A2 ECONOMIC SYSTEMS
a) Economic activity is highly varied in employment structure, organisation and location
Economic activity: start with EMPLOYMENT STRUCTURE - this is a recap of previous work.
4 sectors: PRIMARY, SECONDARY, TERTIARY and QUATERNARY.
Identification of jobs in the various sectors.
Will then obviously look at the variations within these broad definitions and the changes over time.
For lots of THINKING SKILLS activities visit the excellent SLN page.
http://www.sln.org.uk/geography/Economic%20activity.htm
RESOURCES PRODUCED FOR 2007
For some of these resources, thanks to former colleague Miss Martin.
GEORESOURCES has some good starting links for this topic.
IN PREPARATION: A unit of work on the BREWING INDUSTRY - as an example of changes in an industry and the effects of technology and economies of scale.
and a related resource THE GEOGRAPHY OF WHISKY
Also a new CALL CENTRE page which will be developed in time (on the OUTSOURCING page)
Revision GLOSSARY TEST
LESSON IDEAS
1. EMPLOYMENT STRUCTURE
Primary Sector
Provides the raw materials on which other economic activity depends
Involves the exploitation of raw materials (coal mining, drilling for oil), the growth of food and textile crops, forestry, fishing and quarrying. Some of these resources are renewable, some are non-renewable
Involves low value added industries - has an environmental consequence, particular during resource exhaustion
'New' ideas: mining of COLTAN ore and link to ecosystems
Secondary Sector
Manufacturing
"Manufacturing has always been a necessary human activity ever since the first fashioning of a plough or spear from the branch of a tree"
Adam Smith
Adds more value by processing or both processing and combining raw materials.
Capital or basic industries produce equipment for other industries.
Assembly industries ('screw-driver industries')
Consumer industries produce goods for direct sale to consumers.
Core-periphery split.
'The Full Monty' - de-industrialisation - why does this happen ?
Tertiary Sector
Service sector: produces no physical 'product'
Historically the largest single group has been servants and slaves - today includes fast food operatives and geriatric health care.
Not necessarily highly paid.
One of major examples is Tourism
A useful resource here (if you have it) would be Geo Factsheet no. 60 (January 1999): 'Tertiary Activities: Where and Why ?'
Quaternary Sector
Sub-set of tertiary sector (when did quaternary get introduced ? who decided it needed to be ?)
Reliance on high-skill labour.
Includes wholesaling and advertising. Information production and management.
Even a suggestion of QUINARY jobs....
What are the problems with these definitions ?
Examples: aren't quaternary jobs just tertiary ? couldn't crops be said to be 'produced' ? - any other problems ? are some jobs combinations of things rather than explicitly one or the other ?
Need to explore the issue of CUMULATIVE CAUSATION.
Types of economic systems
TRADITIONAL: based largely on subsistence
FREE MARKET: run by private enterprise with no public ownership - only theoretical, but USA is quite close
CENTRALLY PLANNED: socialist economy
MIXED: some public and some private ownership
Each of these is of course dynamic: for example, the collapse of socialism in some countries, and concepts such as 'glasnost' and 'perestroika' in the 1980s Soviet Union.
You could look at the CLARK FISHER MODEL
This is a model of how economic systems change over time.
Different types of economy:
LDC (Least Developed Countries) / HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries)
NIC / RIC (Newly or Recently Industrialising Countries)
LICUS (Low Income Countries Under Stress) - there are 30 of these...
G8 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK, USA)
Former Soviet Republics
OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries)
Also remember the 80:20 rule - 20% of countries consume 80% of the resources
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