This is going murderously slow, over here, in case anyone wondered.

If anyone wanted to summarize Comte and Spencer for me I'd muy appreciate it. I can send you my summaries of Marx and Durkheim?

Marxian Research Project question

I'm struggling the most with this question and only have the faintest clue of how to design a 'marxian' research project. Every time I think I understand it and try to commit those thoughts to paper - they fall out of my head before hitting the paper. It's that bad. :-(

So, pointers from other people attempting that question? How are you addressing a marxian research project? What is your research proj? How are you incorporating 'historical dialectical analysis' (I understand the concept but not how to apply it) into your proposal? Care to share that chunk of your paper? (I'm doing socialized health care BTW, and interested in reasons we don't have it in this country).

--C

Pointers

A variety of pointers, YMMV:

He loves critique of info he's provided in class, support it
Use any examples he's used in class
He likes a general thesis then answer each question seperatly.
If doing creative question, be imaginative, but incorporate what info he provided in class
Loves use of exactly what he provided in lecture


With that said, I'm sitting down right now to rewrite my essays (again).

Q2A: Marxian method for research project

Use a Marxian methodology to design a research project to investigate this topic. What will we learn from the proposed research? What will the proposed project leave out that might be better understood using a different methodological approach?

• Underlying q is about why we don't have socialized health care.
• Goal is to examine reasons for current situation with the goal of changing it.
• Ideally, comparison to other similar systems would be a source of illumination of the subject (whose idea is that comparison? Is it Durkheim, Marx, Spencer - what the heck is it called??). What decisions did other nations make? How was their social situation different?
• Our emphasis on individuality has a large impact, but I'm not sure what to call it, except to say that it's a 'social trend towards individualism' in this country??).
• Research project to analyze this would need to look at sources of conflict and past resolutions on the topic to figure out current situation. (Hole in knowledge right here).
• Lots of analysis of past health care decisions that brought us to this situation. (Big hole in my knowledge of situation right here).
• Who benifits from system?
  
• From Marxian perspective we have huge inequality in access. This obviously benefits big business and the (shrinking, now international) upper classes. There have been some successes with this current system - the upper class has a very international feel and national borders/nationalism is only a topic when it's convent. The overriding goal of accumulation of profit is international.
• Unfortunately, this international brotherhood has not extended to lower classes, not even brotherhood within the country. (Why not? 1) huge focus on personal responsibility, individualism, 'american dream' 2) early history was farms and spread out, not dense groups of people? 3) Availability of individual land for ownership discourages revolt on the basis of landholding verses poor class 4)??? I don't know my history on this one - help!?? ).
• Use VanHoy's coverage of why inequality is popular in this country, the critique of Marxism that has to do with the way we treat objects as having value due to the market and not value because of labor (the point after that one, spacing on the technical name).
• What terms do I want to use, concepts do I want to hit in this question?
  
• Durkeim's Dynamic Density
• Marx's Species Being
• Marx's Dialectics (Conflict Theory)
• Marx's idea of value, surplus value, and wages paid only enough to live till tomorrow
• Durkeim's idea of _functionalism_, goal of system is to function and maintain cultural hegemony (is the cultural hegemony Marx's idea?). Critical to note that the system is 'functioning' in that it hasn't completely collapsed
• Spencer's ideas of personality traits as prod of social structure.
  (individualism, also distractability/ADD, ways of dealing with alienation)
• Alienation (drinking? TV: lots channels, nothing on, Vid games, Work teams? Competition between departments in a retail store? Competition between 'big box' stores? Religion to overcome this alienation, exreme religion as method to 'combat' this?
  
• How education sys ties into this, what education provide you for, 'tracking' students into college or service/wage labor?
  
• Structure of family as domestic unit becoming more individual younger? (Arguable, seems like better off gets to live at home longer, but poor, must bec independent, wage-earning younger, have anything to do with alienation?)
• Technology's contribution to alienation.
• Durkeim's bureaucracy! HMOs, PPOs, Medicaid, Medicare, hell - the hospital! Send insurance woman in in ER before Dr comes in, must consent to pay for care before care. How benefit big business, employers, keep people from using system.
  

Whatup?

For those of you who haven't done this before - I find it damn useful to study in a collaborative way via a blog. Email me (or reply here) and I'll send you an invite so you can post to the blog.

Since collaboration is encouraged on these midterms and I procrastinate less if other people are watching I think it'd be helpful to encourage each other and figure out what questions we're going to answer (I'm doing all the Marx and Engels ones) and what some of the major points we want to hit are (having a rougher time with this part!).

What else? Some people prefer to meet in person - great, we can do that too, though to be honest, I'm shitty at it and find scheduling those things to be a PITA. Hence - the blog.

Oh, I encourage folks to go into settings and add their email address to 'email reply topics' (don't remember what the exact wording is - but it emails you whenever people comment on the blog. It's helpful when you've asked a question to know when someone has replied!).

Have a better idea? Tell me!

--Crystal