WS101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Starbucks, Consumer Capitalism, Westernization

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maroonmacaw994

8 Apr 2015

School

University of Waterloo

Department

Women's Studies

Course

WS101

Professor

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So we"ve been talking about issues of power and privilege and gender and sexuality so far throughout the course. But we"ve really talked about those within the context of the. And i want to move our attention now to thinking about how these issues may play out in a global setting. Particularly because we"re living in a more globalized world, and i think it"s important to think about what"s happening in other places. Not just what"s happening here in our own backyard. So if we think about those same issues: power and privilege and gender and sexuality. But apply a more global context, we might ask and answer some different questions with respect to what that looks like in places other than what we would refer to as the. These images really depict the issues of power and privilege in gender and sexuality in a perspective that we would understand here at home.

Related Questions

Please answer the question after reading the paragraph.

We have a global health challenge in our hands today, and that is that the way we currently discover and develop new drugs is too costly, takes far too long, and it fails more often than it succeeds. It really just isn't working, and that means that patients that badly need new therapies are not getting them, and diseases are going untreated. We seem to be spending more and more money. So for every billion dollars we spend in R&D, we're getting less drugs approved into the market. More money, less drugs. Now we have a whole pipeline of different organ chips that we are currently working on in our labs. Now, the true power of this technology, however, really comes from the fact that we can fluidically link them. There's fluid flowing across these cells, so we can begin to interconnect multiple different chips together to form what we call a virtual human on a chip. Now we're really getting excited.We're not going to ever recreate a whole human in these chips, but what our goal is is to be able to recreate sufficient functionality so that we can make better predictions of what's going to happen in humans. For example, now we can begin to explore what happens when we put a drug like an aerosol drug. Those of you like me who have asthma, when you take your inhaler, we can explore how that drug comes into your lungs, how it enters the body, how it might affect, say, your heart. Does it change the beating of your heart? Does it have a toxicity? Does it get cleared by the liver? Is it metabolized in the liver? Is it excreted in your kidneys? We can begin to study the dynamic response of the body to a drug. Organs on chips could also change the way we do clinical trials in the future. Right now, the average participant in a clinical trial is that: average. Tends to be middle aged, tends to be female. You won't find many clinical trials in which children are involved, yet every day, we give children medications, and the only safety data we have on that drug is one that we obtained from adults. Children are not adults. They may not respond in the same way adults do. There are other things like genetic differences in populations that may lead to at-risk populations that are at risk of having an adverse drug reaction. Now imagine if we could take cells from all those different populations, put them on chips, and create populations on a chip. This could really change the way we do clinical trials. And this is the team and the people that are doing this. We have engineers, we have cell biologists, we have clinicians, all working together. We're really seeing something quite incredible at the Wyss Institute. It's really a convergence of disciplines, where biology is influencing the way we design, the way we engineer, the way we build. It's pretty exciting.

Question: For years, technology and medicine have joined together to pave the way or even solve some of the worldâs greatest issues in healthcare. These issues include but are not limited to incurable diseases and disorders like AIDS and cancer. According to Geraldine Hamilton however, we as a population are spending too much money to develop drugs and solutions to these issues, only to be at a deficit with the drugs actually produced. She believes that one of the keys is how we test these drugs and finding more efficient ways to do so. As a result, she suggests the use of organs on chips, an innovation created and pioneered by her lab. The use of organs on chips could change the way new drugs are released and tested, thus possibly furthering the process of creating solutions to healthcareâs problems. Where is the fine line between technology and human innovation? Is human innovation gradually becoming depending on technology? (At least two paragraphs, a paragraph is at least 5 sentences long.)

Consider the following excerpts:

Excerpt 1:

Saudi Arabia is ramping up efforts to lure international companies and revive Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's plans for an economic makeover after foreign investment fell to a 14-year-low in 2017.

The moves include plans to create two investment funds totalling over $18 billion for the government to enter into ventures with foreign companies, said people familiar with the matter. The kingdom is also pouring billions into entertainment-industry partnerships and working with SoftBank Group's Vision Fund to bring technology firms to Saudi Arabia.

The first modern Saudi bankruptcy law is due to soon come into effect. The government has also drawn up a law on public-private partnerships, the first step toward the sale of billions of dollars in state-owned assets that the government hopes will attract foreign investment in big infrastructure projects.

Prince Mohammed is trying to shift the economy away from oil and toward industries that provide growth and jobs for Saudis. The first steps toward economic reform included cutting subsidies and adding taxes to narrow the budget deficit.

He has introduced social reforms such as allowing women to drive and opening cinemas. He has also forged an alliance with the Trump administration and shifted the kingdom into a more firm posture against Iran. But some of his economic plans have so far stalled.

The Saudi economy contracted last year, largely as a result of lower oil prices, and only emerged from recession in the first quarter of this year. The prospect of years of low oil prices helped spark Prince Mohammed's calls for economic reform, though prices have rallied in recent months.

Also worrying some investors was the detention of Saudi business leaders last fall in what the kingdom said was an anticorruption crackdown. The charges weren't aired publicly and some businessmen remain jailed; the government has moved to collect over

Saudi officials have said the crackdown should assure investors that the kingdom is serious about securing a stable rule of law, and the crown prince sought to win more American business on a nearly three-week visit to the U.S. this spring.

Excerpt 2:

Saudi Arabia's premier business conference opened as scheduled Tuesday, missing the star power of Western executives who cancelled over a Saudi journalist's death but packing a surprise: an unexpected visit from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The event, the Future Investment Initiative, once again served as a forum for promoting Saudi investment and Prince Mohammed's modernization plans. But the gathering was stripped down from last year's inaugural session as the kingdom wrestled with corporate and diplomatic fallout in the wake of allegations that the Saudi government was involved in Jamal Khashoggi's Oct. 2 death in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

"Everybody is talking about it," said Henry Fernandez, chief executive of MSCI Inc., a U.S.-based markets-index compiler, speaking of Mr. Khashoggi's death. Despite that, he said the conference remained focused on engagement [with Saudi Arabia], not divestment...

The reaction to Mr. Khashoggi's death threatens to derail Prince Mohammed's plan to re-engineer the kingdom's economy to make it less reliant on oil income. The event is the prince's most visible effort to attract international investments by presenting the country as a business-friendly place that embraces new technologies

The event drew more than 3,000 investors, business leaders and advisers, according to the event app, but attendees also estimated hundreds had withdrawn. Many Western dropouts were replaced by representatives from Russia, Asia and the Arab world.

Among those who remained, French oil giant Total SA's CEO, Patrick Pouyanne, showed up alongside regional investment bank heads. Lucid Motors Inc., a California-based electric vehicle maker in which Saudi Arabia has committed to invest $1 billion, showcased the only prototype of its planned first car in the hotel's lobby.

Shahid Kazi, chief executive of Dubai-based consultancy ValuStrat, said Western executives who cancelled may have put a dampener [on the event] and may have disappointed people. But I wouldn't say it [the event] isn't useful. The Saudis are all here. That's who we really want to meet.

Still, there were signs that the gathering was off to an inauspicious start.

Last year, Western attendees arriving here were whisked to a luxurious airport lounge serving Arab coffee and dates. On Monday night, they lined up for passport control like everyone else.

The conference's website appeared to be hacked and was unavailable for hours Monday. Meantime, the World Economic Forum, which runs the eponymous event in the Swiss resort of Davos each year, formally objected to the gathering's nickname, Davos in the Desert.

Investors have divested more than $720 million from the Saudi stock market since Mr. Khashoggi's disappearance. The stock market, known as the Tadawul, is down about 4% since then.

What motives might drive technology and entertainment companies to invest in Saudi Arabia?

What are the risks associated with FDI in Saudi Arabia?

Why is the Saudi government so active (reform, conferences, risk-sharing) in bringing FDI back to Saudi Arabia?

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WS101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Starbucks, Consumer Capitalism, Westernization

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