Unequal World Research Articles

Globalization as Continuing Colonialism – Critical Global Citizenship Education in an Unequal World

Globalization as Continuing Colonialism – Critical Global Citizenship Education in an Unequal World

Learning from postneoliberalisms

This forum examines a range of grounded struggles over efforts to materialize elements of a ‘postneoliberal’ agenda by social and political movements of the 2000s. Drawing from their research in Latin America and South Africa, the contributors ask when, where and why these experiments in realizing postneoliberalisms have prompted durable transformations in neoliberal political economic structures and social rationalities (or not). Theorizing from diverse postneoliberalisms, they interrogate what these material and ideological projects reveal about space, power, contestation, and possibilities of reconstituting deeply unequal worlds.

A fatter, healthier but more unequal world

A fatter, healthier but more unequal world

The health gap: the challenge of an unequal world

The health gap: the challenge of an unequal world

Job quality and inequality: The unequal world of work in the UK, 1986–2012

Job quality has become a prominent issue in recent years ‐ and with good reason, say Francis Green, Alan Felstead and Duncan Gallie. Their findings on inequality and job quality and how they have changed illuminate the true state of Britain's labour market, and make clear the need for changes in policy to improve working lives.

Challenges and the Results Approach Facing Sustainability in an Unequal World: The Sub-Saharan Africa Case Study

Challenges and the Results Approach Facing Sustainability in an Unequal World: The Sub-Saharan Africa Case Study

Un enfoque imperfecto para medir la distribución de la riqueza financiera y no financiera de los hogares en México 1984-2014

Our purpose is to analyze the degree of concentration of household financial and non-financial wealth in Mexico during a period of intense economic reforms. Unlike the imputation method proposed by Davies et al. (2006 and 2010), we propose an observed data approach based on micro data. In a attempt to overcome the lack of data, both approaches have points of criticism, and its results should be taken with caution. It is a welcomed statistical coincidence that, in 2000, wealth Gini figure estimated by Davies et al. (2006) and the one proposed here are almost equal. It suffices to say that, statistically speaking, we live in an almost perfectly unequal world, of which Mexico is a clear example.

Giving Back, Doing Good, Feeling Global: The Affective Flows of Family Voluntourism

Whereas research on volunteer tourism has tended to focus on college-aged individuals, this article focuses on families with young children who volunteer abroad together. The article engages with scholarly debates surrounding the emotional and affective dimensions of voluntourism to examine how volunteering experiences encourage children to “feel global.” Through a qualitative analysis of ethnographic stories about catharsis and comfort zones, the article illustrates how certain emotions are produced and managed in the context of family voluntourism in order to propel children toward global subjectivities. The analysis reveals that family voluntourism reflects a neoliberal logic that compels parents to prepare their children for an uncertain future by developing an emotional repertoire of adaptability, open-mindedness, compassion, and gratitude. Family voluntourism is therefore not necessarily about making a difference in poor communities, but rather about equipping middle-class children from the Global North with the emotional skills they will need to live in the uncertain and unequal world of neoliberal globalization.

Drawing lines in the sky: The emotional labours of airspace production

This paper takes as its starting point the idea that airspace is not a singular, finished interface for aeromobile activities to take place in. Striated by lines that connect some points rather than others, it is a contested network of vectors that sometimes require additional human inputs for traffic to flow in desired ways. Assuming the view of a globalising city-state in Asia, this paper refers to two sets of empirical evidence to build its case: first, over 100 airline newsletters on the ‘Singapore Girl’ published between 1982 and 2000, and, second, fifteen sets of interviews with air hub development officers working for Singapore. Particular attention is paid to the emotional labours that have been invested by these aviation workers to induce particular, favourable business environments for air traffic to grow in the city-state. In so doing, this paper emphasises the uneven way aerial vectors are distributed across the globe, and highlights how these air-lines have a tendency to bypass (small) states not at the forefront of global aviation. Even for a successful overcomer like Singapore, the reordering of airspace does not come with the latitude of manufacturing a brand new air-scape, but involves the development of innovative counter regimes, people-performed technologies, and tactical solutions in an unequal air world.

The health gap: the challenge of an unequal world

The health gap: the challenge of an unequal world

Where It Hurts: 2014 Year in Review

ABSTRACTAnthropologists have increasingly used the term public anthropology to refer to a model of research and practice dedicated to bringing anthropological knowledge into public discourse to affect tangible social change (Low 2011). The increased visibility of what is variously referred to as public, engaged, activist, action, or applied anthropology challenges anthropologists to circulate their insights more widely and effectively in the public sphere. The question, however, is not merely whether anthropologists should participate in the public sphere but also how anthropologists should intervene. In this article, I examine the interventions that anthropologists made in debates on the Ebola epidemic, state violence and civil discourse, and the need for cultural change in the face of climate change. Using these cases as a theoretical point of departure, I question what would happen if we imagined our work as a practice of freedom, an act of imagination, a tool for transforming an unequal world? What if we did the work of anthropology as though our lives and the lives of others depended on it? [public anthropology, Ebola, Israel‐Palestine, Ferguson, climate change, year in review]

An Imperfect Approach for Looking at the Distribution of Financial and Non-Financial Wealth in Mexico 1984-2012

Our purpose is to analyze the degree of concentration of household financial and non-financial wealth in Mexico during a period of intense economic reforms. Unlike the imputation method proposed by Davies et al. (2006 and 2010), we propose an observed data approach based on micro data. In a attempt to overcome the lack of data, both approaches have points of criticism, and its results should be taken with extreme caution. It is a welcomed statistical coincidence that, in 2000, wealth Gini figure estimated by Davies et al. (2006) and the one derived from the vehicles proposed here are almost equal. It suffices to say that, statistically speaking, we live in an almost perfectly unequal world, of which Mexico is a clear example.

Traditional Communities as "Subjects of Rights" and the Commoditization of Knowledge in Brazil

The International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 169 and the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) led signatory state-members to recognize traditional communities as subjects of rights, and no longer as objects of tutelage. However, their implementation may bring new challenges in states adopting market-based decision-making to rule social life. In pluri-ethnic societies in which power differentials are structurally embedded, traditional communities and companies exploring their resources and knowledge have been, historically, unequal and opposed parties. In processes of benefit sharing, these unequal social actors are wrongfully considered equally free subjects of rights in negotiating contracts in supposedly free markets. Erasing historical and structural differences, and assuming equality in an unequal world will only reproduce the inequality that CBD has aimed to address.

<i>Deus ex Machina</i>? Religious texts, spiritual capital and inequalities: In continuation of a current debate (a response to colleague Farisani)

Often, theological debates stand in the tension between idealist and realist perspectives. This is true too of a discussion in which I have participated on the Africanisation or contextualisation or relevance of the Bible in (South) Africa. In this debate I have at times been cast as being opposed to such Africanisation or contextualisation or relevance. Such criticism is mistaken. I am, however, critical of too idealistic views on the ways in which Old Testament research can impact African problems. In an interdisciplinary manner, the sociological concept of spiritual capital proves useful in illustrating my view. With this, I hope to be understood correctly and, more importantly, to contribute to greater realism concerning the relationship between research and societal problems. In that way, the Africanisation or contextualisation or relevance of the Bible in (South) Africa can become a greater reality. This is of increased importance in the post-secular time frame in which we currently find ourselves, in which the role of religion in the public sphere is again finding greater acceptance rather than being side-lined. On all counts, thus, the plight of the marginalised may be better served. Such broader acceptance of religion also demands that Bible scholarship takes full cognisance of the societal processes through which such upliftment can occur in reality. Therefore, en route to publication, this contribution is presented for critical consideration in three intellectual fora:��The Religious and Spiritual Capital session, XVIIIth International Sociological Association World Congress of Sociology (conference theme: �Facing an unequal world�), Yokohama, Japan, 13�19 July 2014.� The Old Testament Society of South Africa Annual Conference (conference theme: �Studying the Old Testament in South Africa, from 1994 to 2014 and beyond�), University of Johannesburg, 03�05 September 2014.� The Research Day of the Department of Biblical and Ancient Studies, University of South Africa, 25 September 2014, at which colleague E. Farisani�s University of South Africa inaugural lecture of 03 September 2013, �Dispelling myths about African biblical hermeneutics: The role of current trends in African biblical hermeneutics in the post-apartheid South Africa� was re-presented as �Current trends and patterns in African Biblical Hermeneutics in postapartheid South Africa: Myth or Fact?� for the purpose of critical discussion.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The intersection of Theology and Sociology adds concrete avenues for furthering the cause of the Africanisation of Biblical Studies.

Innovation and Inequality: Emerging Technologies in an Unequal World edited by Susan Cozzens and Dhanaraj Thakur

Innovation and Inequality: Emerging Technologies in an Unequal World edited by Susan Cozzens and Dhanaraj Thakur

Facing an unequal world

To face an unequal world requires us to interpret and explain it, to be sure, but also to engage it, that is, to recognize that we are part of it and that we are partly responsible for it. In other words, inequality is not just something external to us, but also invades our own world. I begin, therefore, by examining the global community of sociology through the lens of inequality. I then consider two recent perspectives on our unequal world from outside sociology: the moral radicalism of Pope Francis that emphasizes exclusion from market society, and the innovative research of the economist Thomas Piketty that emphasizes unequal inclusion in market society. These two faces of global inequality mirror the social movements reverberating from the economic crisis of 2008 but which have their roots in a reaction to a broader wave of marketization, the third to engulf modern capitalism. To explore the meaning of third-wave marketization, otherwise known as neoliberalism, and the social movements it provokes I draw on two concepts from Karl Polanyi – ‘fictitious commodities’ and ‘countermovement’ – as well as a theory of the dynamics of capitalism. I conclude with three challenges facing a global sociology that centers social movements: to develop a theory that speaks to the globally diverse experiences of commodification; to develop a methodology that recognizes that we are unavoidably participants in the world we study; and to develop a politics that defends a particular vision of that world, a vision that has defined the sociological tradition from its beginning, namely one that upholds the centrality of civil society against the over-extension of market and state.

Internationalization in the Asian Pacific: The Case of Handong Global University Facing New Challenges in a Global, Digital, and Unequal World

As Korean, Japanese, and Australian universities see declining birthrates and a tapering off of the percentage of national age cohorts heading to universities, increased enrollments of international students are being pursued. As demographic changes force these universities to attract students from abroad, the globalization trend is also an incentive to modify their educational paradigms to prepare students to become global citizens. This paradigm shift is needed given that peace and prosperity depend on increasing the capacity of people to think and work on a global and intercultural basis. Furthermore, with digital advances in information and communication technologies (ICT), student learning will be integrated through ICT confluence to bring about innovations in products, services, contents, and processes. Thus, the educational environment is changing fast and the challenges are mounting for higher educational institutions, especially for Christian universities.

BIOSOCIAL INHERITANCE: A FRAMEWORK FOR THE STUDY OF THE INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION OF HEALTH DISPARITIES

Proponents of global market expansion claim that economic growth brings prosperity and creates a more equitable global society, yet these efforts may result in the exacerbation of economic disparities that translates into significant disparities in health. These trends underscore the importance of research examining the social determinants of health in an increasingly unequal world. This article brings together concepts from biocultural anthropology, developmental origins of health and disease, and research examining the long‐term effects of early environments on social capital to formulate the notion of biosocial inheritance. Biosocial inheritance is the process whereby social adversity in one generation is transmitted to the next through reinforcing biological and social mechanisms that impair health, exacerbating social and health disparities. Such a theoretical framework considers contemporary and historic political‐economic forces that shape inequalities in human health, across generations. We examine the biosocial determinants of growth in the Andes as a case study of biosocial inheritance, developing a model that will illuminate the contemporary and historic sources of persistent poverty in low‐income communities around the world. By highlighting the biosocial mechanisms underpinning the intergenerational transmission of poverty, this model allows for the formulation of interventions aimed at breaking the cycle of poverty and a reconsideration of the way we think about poverty and social mobility.

Explicating the Capability Approach through the Voices of the Poor: A Case Study of Waste-picking Women in Kerala

The capability approach brings attention to individuals' freedom to choose the valued functionings of life as the parameter for assessing well-being. This study explicates the capability notion, which incorporates the question of what is of value for the subject, by examining how much some of the major concerns of development matter for the poor as revealed from their perceptions and pursuits. The study specifically examines how detested are some of the widely negatively valued situations (unfreedoms—their being disadvantaged in an unequal world and their being employed in lower-end jobs) and how valued are some of the widely positively valued functionings (freedoms—education for upward mobility) in the lives of the poor. The findings give a nuanced and multilayered understanding of the capability notion. It reveals how, with regard to negatively evaluated unfreedoms, the subject need not necessarily evaluate them negatively. This is not just because of adaptive preferences but also due to the fact that there is “multiplicity of functionings even within unfreedoms,” some of which are positive and the subject might value them positively and even passionately. With regard to positively evaluated freedoms, the subject might not prioritize them in the gamut of other goals and pursuits.

Food systems in an unequal world: pesticides, vegetables, and agrarian capitalism in Costa Rica

Political ecology of the 1990s was heavily influenced by Blaikie and Brookfield's (1987) structural “chain of expianation” that examined environmental problems starting with the land manager and mo...