Please write a 10-page double-spaced essay on a topic of your choosing that relates to contemporary capitalism, and that highlights interactions among economic, social, and political dynamics. Below is a list of possible topics, but feel free to choose something entirely different. (If you’re stuck, many students in years past explored different aspects of the 2008 financial crisis which still offers a wealth of interesting possibilities; also see possible topics on this below.)
For whichever topic you choose, consider yourself an anthropologist/ethnographer. Although you won’t be able to conduct fieldwork on the topic, try to think about the social dimensions of the problem and how it plays out in everyday life. Try to locate information that helps elucidate those dimensions. For example, if a topic is one that is heavily debated, consider some of the following questions: What are the range of actors involved in this issue? How are they positioned in relation to each other in social, economic, or political terms? Why do different groups take different positions on this issue and what is at stake for them? What ideas or moral and ethical arguments do they make/offer on behalf of their position? What economic or policy-oriented arguments?
If your topic explores a particular issue or dimension of an issue rather than focusing on competing viewpoints, different questions might be appropriate. Even so, try to go beyond just the “ideas” to consider why such ideas are compelling for particular categories of people. What is going on in social, economic, and political terms that might cause such ideas to have wider salience? In analyzing the viewpoints of various actors in your paper, include an attempt to make sense of the social, economic, and moral logics at work for those actors, even if one disagrees with their viewpoints. In addition, your thesis should encompass your own perspective on the issue that emerges from what you have learned in writing the paper and which may also link back to some of the broader discussions/debates we have had in class about how to understand the nature of capitalism.
In your paper, you must cite two to three of the class readings that you have not cited in previous papers. (If you would like to substitute others, please confer with the instructor.)
In addition to readings cited from class, you will be expected to cite a minimum of 4–5 other sources offering competing viewpoints on the topic and based on respected sources where you know where the information is coming from. These should include academic works but may also include media pieces, particularly for topics that have happened too recently to be thoroughly explored in the academic literature. Cite work that offers different perspectives/controversy on a topic. (For example, if you cite media articles, perhaps pair the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal; the Economist and the New York Review of Books; or the Weekly Standard and the Nation. See “Things to Think About When Using Media Sources” (PDF) for suggestions.)
Regarding academic citations, the instructor will offer suggestions on academic work that might be relevant to your topic. Although you may reference work from different academic disciplines, keep in mind that the orientation of this paper is primarily one that focuses on social analysis (i.e. exploring how a particular topic plays out for particular categories of people in their day-to-day lives or has other kinds of social impacts, i.e. the kind of “ethnographic” analysis we have discussed in class), rather than statistical, economic, or policy analysis per se.
A proposed paper topic and possible sources will be due during session 16. An outline with an annotated bibliography will be due during session 18 (i.e. a bibliography of sources you plan to use with a sentence describing what’s in that particular source and how it relates to your topic). The first draft of your paper is due during session 21, and the final version is due during session 25. During the last two classes, each student will also give a 5–10 min. oral presentation on their final paper topic. Each student will be required to meet with the writing advisor for feedback on their paper draft as it is developed.
Some Possible Topics
- the Pandora papers and secret offshore tax havens
- causes and implications of racial wealth gap in the United States
- debates about Uber and its implications for models of employment
- the Facebook papers and the social dimensions of social media business models
- ideas of a “just transition” and addressing climate change without sacrificing employment for poor and working-class communities
- debates over automation and whether robots are “taking” jobs
- controversies over what are “fair” taxes whether in the U.S. or some other country
- the controversies around Brexit in the UK
- the growth of increasingly precarious labor in Korea, Japan, or another country
- debates about immigration and its relationship to jobs in a country of your choosing
- competing economic visions of two competing politicians (in the U.S. or some other country)
- Fast Food Forward / Fight for $15 movement
- Amazon warehouse facilities as expanding form of work
- economic implications of COVID-19 pandemic and its disproportionate impact on particular social/racial groups
- causes of escalating CEO pay
- adjunct faculty as a form of low-wage labor at universities
- debates about coal industry jobs and climate change in U.S. Appalachia
- economic implications of climate change in the U.S. or for another region of the world
- economic debates about the minimum wage in the U.S.
- changing composition of the super wealthy either in the U.S. or another region
- how the nature of philanthropy has changed with the changing composition of the superwealthy
- examine Forbes list of wealthiest individuals at present and at some point in the past and consider changing nature of amount of wealth and how it’s earned
- economic impact of natural disasters (California wildfires, hurricanes for Puerto Rico, etc)
- the increase in “shell” companies and their implications
Topics Relating to the Financial Crisis of 2008 and its Aftermath
- how people are thinking about the crisis after its 10-year anniversary
- the shareholder value revolution on Wall Street
- Occupy Wall Street
- the Tea Party
- debates over executive pay
- the mortgage crisis
- the impact of the financial crisis on Europe (or a specific country in Europe, i.e. bankruptcy in Iceland, impact on Greece)
- the impact of the 2007–8 financial crisis in another part of the world
- the social implications of growing inequality
- the impact of the crisis on local and state governments in the U.S.
- the impact of the financial crisis on educational institutions or students
- the use of new media in activist movements responding to the crisis (whether Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street)
- an analysis of 3–4 movies made about the crisis (for example, “Margin Call,” “Inside Job,” “Too Big To Fail,” Frontline’s “The Warning”, “The Queen of Versailles”)
- debates over regulation of new financial instruments like CDOs and credit default swaps leading up to the crisis
- reforms put in place after the crisis to prevent similar occurrences and debates over their effectiveness and political future
There are potentially many other topics—please feel free to think of others!
