Chapter 9

The Global Divide

• The modern world is marked by tremendous inequality between nations. Countries are described as developed or developing.
• While there are rich and poor people in every country, all but the poorest people in developed countries are much better off than most people in developing countries.

Developed countries

• highly urbanized
• most of the population engaged in commerce, industry or similar fields
• small proportion of the population working in agriculture
• almost everyone have access to basic sanitation, decent housing and abundant food
• birth rates, deaths in childhood and dangers of disease are low
• Developed countries: United States, Germany, South Korea

Developing countries

• life is much harder
• large proportion of the population works in agriculture to produce the food needed to survive
• malnourishment
• lack of good health care (leading to high rates of disease and deaths during childhood
• poor sanitation and housing
• Disparities between developing and developed countries date back to the 18th and 19th century. Before than people everywhere were poor, surviving by growing their own foods.
• The Industrial Revolution and agricultural productivity led to tremendous economic wealth

Stratification in the World System

• Nations are often classified as being developed (or industrialized) or developing, with developed nations being rich and developing nations being poor.
• Developed nations have modern economies. Almost everyone has access to good health care, housing, sanitation and adequate nutrition
• By constrast, developing nations struggles to survive. They have poor housing, sanitation and nutrition. Health care spending is low, and the rates of disease and infant mortality is high.

The Legacy of Colonialism

• colonialism is rule over a country by outsiders for extended period
• World systems analysis-the study of international inequality by looking at the way in which countries are all independent on one another through a global economic system. Developed by conflict theorist Immanuel Wallerstein. Example of dependency theory.
• According to the World system analysis there are 3 types of countries:
• core-countries with most wealth and power
• periphery-poorest and least powerful countries
• semiperiphery-nations in the middle. They have connections to core nations and domestic industrial base

*Global economic systems enables core nations to exploit non-core nations, such that core nations remain rich while non-core nations stay poor.

The Legacy of Colonialism continued...

• dependency theory-attributes to global inequality to the exploitation of weaker, poorer nations by powerful, wealthy ones (example: world systems analysis)
• globlaization-the worldwide integration of government policies, cultures, social movements, and financial markets through trade and the exchange of ideas

Poverty Worldwide

• Poverty is a worldwide problem that blights the lives of billions of people
• Developed nations sometimes provide money, goods, or other types of assistance to developing nations. This is known as foreign aid.
• Historically, the US provide more foreign aid annually than any other single country
• However, the aid is not enough to end global poverty

Multinational Corporations

• multinational corporation refers to commercial organizations that are headquartered in one country but do business throughout the world (example: doing business in developing countries because of cheap labor, low tax rates, weak labor and environmental laws)
• Today's multinational giants are not merely buying and selling overseas; they are also producing goods all over the world (Wallerstein 1974).
• Multinational corporations are closely related to globalization
• Multinational corporations examples: ExxonMobil, Mercedes, and Pepsi

Functionalist and conflict theorists

• Functionalist Perspective : Functionalists believe that multinational corporations can actually help the developing nations of the world. They bring jobs and industry to areas where subsistence agriculture once served as the only means of survival. Multinationals also promote rapid development through the diffusion of inventions and innovations from industrialized nations
• Conflict Perspective: Conflict theorists challenge this favorable evaluation of the impact of multinational corporations. They emphasize that multinationals exploit local workers to maximize profits. Conflict theorists conclude that on the whole, multinational corporations have a negative social impact on workers in both industrialized and developing nations.

Modernization

• Modernization is the process through which undeveloped countries become more developed while moving away from traditional institutions toward those of modern, industrialized societies.
• Sociologist Wendell Bell (1981), whose definition of modernization we are using, notes that modern societies tend to be urban, literate, and industrial. These societies have sophisticated transportation and media systems. Their families tend to be organized within the nuclear family model rather than the extended-family model.
• Modernization theory holds that development and modernization will gradually improve the lives of people developing nations
• Dependency theory argue that modernization serves to keep developing nations under the domination of developed nations

Stratification within Nations: A Comparative Perspective

• At the same time that the gap between rich and poor nations is widening, so too is the gap between rich and poor citizens within nations. Stratification in developing nations is closely related to their relatively weak and dependent position in the global economy.

Distribution of Wealth and Income

• Global inequality is staggering. Worldwide, the richest 2 percent of adults own more than 50 percent of the world's household wealth. In at least 22 nations around the world, the most affluent 10 percent of the population receives at least 40 percent of all income.

Social Mobility

Mobility in Industrial Nations Studies of intergenerational mobility in industrialized nations have found the following patterns:

1. Substantial similarities exist in the ways that parents' positions in the stratification system are transmitted to their children.

2. As in the United States, mobility opportunities in other nations have been influenced by structural factors, such as labor market changes that lead to the rise or decline of an occupational group within the social hierarchy.

3. Immigration continues to be a significant factor in shaping a society's level of intergenerational mobility.

Cross-cultural studies suggest that intergenerational mobility has been increasing over the past 50 years in most but not all countries.

Mobility in Developing Nations

Mobility patterns in industrialized countries are usually associated with both intergenerational and intragenerational mobility. However, in developing nations, macro-level social and economic changes often overshadow micro-level movement from one occupation to another. For example, there is typically a substantial wage differential between rural and urban areas, which leads to high levels of migration to the cities

Gender Differences in Mobility

Women in developing countries find life especially difficult. Karuna Chanana Ahmed, an anthropologist from India who has studied women in developing nations, calls women the most exploited of oppressed people. Beginning at birth women face sex discrimination. They are commonly fed less than male children, are denied educational opportunities, and are often hospitalized only when they are critically ill. Inside or outside the home, women's work is devalued. When economies fail, as they did in Asian countries in the late 1990s, women are the first to be laid off from work (J. Anderson and Moore 1993; Kristof 1998).

Rethinking Welfare in Europe and North America

• Welfare programs has been controversial in Europe and North American because it can be very expensive
• Welfare systems in Europe have been historically generous , compared with a U.S. system that has stricter limits and requirements. For example, in Great Britian, 83% of health care is paid by the government, compared to 50% in America
• The global economic crisis and recession, strained welfare systems worldwide leading to increasing cost and decreased tax revenue causing some countries to cut benefits

Chapter Summary

Worldwide, stratification can be seen both in the gap between rich and poor nations and in the inequality within countries. This chapter examines the global divide and stratification in the world economic system; the impact of globalization, modernization, and multinational corporations on developing countries; and the distribution of wealth and income within various nations.

1.Developing nations account for most of the world's population and most of its births, but they also bear the burden of most of its poverty, disease, and childhood deaths.

2.Former colonized nations are kept in a subservient position, subject to foreign domination, through the process of neocolonialism.

3.Drawing on the conflict perspective, sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein's world systems analysis views the global economic system as one divided between nations that control wealth (core nations) and those from which resources are taken (periphery nations).

4.According to dependency theory, even as developing countries make economic advances, they remain weak and subservient to core nations and corporations in an increasingly integrated global economy.

5.Globalization, or the worldwide integration of government policies, cultures, social movements, and financial markets through trade and the exchange of ideas, is a controversial trend that critics blame for contributing to the cultural domination of periphery nations by core nations.

6.Poverty is a worldwide problem that blights the lives of billions of people. In 2000 the United Nations launched the Millennium Project, with the goal of halving extreme poverty worldwide by the year 2015.

7.Multinational corporations bring jobs and industry to developing nations, but they also tend to exploit workers in order to maximize profits.

8.Many sociologists are quick to note that terms such as modernization and even development contain an ethnocentric bias.

9.According to modernization theory, the development of periphery countries will be assisted by innovations transferred from the industrialized world.

10.In Europe and North America, countries have been forced to cut back welfare programs after a deep recession drained their treasuries. Even Denmark, known worldwide for its social safety net, has had to cut benefits.