Inequality and Stratification Commons^™

Revisiting Development Discourse Amidst Informal Sector Crises Covid-19 Pandemic, Anjan Chakrabarti, Pooja Sharma

International Journal on Responsibility

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, India has experienced a severe catastrophe of the informal sector, related to both health and livelihood. The informal sector and migrant workers are closely linked and they became easy prey during the nationwide lockdown at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The informal sector, primarily a fallout of the prevailing dual economy, makes it highly imperative to revisit not only India’s growth and development process but also the distribution. The paper attempts to evaluate the development process adopted by developing countries and their relevance in terms of growth and inequality. The study finds the missing link …

Cape Town Cartographies: Which Spaces Can The Youth Access? Mapping The Mobilities Of 11 University Of Cape Town (Uct) Students, Sokona Mangane

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

South Africa went through a gruesome system of segregation known as apartheid, from 1948 until 1994 which enforced spatial and racial divisions through limiting access to spaces, places and (im)mobilities. Despite the formal ending of apartheid in 1994, and some changes it brought to the divided and wounded country, the neo-apartheid spatial structure of the regime lives on in some form or other, particularly in Cape Town. This research paper sought to explore the racial segregation in the mother city further, by examining the daily movements of students from the University of Cape Town (UCT), who are part of the …

Migratory Timescapes: Experiences Of Pausing, Waiting, And Inhabiting The Meanwhile Of Migrants And Asylum Seekers In Mexico, Isabel Gil Everaert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico´s southern border with Guatemala, this dissertation provides insights into contemporary experiences of migration in Mexico by engaging with the notions of movement, control, and settlement from a critical perspective. I explore these experiences through the idea of migratory timescapes, defined as structural temporal-relational contexts in which migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers are socially embedded. In the case of this dissertation, I unpack three migratory timescapes which are situated in a regional context of growing displacement and increasingly restrictive migratory and asylum policies, what I call the block-and-wait system.

First, I introduce the idea …

How Medicalization Of Civil Rights Could Disappoint, Allison K. Hoffman

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay reflects on Craig Konnoth’s recent Article, Medicalization and the New Civil Rights, which is a carefully crafted and thought-provoking description of the refashioning of civil rights claims into medical rights frameworks. He compellingly threads together many intellectual traditions—from antidiscrimination law to disability law to health law—to illustrate the pervasiveness of the phenomenon that he describes and why it might be productive as a tool to advance civil rights.

This response, however, offers several reasons why medicalization may not cure all that ails civil rights litigation’s pains and elaborates on the potential risks of overinvesting in medical rights-seeking. …

We Need A Loud And Fractious Poor, Jeff Maskovsky, Frances Fox Piven

Publications and Research

This article explores the political consequences of four decades of consistent humiliation of the poor by the most authoritative voices in the land, and offers insights into ways that new movements are creating spaces for poor people’s political voices to surface and become relevant again. Our specific concern is the challenge that the current humiliation regime poses to those who seek to revive radical, disruptive and fractious anti-poverty activism and politics. By humiliation regime, we mean a form of political violence that maltreats those classified popularly and politically as “the poor” by treating them as undeserving of citizenship, rights, public …

Dismantling “Dilemmas Of Difference” In The Workplace, Rangita De Silva De Alwis, Sarah Heberlig, Lindsay Holcomb

All Faculty Scholarship

Over the course of six months, the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School’s class “Women, Law, and Leadership” interviewed 55 women between the ages of 25 and 85, all leaders in their respective fields. Nearly half of the women interviewed were women of color, and 10 of the women lived and worked in countries other than the U.S., spanning across Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Threading together the common themes touched upon in these conversations, we gleaned a number of novel insights, distinguishing the leadership trajectories pursued by women who have risen to the heights of their professions. Through thousands …

Exploring The Roots Of Chronic Underdevelopment: The Colonial Encomienda And Resguardo And Their Legacy To Modern Colombia, Pedro Bossio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Colombian society has been historically marked by socioeconomic inequality, restricted social mobility, and institutional weakness. In order to understand the reasons for the country´s continuous struggle to achieve inclusive economic progress and stability since its independence from Spain in 1819, it is necessary to understand its colonial history. Central to this were the two most important colonial economic institutions, the encomienda and the resguardo, both designed for the exploitation of unfree Indian labor. Even when these were slowly replaced by more modern haciendas worked by free farm workers, the economic and political life of the country continued to be …

Reproductive Rights In Latin America: A Case Study Of Guatemala And Nicaragua, Katherine W. Bogen

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

A lack of access to contraceptives and legal abortion for women throughout the nations of Nicaragua and Guatemala creates critical health care problems. Moreover, rural and underprivileged women in Guatemala and Nicaragua are facing greater limitations to birth control access, demonstrating a classist aspect in the global struggle for female reproductive rights. Although some efforts have been made over the past half-century to initiate a dialogue on the failure of medical care in these nations to adequately address issues of maternal mortality and reproductive rights, the women's reproductive health movements of Nicaragua and Guatemala have struggled to reach an effective …

Intimacy And Inequality: The Changing Contours Of Family Life, Richard R. Banks

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections Of Race And Class For Women In Academia -- Introduction, Carmen G. Gonzalez, Angela P. Harris

Carmen G. Gonzalez

Presumed Incompetent is a pathbreaking account of the intersecting roles of race, gender, and class in the working lives of women faculty of color. Through personal narratives and qualitative empirical studies, more than 40 authors expose the daunting challenges faced by academic women of color as they navigate the often hostile terrain of higher education, including hiring, promotion, tenure, and relations with students, colleagues, and administrators. One of the topics addressed is the importance of forging supportive networks to transform the workplace and create a more hospitable environment for traditionally subordinated groups. The narratives are filled with wit, wisdom, and …

Education As Liberation For Low Income Students, Aaron T. Mccoy

Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

‘Miss, Are You Bisexual?’ The (Re)Production Of Heteronormativity Within Schools And The Negotiation Of Lesbian, Gay And Bisexual Teachers’ Private And Professional Worlds, Emily M. Gray Dr

Dr Emily M Gray

This research offers an analysis of the experiences of twenty people who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) and who are teachers within their professional lives. It aims to illustrate the ways in which the continuing (re)production of heteronormative discursive practices impacts upon their lives both within the private and the professional realm. The research deploys a two-tier methodological framework in order to gain insights into the lives of LGBT teachers, an often invisible social group. The research is underpinned by a theoretical framework which draws upon poststructuralist feminist/queer theories but which also is data, rather than theory, driven. …

Systems Of Distribution And A Sense Of Equity: A Multilevel Analysis Of Meritocratic Attitudes In Post-Industrial Societies, Sheri L. Kunovich, Kazimierz M. Slomczynski

Sociology Research

Meritocratic attitudes are defined as general beliefs that education and its correlates should determine personal economic outcomes. Using the International Social Survey Project (ISSP): Social Inequality Module (1992), we examine both individual-level and country-level determinants of pro-meritocratic attitudes. According to self-interest and rational-action theories, individuals with high educational attainment and high personal income are expected to have strong meritocratic beliefs because meritocracy is in their best interest—they would gain under such a system. At the same time, both modernization and post-industrial theories imply that persons living in countries with a high degree of societal meritocracy hold stronger meritocratic beliefs than …

Exploitation Or Fun?: The Lived Experience Of Teenage Employment In Suburban America, Yasemin Besen-Cassino

Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Objectivist scholars characterize typical teenage jobs as “exploitive”: highly routinized service sector jobs with low pay, no benefits, minimum skill requirements, and little time off. This view assumes exploitive characteristics are inherent in the jobs, ignoring the lived experience of the teenage workers. This article focuses on the lived work experience of particularly affluent, suburban teenagers who work in these jobs and explores the meaning they create during their everyday work experience. Based on a large ethnographic study conducted with the teenage workers at a national coffee franchise, this article unravels the ways in which objectivist views of these “bad …

Social Assistance And The Challenges Of Poverty And Inequality In Azerbaijan, A Low-Income Country In Transition, Nazim N. Habibov, Lida Fan

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Although low-income countries in transition are facing the challenges of poverty and inequality, evidence on the performance of safety nets in these countries is scarce. This article uses micro-file data from a nationally representative household budget survey to analyze the existing social assistance programs in Azerbaijan, a low income country in transition, from the perspectives of poverty and inequality reduction. The empirical evidence presented in this paper indicates that the poverty and inequality reduction effectiveness of social assistance programs is inadequate. First, the benefits are very modest and the poor receive only a small proportion of them. Second, some programs …

In Defence Of Exploitation, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

The concept of exploitation is thought to be central to Marx's Critique of capitalism. John Roemer, an analytical (then-) Marxist economist now at Yale, attacked this idea in a series of papers and books in the 1970s-1990s, arguing that Marxists should be concerned with inequality rather than exploitation -- with distribution rather than production, precisely the opposite of what Marx urged in The Critique of the Gotha Progam.

This paper expounds and criticizes Roemer's objections and his alternative inequality based theory of exploitation, while accepting some of his criticisms. It may be viewed as a companion paper to my What's …

From Libertarianism To Egalitarianism, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A standard natural rights argument for libertarianism is based on the labor theory of property: the idea that I own my self and my labor, and so if I "mix" my own labor with something previously unowned or to which I have a have a right, I come to own the thing with which I have mixed by labor. This initially intuitively attractive idea is at the basis of the theories of property and the role of government of John Locke and Robert Nozick. Locke saw and Nozick agreed that fairness to others requires a proviso: that I leave "enough …