Exam 14: Postmodern Political Economy and Sensibilities

Postmodern architecture, as in Chicago's Public Library, shuns adornment and stresses strict functional utility.

Although modernist social planning and architecture were prevalent in the capitalist countries of the twentieth century, they were rejected as "bourgeois" by communist governments.

Jet transport and containerized shipping created strong incentives for U.S. manufacturers to move their operations to areas of lower wages in Latin America and Asia.

Although Fordism gradually came to an end during the 1970s and 1980s, the incomes of most working people in the United States have continued to rise since then.

In Seeing Like a State, James Scott argues that governments often adopt large-scale projects in order to render their citizens more dependent on the state and to better control them.

By creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs in Mexico, free trade pacts such as NAFTA have had the effect of slowing Mexican immigration to the United States.

In Weapons of the Weak, Scott contends that peasants usually do not openly rebel because in most circumstances they are satisfied with social and economic conditions.

According to David Harvey, the response of western governments to the Great Depression fundamentally changed the "mode of regulation" by which capitalism was organized.

The "Enlightenment-Modernist" project entailed a commitment to science, and a belief that its application would result in social progress.

According to Harvey, one effect of "flexible accumulation" has been increased reliance on the "turnover time of production and consumption," which creates the impression of an accelerating rate of social change.