Dimensions of Rural Poverty as Social Problems

This chapter uses a sociological approach to tackle poverty as a social problem. As a social problem, sociologists believe poverty is linked to the distribution of wealth and power structures and how political, economic, institutional arrangements, and historical conditions shape our lives and the possibilities to survive in a competitive world. They use analytic framework that shifts from the current popular focus of blaming the victim to addressing the inequalities of the distribution of power, wealth, and opportunity. Second, the chapter broadens the poverty reduction narrative to recognize that studying poverty is not the same thing as studying the poor. This framework turns empirical attention to political, economic, institutional, and historical conditions, as well as the policy decisions that shape the distribution of power and wealth, and interventions that seek to change the conditions of structural inequality and social stratification rather than narrowly focusing on changing the poor.

Conserving inequality: How private conservation and property developers ‘fix’ spatial injustice in South Africa

In 2016, South Africa launched its National Biodiversity Economy Strategy. This strategy aims to facilitate the development of a ‘wildlife economy’ as a solution to unemployment, loss of biodiversity and rural development. Central to the strategy is the role of private conservation actors, who keenly posit their commercial model as the best way to achieve these objectives. This stands in sharp contrast to recent critiques that suggest that private conservation reinforces structural inequality by denying access to land and perpetuating unjust labour conditions. Using ethnographic data from the South African Lowveld region that includes the Kruger National Park, the paper takes these points further by arguing that a rapidly growing alliance between private conservation and property developers actively conserve inequality by maintaining and even extending spatial injustice in the region. Two popular recent manifestations of this alliance in particular, share block systems that distribute ownership of access to real estate in private reserves and wildlife housing estates, have established new conservation-property linkages that entrench capitalist socioecological fixes. Not only do these initiatives lead to further engrained spatial injustice, we conclude that this conservation-property alliance at the centre of the ‘wildlife economy’ also willingly sacrifices environmental sustainability on the altar of white conservation imaginations and private profit.

Stature, Poverty, and Inequality in 19th- and 20th-Century Mexico

Anthropometric studies have shown that the evolution of human stature can be helpful to examine human welfare. Adult stature is an indicator of health status and living standards for periods in which there has not been a systematic collection of data of other indicators, such as the price of goods and wages, as is the case in Mexico prior to 1950. Mexican anthropometric history studies have revealed that stature is a good measure to examine the evolution of living standards in the long run and that it has been effective for assessing poverty and inequality. These studies have shown that, for the period 1850–1950, the evolution of living standards was heterogeneous. There were different trajectories depending on the socioeconomic status. People from working-class backgrounds experienced a deterioration and/or stagnation, while people from upper-class backgrounds experienced a sustained increase in average stature. These trends challenged the official history of the post-revolutionary period, which argued that the living standards of the Mexican population deteriorated during the Porfirio Díaz administration (1876–1911) and improved afterwards with the promulgation of social legislation in the post-revolutionary era (post-1910). Additional studies show that, during the post-1950 period, there was a generalized improvement in stature, but it was limited by the challenges of economic downturns and persistent structural inequality.

Human Rights and Structural Inequality in the Shadow of COVID-19—A New Chapter in the Culture Wars?

This article takes as its starting point the convergence of two rights-related grassroots movements given momentum by the pandemic’s manifestly discriminatory impact: the push to recognise and address racism as a public health crisis, and the global influence of the Black Lives Matter (‘BLM’) movement. It considers the relevance of this moment to international human rights law, the adequacy of the response from its key institutions, and the conservative backlash, framed within the rhetoric of rights, that is challenging the very idea of structural racism. In doing so, it argues that we are witnessing a new stage of the culture wars around the language, method and assumptions of human rights law with which the discipline must engage pragmatically and strategically.

Truth and Reparation for the U.S. Imprisonment and Policing Regime

In the literature on transitional justice, there is disagreement about whether countries like the United States can be characterized as transitional societies. Though it is widely recognized that transitional justice mechanisms such as truth commissions and reparations can be used by Global North nations to address racial injustice, some consider societies to be transitional only when they are undergoing a formal democratic regime change. We conceptualize the political situation of low-income Black communities under the U.S. imprisonment and policing regime in terms of three criteria for identifying transitional contexts: normalized collective and political wrongdoing, pervasive structural inequality, and the failure of the rule of law. That these criteria are met, however, does not necessarily mean that a transition is taking place. Drawing on the American political development and abolition democracy literatures, we discuss what it would mean for the United States to transition out of its present imprisonment and policing regime. A transitional justice perspective shows the importance of not only pushing for truth and reparation, but for an actual transition.

A Quest for Passion: Understanding Precarious Migration of Young Highly Qualified EU Citizens as Lived Neoliberal Subjectivity

In critical social research the concept of employability is associated with the neoliberal imperative that every individual should become a self-responsible, self-improving and enterprising subject in the increasingly precarious labour markets. Despite the prominence of employability in policies governing young people’s intra-European migration, few studies examine migrants’ subjectivities in this context. Building on narrative data, this article adds to our understanding on how neoliberal subject formations function as an instrument for governing young EU migrants’ lives in conditions of precarious labour. Central to this understanding, it develops the concept of passion to depict young migrants’ quest for obtaining work with opportunities for self-development and self-realisation. This concept contributes to the study of highly qualified intra-EU migration by allowing critical analysis of meanings given to mobility in relation to work; by highlighting dynamics of (self-)precarisation in this context; and by advancing debates on social-structural inequality among EU migrants pursuing their quest for passion.

Justice

A biosocial analysis (chapter 5) of the health of the world’s population reveals deep structural inequality. Impoverishment based on the historical and present-day impact of racist, nationalism, and neoliberalism assure will continue cause death and suffering unless the status quo changes. There is reason to hope because, as we saw with the movement for AIDS treatment access, activism works. This chapter introduces the concept of social movements. It highlights the strategies and tactics used by successful and ongoing movements that seek global health equity and justice. The chapter also presents concrete examples for action that can be used to help build and support the social movement needed to realize the universal right to health care. The chapter also includes the fight for COVID-19 vaccine equity.

Neglect as Collective Failure to Provide for Children: Towards a New Theoretical Approach

The dominant definition of neglect asserts that it occurs when a caregiver fails to provide for a child’s basic psychological and physical needs. Flowing from this dominant definition, current theoretical understandings of neglect largely focus on parental omissions in care. This essay argues that, aside from the inherent ambiguity in the concept of neglect, these theories of how and why neglect occurs are inadequate, because the broader context of the parent-child relationship is deemphasized or omitted. To further research and intervention on child neglect, this essay proposes a theoretical understanding of child neglect that stresses structural inequality (poverty and racism) as a fundamental cause. The article then examines prior theories of neglect, detailing how structural inequality is underemphasized. Finally, it suggests a way of advancing theoretical models of child neglect that integrates scholarship on systemic racism, intergenerational poverty, and child maltreatment. Ultimately, this article argues that child neglect might best be viewed as a collective failure of society to prioritize justice, equality, and economic sufficiency—the necessary foundations for the healthy growth and development of children.