Global Stratification

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Global Stratification
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If the world were a village of 1000

• 584 Asians
• 124 Africans
• 95 East and West Europeans
• 84 Latin Americans
• 55 Soviets
• 52 North Americans
• 6 Australians and New Zealanders

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Difficulty in Communicating

• 165 people speak Mandarin
• 86 speak English
• 83 speak Hindi/Urdu
• 64 speak Spanish
• 58 speak Russian
• 37 speak Arabic
• The rest speak Bengali, Portuguese, Indonesian,
  Japanese, German, French, and 200 other languages

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Religions

• 329 Christians
• 178 Moslems
• 167 non-religious
• 132 Hindus
• 60 Buddhists
• 45 Atheists
• 3 Jews
• 86 all other religions

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Characteristics of the Global Village

• 1/3 are children and 60 gt 65 yrs
• ½ of children are immunized
• 28 babies born 10 die
• 1 is infected with HIV
• 200 people receive 75 of the income 200 receive
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• 70 own an automobile
• 1/3 have access to clean, safe-drinking water
• 1/5 of the adults are literate

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Characteristics of the Global Village

• 6,000 acres of land
• 700 acres cropland
• 1,400 acres pasture
• 1,900 acres woodland
• 2,000 acres desert, tundra, pavement and other
  wasteland
• 83 of fertilizer to 40 of cropland
• Remaining 60 feeds 73 of the people

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Who are they?

• 5 soldiers
• 7 teachers
• 1 doctor
• 3 refugees driven from home by war or drought

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Resources

• 3 million total budget - 3,000 per person
• 181,000 goes to weapons and warfare
• 159,000 for education
• 132,000 for health care
• Just 100 people control all nuclear weapons

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Distribution of World Income(United Nations
figures in 2001)
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Gini Coefficient
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Gini Coefficient Worldwide
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Systems of Stratification

• Slavery Semi-closed system with limited social
  mobility
• Resurgence over last 50 years
• Caste Closed System with no social mobility
• Based on ascribed status
• Class Open system with social mobility up or
  down
• Shares similar access to resources and life style

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Changing Terminology

• Old terminology
• First world industrialized rich countries
• Second world less industrial socialist countries
• Third world non-industrialized poor countries
• New terminology
• High-income richest forty nations with the
  highest standard of living
• Middle-income somewhat poorer nations with
  economic development typical for the world as a
  whole
• Low-income remaining sixty with lowest
  productivity and extensive poverty

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The Severity of Poverty

• Relative poverty
• People lack resources that others take for
  granted
• This sort of poverty exists in every society,
  rich or poor
• Absolute poverty
• A lack of resources that is life threatening
• While some may exist in U.S. One-third or more of
  the people in low-income countries experience
  poverty at this level

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EXTENT OF POVERTY

• Every year 6 million children die from
  malnutrition before their 5th birthday
• More than 800 million people go to bed hungry
  every day 300 million are children
• Every 3.6 seconds someone dies from starvation
• Over 40 do not have basic sanitation

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Children Poverty

• Poverty and children
• 100 million children in poor countries are forced
  to work the streets (e.g., beg, steal, selling
  sex)
• 100 million children have deserted their families
  and live off the streets
• About half of all street children are in Latin
  America
• 10,000 in Mexico City alone

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Women Poverty

• In all societies, a womans work is unrecognized,
  undervalued, and underpaid
• Workers in sweatshops are mostly women
• 80 of farmers in Africa are women
• Seventy percent of the worlds 1 billion people
  living near absolute poverty are women
• Every minute, a woman dies in pregnancy or
  childbirth
• Economic improvement tied to improving lives of
  women
• 40 of women do not have access to basic education

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Modernization TheoryThis Model of Economic
Development Explains Global Inequality in Terms
of Technological Cultural Differences Between
Societies

• Historical perspective
• As recently as several centuries ago the entire
  world was poor
• Exploration, trade, and the industrial revolution
  transformed Western Europe then North America
• Cultural perspective
• Weber explains that the Protestant Reformation
  reshaped traditional Catholicism
• The accumulation of wealth replaced kinship and
  community and fostered the rise of capitalism
• Tradition and cultural inertia discourages
  people from adopting new technologies and rising
  living standards

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W.W. Rostows Stages of Modernization

• Traditional stage
• Changing traditional views
• Take-off stage
• Use of talents and imaginations
• Drive to technological maturity
• Diversified economy takes over
• High mass consumption
• Mass production stimulates consumption

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The Role of Rich Nations

• Assisting in population control
• Exporting birth control and educating people on
  its importance
• Increasing food production
• The use of new hybrid seeds, modern irrigation
  methods, the use of chemicals and pesticides
• Introducing industrial technology
• Machinery and information must be shared if
  shifts in economies are to take place
• Instituting programs of foreign aid
• Money can be used for equipment necessary for
  change to take place

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Critical Evaluation

• Modernization simply hasnt happened in many
  nations
• Fails to recognize how rich nations benefit from
  the status quo of poor nations
• Fails to see the international relations affect
  all nations
• Ethnocentric in that it holds up the richest
  nations as the standard to judge other societies
• Blames global poverty on the poor societies
  themselves

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Dependency TheoryThis Model of Economic
Development Explains Global Inequality in Terms
of the Historical Exploitation of Poor Societies
by Rich Ones

• Historical perspective
• People living in poor countries were better off
  in the past than they are now. Economic position
  of rich poor are linked
• Importance of colonialism
• Europeans colonized much of world west, south
  east of them
• Neocolonialism is the essence of the modern
  capitalistic world economy

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Wallersteins Capitalist World Economy

• Todays world economy is rooted in the
  colonization that began 500 years ago
• Rich countries form the core of the world economy
  being enriched by raw materials from around the
  world
• Low income countries are the periphery, providing
  inexpensive labor and a market for industrial
  products
• Middle income countries form the semiperiphery,
  having a closer tie to the core

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Wallersteins Ideas

• Basic thesis -- the world economy benefits rich
  societies by generating profits and harms the
  rest of the world by perpetuating poverty thus
  the world economy makes poor nations dependent on
  rich ones
• Narrow, export-oriented economies Poor countries
  produce only a few crops for export to rich
  countries
• Lack of industrial capacity Poor countries must
  sell raw materials to rich countries and then buy
  finished products back from them at high prices
• Foreign debt The poor countries of the world owe
  the rich countries 1 trillion dollars, including
  hundreds of billions to the United States

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Critical Evaluation

• Wrongly treats wealth as a zero-sum game
• Wrong to blame rich nations for global poverty
• Too simplistic citing capitalism as the single
  factor
• Downplays the economic dependence fostered by the
  former Soviet Union
• More protest than policy
• Thinly disguised call for world socialism

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New InternationalDivision of Labor Theory

• Commodity production is split into fragments,
  each of which can be moved to whichever part of
  the world can provide the best combination of
  capital and labor.
• Global Commodity Chain
• Producer-driven commodity chain
• Buyer-driven commodity chain

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Maquiladora Plants