Overcoming Social Inequality in Mexico

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 392-396
Author(s):  
M. V. Makarova

The presented study examines certain aspects of Mexico’s social policy from the 19th century to the implementation of the key programs of the 2019-2024 National Development Plan.Aim. The study aims to identify the major causes and find solutions to one of the main problems of social development in Mexico - social stratification.Tasks. The authors determine the sequence of historical, political, and economic actions that have influenced social inequality; examine the factors that have led to social stratification; analyzestatistics pertaining to reforms; examine the programs of Mexico’s 2019-2024 National Development Plan.Methods. This study uses general scientific methods of cognition to identify social development trends in Mexico’s socio-economic policy and the underlying internal and external factors, and to analyze the directions of the programs of Mexico’s 2019-2024 National Development Plan.Results. Social inequality in Mexico can be traced back to medieval times. Since the 19th century, oppressed people have been openly asserting their social standing. Significant social stratification and an overwhelming number of poor people with little education cannot resist the country’s political system. There is constant pressure from foreign countries, particularly from the United States, on the political order of Mexico through the promotion of foreign standards aimed at deriving profit for other countries and the Mexican elite. The country’s domestic regulation is carried out in the context of limited wage growth, lack of a progressive taxation system, and disparate accessibility of social benefits for different population groups. Since the beginning of the 21st century, introduction of socially oriented programs has reduced social inequality, but it remains too high in comparison with developed and developing countries.Conclusions. A study of the country’s socio-economic policy since the 19th century reveals features that are specific to Mexico: a very high level of corruption and criminality, social stratification with an overwhelming number of low-income people and general marginalization hinder the country’s social development and economic growth. The middle class is poorly developed and cannot provide the domestic consumption necessary for the stable development of Mexico and reduction of the country’s dependence on its trading partners. Population support measures are ineffective in the context of the established way of life.

Author(s):  
Amin Tarzi

Since its inception as a separate political entity in 1747, Afghanistan has been embroiled in almost perpetual warfare, but it has never been ruled directly by the military. From initial expansionist military campaigns to involvement in defensive, civil, and internal consolidation campaigns, the Afghan military until the mid-19th century remained mainly a combination of tribal forces and smaller organized units. The central government, however, could only gain tenuous monopoly over the use of violence throughout the country by the end of the 19th century. The military as well as Afghan society remained largely illiterate and generally isolated from the prevailing global political and ideological trends until the middle of the 20th century. Politicization of Afghanistan’s military began in very small numbers after World War II with Soviet-inspired communism gaining the largest foothold. Officers associated with the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan were instrumental in two successful coup d’états in the country. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, ending the country’s sovereignty and ushering a period of conflict that continues to the second decade of the 21st century in varying degrees. In 2001, the United States led an international invasion of the country, catalyzing efforts at reorganization of the smaller professional Afghan national defense forces that have remained largely apolitical and also the country’s most effective and trusted governmental institution.


1996 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Arditi

This paper explores the opening of a discursive space within the etiquette literature in the United States during the 19th century and how women used this space as a vehicle of empowerment. It identifies two major strategies of empowerment. First, the use or appropriation of existing discourses that can help redefine the “other” within an hegemonic space. Second, and more importantly, the transformation of that space in shifting the lines by which differentiation is produced to begin with. Admittedly, these strategies are neither unique nor the most important in the history of women's empowerment. But this paper argues that the new discourses formulated by women helped forge a new space within which women ceased being the “other,” and helped give body to a concept of womanhood as defined by a group of women, regardless of how idiosyncratic that group might have been.


Author(s):  
Brandi L Holley ◽  
Dale L. Flesher

ABSTRACT: The 19th century brought on much economic growth and advancement in accounting in the United States. The teaching of accounting began to veer away from rules and instead sought the logical underpinnings of the system. It was a time when accounting evolved into accountancy through the development of theory, such as the proprietary theory and the theory of two-account series. The Townsend Journal (1840-1841), which chronicles the joint venture between two young men in the Boston maritime trade, is a case study of this progression in commerce and accounting during this pivotal time. B. F. Foster's contemporaneous Boston publications on bookkeeping provide the framework to understand this evolution in accountancy, as well as the recordings in the Townsend Journal. Through the examination of the Townsend Journal alongside B. F. Foster's texts, this paper preserves and illustrates a historical link in the evolution of the field.


Author(s):  
Amy C. Offner

This chapter focuses on John M. Hunter, the thirty-nine-year-old Illinois native who spoke as director of Colombia's first economic research center and addressed readers of one of Colombia's premier journals of economic research, the Revista del Banco de la República. It also talks about economics in Latin America. During the years after 1945, Colombian universities established freestanding economics programs where none had existed before. There had been men called economists in Colombia for decades; they were brilliant lawyers, engineers, businessmen, and politicians who made national economic policy and taught occasional courses in political economy on the side. But the crisis of the 1930s had inspired a new regard for economic expertise as a specialized form of knowledge, and Colombians set out to create a new kind of economist to steer the state. The invention of economics as an independent discipline, a nineteenth-century process in the United States and much of Europe, was thus a twentieth-century phenomenon in Latin America, born of new visions of national development and spearheaded by renowned men in business and government.


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