DD101 Introducing the Social Sciences - Week 6

The suggested time table for Week 6

     Chapter 3 of Making Social Lives (7 hrs)

     'Rubbish Society' (Audio CD 45 mins) 
     Making Connections (Audio CD 30 mins)

     Online Activities 13-15 (2 hrs 30 mins)

     Online Quiz: Making Social Lives, Ch 3 (15 mins)
     Reflection: learning through assessment (45 mins)

To be completed by 18th March.

Our second tutorial is this weekend, so I am trying to get all the reading for TMA02 done prior to that - hence the push on to Chapter 3. 

"Chapter 3 : Rubbish society: affluence, waste and values" - this chapter was not really that interesting and it is not needed for TMA02, I suppose we may need it later in the course but hopefully not. It starts off simply enough, saying rubbish is stuff we used to value, but don't value any more - value can be financial or emotional, value is not a simple thing to define - but if something has no value to us we call it rubbish and dispose of it - as Aleksandr would say 'simples' !!!

The chapter then links the growth in rubbish to the growth in consumerism and ties this to growing affluence, but it doesn't explain if this growing affluence is averaged across the population or is suggesting everyone is now more affluent - which is incorrect. The chapter states that disposable income after tax has increased by 150% between 1971 and 2006 - but later in the chapter the author shows that over the last 30 years (1979 to 2006) the poorest 10% have had an increase in weekly income of 39%, but the richest 10% by 80%, those in between by 50%, the figures do not add up and seem contradictory.

The weakest part of the chapter was the explanation of Michael Thompson's 'Rubbish Theory'. He said that items have 3 states, 'transient' (in use but with falling value), 'rubbish' (things with no value) and 'durable' (items that gain in value over time due to rarity for example). This makes sense, however, he then says that items can move from 'transient' to 'durable', but do so via 'rubbish', which does not make sense, even with the example given of the Stevengraphs. The Stevengraphs were silk woven pictures made in the late 1800s, but are far more valuable now than they were originally - an example of 'transient' moving to 'durable', but how could they ever have become 'rubbish', as they would have been thrown away - rather than what has happened, people have held on to them for about 100 years until the price has risen and they are now selling them to collectors. So if they have been kept for 100 years they must have been emotionally valued, if not financially, so they could never have been' rubbish'.

There is then a fairly sensible discussion on factors influencing Demand and Supply, and then a discussion on aesthetic revaluation talking about rubbish being turned in to art - Tracey Emin & Chris Jordan.

So a bit of a mixed chapter, the most disappointing aspects being contradictory arguments and very weak and unchallenged theories.