Sociology and Ecology

The Exaggerated Ecological Catastrophe

With globalization, we observe that concerns about ecology and environment are beginning to seize the attention of the states, the capitalist organizations as well as nations. Thanks to the earnest publicity by various media, the world is finally informed about some of the imminent catastrophes – Natural resources running out; Population growing faster than food supplies; Species and forests are going to be extinct soon; and air and water are more polluted now than ever.

 While these issues are real, we cannot safely assume complete accuracy in the statements by the environmental advocates. I suspect that these catastrophes are most of the time exaggerated by the environmentalists. For example, although environmentalists have long attributed rising greenhouse effect to technology like airplanes for releasing pollutants near the atmosphere, it is also the very existence airplanes near the atmosphere that has absorbed the sun’s heat, thereby reducing global warming. More examples of such exaggeration and false accusations are highlighted by Bjorn Lomborg in “The Truth About the Environment” from The Economist, August 2001.

Here, I am more concerned with understanding what are the social factors driving the environmentalists to exaggerate their statements.

Firstly, to keep money rolling in for environmental causes, the conservationists must leverage on the power of media to stir up the interest of nations in environmental conservation. Conservationists are driven to exaggerate the deterioration of environmental condition in order to justify higher media exposure and global attention.

Secondly, exaggeration of environmental problems could capture the attention of the states, leading to more resources channeled into finding solutions for environmental issues. This point must be examined in parallel with the previous point: Higher media exposure, especially on a global media platform, would inevitably lead to greater pressure for the state to step up and take ownership of the problems, since any lack of response would imply the state’s incompetency. Thus, as we can observe, following any series of reports on environmental problems, the G7 world leaders would be propelled to jointly find remedy to pressing environmental issues.

Some may say that the exaggeration is legitimate, especially since environmental issues have traditionally been neglected. However, I think that the exaggeration would have serious consequence of imperfect allocation of resources. States are influenced to channel research funds and resources away from medical cause to environmental cause. The discovery of remedies to illnesses could be delayed or hindered. These remedies have more direct effect on saving lives than saving environment could. Thus, my warning here is that states and nations must carefully assess the claims by various civil societies such as the environmentalist groups. Otherwise, the wrongful extension of resources to the wrong cause may lead to further social problems.

Technology and Energy

The Controversial Social Impact of Youtube

Youtube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. YouTube was created in February 2005 and by July 2006, daily viewer rate was more than 100 million videos ranging from user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content such as videoblogging and short original videos.

On the surface, Youtube as technological breakthrough seems to have brought about positive social impacts. It brings the global community closer through information and knowledge sharing and gives everyone a channel for self-expression especially on political issues which are usually censored in State-control media. However, based on my own user experience and further research, I wish to refute the above by highlighting the possible negative social impacts of Youtube.

First, Youtube successfully pools in variety of information and knowledge for one’s learning but at the same time it is used as an instrument for widespread dissemination of pornography. While some might say I am exaggerating, my personal view is that pornography serves to degrade women, reducing them to mere sex objects. In fact, pornography can usually be traced back to some syndicates which force poor women into the trade and make a fortune from exploiting them. As such, the widespread and lack of censorship of pornography helps reinforce the low position of women (gender inequality) and indirectly contribute to perpetuation of organized crime.   

                Second, Youtube serves as an alternative source of information to state-controlled media, and helps the Nation to keep control of the State’s power. However, Youtube also has a potential to undermine national security. According an article from U.S. News published in September 2008, terrorist groups like Al-Queda attempted to make use of Youtube to conduct militant propaganda. It is difficult to monitor such videos constantly and remove them promptly. By the time the videos are removed, a few days have lapsed and undesirable sentiments have been instilled and stirred up within people. Although so far this has not manifested into full-blown social chaos, the potential to result in social disruption is nevertheless conceivable, especially if the censorship and regulation become laxer.

                Third, Youtube is often applauded for its success at fostering a global community through information and knowledge sharing among people from different parts of the world. Some may say, in sociological term, that Youtube brings about greater solidarity in globalization since people with similar or shared ideas can come together to exchanges ideas, regardless of their nationalities. However, I argue that Youtube also has a dysfunction of aggravating urban bias. Certain groups of rural people are excluded from this global community: people without the technical knowledge of surfing the Internet and people without the possession of computers or networks. Such phenomenon happened because network infrastructures normally concentrate in the cities to support trade activities whereas rural areas are given secondary priority in infrastructural development. Hence, Youtube’s unintentional exclusion of certain groups of people contributes another aspect of inequality – the unequal access to information and knowledge.

                In conclusion, although Youtube has the above mentioned negative impact on society, the benefits it brings about nevertheless outweigh so far. Like every double-edged sword, Youtube must adequately regulate its environment so as to minimize social disruption associated with socially harmful videos. However, the onus shall be on Youtube alone. The state and institution must bear the responsibility of educating the nation to discern wrongful information from the vast collection of knowledge in Youtube.

Reference:

Bandyk, Matthew, 2008. Controversy over Youtube’s ‘Terrorist’ Videos. U.S. News. url: http://www.usnews.com/blogs/risky-business/2008/9/15/controversy-over-youtubes-terrorist-videos.html

 

Disease and Globalization

Disease as a crisis for national building

                Disease is commonly thought of as a problem and a natural occurrence that could affect anyone with the same probability. Everytime a pandemic strike any society, the medical institution would engage in quests to find a cure so that ‘everyone’ has a fair chance to be healed. Similiarly, the state would put in place medical checkpoints to thoroughly filtered the infected people, so that ‘everyone’ will be safe from the infection. We mistakenly assume that these are natural act to protect humanity. No doubt it may be true to some extent, disease could still be used as a social leverage to heighten power and conflict in society. Here, I want to share my opinion about 3 common ways on how inequality and power struggle could be seen whenever disease is claimed to plagued a society.

 

1. struggle between city-dwellers and rural people for medical help

                Although a disease may strike both the cities and the rural areas, I believe that the state tends to favour the cities more by channeling more medical resources to battle the disease in cities. There are apparently political agenda to such bias. First, the media and the communication infrastructure are usually more established in cities, making the cities more visible to the rest of the nation. Should the government not respond promptly and adequately to the cities, information about its incompetency will be spreaded. This would lower the legitimacy of the power vested in the government as the nation loses faith in it. Thus, the government would prioritise cities first in its rescue. A second reason is that the more important economic activities are generally congregated in cities. Should the rescue of cities be delayed, the cost of disruption of trade is higher. Hence, the nation’s medical resources are first rationed to the cities. These observation could also be made in the film shown during the lecture (hereafter, it will be called ‘the film’). The chinese government responsed slower to SARS in rural areas than in cities.

While disease could hit anyone, here we see inequality in that the people living in rural areas suffer more impact from the disease due to the slower response by the government in tackling the issue there.

 

2. Disease as a crisis for national building and legitimacy of government

                Whenever a disease plagues the nation, I notice it would be a perfect time for the government to justify its existence. Ususally, the state would not hesitate in declaring the crisis condition of the nation. The purpose is probably to stir up nation-building sentiments so that when the state implements public policies to tackle the crisis, the nation would give its best cooperation to the state, since the state is acting ‘in the interest of the nation’. During the course of tiding over the crisis, the state’s actions and nation’s the cooperative responses would help bring about greater national unity and legitimacy of the government. In the film, I could see that the SARS pandemic was once again used as a mean for the Singapore government to establish its authority as a government most competent and qualified to be the nation’s steward. While Singapore government certainly deserves the credit during the SARS episode, it is still important for us to examine the sociological implication because a state’s increased legitimacy during national crisis may be in turn used to justify or even blindfold the people from seeing the actual power domination of the state on the nation.

               

3. Disease and international power struggle

                Besides using crisis of disease as an instrument to establish power domestically, powerful governments may also leverage on crisis of disease to institutionalize power and influences on the globalized world. For example in the film, although SARS had yet to reach the United States, the US medical research institutions had voluntarily initiated research to create a immunity for the disease. Here, I suspect that there are some reasons for this response. First, the participation in the research sought to communicate the message that the United States is a powerful nation, the ‘big brother’, that partakes in actions to affect the world. Second, should United State succeed in discovering a cure to SARS, it would hold a key that guards its own national security from possible SARS-related biology attacks launched by its enemy, i.e. the terrorists and the communists. To hold this key would also signal that the United States had the power, the ‘upper hand’, in the ownership of biological means to attack and defend. Hence, while the United States may genuinely seek to further the humanitarian course in its search of the SARS remedy, there actually may be sociological implications of power formation for political reasons.

               

In conclusion, I see disease as a natural phenomenon that introduces instability to the society. It is in finding treatment to the disease (i.e. restoring social stability) that sociological forces come into play. These forces could be conflicts over inequality or power struggle for domination, as covered in the early examples. Therefore, the message I wish bring about here is that as far as possible we should use sociological imagination  – it helps us to link phenomena in the natural realm to those in the social sphere, and thus develop greater meaning in things happening around us.

Urbanization and Globalization

The Healthy Divide between HDB and Private Housing People

The type of house we live in can constitute our social identities. People living in slums are perceived to be poor, marginalized and even criminal. However this perception of one’s economic and social standing is not exaggerated. People are indeed categorized into classes by assigning them specific house types.

In Singapore, an 80% majority belongs to the HDB class – the group that lives in Singapore’s public housing. The HDB people are usually from the lower income groups relative to those living in private houses. These private houses are located away from the HDB heartlands, leading to a visible divide of people based on income. Yet, unlike in other societies, our HDB people seem to embrace their identity even though it has the connotation of a lower economic status. Here, I want to examine how Singapore managed to conceal this connotation.

First, the government had brilliantly elevated the status of HDB people by housing an overwhelming majority into HDB flats. From a symbolic interactionist standpoint, housing a majority into HDB is crucial because this creates more interactions among HDB dwellers. An actor’s repeated encounters with other HDB people during social interaction will socialize him to think that it is the norm to be HDB dwellers or even a national pride to support public housing. On the flip side, the mind is socialized to condescend private housing people as the ‘minority’ and ‘outside the general Singaporean community’. Hence, HDB people can better accept their identity since they apparently could not see how they are of lower social standing, given their majority status.

Second, the local television has all along subtly glamorized the HDB community. Many sitcoms or dramas (like the example of ‘My Sassy Neighbour’) featured HDB people and their lives as the theme. Characters are constructed according to commonly assumed personalities of HDB people, such as the ‘Kiasu’ – the fear of losing out – which is exemplified in behaviour such as accumulating too much food on one’s plate during a buffet lunch. The film-makers usually craft these behaviors to look pleasantly funny, contrary to the social stigma that criticises them as ‘low-class’. The exposure to such media portrayal of HDB people helps induce the mind to accept one’s identity as the HDB people seeking simple pleasure in life.

Third, the government orchestrated a formation of the HDB community through institutions like the Resident Committee (RC) and the Town Council. These institutions exist to especially look after the welfare of the HDB people and their services to the community are regarded as a distinctive privilege that private housing people have no share in. The social interactions with these institutions, particularly in situations where people seek their helps, will facilitate the establishment of common ideas that HDB life is desirable as one is better taken care of here than in private housing. However, the truer case is that the institutions are usually ineffective in addressing individuals’ needs, given the sheer size of people the institutions need to attend to, whereas private housing people in fact receive better assistance from their privately hired consultants.

 

Conclusion:

Although it is fortunate of Singapore that the great divide between HDB and Private Housing people has yet to manifest into hostility, thanks to the various mechanisms as mentioned above, we must also be alerted that the government’s controlling power over the HDB territories has some alarming implication. For example, during the election, the government tends to draw up the Group Representation Constituency (GRC) boundaries in strategic manner to win the elections, given that it possesses more information about each HDB community’s receptivity of the government. Also, the government may leverage on its ability of having controlling say in urban planning to influence voting. (E.g not upgrading flats in territories which it loses to the opposition) Therefore, we must be aware that urbanization is not a simple process of city formation. The urban planning aspect of urbanization is vulnerable to manipulation by the State for its interest, rather than for the people’s interest.

Democracy is a political strategy

In this lecture, we learnt the different political orientations in society. One of the most prominent systems is the democracy. Democracy, by right, seeks to establish a government by the people in which the supreme power is vested in the people. This is an ideal type – equal representation of all people. However, this ideal form is attainable only in small groups. When population grows and eventually becomes a gigantic body called nation, it is beyond the nation’s ability to assemble everyone to discuss the nation’s matter. [Democracy] is impossible for the collectivity cannot undertake the direct settlement of all the controversies that may arise. (Michel, 1962). The pragmatic solution is to use representatives or elected agents to partake in political activities. Eventually, this lead to the formation of Nation-State, where a professional body called politicians represents the voice of a really huge group of people.

Here, we can notice that the modern democracy we have now is a hybrid of democracy and oligarchy (ie. political power vested in a class or a group of people called elites). But I argue that it is in fact oligarchy guised as democracy. Our politicians virtually make all final decisions for the nation and sometimes do so despite controversies and objections at grass-root level. For example, in Singapore, despite objections of casinos in the upcoming Integrated Resort, particularly from many religious and social welfare groups, the government maintained its position as final for the name sake of ‘sustainable economic growth in future’.  Thus, my question is:  if the political orientation is an oligarchy in substance, then why retain the form and the title of democracy? Here, I argue that democracy is used as a political strategy to justify the State’s existence and to protect underlying oligarchy.

Justify the State’s existence

In Marxist theories, the capitalist state is malevolent because it exists to serve the interest of the capitalists and perpetuates the inequality between capitalists and the labor class at the social-economic structural level.  To justify the state’s existence, democracy is used as an ideology to fool everyone into thinking that in this ideal system, each has so-called equal power and autonomy to choose their representatives. Thus the democracy title and the crucial rituals of democracy, like voting and elections, are retained to give an impression that the chosen political body, hence the State, is the best agent to administer to every class of people. However, the truth is that these agents are mainly from the capitalist class since the objective criteria in nominating agents are huge amount of personal wealth and high level of social status. Many working class leaders could not pass such barrier of entry. So eventually, the political body consists mainly of capitalists that administer public policies which serves its class interest.

Protect the oligarchy

Democracy is capable of evoking a false sense of collectivity in society. This is because people are prompted to become involved in Nation’s matter. By focusing on bigger issues outside one self, each person in the nation is distracted from looking at the prevailing individual problems arising from incompetency of state government ie. the oligarchy. In America, the democratic citizens became so actively and collectively engaged in debates about State sovereignty and about the foreign policies in Iraq and Afghanistan wars, such that internal issues of income inequality and failure of the government to manage its economy were overlooked. Another example is Malaysia. The Mahathir administration influenced the nation to rivet its eyes on the threats of economic rivalry posed by Singapore, and divert people’s attention away from the government’s reluctance to resolve the problems of racial inequality within the country. In these examples, we can see that the political bodies seek to protect themselves by concealing their ineffectiveness. Should the people turn their eyes away from national concerns (ie. a moral imposed unto all citizens under democracy), and look into individual problems arising from incompetent government, the oligarchy will risk being removed in the next election.

What can the citizens do then?
There will certainly be contradictions of democracy and oligarchy in many so-called democratic nations because practically it is impossible to administrator effectively through gigantic body of nation without using representation system. However, we must understand the implication of this deviation from the pure type of demography, meaning how the ruling class may have the tendency to manipulate the ruled so as to protect itself and to extend its own interest. Thus, we must remain vigilant to provide oversight on the government so that it acts, most of the time, in the nation’s interest. Two possible areas of oversight is the prevention of the development of a closed status group of officials and the minimization of the authority of officialdom in influencing public opinions. (Weber, 2003)

Reference:
Michels, Robert. (1962). Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical tendencies of Modern Democracry. The Free Press.

Weber, Max. (1968). Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. The University of California Press.

Political Identity, Ethnicity and Religion

 

Case Analysis: Egypt’s Rubbish People

According Max Weber, Man is a meaningful human. He constantly seeks meaning and purposes in his social context and actions. Before the age of Enlightenment, values and beliefs set out by religions are the keys to understanding                 the world we live in. However, with advent of modernity and human rationality, it was predicted that science will replace religions and diminish the latter’s influence in our value systems. Yet, we observed that in many part of the world, religions still powerfully play the role of the divider, stratifying people and perpetuating inequality. In many instances, stratification based on religions is institutionalized and discrimination is widely becoming the norm.

Here, I will use the functional and conflict perspectives to analyze the role of religious discrimination in Egypt. The analysis is based on the documentary, Unreported World: Egypt’s Rubbish People, available at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8207570039564224446.

Summary of Video
Reporter Evan Williams uncovers a secretive society of around 40,000 Christians literally living in rubbish in a Cairo ghetto overrun by rats and disease. They make their livelihood by recycling the rubbish by hand. Williams also interviewed converts who reveal that the State do torture those trying to convert. Further, government officials have been illegally refusing to allow thousands of converts to register their new religion on their ID cards. In one interview, a father cried over the 5-month disappearance of his daughter, lamenting that the police refuse to search for her because she is a Christian.

Role of Religious Discrimination – Functional Perspective
1.  Every modern society would undergo a certain degree of division of labor, which inevitably gives rise to occupations that is socially perceived as undesirable. Yet, it is necessary for some actors to fulfill these roles so that society can operate properly. In Egypt’s case, people involved in the recycling-by-hand business will unavoidably get frequent physical contacts with ‘contaminated materials’ under the Islamic laws, like pigs’ wastes and the blood of dead animals. Thus, the majority Muslim are not suitable to work as recycling labor. Religious marginalization is thus a useful tool to force the minority Christians into this occupation. By limiting their career and housing opportunity, the Christians will be driven to live in slums and then naturally work in the recycling-by-hand business.

2. In order for a society to function stably, it is necessary to maintain strong collective consciousness. This means that people should conform to the common norms, values and beliefs, lest individualism will disrupt the social fabric. With higher commonality, society will be benefit as the State or the institutions to administer policies more effective and efficient as people reach consensus about the institutionalized rules. This is the same reason for Egyptian government to limit the mobility of people converting to other religions outside Islam. As the law systems are inherently based on Islamic laws, it would be necessary to the status quo of Islam as the majority religion lest there will be less agreement over the national laws, which introduce instability in the social structures.

Role of Religious Discrimination – Conflict Perspective
While I agree that politicians or policy-makers who back their religions are more or less genuinely devoted to their faiths, I believe that to some extent, religions and marginalization are used purely as political strategy in the power struggle among the classes of people.

1. Political systems in modern societies are commonly organized into the Nation-State structure. The State, ie. The government, is to represent the interest of the Nation, ie. The people, in administering public policies. It is thus imperative for the State to gain support of the Nation. In absence of strong nationalistic sentiments in a society to create rapport between the government and the people, religion is often used by politicians to justify their existence. In Egypt, as the majority is Muslim, it would only be wise for the State to side this religion (apart from the fact that Egypt is traditionally a Muslim country) so that Muslim people would perceive the government as guarding their interest and thus continue to support the public policies. Hence, religious discrimination is used to protect the interest of the Muslim people, as well as the government’s interest to remain in power as the elected.

2. A State’s duty is to advance the interests of all people in the Nation by common ways such as improving the general living standards. Thus, a failure to deliver these results often evokes negative sentiments among people and ultimately leads to the overthrowing of the incapable government. To protect themselves from such ill fate, politicians frequently legitimize or institutionalize religious discrimination to justify the unequal living conditions of minority, although the actual reason lies in the incompetency of the government. Here, it is possible that the Egyptian government might be using the same tactic. The government is unable to provide substantially and equally for all people so it channels more resources into the hands of the majority Muslim to gain their favor. To prevent the minority Christians from rebelling to such inequality, the State must reduce their political representation by justify their disadvantaged state using religion, thereby striking a common chord with the Muslim people to deem the Christians as a threat to their belief system. Thus, the State justifies the unequal treatment as deserving for the Christians, rather than a result of the State’s inability to provide for them. 

Conclusion
I believe that religion belongs to the private sphere of activities which separated from the public life of a citizen. Thus I could not agree with politicians that interfere with the private sphere by administering their public policies with a religious agenda. Often, doing so would superimpose the political identity based on religion, which create inequality and more misery. Both politicians and citizens must be cautious not to blur the line between private and public lives. Looking at the example of Singapore, I believe that ideal model for politicians to create collective consciousness is through successful establishment of nationalism, not through religious stratification.

War and Terror

The Ultimate Superpowers on the War of Terror

War has always been a distant issue for a Singaporean like me. But as far as I could recall, the two most controversial wars of my time were the War on Terrorism between the United States of America and Afghanistan, and the Iraq War. I prided myself that I already attained the best knowledge of these wars from newspapers and various publications. But in recent study of wars (because of this module), I realized that I was to large extent still ignorant of the truth and lies of these wars. Here, I want to share about some findings which I find astonished.

The real terrorist is not the Taliban nor the Al-Qaeda, but the US government. In Afghanistan, this figure hover around 26,000 people with a majority who died indirectly from the war. Some of the indirect deaths were caused by a lack of medical and food supplies, which international groups like United Nations promised to provide. The amount of bloodshed on Afghanistan civilians far outweighed the death of roughly 3,000 Americans and foreign nationals who were killed by the Afghanistan terrorists led during September 11, 2001. In my opinion, this is ridiculous and the Bush and Blair government had leveraged on the 911 incidents to justify its killing of innocent Afghanistan people as ‘Operation Endurance and Freedom’. Despite the atrocity, during an interview with award-winning investigative journalist, John Pilger, the United Nations spokesman defended the US, claiming that the ratio of death was considerably low, compared with other wars in history, given the relatively large scale of operation. The statement dumbfounded me: does the statement means that the death of many, even the innocence, can be made justifiable so long as the warlords control the number of death within the historical limit?

Apart from the controversial Afghanistan War of Terror, another source of public uproar is the Iraq war. The invasion was led by the US military, on the allegation that the Saddam Hussein regime possessed mass weapon of destruction. Yet, there was no weapon of such found since the invasion. The evidence is clear once again about who exactly played the role of terrorist: about 88,000 – 96,000 Iraqi people died from the violence of Iraq war, not including the half a million of civilians (mainly children) who died during the 10-year Iraq sanctions imposed by US and UK. Despite the amount of misery, it saddens me that the warlords of the Western world still insisted that their ‘security plans’ are successful. When asked on the National television if the death of half a million of Iraqi children through the sanctions is justifiable, Madeline Albright, US Secretary of State, replied that ‘this is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it’.

 I believe the ultimate superpower that could protest against the wars is the public voice. There is a duty for those, who have insights about the truth and lies of these wars, to educate others. This is vital because the information that we have regarding these wars are predominately distorted. In face of the human misery resulting from wars, global citizens like you and me need to break the silence and take a stand.

Here’s a video of John Pilger’s Breaking the Silence. Must watch !!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-210088912352527308

Lecture 5: Crime and Globalization

Which is more harmful, street crime or white-collar crime?

 

During this lecture, we learn about how globalization has brought about transnational crime. In globalization, we observe rapid urbanization, which often leads to high unemployment and widening income gaps. Thus, the poor or unemployment people, having no proper occupations that compensate them well, are driven to criminal work. For example, people may join street gangs that extort, rob or even traffic drugs for a living.

 

However, what dawns upon me is that why is the poor always being stereotyped as having greater potential of criminality. Having reviewed the past lecture materials, I realized that the rich and powerful people also have the capacity to cause social detriments. If crime is broadly defined as activities that are unjust, senseless, or disgraceful, then white-collar crime such as exploitation of workers by the rich capitalists should be regarded as having almost the same severity as crime of violence committed by the poor. Here, I want to discuss three things – one, what is the type of white-collar crimes that I refer to; two, why society normally overlooks white-collar crime in its discussion of crime; three, why should we look into white-collar crime, especially in globalization.

 

What is white-collar crime?

As the name has suggested, this kind of crime is committed by people who are relatively richer and more powerful in society. Harm is usually not inflicted on others through physical violence yet the victims can be hurt indirectly. For instance, in trying to boost profit, some employers cut back spending on safety act and thereby repeatedly expose their employees to work-related injuries or death. This is especially true in mining work. The deliberate negligence of safety can result in mine explosions which amount to many deaths. Yet, incidences like that are never regarded as mass murder, but merely an accident or a tragedy. Likewise, the white-collar criminal faces a lighter punishment as compared to his street crime counterpart. While the typical criminals are jailed or executed for using violence, the employers who indirectly murder his employees usually get away by paying fine for not adhering to safety regulations.

 

Why society normally overlooks white-collar crime?

So, if white-collar crime can harm as many people as street crime, why do we stereotype crime as those committed by the poor? There are two explanations to this.

 

First, throughout history, the criminal justice systems all over the world punish crime of violence more heavily. People are thus socialized to think of white-collar crime to be less evil as crime of violence. Further, crime of violence is largely associated with poor people or poorer communities in a country. Therefore we stereotypically think of poor people as criminals.

 

Second, unlike crime of violence, whereby the assaulters directly and intentionally inflict harm on their choice victims, the harm caused by white-collar crime is effected indirectly and unintentionally. Using the mine example, the negligent employers do not intend to kill their workers. In actual fact, they would rather not to have any work-related injury or death because the compensations relating to such accidents may slash their profits. The largely capitalist societies also empathize with them – the criminals are basically doing their jobs by cutting cost and maximizing profit. Although many workers may be harmed, it is after all an unintentional result from a legitimate pursuit of profits. Since white-collar criminals are responsible for indirect harm, they are thus not regarded as dangerous as criminals of violence.

 

So why should we look into white-collar crime, especially in globalization?

Globalization prompts greater competition in the capitalist market. According to Marx, many capitalists resort to aggressive cost cutting to remain competitive. Many have globalized their businesses and moved operations overseas to tap on cheaper labor. Some have even leveraged on the society’s unique culture to reinforce a system of exploitation. For example, Japanese workers’ admirable work ethics and their fealty to the companies have been taken advantaged by many multi-national companies. In the case of Toyato Japan, a quality control manager was worked to death in his final month from clocking 93 hours of overtime, unpaid. As for MacDonald’s Japan, workers are promoted to bona fide manager so that the company can avoid paying overtime. As globalization intensifies the relentless pursuit of cost-cutting, the catastrophe of labor exploitation will aggravate further by the same scale, costing society much more. It is thus important for society to recognize and monitor the magnitude of such white-collar crime. This would necessarily mean that we ought to stop thinking of crime as consisting only crime of violence by the poor. People need to develop a more realistic view about crime and their actual state of security.

 

Reference

Rowley, Ian (2008). McDonald’s not loving Japan court ruling. Retrieved on 5 September, 2008. Website:http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/blog/eyeonasia/archives/2008/01/mcdonalds_not_l.html

Harden, Blaine. (2008). Japan’s Killer Work Ethic: Toyota Engineer’s Family Awarded Compensation. Retrieved on 5 September,2008.
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/12/AR2008071201630_pf.html

Reiman, Jeffrey. (1998). The Richer Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice, 5^th edition. Allyn & Bacon.

 

Lect 4: Women and Displaced Men

Is displacement of men in corporate leadership probable?

According to Forbes’s latest report on the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women 2008, Temasek Holding chief executive HO Ching has been ranked 8th, just behind US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Ms Ho is also the wife of Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

Perhaps, Ms Ho’s success is an inspiration for many Singaporean women. However, for the male members of sociey, such inspiration can be alarming: Just as we observe how women displace men in low-income jobs, it seems reasonably forseeable that women, in the high-income jobs, may threaten the leadership position of their male counterparts in industries which are traditionally dominated by men. Here, my stand is that this concern is unfounded because till this day, while there are fewer barriers for women to enter the corporate world, there are still other structural barriers that slow or even stop women’s progession up the corporate ladder.

Structural Barrier No.1 – Masculine nature of corporate bureaucracy
According to a research by the London Business School, women find it hard to fit into the masculine environment of business schools in general. This is because the schools emulate the actual settings in the corporate world, in which business is done according to male rules. While some women accept the inevitability of ‘doing business like a man’, a majority of women are deterred from even to enroll into the school since they could not identify with this masculinity. Below shows the percentage of women students at top business schools:

Business School                                          Country          Women student (%)
Univerisity of Pennsylvania: Wharton             US                          37
London Business School                                UK                          23
Columbia Business School                             US                          33
Stanford University GSB                                  US                         38
Harvard Business School                                US                         36
Insead                                                  France/Singapore            24
MIT: Sloan                                                      US                          30
IE Business School                                      Spain                         36
Unversity of Chicago GSB                              US                           35
University of Cambridge: Judge                     UK                          32
Sources: FT 2008 Clobal MBA ranking

The inference from this research is clear: fewer women students in business schools would mean that fewer women pursue corporate career. According to the dean of Simmons School of Management, a business school designed for women, only 2 percent of chief executive officers at Fortune 500 companies are women, only 16 percent of corporate officer are women and only 8 percent of top level staff. The low representation in corporate leadership is clearly associated with the small female enrollment into business school. Besides that reason, another powerful force contributing to the low female representation is that the ideal models of leadership widely assume masculine characteristics such as toughness, individualism and assertiveness. Women are thus at a disadvantage for promotion because these qualities are not inherent of them.

Therefore, given this structural barrier that promotes and rewards masculinity, it will be difficult for more women to climb corporate ladder. Thus, the displacement of men is quite unlikely at the moments for the corporate world.

Structural Barrier No. 2 – Lack of Social Capital and Power
Social capital is a concept in business, economics, organizational behaviour, political science, public health, sociology and natural resources management that refers to connections within and between social networks. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu explained that an actor who has social capital can derive information from his network and in turn use the information to enhance his competitive advantage. Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, the former editor of Harvard Business Review, seems to echo Bourdieu in her explanation of power: Power refers to the ability to achieve goals and one of the organizational sources of power is the posession of more information over others. Both scholars’ theories also ties in with the common business rule for winning – it is not about who you are, but who you know. Therefore, most corporate leadership, we observe, have strategic social connections within and outside the organization.

Using these concepts, what I want to say about women’s disadvantage in corporate career advancement is this – the way our corporations and the society organize themselves poses difficulties for women to make strong social connections which are very much needed to obtain power and social capital.  Most career women are expected to fulfill their duties as home-making wives and nurturing mothers. Unlikely men who can be 100% corporate animals that fully devote to both work and after-work social networking events, most women have to forgo after-work events to serve at home. Yet, such social events can be crucial in determining one’s fate in one’s career path because during these events, important social connections are made (ie. social capital are accumulated) and important information that confers one power are exchanged. Women who miss out on such social opportunities are bound to lose their edge in seizing leadership opportunities in a corporation. Thus, like I have emphasized earlier on, this structural barrier which limits women’s involvement in corporate social activities would protect the men from being displaced.

Conlusion:
Although the lecture explained that women succeeded in overthrowing the state of male dominance in industrial work and thereby displace men, I personally think that women are far from becoming a forceful challenge to men in the corporate world at this point. However, this condition may not hold true for long. Many corporations are increasing taking heed of research studies that associate the presence of women in senior management with greater profitability. This means we may expect institutional changes to make business environment more acceptable for women and to provide them level playing field with the men.

Lecture 3 – Work and Trade

Objective of Lecture

Work and trade are two most widespread activities in the global economy. In this lecture, I learnt about how work and trade in modern societies can give rise to social problems in global context.

 

Transformation of Work and Trade

Work and trade are certainly not exclusive features of modernity. They already existed even back in traditional societies which comprised of tribes and villages. However, work and trade had different meanings as those in modern days. In the past, work is an activity in which man combined resources using his creativities and skills to produce something solely. This man was a craftsman and was capable of sustaining his livelihood by making his own tools and growing his own food. But should he lack anything, he would simply barter-trade with his neighbors. However, with modernization alongside industrialization and the division of labor, the craftsman was reduced to a mere labor. This was because he no longer owned the means of production; neither could he exert creativity in his meaninglessly repeated task nor take ownership of the end products. Instead of exchanging the products he created for something he needed, the worker now trades money (his low wage) as a commodity for another commodity (that was produced in another factory by another worker he did not know). In conclusion, the transformation of work and trade from traditional to modern society changed the following: First, man is no longer the creator of commodity, but is a small gear in the whole production chain that is easily replaced. Second, work and trade become devoid of social interaction because when people trade commodities, they are not aware of the creators of the commodities whereas in the past social relationship was established during economic exchange. Third, the capitalist organization of work and trade had contributed to widening income gap due to exploitation of the labor by the capitalists and this leads to other social problems.

 

Rationale behind DOL and Free Trade

Based on classical economists’ theories, division of labor (DOL) and free trade are capable of achieving efficiency and productivity, thereby maximizing social wealth by making commodities at cheaper rates. Adam Smith attributed efficiency of DOL to (1) workers develop dexterity when they repeat the same, simple task, (2) production time is reduced since the workers do not switch from one task to another, (3) workers have greater tendency to mechanize the task if it is simpler and recurring. This philosophy of Smith is applied to the global economy with the advent of globalization. Different parts of a production line are outsourced to different countries that possess the relevant specialization. David Ricardo seconded this organization of economic activities and termed the relevant specialization as comparative advantages, the abilities of a country to produce something more efficient than others given the same amount of resources. Ricardo thus proposed that the ideal global economy is one in which each country does what it does best and in turn trades freely across borders for the commodities it wants. Over time, such manner of economic exchange is institutionalized to regulate international work and trade.

 

Problems of International Institutions for work and trade

Although the ideology of DOL and Free trade promised to maximize social wealth, they are in fact used as justifications to legitimize exploitation. For the name sake of efficiency and productivity, capitalists around the world seek the cheapest form of labor so as to cut cost and earn most profit for themselves. Many a time, countries with weak enforcement of labor protection laws are chosen by the capitalists so that there is less resistance against their exploitation. As a result, the exploited people are faced with multiple social problems, such as poverty (due to the low wage paid), unhealthy working environment, insufficient benefits and child labor abuse.

 

Although international institutions are set up to resolve the social problems of international work and trade, their efforts are usually in vain, if not their efforts go into serving political agendas. This is because the institutions are mainly dominated by the capitalist states which inevitably draft policies that favor their own multi-national corporations. For example, laws were passed to ban child labor in the United States but yet no law is enforced against the same corporations when they abuse child labor in other countries. Therefore, countries that are not represented in these international institutions will be legitimately exploited in the disguise of DOL and free trade. There are thus more social problems with globalization.

 

My response:

As a business school student, the so-call future drivers of corporations, I am certainly inspired by this lecture as it opened my horizon to reflect upon the actions of these organizations which I may work for. Although sociology is not a moral science that teaches people how they should think, its unique framework of analyzing a situation from both function and conflict points of view will lay out all the cards for humanity to decide its actions and its fates. Perhaps, the only caution that I have about sociology is that the sociologically trained should not fall into skepticism. All of us, be it lecturer, tutor or students, can easily develop a tendency to attribute social problems to a particular social actor, be it an individual or an organization, by making sweeping one-sided statements. E.g. proving that capitalist corporations are exploitators without highlighting that increasingly, more corporations have amended their ways and take upon their shoulders the responsibility to minimum the detriments they cause. Quoting Max Weber, the sociologically trained has the duty to educate the mass by presenting objective facts yet leave the mass to decide for oneself their actions and opinions. It is a tall order, I dare say.