Industrial Society and Business

Course Overview

The modern economy is called a "market economy" or "capitalistic economy," in which businesses play an important role. However, businesses and the modern market did not exist at the birth of human civilization, and businesses' importance to society has changed through the ages. Though the development of businesses and the market economy contributed to the resolution of many issues, it also brought about new serious problems like pollution and income inequality. This lecture addresses the birth and developmental process of modern business enterprises and the modern market from a historical perspective and aims to enable students to analyze both its positive and negative impacts on modern society.

Key Features

• Given that this course is a general education course, this course will not teach by listing individual topics. This course will be taught by showing the general outline of the formation of the modern market economy, and the acheivements and difficulties related to it.
• Movies and pictures will be presented via Powerpoint slideshows so that students will expand their concepts of the market economy.
• To encourage students to take notes and thereby enhance their comprehension of the topics, I did not distributed copies of the Powerpoint slides. Instead, I distributed an outline of the class with a general plan of topics to be discussed each class and important graphs. Students were encouraged to take notes in the margins.
• As a reference for further study, I introduced about 10 relevant books each lecture.. The final paper for the class was to choose one of these texts and write a review of it.

Course Schedule

Session	Contents
1	Introduction
2	Economy and Market Economy
3	Factors of Economic Development (1): Nature
4	Factors of Economic Development (2): Sprit and Institutions
5	Factors of Economic Development (3): Sprit and Institutions
6	From the Ancient Orient to Ancient Greece
7	Medieval Western Europe: Feudalism
8	The Industrial Revolution
9	Development of the Market Economy and Unemployment/Poverty
10	Globalization and Transformation of the Japanese Economic System
11	Economic Development and Environment -Minamata Disease-1
12	Economic Development and Environment-Minamata Disease-2
13	The Market Economy and International Relationships: North-South Problem and Global Peace 1
14	The Market Economy and International Relationships: North-South Problem and Global Peace 2
15	Conclusion

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