Political Economy Days #2 (10/20/11) Michael Mufson

Shane Tremblay

Speaker: Michael Mufson Topic: “Humanizing the System: A

workshop to Identify the Relations Between People and the Current Economic Crisis”

Mufson used an interesting technique in this “lecture”

Rather than sit and talk about the economic problem, we began by physically representing ideas or themes with our bodies (very interesting).

Main Topics Mufson describes most Americans as

“Mechanized” in the sense that the big corporations or companies essentially influence the way we act, what we buy etc.

We then formed groups to physically represent (with our bodies) the current economic crisis, and were instructed to design the crisis so that you could point to the source of the problem (ex. Is it the government’s fault? Bankers? Politicians? Etc.)

Agree? / Disagree? After every group completed the project, we

dissected each presentation of the economic problem.

I agree with the idea that there are multiple interpretations of the current economic crisis (and there probably always will be).

Overall I enjoyed the experience, however I disagreed with the idea of Americans as “mechanized”. I agree that Americans can be “mechanic” in nature, but I felt it was too broad of a generalization to be putting on an entire society.