Marvin Harris on Centralization

Anthropologist Marvin Harris notes the dependence of our centralized economy on high technology.

"...the two dominant institutions of our time - the military defense complex and multi-national corporations. Both of these are enormously centralizing forces that really determine a very large share of everyday activity in the industrial nations of the world. And both of these are clearly utterly dependent upon the technological breakthroughs which we associate with high technology. I mean high technology makes it possible for the Ford Motor Company now to be building cars in 28 different countries. Because in the one centralized office, the database is essential for keeping track of all those different assembly lines, and matching up parts in Brazil with parts in Spain with parts in the United States. That's all dependent upon our satellite transmissions and our high speed computers and microprocessors and so forth. And needless to say, the entire military operation depends upon greater and greater infusions of high tech into their operations. So as one looks at what's happening right now, one would have to say that the forces that are moving us toward ever greater centralization, ever greater concentrations of power have the upper hand."

Video source: http://www.cultural-materialism.org/

Category:

Education

Tags:

• marvin
• harris
• anthropology
• cultural
• materialism
• centralization
• high
• technology
• globalization
• social
• science

[capitansudamerica]

@tmarpe All these videos should have more than 1 million of views...!!!!

[LxE1993]

@tmarpe that may be because it gets dificult and boring for people to actually think, now thinking about how and why our society works would include to think on solutions getting some conscience and re-evaluate our behavior and beliefs, plus, to create interest in people is a problem of education which gets worse every day because its easier for a goverment to handle ignorant people, so they do nothing about it.

[tmarpe]

why no one comments here but Britney Spears has 5 million views?