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.