Sociology of the Rich and Poor Nations Essay Example

Dear Students,

Thank you for your vibrant discussion last Thursday. I promised that I would send you the notes, and here they are. These do not replace the notes you take in class. Do continue to take your own notes too.

Our class is titled sociology of Rich and Poor Nations. Let us then understand the meaning of wealth. What indeed is the wealth of a nation?

I think that most of us would agree that the USA is the primary leader of the first world.  In military might we hold sway. We have a strong economy. Having said this, let us chart the nitty gritty of  wealth.

What indeed is wealth? Is it monetary and valuable possessions or is it the equitable distribution of money or the rich ties between people or an equal and just society

Let us try to code these into INDICATORS that we can MEASURE.  What would some of these indicators look like.

How much of the total wealth do different groups own?

Gender Equity in Pay

Access to Health care

Maternity benefits

Educational Achievement

Food Stability

Incarceration Policies

Women Heads of State. Sociology of the Rich and Poor Nations Essay Example

Let us pull out just one or two indicators. Let us take maternity leave. Let us pull out two countries in the world we may consider poor. Let us pull out Vietnam and Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has 180 days paid leave, 180 days half paid leave, 180 days no paid leave for mothers and they also get time off for breastfeeding. I know this because it is my research area. Vietnam has similar maternity leave. America does not come close to such conditions.

Let us choose another indicator. Let us take  Elected Women Heads of State. The first woman head of state in the world was from Sri Lanka in 1960. The second from India in the 1970’s. Almost all of the South Asian countries have had Women Heads of State.

World Economic Forum Gender Gap report charts the lowest gap between men and women to exist in countries such as Iceland, Norway , Rwanda and Finland. Ahead of the US are also many other countries amongst which are Nicaragua, Slovenia and Bangladesh.

Take a look at the chart below.  Look at the countries that offer free medical care. And the countries that do not.

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What the numbers show is that the concept of Rich and Poor is not so clear cut as we think, with one group on one side and another group on the other side.

Yet the media bombards us with images of utter poverty, are these images not true?

We think that these images are timeless. But there are theories that point to these images as having their roots in Colonization. In the conquest of these countries. There were coherent systems of culture and progress before these countries were invaded by the Colonizers.

If we take the example of India, Before Colonization, India’s share of the international manufacturing market was the same as Europe. Please watch the video I have sent you.

We will continue this discussion further on Thursday.

Dear Students,

In our first lecture we dismantled the clear divide of Rich and Poor Nations by analyzing this divide through particular indicators.

How did we come to see the world in such clear categories? And one theory is that the answer lies in the period of colonization. It is during the period of colonization that one came upon such images as constant starvation, famine and disease of people who are deemed to be “the other”.

How is it possible for a foreign power to penetrate into vast regions?

There are many ways in which a foreign power can penetrate another. One is plunder, you rape the women, kill the women, massacre whole populations and carry away everything of value. This is however only feasible in the short run. If you plan to rule for the longer run, then you may need to consider centralization. This is where the process of how one power coopts, circumvents or destroys different social groups comes in.

On one hand you may need to reshape economies, political systems and cultural  systems, on the other you may need to colonize the mind as well. We will explore the colonization of the mind in detail later.  Today, we will analyze the manner in which material systems were dismantled to allow for maximum exploitation of the resources of the invaded country.

Let us now take a look at the economic system in India before the British.  The system in place was one in which the Zamindar (Lord) owned the land, but the peasants farmed the land. There was a close relationship between the family of the Zamindar and the peasants. In sociology this is called the “Patron Client” relationship. The peasant farmer paid the Zamindar a portion of the earnings, and the Zamindar paid the emperor a part of what was given to him for his land.  When there was a drought, or in case of emergency the Zamindar was able be flexible. The Zamindar was also able to account for time of famine. The system of irrigation was extremely developed as to preserve water for crops during droughts.

The British came up with the system of a “Permanent Settlement” in which the Zamindar had to pay land tax to the British. This tax was calculated on the revenue received during a good crop season, so it was quite high. This tax was fixed. It could not be changed. On the other hand the British neglected systems of irrigation for rice crops that had been the responsibility of the kings and emperors. Instead the British built a system of irrigation for growing poppy and opium to be traded with China. The rich system of agriculture began to break down as irrigation systems for agriculture began to break down. The Zamindars could no longer be flexible in their tax collection during a drought, and millions died in famines. This is perhaps the face of India that was seen in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One Third of land in the state of Bengal was taken from the Zamindars and the peasants by the British for the non payment of taxes. Sociology of the Rich and Poor Nations Essay Example

India became a producer of raw material which was turned into finished products and sold back to India.   The British also dipped into the pool of labor by using the peasants as indentured laborers in their other colonies for the growing of tea. These indentured laborers were only a little better off than slaves.

Some of the Zamindars were in a position to move into these new economies as middle men and became a class loyal to the British.

This lesson therefore highlights the manner in which famines were created, and also highlights the manner in which economic disjuncture created a new social group of middlemen loyal to the British.

I have attached two videos and a long one. Please do watch them all. The first one shows the coolie system, this is how the British created the circulation of bodies for labor, shipping the poorest Indians around to take the place of slaves. This will be in your exam. The next two videos are important too, and you will be questioned on it. One is on the focus on irrigation in ancient times. You have watched this video, but I am resending it so that you could concentrate just on the preservation of water. This happens at 23 minutes into the video. If you have not seen this video before, watch the whole video, otherwise watch just the methods of water preservation. The last video which is only a few mins long is on the famine in Bengal.

I would like you to remember that a State imposed legislation can enter people’s lives and change their lives in many different ways.     During the time of the British this piece of legislation was the permanent settelement.

The individual is only a small factor in the institutions that surround him/her.

This is where we come to the important concept of institutions. Think of all the institutions that are needed to enforce this law, and to keep its boundary of power between the ruler and the ruled.

What are these institutions? The very institution of law, the courts, the clerks, the lawyers, the judges, a whole network of people. Almost all of them white British. The land surveyors, the middlemen, the police, the prisons. The schools that taught the students that the British were just and right. The media that was allowed to print only pro British news . All these institutions surround the poor farmer.

Let us compare this with the Institution of slavery and how it worked. Can you map the processes we discussed here onto the institution of slavery?

We first have the representation of a certain group of people as inferior. The institutionalization of this representation into laws which made this group a property of the slaveholders.  The schools that the slave children could not enter, the homes they could not own, the people they could not marry, all this was written in law and practiced at every level of the tiniest interaction between people.

Let us take the case of witch burning. Women who were thought to be against a particular belief system (Christian) were burnt at the stake. One theory posits that this was because women who had the power to heal, who knew a different system of medicine and healing were being displaced by men who were competing to emerge as “healers”. Burning at the same was a way of moving one group of people out of the way. Therefore along with the clash of belief systems was the struggle for power.

Here is one piece of legislation such as the one we spoke about above in the case of India.

Southern states wanted other states to return escaped slaves. The Articles of Confederation had not guaranteed this. But when Congress adopted the Northwest Ordinance, it a clause promising that slaves who escaped to the Northwest Territories would be returned to their owners. The delegates placed a similar fugitive slave clause in the Constitution. This was part of a deal with New England states. In exchange for the fugitive slave clause, the New England states got concessions on shipping and trade.

These compromises on slavery had serious effects on the nation. The fugitive slave clause (enforced through legislation passed in 1793 and 1850) allowed escaped slaves to be chased into the North and caught. It also resulted in the illegal kidnapping and return to slavery of thousands of free blacks. The three-fifths compromise increased the South’s representation in Congress and the Electoral College. In 12 of the first 16 presidential elections, a Southern slave owner won. Extending the slave trade past 1800 brought many slaves to America. South Carolina alone imported 40,000 slaves between 1803 and 1808 (when Congress overwhelmingly voted to end the trade). So many slaves entered that slavery spilled into the Louisiana territory and took root.

Northern states didn’t push too hard on slavery issues. Their main goal was to secure a new government. They feared antagonizing the South. Most of them saw slavery as a dying institution with no economic future. However, in five years the cotton gin would be invented, which made growing cotton on plantations immensely profitable, as well as slavery.

In the laws of America the slaves were defined as property and the one drop rule in 1911 classified anyone with even one drop of blood as African American (the term used then was Negro) and subject to the formal and informal social practices of oppression. Sociology of the Rich and Poor Nations Essay Example

How was it possible to ignore the death of millions, as in the case of India under the British? Or the enslavement, lynching and segregation of African Americans or the internment of our own people within camps?

The answer lies in the creation of “the other”. When we construct people as “the other” and “Not us” and when we have the power to enforce this boundary upon them so many acts of killing and oppression can be justified.

In the case of slavery,  one group of people were oppressed and exploited. Therefore, though the nation lost on moral grounds on this, the whole nation did not lose on the economic front. In the case of India, however, her whole being, her resources and people were shaped to give maximum profits to the British.

In this lecture then we examined how formal mechanisms of power such as legislation imposed from above (the ruler) and in this case the Colonial State can cause much suffering, death and disjuncture on those whom it is imposed upon. We also opened this out to informal mechanisms of racism that accompanies such legislations. Sometimes, even when the formal legislations have been long forgotten, its social effects and practices continue.

We then examined the institutions that uphold these formal, and sometimes informal mechanisms. For example, a family that is being burnt out may call the police and find no help since the police may side with the oppressors.

We ended the lecture by placing the ability to oppress and exploit on the boundary between the “Us” and the “Them” which we shall explore further as we go along.

For today, I leave you with a reading of about three pages.

What do you think of this article and the people that it discusses?

Do you think that they are barbaric, if so why?

Please post your thoughts on this. Sociology of the Rich and Poor Nations Essay Example