Figure 5.1. Starbucks workers marching for the right to organize a union. Their campaign succeeded in organizing the first union at a Starbucks, December 9, 2021.

Imagine you’re sitting in a coffee shop studying for your Social Change class. It’s loud, so you have your earbuds in. The coffee is a bit spendy, but today it feels like a price worth paying for a decent wifi connection. It smells like espresso and cinnamon rolls. The bottomless mug of coffee on your table barely fits into your budget, but, regrettably, a cinnamon roll does not. So there you are, immersed in an economic system, trying to wrap your head around an economic system.

“The economy” can feel like an abstraction. One might imagine it as a bunch of pie charts over which people in boardrooms argue. But in fact, the economy is a major (maybe the major?) force that shapes the lives we’re all living and the people we’re all becoming. It is a force that determines who eats, buys ski boats, gets thrown out of their apartments by police, or vacations in Tulum, Mexico. It might even determine whether the person who made your coffee can make their rent this month.

Most people in the world today live within an economic system called “capitalism.” Capitalism is a type of economic and social system in which private businesses or corporations compete for profit, in which goods, services and many beings are defined as private property and in which people sell their labor on the market for a wage. So, capitalism is more than just a system of trade. Much more profoundly, it is a form of social organization imbued with specific values, priorities and relationships of power. In many respects, we all live in the world that capitalism has made.

The Starbucks workers in figure 5.1 who organized to have more say within their jobs are one example of how people can work together to create social change.  This chapter will encourage you to ask questions about the economic system, and the ways it impacts your life and the lives of others. What different kinds of economic systems have existed? How do various sociologists make sense of how economic systems change over time? What effect do economic systems have on society and ecological systems? Finally, as we explore issues related to our current economic systems, are there better models being developed that can better serve society and the planet?