Global Social Problems

Professor Linda Bender

Global social problems
 They are “social” because they have social causes
and consequences and treating them requires
changes in social behavior
 Natural disasters and famine
 Floods, droughts, earthquakes and insect infestations
 China – 1931 flood killed 4 million
 Famines – if there is a strong, surviving, kin group then better
chance
 Government relief takes time to get where it is needed
 In stratified societies poor more likely to be forced to over
cultivate, overgraze, and deforest their land, making it more
susceptible to degradation
Inadequate housing and homeless

 Slums
 Squatter settlements
 Often located in degraded environments
 Subject to flooding and mudslides
 Often have inadequate or polluted water
 Most of the dwellers are employed, aspire to get
ahead, live in intact nuclear families, and help
each other
Inadequate housing and homeless
 Homeless
 1987 estimated >1 million US homeless
 Over 2 million people, over 1/3 children, were estimated to be
homeless for some period in 1996
 In US employment, shortage of decent paying jobs and
shortage of affordable housing main causes
 Also, deliberate release of mentally ill hospitalized patients
 Poverty and disability (mental or physical) lead to a cycle that
often ends in homelessness
 Why not shelters?
 Not enough room
 People do not feel “safe”
 Homeless can only happen in countries of inequality (like US)
 US inequality more like developing countries (India and Mexico)
Family violence and abuse
 What is child abuse - Spanking, yelling,
slapping, yanking, neglect, spoiling?
 1992 – US
 1 out of 10 couples had violent assault
 1 out of 10 children was severely assaulted by a
parent
 Mid-90s survey – 75% of assaulted women
were from male intimate partner
 When a child is the target usually comes from
the birth mother – Why do you think this is?
Family violence and abuse

 Violence against children

 Many cultures allow for infanticide
 Illegitimacy, deformity of the infant, twins, too many
children or that the child is unwanted
 Reasons similar to those for abortion
 Physical punishment of children occur in 75% of
world’s population
 Frequent or typical in 40%
 Those at the bottom of the social hierarchy more likely to
practice corporal punishment of children
Family violence and abuse
 Violence against wives
 Beating most common abuse (occurs in about 85% of
world’s societies)
 In about half of the societies the beatings are bad enough
to cause permanent damage
 More common when:
 Men control the product of labor
 Men have final say in decision making in the home
 Divorce is difficult for women
 Remarriage for a widow is controlled by the husband’s kin
 Women do not have any female work groups
 Extremely likely when husbands controls the household and is out
of work
Family violence and abuse
 Reducing the risks
 If severe child punishment and wife beating are
perfectly acceptable by almost everyone in a
society, they are unlikely to be considered social
problems that need solutions
 US – many programs designed to take abused children
or wives out of the family situation or to punish the
abuser
 Cross-culturally, at least with respect to wife
beating, intervention by others seems to be
successful only if the intervention occurs before
the violence gets serious
Crime
 In one society what may be a crime is not in
another
 Walking over someone’s land (trespassing)
 Killing (murder, self-defense, defending “honor”)
 Homicide rates increase after war – why?
 In last 600 years homicide rates have declined in
Westernized countries (by %)
 Most countries show murder rates going down
(not up) after capital punishment abolished
 Capital punishment may legitimize violence rather than
prevent it
Crime

 In US juvenile delinquents (usually boys)

come from broken homes, where father is
absent most of the time
 Studies show violence in children goes up when
father spends less time with kids
 Theory: Boys without active fathers become
“supermasculine” and mothers more likely to be angry
 More TV watching in childhood and adolescence
predicts more overt aggression later
Crime
 In US juvenile delinquents (usually boys) come from
broken homes, where father is absent most of the
time
 Studies show violence in children goes up when father
spends less time with kids
 Theory: Boys without active fathers become “supermasculine”
and mothers more likely to be angry
 More TV watching in childhood and adolescence predicts
more overt aggression later
 Low economic times
 Does not increase homicide
 Does increase crimes against property
War
 Warring was common in indigenous societies
 The number of killed were small but the warfare of
nonindustrial societies was not a trivial matter
 May even have been more lethal proportionally
 People who grow up being mistrustful of others may
be more likely to go to war than to negotiate or seek
conciliation with “enemies”
 Cross-cultural studies:
 More participatory, “democratic,” societies rarely go to war
 War would be minimized if:
 Nations encouraged to be more independent economically
 Encouraging the spread of international nongovernmental
organizations to provide resolution for conflicts
Terrorism

 What is terrorism and how shall it be defined?

 What are the causes of terrorism?
 What kind of people are likely to become
terrorists?
 What are the consequences of terrorism?
Terrorism

 Terrorism – threat of violence to create fear in

others, usually for political gain
 Criminals rarely take credit for their crime but
terrorist have to have power
 Zealots - Jewish nationalists who revolted against
Romans occupying Judea in 1st century
 Would hide in crowds and stab officials and priests
Terrorism

 History
 Stalin – Soviet – killed millions of his own people
 Hitler – German Third Reich – 6 million Jews
 Latin America – gorillas in Argentina killed
dissidents in 70s and 80s

 State terrorism has caused 4 times more

deaths than wars
Terrorism

 Killing regimes
 Soviet Union 1917-1987
 China 1923-1987
 Germany 1933-1945
 Killed total of 100 million civilians
 Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia
 Killed 30% of its civilians between 1975-1978

 “Power kills, absolute power kills absolutely”s

Making the world better
 International trade in drugs
 Human trafficking
 Environmental degradation
 Water
 Forests
 Over population
 Energy crisis

 Social problems are of human making and therefore

solution involves human UNMAKING
Universal Human Rights
 United Nations stand on Universal Human Rights
 Could these principles constitute a universal standard against
which all cultures would be judged?
 How well do the cultures you’ve been reading about meet these
standards?
 How well does your culture (or cultures) meet these standards?
 Are there rights missing from these declarations that you
believe should be included?
 Several societies with distinct cultures are not represented in
the UN, such as the Kurds of Iraq, the Basques of Spain, and
the Mohawks of New York and Ontario; shall we also hold these
ethnic groups to these principles?
 Are there rights in these declarations that you would exclude
because they seem to be borrowed directly from cultures of
Western European and North America?