depression. Protests are mounting, and will continue to build, in support of opening the economy. The Market Forces, supported by the State, will kick out the third leg of the stool – livelihood. In this case, the term “livelihood” is no metaphor. It does not mean “a pleasant, fruitful, and equitable economic livelihood.” In this case, livelihood means “staying alive,” as in escaping excruciating death! But even in the face of death, the State and the Market will attempt to kick the third leg completely off of the stool.

I was hoping you might expand on one of these ideas to build it into a longer paper.

That last paper on economy, for example, presented the need for an economic system to support the livelihoods of individuals. Thinking about the Davos conference in January, I suggested that your article was like the Davos comments about the need for economy to support individual stakeholders – not shareholders. The stakeholders are any individuals whose livelihoods are affected by large scale business developments – the benefits of all individuals should be considered, not just the relatively few wealthy shareholders who benefit. This economic message seems very pertinent to the economic crisis we are rushing toward today. We are rapidly headed toward a Great Depression – perhaps greater than the one experienced in the 1930s. This time the issues are associated with a pandemic, but the specter of inequality is obvious. Immigrant butchers and meat packers in the Midwest are being forced to continue working in conditions that threaten their lives from Covid infection, while corporate CEOs are making the profits. The deaths from Covid inequitably affect the poor, the aged and vulnerable senior care residents, prisoners in large jails, colored people, homeless, and immigrants with no health care. The “state” — federal government — seems not interested in public health. Instead there is a big push to get the economy back rolling — even if it causes greater deaths. Are you interested in any of that discussion? Economic theory becomes anthropological theory when economic disaster and massive health crises converge. One idea would be to take the concepts in that last paper and add to them your reflections upon the actualities of our current situation. We may be living through the greatest economic transition humans have ever experienced…!