World Problems Midterm

How does TBS make a difference in Rajasthan, India?

1. community engaged water management project (johad) that utilizes traditional methods.

2. Empowerment of Women and girls through the revival of traditional education on herbs, healing, and healthcare.

3. training for community leaders

Key elements that allow for success - community inclusion and incorporation of cultural traditions and values. A model NGO.

Describe the government structure in Rajasthan.

1. At the village level, the council, Gram Sabha, has representatives from all households. no formal leader or hierarchy, and decisions are consensual.

2. At the regional level, The Avari Sansad (River Avari Parliament) meets twice a year, with representatives from 72 of the river basin villages. participatory, egalitarian, and decentralized

3. the villagers learned to fight to protect their interests

differentiating between social vs. private problems

When a large number of people suffer from the same problem, it is likely to be a social or public problem. The root cause is in the structure of the social group—whether a community, a society, or the world. Many individuals suffer the consequences, but the source of the problem is in the social order—local, national, or global.

Describe vulnerability

When it comes to social problems, some are more vulnerable to consequences than others. The fact that some are more vulnerable than others does not negate the fact that there is a social problem.

Some people and categories of people have liabilities not of their own making that aggravate their individual vulnerability. Their liabilities depend on their social location. The location could be geographical such as the country or neighborhood in which they live. It could be their age, gender, race, ethnicity, social class, or one of many other factors. However, being poor—a poor country or a poor person in a wealthy country—and being marginalized because of race, religion, ethnicity, or gender are among the most significant factors determining vulnerability.

Throughout this process, it is essential to remember that the individuals most vulnerable are akin to the “canary in the coal mine.” They suffer the consequences first and usually the most severely, and the rest of us will probably suffer from them later or perhaps more subtly.

Sociological Imagination

The ability to see the social dimensions of problems in the global system, the contributing factors, and thus the potential solutions.

Describing the scope of global problems and determining the most vulnerable comprise the first steps in confronting them. Explaining the vulnerability of people in the operation of global systems is the second step.

Suicide as a Social Problem

Emile Durkheim studied suicide in 1897 to demonstrate that variation in suicide rates is a social phenomenon; rates of suicide vary with social structural variations. Rapid social change leaves people feeling anomic, without clear guidelines for life. Too few and/or weak bonds among people in society drains life of meaning, and too great an importance placed on the group in relation to the individual can make individuals’ lives seem inconsequential—as if it doesn’t matter whether they live or die. All three of these social factors— rapid social change, lack of bonds, and diminution of the individual—cause spikes in suicide rates.

Durkheim’s Evidence: economic recessions increased suicidal tendencies, and not just in those who lost jobs.

Manufactured Risks

Issues like the effects of climate change, war/violent conflict, and world hunger are manufactured, as they are of human making.

Define Systemic Risk

The different risks to human security are interrelated. The chronic state of risk of the "breakdowns in an entire system as opposed to individual part” is systemic risk. Note that this also means that improvements in one area affect improvements in others as well.

Key characteristics:

• modest tipping points combining to produce large failures

• risk sharing or contagion- one loss triggers a chain of others

• hysteresis- systems being unable to recover after a shock.

life chances

the opportunities and resources that you have to meet your needs and achieve your goals. They impact individual vulnerability. 

Social location

The chances to obtain adequate food, clothing, and shelter; achieve your potential in physical, intellectual, and emotional development; get a good education; or have a job vary by geographic location, social class, gender, race, religion, and ethnicity- all examples of social location. They are factors that impact individual vulnerability.

developed vs. developing nations

differentiation based on wealth. The world bank classifies using measures of wealth.

Human Development Index (HDI)

defining development as enlarging human choices. The UNDP conceptualizes enlarging human choices as a function of two primary dimensions: factors that directly enhance human capabilities and factors that create conditions for human development.

Factors that create conditions for human development are participation in political and community life, environmental stability, human security and rights, and equality and social justice.

It incorporates GNI per capita, life expectancy as an indicator of health, mean years of schooling, and expected years of schooling. Countries are given scores from 0 to 1. The closer to 1, the higher the level of human development; the more opportunities and choices people have, and the better their life chances are. Countries are classified as very high, high, medium, and low development. The HDI is not a perfect or complete measure but is a useful tool.

The Gender Inequality Index modifies the HDI by contrasting women’s and men’s scores on several important measures: health, labor market participation, and participation in government.

up and coming powers

Asian Tigers and China

older and declining powers

Europe and the United State

the West

Western Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. In these cases, it is referring more or less to the traditionally wealthier societies.

North and South

implicit meanings of the terms are that the North is richer and dominant and the South is poorer and exploited.

First World, Second World, and Third World

Out of favor terms. They infer political and economic characteristics.

• First World refers to capitalist industrial societies, on the one hand, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance countries, on the other.

• Second World refers to the Warsaw Pact countries and the USSR—the less developed Eastern bloc.

• Third World countries refer mostly to nonaligned nations.

In some contexts, the Third World and First World are used synonymously with South and North, respectively.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

an intergovernmental organization of the richest countries of the world

The Great Divergence

What Samuel Huntington called “the great divergence”—the period when some societies surged ahead of others in development. European societies accumulated wealth through trade surpassing the Middle East, India, and China, which had enjoyed the highest standard of living in the world until then.

• 1600s, when the European countries gained dominance in trade

• or mid 19th century with the Industrial Revolution and colonization of Africa and Asia

Reasons for the great divergence

• The West benefitted from good fortune with respect to geography, climate, topography, and resources.

• Reforms in social structure and culture such as modern democratic institutions,

• the embrace of science and pragmatic use of inventions\

The great convergence

What we may be approaching following wwii as Asian tigers then cubs rose, then BRICS, then rest of the poor countries accumulate and grow in wealth.

Sustainable Development Goals

With 17 major goals and a range of targets within each goal, the SDGs are more ambitious than the MDGs. In tackling a broader set of issues, they acknowledge the interdependence of problems and the globe as a single system. Emphasis on development everywhere, and sustainability. Emphasis on attention to both science and indigenous tradition. Achieving them requires the coordinated action among civil society and corporations as well as countries and intergovernmental groups globally.

Conflict Theory and the Forces of Production

conflict theorists center their analyses on competition for and differences in power. Marx’s focus was economic history. As productive forces change, power shifts from one group to new groups as social structure changes.

Ultimately, as industrialization progressed along the never-ending quest to satisfy newer needs, Marx believed that professionals such as doctors, lawyers, merchants, and artisans would become absorbed into the working class until there were only two classes, the bourgeoisie and the workers. Workers would become increasingly exploited and alienated.

Conflict theory focuses on how the bourgeoisie come to control the institutions of society and use them to their advantage.

• education prepares people to contribute to economy and perpetuates inequality between classes

• laws and policies - benefit the elite

• Religion = “opiate of the oppressed”

• “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” literature also perpetuates class structures

Who benefits from capitalism according to Marx and how?

While industrialization produces enough for all, only some benefit due to the creation of the Global economy just as Marx foresaw. Multinational corporations, with the cooperation of elite classes in the poorer nations, developed an international bourgeoisie, a transnational capitalist class that extracts value from both workers and their countries and transforms them into their profit. Little accrues to the workers who create value. Not only the economies but also the political systems of many countries, rich and poor, continue to be controlled by, or at least serve the interests of, capital.

Contemporary conflict and critical theorists

expand their analysis of conflict to include conflicts in values—such as those fueling the culture wars within and among civilizations—and other sources of domination based on gender, gender identity and sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, and other fault lines within societies

Structural Functionalism

This perspective grew out of the work of the classical sociologist Emile Durkheim. It view societies as living organisms. Organisms are composed of systems and structures, each of which has a set of functions. prompts us to find the problems of order, the dysfunctions, within and among societal and global systems that give rise to these problems.

Social Solidarity

A concept from Durkheim’s functionalism. How was order possible in societies that stressed liberty and individual freedom? The answer for Durkheim was that people needed to feel connected to the social community; after all, people were social and did not exist except in a social group. There must be collective values.

Increased division of labor and diversity leads to organic solidarity. Traditionally, there was mechanical solidarity. Social order is more difficult under organic solidarity.

Latent vs. Manifest Functions/Dysfunctions

intended and recognized vs. unexpected and unknown

Symbolic Interactionism

Max Weber maintained that to understand social action, it was necessary to understand not only the social structure in which it occurred (as the perspective of the conflict theorist and structural functionalist) but also the meaning of action to the acting individual.

The social scientist needed to develop the quantitative skills of the natural scientist and also needed to develop verstehen, the ability to empathize and interpret what an action or belief means to the person acting.

What was Weber’s explanation for the great divergence?

According to Weber, the culture of Protestantism, in particular Calvinism, propelled Protestant England.

• Calvinists believed that they were predestined to heaven or hell. Success in business became a sign that they were favored by God and destined for salvation thus motivation for people to work hard. (Our admiration of the wealthy and disdain for the poor is a remnant of this.)

• Calvinism forbade luxuriating in food, wine, perfumes, and silks as French and Italian Catholics were wont to do with the fruits of their labor. Calvinists put their profit back into their business. (Investment and reinvestment remain pillars of the capitalist enterprise.)

• The duty to work, demonstrating one’s piety, had consequences in nature as well. Nature was the object of people’s work. Thus, a stone or a tree, for example, did not serve God by being in the natural state but needed to be transformed, by work, into hammers, roads, cathedrals, or something else to service God. Transforming natural resources through work still serves as justification to view the environment only as a tool in the pursuit of progress.

What was Weber’s view of power

Economic class was not the only source of power in social interactions. Prestige and political office could also carry power because people ascribe meaning to them.

Describe Weber’s view of bureaucracy

as more and more of life became bureaucratized, people would feel increasingly trapped. His detailed analysis of bureaucracy led him to call it an “iron cage” in which people were imprisoning themselves.

Describe the global economy

• Goods and services are produced from resources and components that come from all parts of the world and are distributed to all parts of the world.

• Every step of the production and distribution process adds value to the original raw material, increasing the price and providing jobs.

• Many of the raw materials needed for products come from the poorest societies.

• The raw materials are manufactured into components and assembled into products in somewhat richer

• Most are delivered to the richer countries where they ultimately end up in the waste stream and are shipped back to poor countries for reuse or disposal, where the toxic materials have a second chance to pollute.

• The world of investment and finance is borderless

The globalization of capitalism

the evolution of capitalism from the early trading companies to a system of ownership, production, and control that incorporates nearly every country into global enterprises and markets.

also refers to the transition as formerly socialist-oriented societies transformed their state-controlled economies to free markets, privatizing industries and liberalizing trade.

world systems analysis and global systems analysis

Theories of global economy that aim to describe/explain world order

Both world systems and global systems theorists predict that we are nearing the end of the capitalist era as we know it. World systems theorists maintain that a challenge to the existing core could come from semi-peripheral societies that are growing. Or the threat to capitalism could come from within the nature of capitalism itself. Capitalism is less appealing if a high level of profits cannot be maintained.

World Systems perspective

Focuses on international power and the division of labor among societies. Its fundamental tenet is that a society’s position in the global economy is more important to individual life chances than people’s position in their society

Capitalism causes domination of a few countries over others

Marxist

The Periphery

A component of the World Systems Perspectives framework. Contains the poorest and politically and economically weakest societies. 

Most of the labor force is employed in “primary industries” (agricultur, mining, forestry, fishery etc.)

little negotiating power in global politicswhich leads to exploitation of labor and resources.

low human development scores; high concentration of poor.

Semi-periphery

A component of the World Systems Perspectives framework. \

As the middle level, they have a mix of core and periphery characteristics. Primary industries play a smaller role in their economies than in the peripheral societies. They are industrializing, but most industrialized later than the core countries, so their industrial sectors tend not to be cutting edge or highest value added but rather mid-range.

Most of these societies gained independence during the nineteenth century and were able to take advantage of the migration of manufacturing from the North and West to the South.

The core

• These are the richest and most powerful countries. Controlling the highest levels of technology secures their place in the highest value-added sectors of the economy.

• They have the economic and political clout to negotiate favorably with other countries and steer international organizations on such things as trade and finance.

• Aid and loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund historically were directed toward the interests of core societies, particularly during the Cold War.

• Capital extracted from lower levels accumulates in the core societies.

• North American and Western European societies, along with Japan and Australia, comprise the bulk of the core. This domination began with industrialization and was enforced through colonialism, the Cold War, and neocolonialism.

Global Systems Theory

rather than put states at the center of analysis, it focuses on economic classes spanning the globe.

According to GST, the transnational capitalist class (TCC) is the dominant force in the global economy. Nationality of members of the TCC is immaterial in this theory. Their control of the economy comes through the activity of transnational corporations in business, their influence in politics, and ownership of the media.

transnational labor movements, transnational social movements, civil society organizations, and transnational lower and middle classes.

Describe the four fractions of the transnational capitalist class according to Global Systems Theory

• the leaders of the largest transnational corporations (the corporate fraction)

• the biggest media and merchant outlets (the consumerist fraction)

• politicians and bureaucrats (the state fraction)

• and the technocrats (the technical fraction)1

Rationalization

component of global culture

Rationalization is a way of thinking grounded in reason rather than in tradition, common sense, or religion. 

It emphasizes calculability

It is a tool for organizing social life. Global trends in institutional arrangements, whether governmental, educational, hospital, military, manufacturing, or business enterprises, use rational, primarily bureaucratic, models.

Human Rights

UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 follwed by several treaties

They lay a normative groundwork for citizens in their relations to societies and the world’s responsibility to people regardless of the country in which they reside.

Arjun Appadurai’s five global “scapes”

Appadurai identified five distinct but related flows that circulate culture globally:

• Ethnoscapes: capture the flow of people for migration. As people move about, their alliances, relationships, and communities morph and shift. They carry ideas and images with them, transmit them to others, and receive ideas and images from others. The communication among them is not perfect any more than any communication is; thus, we learn and in part invent the images and ideas of others that we both send and receive.

• Mediascapes are produced by mass and social media. They influence how people view other people in their own country as well as in other countries—how they understand the situation of others.

• Ideoscapes are the images of ideologies. They move within political domains and reach out to people through political parties, governmental and educational agencies, protest groups, and civil society organizations.

• Technoscapes are the flows of technology, high and low tech, mechanical and informational. This flow is important to determining the occupational structures of high- and low-wage jobs within countries, the movements of money, and the tools available to people for communication, education, and so on.

• Financescapes are the flow of currency and stock markets and of investment into and out of countries. These affect everything from the value of currency to the cost of goods. The financial crisis of 2008 demonstrated the interconnected nature of financial systems. Contagion spread globally in days, to some places within hours, shutting down banks and businesses.

human capital

the total of resources inherent in the population of a community

Economic capital

financial resources

social capital

Value of one’s ties to others

Uses:  personal relationships, social network support, civic engagement/trust, and cooperative norms

six degrees of separation thesis

everyone in the United States is connected to everyone else by, on average, a chain of six people—seems to now hold at the global level.

Bridging capital

social capital built between people different from one another

World Society Theory

counterpoint to global systems theory.

world society theory argues that the global economy, global culture, and globalization generally grow out of the relationships among people—the global civil society—that exist outside of the formal operations of the economy or states.

The Lorenz curve

the percentage of global income that acrues to every percentage point of global population

The Gini coefficient is a measure of the deviation of the actual distribution from the line of perfect equality

How has inequality within countries evolved

As economies evolved to be more complex (industrialize, middle class emerges, shift to service economy etc.), inequality increased.

Kuznets curve (inequality decreases then increases)

between 1990 and 2010, inequality increased by 9 percent in high-income countries and by 11 percent in developing countries

Where is the most inequality globally

Countries with the highest inequality are clustered in Central and South America and southern Africa

Descr5ibe the relationship between wages and inequality

inequality increases as wages stagnate

explains most inequality

Productivity and worker’s compensation do not grow together, leading to inequality.

Examples: China, India

What is the main reason for inequality in the richest societies?

Explosive growth at the top of the pyramid (super managers) and stagnation at lower levels

Describe the global wealth pyramid

Wealth concentrates in the top two tiers of the pyramid. At the upper middle tier, 11.1 percent of adults possessed between US$ 100,000 to 1million or 39.1 percent of wealth. The top 1.1 percent (56 million adults) controlled 45.8 percent of the global wealth, each having over US$ 1 million.

Describe inequality within the US

In the United States, the top 1 percent had more net worth than the entire middle class—60 percent of the population; 27 percent (up from 17 percent in 1989) in comparison to the middle-class’ share of 26 percent (down from 36.4 in 1989)

In the United States, the top 1 percent had more net worth than the entire middle class—60 percent of the population; 27 percent (up from 17 percent in 1989) in comparison to the middle-class’ share of 26 percent (down from 36.4 in 1989)

How does inequality impact life chances

Increasing divergence in income and wealth results in increasing divergence in life chances. There are many countries whose populations enjoy better life chances than people in countries with more income and wealth. 

• Income inequality stifles intergenerational upward mobility, leading to feelings of hopelessness and disaffection from the society.

• It stifles economic growth of the society as a whole - more social problems

• breeds social resentment, and can

• generate political instability. 

• worsens public health

HDI adjusted index

Accounts the loss in human development due to inequality and wasted potential

Countries that direct a greater portion toward public goods such as education, health, and building good governance and infrastructure will have better outcomes regarding people’s life chances than societies that invest less.

The bottom of the pyramid

Roosevelt’s term for farmers and workers at the bottom of the us wealth pyramid as he proposed bottom-up plans for revitalization as opposed to top-down solutions

Slavery

Although it is outlawed everywhere, it still exists through forced labor, involuntary servitude, bonded labor, debt bondage, child sex trafficking, child soldiers, human trafficking, and traditional slavery. UN aimed to eradicate all by 2025.

There were 45.8 million enslaved people spread over 167 countries in 2016. Most of them are in India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Uzbekistan (Walk Free Foundation 2016). However, they can be found in every country.

Modern Slavery

people who earn less than $1.90 a day, considered the extreme poverty class. They lack the basic necessities—food, clean water, and shelter. 1 billion at this level.

Subsistence level

those who earn up to $3 a day, are usually poorly educated and unskilled. They work as day laborers, migrant farmhands, helpers and assistants in petty trades, or temporary workers. They may have been displaced from their homes by conflict, natural disasters, persecution, famine, or other hardships. Their paychecks are unsteady. They might be able to afford only one meal a day, usually of substandard nutritional value. They are likely to lack improved sanitation, health care, and education.

What are the three sectors of the economy

primary (agricultural), secondary (manufacturing), and tertiary (service) industries

How does the proportion of GDP derived from each economic sector related to levels of development?

A greater proportion of GDP is generated by industry and manufacturing in more developed countries.  people in countries with low levels of development work hard—much harder, one might argue, than people in wealthy societies. But they work for less money.

Factors Influencing Varying Levels of Development

• economic growth

• extractive institutions and inequality - colonialism,

• Diversity and conflict- religious, ethnic, ideological, national fault lines come with diversity. The result of violent conflict is significant. If only some diverse groups thrive, inequality increases, development declines.

• Corruption- strongly related to inequality than income

• The resource curse- other industries suffer, doesn’t employ enough, unreliable

• climate change - costs of adapting agriculture, dealing with vector-borne diseases, harm to trade, forced migration, pre-mature death, etc.

• Participation in the global economy

Reversal of Fortune thesis

regions that were the most productive pre-1500 became the least productive after colonization and those that were the least productive pre-1500 became the most productive

What can countries do to fight poverty and inequality

Social protection programs

Ensure dignity in work

Guaranteed annual income

living wage

recognize unpaid labor

What makes foreign aid helpful?

Transparency

fragmentation

Selectivity

Debt Relief

How does the private sector address poverty and inequality

Microfinancing - loaning to cottage industries

Corporate social responsibility

four categories to measure food insecurity:

Availability

Access

Stability

Utilization

insufficient production and consumption of fruits and vegetables costs the world 16 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and accounts for 1.7 million deaths

Still, nearly 6 million children died before their fifth birthday in 2015—nearly half from communicable diseases (

Eighty-two percent of child deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa (55 percent) and South Asia (27 percent).

Improved water supplies and sanitation systems, dissemination of health care education, nutrition, the efforts of civil society, international governmental organizations and states, and maternal education all have a synergistic effect in improving health. In contrast, political and social unrest, war, climate change, natural disasters, and large-scale migrations adversely affect physical and mental health directly and reduce access to health care

The World Health Organization (WHO) categorizes causes of death as noncommunicable diseases, communicable diseases, and injuries (Figure 4.1). Globally 7 of the top 10 causes of death in 2019 were noncommunicable. In 2000, there were only 3. But, in lower income countries communicable diseases still account for an overwhelming burden of disease and death.

NCDs are the leading cause of death, accounting for 74 percent of all deaths and 70 percent of premature death globally;

Working-class Whites experienced a long and steady deterioration in their job opportunities beginning in the early 1970s. Along with other changes in society—fewer and failing marriages, fewer prospects for their children, declines in membership in religious and voluntary organizations—people have fewer secure social supports and structure.

Almost universally, males are more likely to commit suicide than females, and females are more likely to attempt suicide.

Indigenous youths are much more likely (up to 30 times) to die from suicide than their peers - transgenerational trauma,

Globally, as many as 700,000 people die every year due to drug-resistant infections, primarily strains of malaria, HIV/AIDS, and TB.

In Western Asia, girls lag slightly behind boys in primary and secondary school, but because a greater rate of girls than boys who graduate go on to higher levels, they are at parity in tertiary education

Men drop out of secondary education more than women in 26 of 28 countries in the EU. Women outnumber men in higher education in 19 of 22 countries in Western Europe and North America and in 23 of 25 countries in Central and Eastern Europe