COMMUNICATION, BASE OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS (IV)

Communication

Today, The Grandma has returned to Gavà to continue her course about communication. They have been talking about nonhuman communication and the models of communication.

Every information exchange between living organisms  -i.e. transmission of signals that involve a living sender and receiver can be considered a form of communication; and even primitive creatures such as corals are competent to communicate. Nonhuman communication also include cell signaling, cellular communication, and chemical transmissions between primitive organisms like bacteria and within the plant and fungal kingdoms.

The broad field of animal communication encompasses most of the issues in ethology. Animal communication can be defined as any behavior of one animal that affects the current or future behavior of another animal. The study of animal communication, called zoo semiotics (distinguishable from anthroposemiotics, the study of human communication) has played an important part in the development of ethology, sociobiology, and the study of animal cognition.

More information: Owlcation

Animal communication, and indeed the understanding of the animal world in general, is a rapidly growing field, and even in the 21st century so far, a great share of prior understanding related to diverse fields such as personal symbolic name use, animal emotions, animal culture and learning, and even sexual conduct, long thought to be well understood, has been revolutionized.

Communication is observed within the plant organism, i.e. within plant cells and between plant cells, between plants of the same or related species, and between plants and non-plant organisms, especially in the root zone. Plant roots communicate with rhizome bacteria, fungi, and insects within the soil.

Nonhuman Communication

Recent research has shown that most of the microorganism plant communication processes are neuron-like. Plants also communicate via volatiles when exposed to herbivory attack behavior, thus warning neighboring plants. In parallel they produce other volatiles to attract parasites which attack these herbivores.

Fungi communicate to coordinate and organize their growth and development such as the formation of Marcelia and fruiting bodies. Fungi communicate with their own and related species as well as with non fungal organisms in a great variety of symbiotic interactions, especially with bacteria, unicellular eukaryote, plants and insects through biochemicals of biotic origin.

The biochemicals trigger the fungal organism to react in a specific manner, while if the same chemical molecules are not part of biotic messages, they do not trigger the fungal organism to react. This implies that fungal organisms can differentiate between molecules taking part in biotic messages and similar molecules being irrelevant in the situation.

More information: UDEL

So far five different primary signalling molecules are known to coordinate different behavioral patterns such as filamentation, mating, growth, and pathogenicity. Behavioral coordination and production of signaling substances is achieved through interpretation processes that enables the organism to differ between self or non-self, a biotic indicator, biotic message from similar, related, or non-related species, and even filter out noise, i.e. similar molecules without biotic content.

Communication is not a tool used only by humans, plants and animals, but it is also used by microorganisms like bacteria.

The process is called quorum sensing. Through quorum sensing, bacteria are able to sense the density of cells, and regulate gene expression accordingly. This can be seen in both gram positive and gram negative bacteria. This was first observed by Fuqua et al. in marine microorganisms like V. harveyi and V. fischeri.

Nonhuman Communication

The first major model for communication was introduced by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver for Bell Laboratories in 1949.

The original model was designed to mirror the functioning of radio and telephone technologies. Their initial model consisted of three primary parts: sender, channel, and receiver. The sender was the part of a telephone a person spoke into, the channel was the telephone itself, and the receiver was the part of the phone where one could hear the other person. Shannon and Weaver also recognized that often there is static that interferes with one listening to a telephone conversation, which they deemed noise.

In a simple model, often referred to as the transmission model or standard view of communication, information or content (e.g. a message in natural language) is sent in some form (as spoken language) from an emitter (emisor in the picture)/ sender/ encoder to a destination/ receiver/ decoder.

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This common conception of communication simply views communication as a means of sending and receiving information.

The strengths of this model are simplicity, generality, and quantifiability. Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver structured this model based on the following elements:

-An information source, which produces a message.

-A transmitter, which encodes the message into signals.

-A channel, to which signals are adapted for transmission.

-A noise source, which distorts the signal while it propagates through the channel

-A receiver, which 'decodes' (reconstructs) the message from the signal.

-A destination, where the message arrives.

Shannon and Weaver argued that there were three levels of problems for communication within this theory.

-The technical problem: how accurately can the message be transmitted?

-The semantic problem: how precisely is the meaning 'conveyed'?

-The effectiveness problem: how effectively does the received meaning affect behavior?

Daniel Chandler critiques the transmission model by stating. It assumes communicators are isolated individuals.

-No allowance for differing purposes.

-No allowance for differing interpretations.

-No allowance for unequal power relations.

-No allowance for situational contexts.

More information: The Business Comunication

In 1960, David Berlo expanded on Shannon and Weaver's (1949) linear model of communication and created the SMCR Model of Communication. 

The Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver Model of communication separated the model into clear parts and has been expanded upon by other scholars.

Communication is usually described along a few major dimensions: Message (what type of things are communicated), source / emisor / sender / encoder (by whom), form (in which form), channel (through which medium), destination / receiver / target / decoder (to whom), and Receiver.

Types of Communication

Wilbur Schram (1954) also indicated that we should also examine the impact that a message has (both desired and undesired) on the target of the message.

Between parties, communication includes acts that confer knowledge and experiences, give advice and commands, and ask questions.

These acts may take many forms, in one of the various manners of communication. The form depends on the abilities of the group communicating. Together, communication content and form make messages that are sent towards a destination.

The target can be oneself, another person or being, another entity (such as a corporation or group of beings).

Communication can be seen as processes of information transmission with three levels of semiotic rules:

-Pragmatic (concerned with the relations between signs/expressions and their users).

-Semantic (study of relationships between signs and symbols and what they represent).

-Syntactic (formal properties of signs and symbols).

More information: Businesstopia

Therefore, communication is social interaction where at least two interacting agents share a common set of signs and a common set of semiotic rules. This commonly held rule in some sense ignores autocommunication, including intrapersonal communication via diaries or self-talk, both secondary phenomena that followed the primary acquisition of communicative competences within social interactions.

Communication models are systematic representations of the process which helps in understanding how communication works can be done. 

Models show the process metaphorically and in symbols. They form general perspectives on communication by breaking communication from complex to simple and keeps the components in order. Communication models can sometimes encourage traditional thinking and stereotyping but can also omit some major aspects of human communication.

More information: Businesstopia

Methods and channels of communication to be used and the purpose of communication, must be considered before choosing a specific communication model.

Models are used by business companies and other firms to foster their communication, explore their options and to evaluate their own situations. It is also used to understand how the receivers will interpret the message.

There are three general types of communication models in which all other communication models are mostly categorized: Linear, Transactional and Interactive.  

In light of these weaknesses, Barnlund (2008) proposed a transactional model of communication. The basic premise of the transactional model of communication is that individuals are simultaneously engaging in the sending and receiving of messages.

In a slightly more complex form a sender and a receiver are linked reciprocally. This second attitude of communication, referred to as the constitutive model or constructionist view, focuses on how an individual communicates as the determining factor of the way the message will be interpreted.

Communication is viewed as a conduit; a passage in which information travels from one individual to another and this information becomes separate from the communication itself. A particular instance of communication is called a speech act. The sender's personal filters and the receiver's personal filters may vary depending upon different regional traditions, cultures, or gender; which may alter the intended meaning of message contents.

More information: Businesstopia

In the presence of communication noise on the transmission channel (air, in this case), reception and decoding of content may be faulty, and thus the speech act may not achieve the desired effect. One problem with this encode-transmit-receive-decode model is that the processes of encoding and decoding imply that the sender and receiver each possess something that functions as a codebook, and that these two code books are, at the very least, similar if not identical. Although something like code books is implied by the model, they are nowhere represented in the model, which creates many conceptual difficulties.

Theories of coregulation describe communication as a creative and dynamic continuous process, rather than a discrete exchange of information. 

Canadian media scholar Harold Innis had the theory that people use different types of media to communicate and which one they choose to use will offer different possibilities for the shape and durability of society. His famous example of this is using ancient Egypt and looking at the ways they built themselves out of media with very different properties stone and papyrus. Papyrus is what he called Space Binding.

It made possible the transmission of written orders across space, empires and enables the waging of distant military campaigns and colonial administration. The other is stone and Time Binding, through the construction of temples and the pyramids can sustain their authority generation to generation, through this media they can change and shape communication in their society.

More information: Businesstopia

We have language and they do not.

Chimps communicate by embracing, patting, looking 

-all these things. And they have lots of sounds.

But they cannot sit and discuss.

They cannot teach about things that are not present,

as far as we know.

Jane Goodall

COMMUNICATION, BASE OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS (III)

Non Verbal Communication

Today, The Grandma has returned to Gavà to continue her course about communication. They have been talking about Nonverbal communication (NVC) one of the most interesting aspects of communication.

Knowing and understanding nonverbal communication is a good chance to be a good communicator and a good receiver. Although it seems nonverbal communication is something new related with communication, it is really something deeply joined to the human condition. Charles Darwin, the great scientist, wrote an interesting book about nonverbal communication in human and animals that is totally modern and useful in our days.

Nonverbal communication describes the processes of conveying a type of information in a form of non-linguistic representations.

Examples of nonverbal communication include haptic communication, chronemic communication, gestures, body language, facial expressions, eye contact etc.

More information: ThoughtCo

Nonverbal communication also relates to the intent of a message. Examples of intent are voluntary, intentional movements like shaking a hand or winking, as well as involuntary, such as sweating.

Speech also contains nonverbal elements known as paralanguage, e.g. rhythm, intonation, tempo, and stress. It affects communication most at the subconscious level and establishes trust. Likewise, written texts include nonverbal elements such as handwriting style, the spatial arrangement of words and the use of emoticons to convey emotion.

Non Verbal Communication

Nonverbal communication demonstrates one of Paul Watzlawick's laws: you cannot not communicate. Once proximity has formed awareness, living creatures begin interpreting any signals received.

Some of the functions of nonverbal communication in humans are to complement and illustrate, to reinforce and emphasize, to replace and substitute, to control and regulate, and to contradict the denotative message.

Nonverbal cues are heavily relied on to express communication and to interpret others' communication and can replace or substitute verbal messages.

However, non-verbal communication is ambiguous. When verbal messages contradict non-verbal messages, observation of non-verbal behaviour is relied on to judge another's attitudes and feelings, rather than assuming the truth of the verbal message alone.

More information: Skills You Need

 
There are several reasons as to why non-verbal communication plays a vital role in communication:

Non-verbal communication is omnipresent. They are included in every single communication act. To have total communication, all non-verbal channels such as the body, face, voice, appearance, touch, distance, timing, and other environmental forces must be engaged during face-to-face interaction.

Written communication can also have non-verbal attributes. E-mails and web chats allow an individual's the option to change text font colours, stationary, emoticons, and capitalization in order to capture non-verbal cues into a verbal medium.

Non-verbal behaviours are multifunctional. Many different non-verbal channels are engaged at the same time in communication acts and allow the chance for simultaneous messages to be sent and received.

Non-verbal behaviours may form a universal language system. Smiling, crying, pointing, caressing, and glaring are non-verbal behaviours that are used and understood by people regardless of nationality. Such non-verbal signals allow the most basic form of communication when verbal communication is not effective due to language barriers.

More information: Very Well Mind

Nonverbal communication (NVC) is the nonlinguistic transmission of information through visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic (physical) channels.

Nonverbal communication is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal platform such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, posture, and the distance between two individuals. This form of communication is characterized by multiple channels and scholars argue that nonverbal communication can convey more meaning than verbal communication.

Non Verbal Communication

Some scholars state that most people trust forms of nonverbal communication over verbal communication.

The study of nonverbal communication started in 1872 with the publication of The Expressions of the Emotions in Men and Animals by Charles Darwin.

Charles Darwin started to study nonverbal communication as he noticed the interactions between animals and realized they also communicated by gestures and expressions.

For the first time, nonverbal communication was studied and its relevance questioned. It includes the use of visual cues such as body language (kinesics), distance (proxemics) and physical environments/appearance, of voice (paralanguage) and of touch (haptics). It can also include the use of time (chronemics) and eye contact and the actions of looking while talking and listening, frequency of glances, patterns of fixation, pupil dilation, and blink rate (oculesics).

The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by C. Darwin

Just as speech contains nonverbal elements known as paralanguage, including voice quality, rate, pitch, loudness, and speaking style, as well as prosodic features such as rhythm, intonation, and stress, so written texts have nonverbal elements such as handwriting style, spatial arrangement of words, or the physical layout of a page.

However, much of the study of nonverbal communication has focused on interaction between individuals, where it can be classified into three principal areas: environmental conditions where communication takes place, physical characteristics of the communicators, and behaviors of communicators during interaction.

Nonverbal communication involves the conscious and unconscious processes of encoding and decoding.

Encoding is the act of generating information such as facial expressions, gestures, and postures. Encoding information utilizes signals which we may think to be universal.

Decoding is the interpretation of information from received sensations given by the encoder. Decoding information utilizes knowledge one may have of certain received sensations. For example, refer to the picture provided above. The encoder holds up two fingers and the decoder may know from previous experience that this means two.

More information: Help Guide

The Nonverbal encoding sequence includes facial expressions, gestures, posture, tone of voice, tactile stimulation such as touch, and body movements, like when someone moves closer to communicate or steps away due to spatial boundaries. The Decoding processes involves the use of received sensations combined with previous experience with understanding the meaning of communications with others.

Culture plays an important role in nonverbal communication, and it is one aspect that helps to influence how learning activities are organized. In many Indigenous American Communities, for example, there is often an emphasis on nonverbal communication, which acts as a valued means by which children learn.

In this sense, learning is not dependent on verbal communication; rather, it is nonverbal communication which serves as a primary means of not only organizing interpersonal interactions, but also conveying cultural values, and children learn how to participate in this system from a young age.

More information: The Balance Careers

When you have a nonverbal conversation with a total stranger,

then he can't cover himself with words, 

he can't create a wall.

Marina Abramovic

COMMUNICATION, BASE OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS (II)

Barriers in communication

Today, The Grandma has returned to Gavà to continue her communication course.

Communication is the base of human relationships. There are lots of things that difficult a good communication and The Grandma wants to talk about it. Barriers in communication, cultural aspects and noise are elements that make communication a little bit complicated.

Barriers to effective communication can retard or distort the message or intention of the message being conveyed. This may result in failure of the communication process or cause an effect that is undesirable. These include filtering, selective perception, information overload, emotions, language, silence, communication apprehension, gender differences and political correctness.

This also includes a lack of expressing knowledge-appropriate communication, which occurs when a person uses ambiguous or complex legal words, medical jargon, or descriptions of a situation or environment that is not understood by the recipient.

More information: PhiCare

Physical barriers are often due to the nature of the environment. An example of this is the natural barrier which exists if staff is located in different buildings or on different sites. Likewise, poor or outdated equipment, particularly the failure of management to introduce new technology, may also cause problems. Staff shortages are another factor which frequently causes communication difficulties for an organization.

System design faults refer to problems with the structures or systems in place in an organization. Examples might include an organizational structure which is unclear and therefore makes it confusing to know whom to communicate with. Other examples could be inefficient or inappropriate information systems, a lack of supervision or training, and a lack of clarity in roles and responsibilities which can lead to staff being uncertain about what is expected of them.

Barriers in communication

Attitudinal barriers come about as a result of problems with staff in an organization.

These may be brought about, for example, by such factors as poor management, lack of consultation with employees, personality conflicts which can result in people delaying or refusing to communicate, the personal attitudes of individual employees which may be due to lack of motivation or dissatisfaction at work, brought about by insufficient training to enable them to carry out particular tasks, or simply resistance to change due to entrenched attitudes and ideas.

Ambiguity of words/phrases. Words sounding the same but having different meaning can convey a different meaning altogether. Hence the communicator must ensure that the receiver receives the same meaning. It is better if such words are avoided by using alternatives whenever possible.

Individual linguistic ability. The use of jargon, difficult or inappropriate words in communication can prevent the recipients from understanding the message. Poorly explained or misunderstood messages can also result in confusion. However, research in communication has shown that confusion can lend legitimacy to research when persuasion fails.

Physiological barriers. These may result from individuals' personal discomfort, caused -for example- by ill health, poor eyesight or hearing difficulties.

More information: TOPPR

Bypassing. These happens when the communicators (sender and the receiver) do not attach the same symbolic meanings to their words. It is when the sender is expressing a thought or a word but the receiver takes it in a different meaning. For example- ASAP, Rest room.

Technological multi-tasking and absorbency. With a rapid increase in technologically-driven communication in the past several decades, individuals are increasingly faced with condensed communication in the form of e-mail, text, and social updates. This has, in turn, led to a notable change in the way younger generations communicate and perceive their own self-efficacy to communicate and connect with others.

With the ever-constant presence of another "world" in one's pocket, individuals are multi-tasking both physically and cognitively as constant reminders of something else happening somewhere else bombard them. Though perhaps too new of an advancement to yet see long-term effects, this is a notion currently explored by such figures as Sherry Turkle.

Barriers in communication

Fear of being criticized. This is a major factor that prevents good communication.

If we exercise simple practices to improve our communication skill, we can become effective communicators. For example, read an article from the newspaper or collect some news from the television and present it in front of the mirror. This will not only boost your confidence but also improve your language and vocabulary.

Gender barriers. Most communicators whether aware or not, often have a set agenda. This is very notable among the different genders. For example, many women are found to be more critical in addressing conflict. It's also been noted that men are more than likely to withdraw from conflict when in comparison to women. This breakdown and comparison not only shows that there are many factors to communication between two specific genders but also room for improvement as well as established guidelines for all.

Cultural differences exist within countries (tribal/regional differences, dialects etc.), between religious groups and in organisations or at an organisational level -where companies, teams and units may have different expectations, norms and idiolects. Families and family groups may also experience the effect of cultural barriers to communication within and between different family members or groups. For example: words, colours and symbols have different meanings in different cultures. In most parts of the world, nodding your head means agreement, shaking your head means no, except in some parts of the world.

More information: Skills You Need

Communication to a great extent is influenced by culture and cultural variables. Understanding cultural aspects of communication refers to having knowledge of different cultures in order to communicate effectively with cross culture people. Cultural aspects of communication are of great relevance in today's world which is now a global village, thanks to globalisation. Cultural aspects of communication are the cultural differences which influences communication across borders. Impact of cultural differences on communication components are explained below:

Verbal communication refers to form of communication which uses spoken and written words for expressing and transferring views and ideas. Language is the most important tool of verbal communication and it is the area where cultural difference play its role. All countries have different languages and to have a better understanding of different culture it is required to have knowledge of languages of different countries.

Noise in communication

Non-verbal communication is a very wide concept and it includes all the other forms of communication which do not uses written or spoken words. Non verbal communication takes following forms:

Paralinguistics are the voice involved in communication other than actual language and involves tones, pitch, vocal cues etc. It also include sounds from throat and all these are greatly influenced by cultural differences across borders.

Proxemics deals with the concept of the space element in communication. Proxemics explains four zones of spaces, namely intimate, personal, social and public. This concept differs from culture to culture as the permissible space varies in different countries.

Artifactics studies the non verbal signals or communication which emerges from personal accessories such as the dress or fashion accessories worn and it varies with culture as people of different countries follow different dressing codes.

Chronemics deals with the time aspects of communication and also includes the importance given to time. Some issues explaining this concept are pauses, silences and response lag during an interaction. This aspect of communication is also influenced by cultural differences as it is well known that there is a great difference in the value given by different cultures to time.

More information: Economics Discussion

Kinesics mainly deals with body language such as postures, gestures, head nods, leg movements, etc. In different countries, the same gestures and postures are used to convey different messages. Sometimes even a particular kinesic indicating something good in a country may have a negative meaning in another culture.

So in order to have an effective communication across the world it is desirable to have a knowledge of cultural variables effecting communication.

According to Michael Walsh and Ghil'ad Zuckermann, Western conversational interaction is typically dyadic, between two particular people, where eye contact is important and the speaker controls the interaction; and contained in a relatively short, defined time frame. However, traditional Aboriginal conversational interaction is communal, broadcast to many people, eye contact is not important, the listener controls the interaction; and continuous, spread over a longer, indefinite time frame.

More information: Virtual Speech

To effectively communicate,

we must realize that we are all different

in the way we perceive the world

and use this understanding as a guide

to our communication with others.
 

Tony Robbins

CELEBRATING THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF CSE IN GAVÀ

The Grandma arrives to the CSE, Gavà

Last November 21 evening, The Grandma assisted to an important event in Gavà, the 20th anniversary of the CSE (Centre de Suport a l'Empresa), a local centre that gives support to entrepreneurs, business and unemployed people. During the trip from Barcelona to Gavà, The Grandma started to read a new novel titled This Rough Magic written by Mary Stewart.

It was a beautiful act where the main protagonists of the CSE, the workers and users of this centre, talked about their experiences during these 20 years.

The Grandma spent a nice evening remembering how many wonderful people she had met in Gavà during her staying in the city these last years. She thanks the invitation and wishes the best for this institution, their workers and their users.

After the act, when The Grandma returned home by public transport, she was reading about General Economy, Local Purchasing and Circular Economy.

An economy (from Greek οίκος that means household and νέμoμαι manage) is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services by different agents. Understood in its broadest sense, 'The economy is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with the production, use, and management of resources'.

Economic agents can be individuals, businesses, organizations, or governments.

Economic transactions occur when two groups or parties agree to the value or price of the transacted good or service, commonly expressed in a certain currency. However, monetary transactions only account for a small part of the economic domain.

Economic activity is spurred by production which uses natural resources, labor and capital. It has changed over time due to technology (automation, accelerator of process, reduction of cost functions), innovation (new products, services, processes, expanding markets, diversification of markets, niche markets, increases revenue functions) such as, that which produces intellectual property and changes in industrial relations (most notably child labor being replaced in some parts of the world with universal access to education).

Economy

A given economy is the result of a set of processes that involves its culture, values, education, technological evolution, history, social organization, political structure and legal systems, as well as its geography, natural resource endowment, and ecology, as main factors.

These factors give context, content, and set the conditions and parameters in which an economy functions. In other words, the economic domain is a social domain of human practices and transactions. It does not stand alone.

A market-based economy is one where goods and services are produced and exchanged according to demand and supply between participants (economic agents) by barter or a medium of exchange with a credit or debit value accepted within the network, such as a unit of currency.

A command-based economy is one where political agents directly control what is produced and how it is sold and distributed. A green economy is low-carbon, resource efficient and socially inclusive.

In a green economy, growth in income and employment is driven by public and private investments that reduce carbon emissions and pollution, enhance energy and resource efficiency, and prevent the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. A gig economy is one in which short-term jobs are assigned or chosen via online platforms and a programmable economy is the set of revolutionary changes taking place in the global economy due to technology innovations. New economy is a term referred to the whole emerging ecosystem where new standards and practices were introduced, usually as a result of technological innovations.

More information: Catalonia Trade & Investment

Today the range of fields of study examining the economy revolves around the social science of economics, but may include sociology (economic sociology), history (economic history), anthropology (economic anthropology), and geography (economic geography). Practical fields directly related to the human activities involving production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods and services as a whole are engineering, management, business administration, applied science, and finance.

All professions, occupations, economic agents or economic activities, contribute to the economy. Consumption, saving, and investment are variable components in the economy that determine macroeconomic equilibrium. There are three main sectors of economic activity: primary, secondary, and tertiary.

Due to the growing importance of the economical sector in modern times, the term real economy is used by analysts as well as politicians to denote the part of the economy that is concerned with the actual production of goods and services, as ostensibly contrasted with the paper economy, or the financial side of the economy, which is concerned with buying and selling on the financial markets. Alternate and long-standing terminology distinguishes measures of an economy expressed in real values (adjusted for inflation), such as real GDP, or in nominal values (unadjusted for inflation).

The Grandma & The CSE 20th Anniversary

As long as someone has been making, supplying and distributing goods or services, there has been some sort of economy; economies grew larger as societies grew and became more complex.

Sumer developed a large-scale economy based on commodity money, while the Babylonians and their neighboring city states later developed the earliest system of economics as we think of, in terms of rules/laws on debt, legal contracts and law codes relating to business practices, and private property.

The Babylonians and their city state neighbors developed forms of economics comparable to currently used civil society (law) concepts. They developed the first known codified legal and administrative systems, complete with courts, jails, and government records.

The contemporary concept of the economy wasn't popularly known until the American Great Depression in the 1930s.

After the chaos of two World Wars and the devastating Great Depression, policymakers searched for new ways of controlling the course of the economy. This was explored and discussed by Friedrich August von Hayek (1899–1992) and Milton Friedman (1912–2006) who pleaded for a global free trade and are supposed to be the fathers of the so-called neoliberalism. However, the prevailing view was that held by John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), who argued for a stronger control of the markets by the state.

The theory that the state can alleviate economic problems and instigate economic growth through state manipulation of aggregate demand is called Keynesianism in his honor. In the late 1950s, the economic growth in America and Europe -often called Wirtschaftswunder (ger: economic miracle)- brought up a new form of economy: mass consumption economy. In 1958, John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) was the first to speak of an affluent society. In most of the countries the economic system is called a social market economy.

More information: Cambra de Comerç de Barcelona

With the fall of the Iron Curtain and the transition of the countries of the Eastern Block towards democratic government and market economies, the idea of the post-industrial society is brought into importance as its role is to mark together the significance that the service sector receives instead of industrialization. Some attribute the first use of this term to Daniel Bell's 1973 book, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, while others attribute it to social philosopher Ivan Illich's book, Tools for Conviviality. The term is also applied in philosophy to designate the fading of postmodernism in the late 90s and especially in the beginning of the 21st century.

With the spread of Internet as a mass media and communication medium especially after 2000-2001, the idea for the Internet and information economy is given place because of the growing importance of e-commerce and electronic businesses, also the term for a global information society as understanding of a new type of all-connected society is created. In the late 2000s, the new type of economies and economic expansions of countries like China, Brazil, and India bring attention and interest to different from the usually dominating Western type economies and economic models.

The economy may be considered as having developed through the following phases or degrees of precedence:

The Digital Economy

-The ancient economy was mainly based on subsistence farming.

-The industrial revolution phase lessened the role of subsistence farming, converting it to more extensive and mono-cultural forms of agriculture in the last three centuries. The economic growth took place mostly in mining, construction and manufacturing industries. Commerce became more significant due to the need for improved exchange and distribution of produce throughout the community.

-In the economies of modern consumer societies phase there is a growing part played by services, finance, and technology—the knowledge economy.

In modern economies, these phase precedences are somewhat differently expressed by the three-sector theory:

-Primary stage/degree of the economy: Involves the extraction and production of raw materials, such as corn, coal, wood and iron. (A coal miner and a fisherman would be workers in the primary degree.)

-Secondary stage/degree of the economy: Involves the transformation of raw or intermediate materials into goods e.g. manufacturing steel into cars, or textiles into clothing. (A builder and a dressmaker would be workers in the secondary degree.) At this stage the associated industrial economy is also sub-divided into several economic sectors (also called industries). Their separate evolution during the Industrial Revolution phase is dealt with elsewhere.

-Tertiary stage/degree of the economy: Involves the provision of services to consumers and businesses, such as baby-sitting, cinema and banking. (A shopkeeper and an accountant would be workers in the tertiary degree.)

-Quaternary stage/degree of the economy: Involves the research and development needed to produce products from natural resources and their subsequent by-products. (A logging company might research ways to use partially burnt wood to be processed so that the undamaged portions of it can be made into pulp for paper.) Note that education is sometimes included in this sector.

More information: OECD

Other sectors of the developed community include:

-The public sector or state sector (which usually includes: parliament, law-courts and government centers, various emergency services, public health, shelters for impoverished and threatened people, transport facilities, air/sea ports, post-natal care, hospitals, schools, libraries, museums, preserved historical buildings, parks/gardens, nature-reserves, some universities, national sports grounds/stadiums, national arts/concert-halls or theaters and centers for various religions).

-The private sector or privately run businesses.

-The social sector or voluntary sector.

More information: Economics Discussion

Local purchasing is a preference to buy locally produced goods and services over those produced farther away. It is very often abbreviated as a positive goal, buy local, that parallels the phrase think globally, act locally, common in green politics.

On the national level, the equivalent of local purchasing is import substitution, the deliberate industrial policy or agricultural policy of replacing goods or services produced on the far side of a national border with those produced on the near side, i.e., in the same country or trade bloc.

Historically, there have been so many incentives to buy locally that no one had to make any kind of point to do so, but with current market conditions, it is often cheaper to buy distantly produced goods, despite the added costs in terms of packaging, transport, inspection, retail facilities, etc. As such, one must now often take explicit action if one wants to purchase locally produced goods.

Local Purchaising or Local Economy

These market conditions are based on externalized costs, argues local economy advocates. Examples of externalized costs include the price of war, asthma, or climate change, which are not typically included in the cost of a gallon of fuel, for instance.

Most advocates for local economics address contracting and investment, as well as purchasing. Agricultural alternatives are being sought, and have manifested themselves in the form of farmers' markets, farmed goods sold through the community cooperatives, urban gardens, and even school programs that endorse community agriculture.

The argument that buying local is good for the economy is questioned by many economic theorists. They argue that transportation costs actually account for a fraction of overall production prices, and that choosing less efficient local products over more efficient nonlocal products is an economic deadweight loss. Moreover, the community as a whole does not actually save money because consumers have to spend so much more on the more expensive local products.

Similarly the moral purchasing argument has been questioned as more and more consumers consider the welfare of people in countries other than their own. Most buy local campaigns rely on the implicit assumption that providing jobs for people in the consumers' own country is more moral than in foreign countries. They also imply that money going to foreign countries is worse than money staying in the consumers' own country. Increasingly, these campaigns have been called out as paranoid, jingoist and even xenophobic.

Additionally, organic local food tends to be more costly so this is not an appealing option to consumers who are shopping on a budget.

Small-scale farmers do not receive government subsidies and are not able to support their business on prices comparable to those of industrial-scale food production, so they must sell at higher prices to make a living.

Therefore, in order for the appeal of the local agriculture movement to overcome the economic cost, people must be willing to invest in it, which is unlikely when apparently similar products are available in grocery stores for a lower cost. Despite this, distribution costs of expansive food trade must also be factored in; with increasing gas prices, it becomes more expensive to ship food from outside sources.

More information: Time

A circular economy, often referred to simply as circularity, is an economic system aimed at eliminating waste and the continual use of resources.

Circular systems employ reuse, sharing, repair, refurbishment, remanufacturing and recycling to create a close-loop system, minimising the use of resource inputs and the creation of waste, pollution and carbon emissions.

Circular Economy

The circular economy aims to keep products, equipment and infrastructure in use for longer, thus improving the productivity of these resources.

All waste should become food for another process: either a by-product or recovered resource for another industrial process, or as regenerative resources for nature, e.g. compost. This regenerative approach is in contrast to the traditional linear economy, which has a take, make, dispose model of production.

Proponents of the circular economy suggest that a sustainable world does not mean a drop in the quality of life for consumers, and can be achieved without loss of revenue or extra costs for manufacturers. The argument is that circular business models can be as profitable as linear models, allowing us to keep enjoying similar products and services.

Intuitively, the circular economy would appear to be more sustainable than the current linear economic system. Reducing the resources used, and the waste and leakage created, conserves resources and helps to reduce environmental pollution. However, it is argued by some that these assumptions are simplistic; that they disregard the complexity of existing systems and their potential trade-offs. For example, the social dimension of sustainability seems to be only marginally addressed in many publications on the circular economy. There are cases that might require different or additional strategies, like purchasing new, more energy efficient equipment.

More information: Ellen Macarthur Foundation

Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment;

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for the individual to explore, in his own way.

Noam Chomsky