DD101 Introducing the Social Sciences - Week 5

The suggested time table for Week 5

     Chapter 2 of Making Social Lives (7 hrs)

     'Evidence in the social sciences' (Audio CD 45 mins)

     Online Activities 9-12 (3 hrs 30 mins)

To be completed by the 11th March.

This week's work was just as 'full on' as last week. The chapter 'One Stop Shopping - the power of supermarkets' was quiet a mixed chapter, it started discussing Tesco-Towns and the proposal for two Tesco supermarkets, one which on the face of it was unnecessary and could harm the community, and one which would be of great benefit to another community. Both sides of both arguments were discussed along with the notion of supermarket power.

The next part of the chapter discussed what makes supermarkets powerful and introduced important terms like 'market power', buyer power', positive and zero sum gains. Also under discussion was the concept of a monopoly and how and who measures this, and what 'damage' or 'benefits' does this bring to communities.

The last part of the chapter talked about the 'dominance of suppliers around the glode', and are third world workers exploited, or not, by big chains looking for cheap labour - is it a positive sum or a zero sum gain for these relationships.

At this time due to the current financial climate in the UK there is much discussion about the UK's role in providing foreign aid especially to countries like Indian who have an expanding economy. While it is easy for some to point to the continued poverty in Indian and say we 'must do more', I would suggest that due to the caste system and culture in Indian foreign financial aid will do little to lift the poorest out of poverty - as the caste system exists to keep them there.

If people are really interested in helping the poorest in Indian then it is a far more complicated social solution that is required - financial aid will not do it alone, and for this reason I would suggest that the third world workers producing cheap goods for UK supermarkets are in a positive sum gain relationship at present.

This chapter also introduced the concept of quantitative and qualitative data or evidence, and encourages the reader to question the source and motive of so called 'evidence'. This is where I find 'Social Science' a bit difficult to take seriously as a 'science', the chapter discussed 'evidence', that I would class as opinion, and conclusions seem to be based on untested or unsubstantiated 'facts'.

Anyway, a lot to take in and the bulk of the reading for TMA 02 is now complete.