SOCI 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 26: Conflict Theories, Financialization, Economic Inequality
Document Summary
The economy: the social institution that organizes the production, distribution, and co(cid:374)su(cid:373)ptio(cid:374) of a society(cid:859)s goods a(cid:374)d ser(cid:448)ices. From a sociological standpoint, the economy is a major social institution. It is what organizes all kinds of social relations in society. The economy is at the heart of how we live our lives in society. People that work in the extraction segment of the economy. People working in mines, people extracting oil, fishermen, forestry, etc. Primary: extraction of raw materials from the natural world. Secondary: transformation of raw materials into finished products. Factories; where raw material gets transformed into some kind of product. Includes all kinds of people from janitors to media presenters, etc. Most of us work in the service sector but we rely heavily on the primary and secondary sectors. So, we probably are not actually in a post-industrial economy. In a capitalist economy, the means of production are privately owned.
