CHAPTER COMMENTARY
Chapter 14 has close links to Chapter 13 on Poverty, Social Exclusion and Welfare, and also
develops many of the theories of globalization that are included in chapter 4. The chapter
provides an account of some of the empirical materials relating to inequality across the
emerging global society. The opening paragraphs highlight the growing number of superwealthy in the twenty-first-century world as evidenced by the 2011 ‘Rich List’ in Table 14.1.
These success stories are contrasted with the billions of workers currently earning barely
enough to live on. The text links back to the previous chapter on poverty by stressing that
the same mechanisms are at work but on an even greater scale on a global level. The
chapter proceeds in four sections. The first sketches a typology of the countries of the world
by income level. The second places some empirical flesh on the bones of the typology. The
third covers the terrain of historical demography and looks ahead at the likely trends in
world population. The fourth deals with the sociology of development and the role that
political institutions play within the process of development.
Global economic inequality is defined as signalling the systematic inequalities that exist
between countries, allowing for the simultaneous existence of inequalities within countries.
Competing measures of a country’s wealth are examined, namely Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) and Gross National Income (GNI). The text uses the World Bank’s typology of highincome, middle-income and low-income countries, while pointing out that income measures
only tell part of the story. High-income countries were the early industrializers, although the
‘Asian tigers’ have now joined their ranks since the 1980s. Middle-income countries are
found in south-east Asia, the Middle East oil producers, the Central American countries and
the former Soviet republics. The low-income countries are mostly to be found in Africa, the
Indian subcontinent, Indonesia and parts of Eastern Europe. The whole debate about
inequality is an ongoing one: there are those who see globalization as ‘the great leveller’,
while others see globalization as exacerbating existing patterns of inequality. The arguments
are complex but are given full value and are supported by informative charts in Figure 14.1.
The next section details the difference in living standards between the different countries
known as ‘unequal life chances’. Four areas are highlighted: health, hunger, education and
child labour. In each case we are presented with both the overall global picture and the
inequalities between rich and poor. Maps, tables and photographs bolster and amplify the
arguments in the text. Underlying such unequal life chances is the basic comparison
between life in the relatively rich, industrialized countries and that in the relatively poor,
developing world. This distinction is used across the book and offers a way of making some
basic global comparisons across the diverse sub-fields of sociology.
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The chapter moves on to a short course in historical demography, starting with the arresting
statistic that the Earth’s population passed seven billion in 2011. The text briefly introduces
the discipline of demography in order to understand and explain population trends. Some of
the most widely used concepts are glossed in boxed form. The near zero or negative growth
rates of the advanced nations are contrasted with the high net rates and distorted
population pyramids of many of the less developed societies. This material is then placed in
historical context with a review of Malthusianism and its famous thesis about the
relationship between population and food resources. By the late twentieth century it
seemed that Malthus’s ideas, in modified form, might again have relevance. The text offers
an exegesis of the three stages of the demographic transition first outlined by Warren S.
Thompson. This model is presented as a Classic Study given its wide-ranging influence on
studies of demographic change. Stage 1 has high birth and death rates; in stage 2 the death
rate falls but fertility remains high leading to a burst of population growth. In stage 3 birth
rates fall to match death rates and stability returns. This contrasts with the work of Malthus.
This section concludes with some speculation about future population levels, with the UN
best estimate being around 9.3 billion people by 2050.
With the empirical background established, the chapter finished with the development
agenda. The experience of the newly industrializing countries (NICs) is detailed, with five
major explanations being offered for their rapid success:
(a) Many of these countries had foundations laid by the experience of colonialism.
(b) There was a long period of world economic growth between the 1950s and
the 1970s from which these countries benefited.
(c) Generous economic assistance was provided by the United States during the
height of the Cold War.
(d) Some commentators suggest that the shared cultural tradition of
Confucianism helped promote economic advancement in Japan and East Asia.
(e) Strongly interventionist policies on the part of many governments were a
major boost to economic growth.
Theories of development are thoroughly discussed in the rest of this main section. Marketoriented theories favoured the pursuit of unfettered capitalism, a perspective exemplified
by Rostow’s belief that underdeveloped societies needed to embrace a market approach.
This perspective, modernization theory, was the dominant paradigm and was encapsulated
in Rostow’s stages of economic growth (a Classic Study): traditional stage, ‘take-off’,
technological maturity and high mass consumption. This bundle of views lives on in
contemporary neo-liberalism. From the 1960s this perspective was challenged first by the
dependency theorists, with its emphasis on colonialism, and later by world-systems theory.
The world system comprises both core countries and peripheral countries, and it has an
element of self-correction in its make-up.
In the early 1990s, the dominant concept of ‘development’ came under severe criticism
from scholars and activists, many of them working in developing countries, marking the
start of a new era of post-development which bears some similarity to ideas of postindustrialism and postmodernism. The discourse of development is seen by postdevelopment theorists as a central element in maintaining the power of the minority world
over the global majority.
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The remainder of the chapter examines the role of global institutions – the IMF, the World
Bank, the UN and the World Trade Organization – in attempting to alleviate global
inequality. It speculates on the future prospects in this area.
TEACHING TOPICS
1. The nature of global inequality
This covers the material in the first two sections of the chapter, comprising both the
typologies of inequality and the empirical illustrations of the gulf between the rich and the
poor of the world.
2. Population and demography
This material covers both the theory and practice of demography as discussed in the chapter
section titled ‘The changing human population’.
3. Arguments about development
Comprising both the theoretical debates within the sociology of development and the
controversies over the operation of global institutions, this covers the material in the main
section ‘Can poor countries become rich?’
ACTIVITIES
Activity 1: The nature of global inequality
A. Read the opening section about global billionaires. Is it possible that there is now a ‘world
elite’?
B. Read the section on global economic inequality starting on page 575. Note down some
statistical evidence showing growing inequalities across the world. How can countries can
be growing further and further apart when the very nature of globalization involves greater
economic integration?
Activity 2: Population and demography
A. Read the section on world population growth. Make sure you have a good grasp of the
basic demographic concepts in Using Your Sociological Imagination Box 14.1 on pages 592-3.
Make a summary of the main arguments put forward by Malthus about population growth.
B. Now consider this short passage from a book on Thomas Malthus.
In a short book mainly on a different topic altogether, Malthus had one comment
on population: ‘I cannot agree with Archdeacon Paley, who says that the quantity of
happiness in any country is best measured by the number of people. Increasing
population is the most certain possible sign of the happiness and prosperity of a
state; but the actual population may be only a sign of the happiness that is past’. In
several respects this is an interesting passage. … For all his independence from
political parties and schools of thought, Malthus throughout his life accepted
without equivocation the utilitarian axiom that the function of political economy or
of statesmanship is to improve the lot of humankind.
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Second, these two sentences from Malthus’s first work at least suggest a dilemma
that has plagued modern demographic analysis – namely, that the growth of
numbers may be the consequence of prosperity (or, as we would be more likely to
put it, of development), but that the effects of population increase are sometimes
to impair that prosperity or in the worst cases to destroy it.
[W. Petersen, Malthus, London: Heinemann, 1979, p. 38]
1. Check the term ‘utilitarian’ in a sociology dictionary and note the definition. Do you
agree that the purpose of economic growth is to ‘improve the lot of humankind’?
2. Think more carefully about Malthus’s identification of population growth as both cause
and effect. Try and apply this framework to other sociological variables and work through
exactly how the relationships work.
Activity 3: Arguments about development
A. Make a brief summary of the main global institutions, especially the World Trade
Organization (WTO). Then examine this piece of advocacy in favour of the WTO:
The truth is that the WTO is more a champion of the weak than a stooge of the
strong. Ask Ecuador. Its annual income per person is about £1,000 but its banana
growers are the most efficient in the world. Banana production is in the hands of
local people and banana workers enjoy full union rights. Their problem is that the
EU makes it difficult for Ecuador to sell its fruit in Europe: the EU imposes strict
limits on how many bananas it can export, and makes it pay hefty import duties …
Without the WTO, Ecuador would be in dire straits. Thankfully it was able to appeal
to the WTO, which ruled that the Europeans were breaching world trade rules.
Kicking and screaming, the EU has agreed to change its banana regime …
This is not the first time that the WTO has helped a small poor country fight its
corner against a big rich one. True, the dispute settlement mechanism is not as fair
as it could be. The US can marshal a battery of top lawyers to fight its cases; poor
countries have to scrimp. But efforts are being made to remedy this, and a legal aid
centre for poor countries is being set up. The point, though, is that in an unequal
world, the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism is much fairer than the
alternative: the law of the jungle.
[P. Legrain, ‘Against Globophobia’, Prospect, May 2000, pp. 32–3]
www.prospect-magazine.co.uk
1. If wealthy countries are interested in free trade, why might they resort to various forms
of protectionism? On which sectors of the developed countries’ economies might there
be most pressure to do this and why?
2. Find out more about the activities of the WTO from its website. Look for additional
examples where it has intervened in trade disputes and see what the outcomes were.
3. Consider the environmentalist motto, ‘think globally, act locally’. How exactly do you
think this works? Choose one of the individual case studies recounted in the article and
try to trace the mechanism through which a global event becomes an individual
outcome. Write it down in terms of a number of steps or stages and show how each
leads to or causes the next.
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REFLECTION & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
The nature of global inequality
Might globalization not be good for everyone?
Why have some developing countries done so much better out of expanding world
trade than have others?
Population and demography
Why are sociologists interested in the work of demographers?
In what sense is population growth at once ‘cause and consequence’?
Why are birth rates lowest in wealthy countries where people could afford to have
more children?
Arguments about development
To what extent are theories of development just reflections of more general theoretical
controversies?
Why is there so much hostility to organizations like the WTO?
ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. Assess the prospects for a reduction in the wealth differentials between developed and
developing countries in the next twenty years.
2. Describe and explain the phenomenon known as ‘the demographic transition’.
3. Which of the following provides the most convincing explanation of persistent and
increasing global inequality: modernization theory, dependency theory, world-systems
theory, post-development critiques?
MAKING CONNECTIONS
The nature of global inequality
Obvious linkages exist here between the bulk of this chapter and the material in Chapter 4
on globalization. There are also parallels between the nature of global inequality and
poverty in Chapter 13. You may also find connections here with issues of class and
stratification in Chapter 12 and with global environmental issues in Chapter 5.
Population and Demography
This topic returns us to the emergence of modern societies traced in Chapter 4. The
identification, observation and measurement of population trends present interesting
challenges in terms of research methods (Chapter 2). A good example of the impact of
population growth and movement would be the material on urbanization in Chapter 6.
Arguments about Development
Many theories of development mirror the central planks of the ‘grand theories’ discussed in
Chapter 1 and Chapter 3, in so far as they are close to functionalism or Marxism. Themes of
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nations, nationalism and colonialism are also closely tied to theories of national
development and these are discussed in more detail in Chapter 23.
SAMPLE SESSION
Demography
Aims: To introduce students to the discipline of demography and to raise their awareness
of the technique of extrapolating from past and current trends.
Outcomes: By the end of the session students will be able to:
1. Identify the main concepts within demography.
2. Produce an account of the main ideas of Thomas Malthus.
3. Demonstrate an awareness of the pitfalls of prediction in social science.
Preparatory tasks
Read the relevant sections of Sociology. In small groups carry out Task A and prepare a
summary of the key points.
Classroom tasks
1. Tutor elicits from the class explanations of the key demographic concepts in the boxed
text referred to in Task A. Definitions go up on a board/flip-chart and remain there for
duration of lesson. (10 minutes)
2. Split the class into the groups in which they did preparatory task. Groups now present
the key facts they would consider when trying to predict the world’s population by
2050. (15 minutes)
3. As individuals, students complete Task B. (10 minutes)
4. Tutor-led discussion based on the passage commenting on Malthus. (15 minutes)
5. Tutor rounds off with links back to definitions in 1. (5 minutes)
Assessment task
On the basis of current information about future improvements and challenges to public
health, discuss the variables that you would put into a model to predict the average life
expectancy in the UK by 2050.