Unequal World Research Articles

Worldmapper: the human anatomy of a small planet.

You can say it [1], you can prove it [2], you can tabulate it [3], but it is only when you show it that it hits home [4]. There is a long history of using illustrations to help spread new medical scientific ideas. Anatomical imagery, for example, is at least 500 years old [5]. That imagery allowed us to look inside human beings and, among much else, showed us just how much of the brain was dedicated to visual understanding. We now know that good health relies as much on the anatomy of society as on the anatomy of our bodies [6]. And we are just beginning to learn that an unequal human world is also more likely to be a sick world. How, though, can we better understand the distribution of health resources around the world, and of where most people are sick and die early as compared to people in more privileged positions? How can we fathom the extent to which health equity gaps are growing despite unprecedented global wealth and technological progress? Drawing images is one way to engage more of our imagination to help understand the extent and arrangement of world inequalities in health.

Health in an unequal world

William Harvey was born in Folkestone on April 1 1578. He was educated at the Kings School Canterbury Gonville and Caius College Cambridge and the University of Padua graduating as doctor of arts and medicine in 1602. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1607 and was appointed to the Lumleian lectureship in 1615. In the cycles of his Lumleian lectures over the next 13 years Harvey developed and refined his ideas about the circulation of the blood. He published his conclusions in 1628 in Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus which marks the beginning of clinical science. In it Harvey considered the structure of the heart arteries and veins with their valves. By carefully devised experiments and supported by the demonstration of the unidirectional flow of the blood in the superficial veins of his own forearm he established that the blood circulated and did not ebb and flow as had been believed for more than 1000 years. (excerpt)

Health in an unequal world: social circumstances, biology and disease

Health in an unequal world: social circumstances, biology and disease

International Relations and Responsibility in an Increasingly Unequal World

ABSTRACTMartha Nussbaum has provided a major service to the study and practice of international relations (IR) by articulating the moral claims made on states and international organizations by the fact of human capabilities. In return, something of what has been learned by scholars of IR can contribute to her project by considering the ways in which concrete international institutions (such as UNDP) have struggled with their international responsibilities, highlighting the role of egalitarian social movements in the establishment and reform of global level intergovernmental organizations, and searching for ways to embody Nussbaum's ‘Principles for Global Structure’ in the current agenda for reform of the United Nations' system.

Informal Settlements under the Impact of Globalization in Southeast Asian Mega-cities: The Case of Bangkok

Globalization studies in Asia tend to highlight the positive influences or impacts that the mega-cities could benefit from in economic development, thereby gearing up to join ‘global cities’ within the world city system. Micro-level observation within a mega-city, however, brings up the issue of unequal effects of globalization among the citizens. Economic globalization, in terms of its essential attribute, tends to converge on the key centers of production, distribution, services and finance, and thus their benefits are subjected to a preoccupation by ‘the haves’, rather than ‘the have-nots’. Paying attention to this likelihood of an ‘unequal world’, the paper attempts to examine the influence of economic globalization on the informal settlements in Bangkok and its vicinity. For this purpose, Section II analyzes changes in size and spatial distribution of informal settlements, followed by a discussion on globalization impacts on informal settlements from economic, social and physical perspectives in Section III. The last section includes conclusions and policy recommendations to promote a ‘trickle down’ of the benefits of economic globalization to the urban poor.

Gender equality: striving for justice in an unequal world

Gender equality: striving for justice in an unequal world

Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World

Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World

Human development report 2005: international cooperation at a crossroads: aid, trade and security in an unequal world

Human development report 2005: international cooperation at a crossroads: aid, trade and security in an unequal world

Beijing Plus Ten: An Ambivalent Record on Gender Justice

AbstractThe 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women (the ‘Beijing Conference’) was a landmark in policy terms, setting a global policy framework to advance gender equality. Ten years after Beijing, in March 2005, the UN's Commission on the Status of Women presided over an intergovernmental meeting in New York to review the progress achieved on the commitments made in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. This ‘Plus 10’ event was decidedly low key. Its aim was not agenda setting but agenda confirming; not policy formulation but policy affirmation. Whether it proves to be part of an ongoing worldwide movement in support of gender equality, or whether it marks the decline of that process, is a question that many in international women's movements are asking. This article, drawing on research undertaken for the UNRISD report, Gender Equality: Striving for Justice in an Unequal World, reflects on the ambivalent record of progress achieved by women over the last decades and considers how the policy environment has changed over the period since the high point of global women's movements. It examines how the changing international policy and political climate over this period has given rise to new issues and challenges for those active in global women's movements.

Invisible Hierarchies: Africa, Race, and Continuities in the World Order

The failure to acknowledge race as a fundamental feature of today's unequal world order remains a striking weakness of radical as well as conventional analyses of that order. Current global and national socioeconomic hierarchies are not mere residues of a bygone era of primitive accumulation. Just as it should be inconceivable to address the past, present, and future of American society without giving central attention to the role of African American struggles, so analyzing and addressing 21st-century structures of global inequality requires giving central attention to Africa.

HIV/AIDS epidemic features and trends in Saudi Arabia

BACKGROUNDMore than 60 million persons have been infected since AIDS was described in 1981. By the end of 2003, an estimated 40 million individuals were living with HIV globally. The surveillance of HIV/AIDS still faces challenges in Saudi Arabia. This study describes the pattern and characteristics of HIV/AIDS cases in Saudi Arabia.METHODSThis descriptive analytic study describes the reported HIV/AIDS data for all notifiable cases during the period 1984 to 2003 in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Case definitions based on ELISA and Western Blot tests were used. Age, sex and regional distribution were studied in addition to survival rates.RESULTSAs of 2003, 1743 Saudi nationals and 6064 non-Saudi HIV cases were reported. Among Saudis, 872 were AIDS cases. Males accounted for 1329 HIV infections, comprising 77%, with a male-to-female ratio of about 3:1. Adults 15–49 years constituted 78% of cases, including 46% of cases infected through sexual activity, while 33% of reported HIV seropositive cases had already died. Most cases (67%) were registered in Jeddah, Riyadh and Dammam. Infection through blood transfusion declined with no reported cases since 2001.CONCLUSIONThe number of reported HIV infections in KSA has increased in the last few years. Using the coverage rate estimating method, the number of Saudi HIV infections since the emergence of the epidemic was estimated to be 2640 cases as of the beginning of the year 2004. The estimated number of HIV infections is almost one and one-half times the reported number, indicating that a problem of underreporting of HIV/AIDS cases still exists.

Gaining Technical Know-How in an Unequal World: Penicillin Manufacture in Nehru's India

The paper examines the rationale behind the Government of India's decision to initiate the manufacture of penicillin through collaboration with specialized agencies of the United Nations. Initially the expectation had been that collaboration was essential with one of the prominent transnational companies which had proprietory knowledge in penicillin manufacture. This preference for aligning with a proven manufacturer rather than taking the more entrepreneurial route of depending on the United Nations was favoured by the Committee established to oversee the penicillin project which was chaired by a prominent industrialist. Prime Minister Nehru's intervention tilted the balance in favour of the United Nation's agencies. Nehru's choice in the matter was based on the advantages to India which would accrue from association with the United Nations, in addition to his reluctance to allow India to enter into a subordinate position through collaboration with a foreign manufacturer in as sensitive an area as pharmaceuticals.

Kofi Annan on an Immigration Strategy for Europe

Kofi Annan on an Immigration Strategy for Europe

Globalisation and the University: Myths and Realities in an Unequal World

Abstract Much has been said about the impact of globalisation on higher education. Some have argued that globalisation, the Internet and the scientific community will level the playing field in the new age of knowledge interdependence. Others claim that globalisation means both worldwide inequality and the McDonaldisation of the university. It is argued that all of the contemporary pressures on higher education, from the pressures of massification to the growth of the private sector, are the results of globalisation. There is a grain of truth in all of these hypotheses ‐ and a good deal of misinterpretation as well. The purpose of this essay is to “unpack” the realities of globalisation and internationalisation in higher education and to highlight some of the ways in which globalisation affects the university. Of special interest here is how globalisation is affecting higher education in developing countries ‐ the nations that will experience the bulk of higher education expansion in the coming decades.

Just sustainabilities: development in an unequal world

Just sustainabilities: development in an unequal world

Reviews: Environmental Dilemmas and Policy Design, the Political Culture of the Left in Affluent Britain, 1951–64: Old Labour, New Britain, the Government and Politics of the European Union, Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World, Climate Change and Sustainable Development: Prospects for Developing Countries, Environmental Leaders and Laggards in Europe: Why there is (Not) a ‘Southern Problem’, Business and Politics:

Reviews: Environmental Dilemmas and Policy Design, the Political Culture of the Left in Affluent Britain, 1951–64: Old Labour, New Britain, the Government and Politics of the European Union, Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World, Climate Change and Sustainable Development: Prospects for Developing Countries, Environmental Leaders and Laggards in Europe: Why there is (Not) a ‘Southern Problem’, Business and Politics:

Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World

1Centre for European, Comparative and International Law, University of Sheffield Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World J.AgyemanR.BullardB.Evans Earthscan 2003xviii + 347

Equity, responsibility and climate change

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its decision-making processes are influenced by powerful economic and political interests, but also by debates on equity and responsibility. This is equally reflected in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose task it is to compile and assess existing knowledge for the UNFCCC negotiations. The IPCC is not charged with producing new knowledge, and its assessments, particularly the 'Summary for policy makers', are the product of political and ideological debates, and may include biased statements. The debate on equity and responsibility is characterized by a division, mainly based on socio-geographic differences, between the representatives from developed and those from developing countries. We argue that 'common but differentiated responsibilities' (UNFCCC 1992, Article 3) require a consideration of temporal and sectoral factors, as well as geographic ones. Countries and economic sectors that have caused today's climate change must be held accountable. More attention must be devoted to giving different responsibilities to the various economic sectors according to their importance for basic human needs. The differences in accountability between economic sectors were first analyzed in Agarwal and Narain (1991; Global warming in an unequal world. Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi); the need for historical accountability was proposed by the Brazilian Delegation in UNFCCC (1997). © Inter-Research 2004.

Globalisation and the university: Myths and realities in an unequal world

Globalisation and the university: Myths and realities in an unequal world

Product Review: Global Inequality and Human Needs: Health and Illness in an Increasingly Unequal World

Product Review: Global Inequality and Human Needs: Health and Illness in an Increasingly Unequal World