Category Archives: Sociological Theory

The wealth of the richest 1000 grew by £77bn last year

According to this article the richest 1000 people in the UK saw their wealth increase by a third last year-  an increase of £77bn – If I were in power I would give these people the opportunity to  donate these profits to socially useful public services – (no one can actually earn this much money after all), if they chose not to, I would jail them and forcibly take their assets for the benefit of all. It really is morally unnaccetable that we are facing cuts of billions of pounds from our public services while the rich just go on getting richer.

The government’s response to this situation is of course to put in place budgets that make the poor even poorer!

Sociopops – Dose One – As for Bias

 

You have to wait ’til the very last lines to get the ‘anomie’ reference –
‘Adrift in a sea of normless-ness
Anomie shifts all dormant sets’

(At least I think that’s what the lines are!)

Interestingly Lyrics mania has the lyrics down as
‘upset a drift in a sea of normless-ness
And a knee-shift of dormant sets’

This clearly doesn’t make any sense. I would have left a comment informing them of the error, but I didn’t have time or the desire to register with the site.

To be honest I don’t know what the song’s about – listen to it – Dose is clearly pretty intelligent – I just wanted to win the prize for the most obscure reference to a sociology concept in a song.

Dose isn’t political – a true child of post-modernism – just commenting on how he gets through life in a fragmented world –

“I don’t have a message, a political decree. There’s no grail. All art is really about ‘How do I make it through these days?’ That’s why my writing is so fragmented. My style is very collage-oriented, junk-collector. What I love about poetry is when you can isolate a moment and hit the nail on the head. But I’m a TV baby and a lot of the voices I choose to use are from that medium. The way I hear writing and recording is like some exploding television program or a budget dream with special effects.”

You might like this too – Dose in action

 

Check out this for some history – it refers to his sexuality, which I’m sure you’ll all wondering about…

Tory budget set to hit poorest the hardest

The forthcoming proposed Tory budget, combined with measures introduced in the last months of the Labour party – hit the poor hardest and are likely to increase inquality.

_48863679_ifs_gra_304If you believe Richard Wilkinson’s ‘The Spirit Level’, then inequality matters, because a whole host of social problems – from depression to crime – are correlated with the degree of inequality in society.

The exception is, of course, that the wealthiest ten percent lose out more than those in the middle – but it seams that it’s the poorest who are hit the hardest…

See this BBC report for more details

If you check out the graphic outside the room of P104 you will see that inequality increased massively under Thathcher, continued under New Labour, and the increase looks set to carry on into the future!

The cost of the financial crisis – £4000 per year per household

That’s an overall loss to the taxpayer of about £90 billion at a conservative estimate!

Just a brief summary from the WDM on the costs of the current financial crisis – yet more evidence of how the average guy on the street ends up paying  for the greed of the capitalist class (the bankers who destabilised our economy and their government apologists who let them).

Keep in mind what I said in this post about David Harvey who pointed out that the world’s leading hedge fund managers in 2009 took home  £15 billion in bonuses between them. – https://realsociology.edublogs.org/2010/08/11/why-any-sane-person-should-join-an-anti-capitalist-movement/

According to the article –

”The Treasury’s total net cash outlay for purchases of shares in banks and lending to the banking sector, including Northern Rock, amounted to around £117 billion by 2010. The Treasury’s additional potential exposure to banking losses totals (through insurance of bank assets and Bank of England lending) totals over £1 trillion.’

‘The crisis has had a huge impact on the public finances. UK households will have to pay around £3,900 per year more in taxes – or public spending per household will have to be reduced by £3,900 per year, or some combination – to balance the books. Households are also likely to face a one-off cost of £1,500 each (on average) for the banking bailout itself.’

The figures above may not quite add up because there are numerous different ways of caclulating (estimating most of the time) costs and potential costs!

Spending cuts, agenda setting and ideological control

I thought the following two quotes were worth flagging up – from Polly Toynbee’s latest post – about the forthcoming budget cuts…

‘Never mind that benefit fraud is only 0.7% of the benefit bill, Cameron’s crackdown smears all claimants by association. The tax evasion bill is at least £70bn, according to Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK, and the IMF puts it higher.’

So she is basically saying that if the government put its efforts into making the wealthy pay the taxes they are legally suppossed to be paying, then the forthcoming cuts would be much less severe…

‘Cameron has performed a political conjuring trick of some brilliance in diverting voters’ wrath from the gamblers of high finance to public servants’ excess. By persuading people it was public spending not the bankers’ crash that wrecked the economy, he has won the narrative so far – no mean feat. ‘

Now the media agenda is focussing on inefficient public services – when the cause of the financial crisis was the private sector lending irrespsonsibly. Interestingly, the fact the Tories are engineering a debate about what should be cut is precisely what steers our attention away from the tax avoidance by the rich and the fact they caused the crash in the first place.

Don’t be fooled by the Tory propoganda – It was the wealthy who caused the crash and now it is the poor who are going to pay! Demand an end to tax avoidance and higher taxes for the rich! Make those who created this mess pay for it.

An interesting discussion question here might be – has the time now come when violent resistance to Tory cuts is a duty rather than merely a right?

SocNews – TA – Do we have too much choice in our lives?

In this podcast Laurie Taylor, Renata Selacl and Rachel Bowlby discuss whether or not we have ‘Too much choice? (second half of the broadcast)

This is relevant to ‘criticisms of postmodern thought’

Having established that ‘choice’ is the dominant way in which we experience life today’ – pointing to the areas in which we have to make choices – what school to go to, whether to have a caesarian birth, what mortgage,holiday, care, what partner… and so on!!!  – two points of particular interest are –

Having too much choice can lead to anxiety – we constanly worry about ‘having made the right choices’ – and having made a choice – we sometimes worry that we have made the wrong choice and might focus on all the possibilities that have closed off to us a result – either way the net result of having too mcuh choice is anxiety. This challenges the idea that ‘more coice’ is automatically a good thing.

Secondly, there is the suggesting that we spend so much time making choices over relatively mundane things – that we lose sight of the bigger questions such as what’s wrong with society, where society is heading and issues such as social inequalities – Laurie Taylor in fact talks of us being ‘burdened’ with choice’ and there is a suggestion that ‘having to choose’ makes us less free and more powerless. ‘

I think the issue they are getting at is that we have choice over certain things – but only as consumers – and no real power to influence politics at a deeper level -the conservatives and labour and lib dems are all right wing for example. In this sense one can see consumerism as part of neo-liberal ideoligical control.

This clearly ties in with Bauman’s ideas.

Web Site of the Week – The Bristol Centre for Market and Public Organisation

I was just clearing up my desktop and stumbled across a document with a link to this organsiation – The Bristol Centre for Market and Public Organisation funded by the ESRC – they do podcasts! (one day soon that won’t seem like such a novelty).

The things they research are of direct relevance to the AS family and education modules, research methods and A2 social policy – See also the link below for details of research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that forms the background of this research project

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cmpo/publications/other/jrf.pdf (2009)

Some of the key points –

The poorest fifth of children score, on average, 14 percentile points lower than the middle fifth of children in Key Stage 2 tests at age 11, and 31 percentile points lower than the richest fifth.

Lack of economic resources is not the only thing that matters for disadvantaged children. Together the levels of parental education, demographic characteristics like family size and structure, and the characteristics of the schools attended by the poorest fifth can explain 60 to 70% of their educational deficits at Key Stage 2.

Why any sane person should join an anti-capitalist movement

RSA video and podcast of David Harvey on the credit crunch – David Harvey has read, re-read and taught Marx’s Capital every year for the last four decades. According to him ‘any sane person today would join an anti-capitalist organisation, because otherwise we are screwed’ (or something along those lines) –

And the podcast from Thinking Allowed –  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s3fzq

 My summary of the above two together – These are relevant to the question ‘Assess the relevance of Marxist theory to an understanding of contemporary society’

This is really quite advanced stuff for an A level student – and quite difficult to understand – I will try and clarify if you don’t get it – catch me at the end of the day sometime!

David Harvey’s basic theory is that Capitalism is a system that grows in boom-bust cycles – the bust phase being what is commonly known as an ‘economic crisis’, which typically requires Nation States to step in and ‘rebalance’ the system to get economic growth going again.  The problem is that the solutions to one economic crisis simply lay the foundations for another crisis, or downturn in economic growth, at some future point in another part of the world, or another sector of the economy.

David Harvey demonstrates one way in which Marxist theory is still relevant to understanding contemporary events – Here is how Harvey explains the ‘credit crunch’ in Marxist terms –

He starts off by pointing out that ‘the excessive power of finance capital’ is the root problem of the current crisis – In other words the banking and credit industries who lend money had (and still arguably have) too much power – but how did this happen?

Harvey goes back to another ‘economic crisis’ in the 1970s to explain this. At this point in history, he points out that wages, especially in the manufacturing sectors, in Europe were too high in order for Capitalists to make a profit. This crisis was solved by outsourcing manufacturing to the developing world where labour is cheaper and a combination of high unemployment in the West and Thatcher breaking the power of unions in the 1980s. This then meant that overall labour costs were lower, restoring profitability and economic growth.

However, wages provide people with the money that buys goods – thus a reduction in wages lead to a reduction in the demand for goods and services, which again reduces profit for Capitalists –

The solution to this problem was ‘pumping up the credit economy’ – or encouraging consumers to get out their credit cards and take on more debt.  The average British household has trebled its debt in the last thirty or forty years, most of this debt being in the form of mortgages, which most of us regard as a normal part of adult life.

The end result of this is that the banking and finance sectors have grown massively in recent years – before the credit crunch, in the mid 2000s, they represented 30% of the British economy. The profits of these industries have soared in 1990s – whereas manufacturing profits were declining and Harvey argues that Britain has screwed the manufacturing industry to keep the financiers happy –

Something else that happened in the last decade was the ‘deregulation of the finance sector’ – banks and hedge funds were given more freedom to lend – and many banks such as Northern Rock did so to people who could not realistically afford to pay back what they borrowed – eventually people woke up to this fact and the banking sector of the economy started to collapse (economic growth based on debt which needs to be repaid – once it’s realised this can’t be repaid it causes a crash)

Of course in Britain, this was a disaster, because baking  represented 30% of our economy – so the government bailed the banks out – and now we have a massive national debt – and what are the Tories doing – cutting our public services by 25% and raising the pension age so we, the tax payer,  can pay for this.

What are we actually paying for – the billions of pounds of profit that the heads of banks have taken in wages and bonuses over the last two decades. We are paying for them – The unequal accumulation of wealth has not stopped – in 2009 more billionaires were created in India than ever and in the same year the managers of the 5 biggest hedge funds in the world shared bonuses of $15 billion.

The wealthy are doing fine out of the credit crunch, while we the people, in our ignorance of how Thatcher and the Bliar pimped our nation to the transnational capitalist class over the last three decades, pick up the bill for their wealth years later.  

Harvey’s theory is that Capitalism can never solve its own crisis problems – it just moves them around geographically – eventually it is the little man that gets shafted while the wealthy just go on getting wealthier. This is classic Marx – all that has really happened since his day is that Capitalism has become more complex, some may say convoluted, but at its root – Capital will always make the little man pay for his wealth accumulation.

Harvey argues that any sensible person right now would join an anti capitalist organisation. If you decide to join one, an interesting debate would be ‘what level of violence is it acceptable to use against the Capitalist class and their Tory apologists in order to get your money back?’

Of course Harvey has his critics, and you might like to read the commentary below the video…

The Institutions of Economic Globalisation

The institutions of Economic Globalisation

Economic globalization refers to increasing economic interdependence of national economies across the world through a rapid increase in cross-border movement of goods, services, technology and capital

Most social scientists would point to four ‘institutions’ that oversee international trade and investment, and that attempt to steer the global economy on a path of continued economic growth. It is important for students to understand something about these institutions because all supporters and critics of economic globalisation refer to these institutions (Hyper globalists are the supporters, Marxists and the broader anti-capitalist movement the critics).

You should read this through once when directed and refer back to it when we look at material that either supports or criticises the spread of global capitalism

The four institutions that make up economic globalisation are The World Trade Organisation, The International Monetary Fund and World Bank, The G8 and Transnational Corporations.

1. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) – was founded in 1949, has 149 member states and 149 states are WTO members, constituting over 90% of all world trade with a further 31 in the process of joining.

 The WTO is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. The goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business.” [1]

The WTO functions through a number of meetings involving high- up officials from Nation States often referred to as a trade ‘round’ where they agree on the future terms of trade (for example how much to tax import and exports of goods and services)

2. The International Monetary Fund and The World Bank

 The IMF has 187 members. It monitors the world’s economies, lends to members in economic difficulty, and provides technical assistance ([2]). The IMFs mission is to facilitate international trade, promote high employment, achieve sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world. If a country gets into too much debt and can’t pay it off, it is the IMF that lends the country, setting conditions the country must abide by in order to receive that loan.

The World Bank was established in 1944, is headquartered in Washington, D.C. and has more than 10,000 employees in more than 100 offices worldwide. Like the IMF it has 187 member states  

The World Bank works closely with IMF. It provides low-interest loans to developing countries for a wide array of purposes that include investments in education, health, infrastructure, and natural resource management. ’It says that is mission is to ‘fight poverty with passion and professionalism for lasting results and to help people help themselves and their environment by providing resources, sharing knowledge, building capacity and forging partnerships in the public and private sectors.’ The World Bank is thus the largest single organisation responsible for bringing undeveloped countries whose populations make up at least 2/3rds of the world’s population into the global economy.

The World Bank believes that economic growth through industrialization and free trade are essential for countries to develop. They argue that there are sees the five key factors necessary for economic growth: 

3. The Group of Eight (G-8) is a forum for the leaders of eight of the world’s most industrialized nations, aimed at finding common ground on key topics and solutions to global issues. The G-8 includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. While the leaders of these countries are in regular contact, they meet in summit format as the G-8 once a year.[3] ALSO [4]

4.    Transnational Corporations

 Transnational Corporations are some of the largest include Shell, ICI and Microsoft. Since world war two these have expanded massively.

 Held and Mcgrew point out that Transnational Corporations account for more than 25 percent of world production, 80% of world industrial output, approximately 40% of world merchandise trade and 10 percent of world GDP. They also suggest that they have become powerful in determining where in the world production takes place and have played a major role in reordering the productive relationships between nation states[5]

Transnational Corporations have benefited hugely from the trade rules established by the WTO. Ellwood (2000) argues that these are now the driving force behind economic globalisation, wielding more power than many nation states. Today, 51 of the 100 largest economies in the world are run by TNCs rather than Nation States.

 


 

[1] http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/whatis_e.htm

[2] http://www.imf.org/external/about.htm

[3] http://g8.gc.ca/about/

[4] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/g8

[5] Held D and Mcgew, A (2007) – Globalisation/ Anti Globalisation: beyond the great divide – Polity.

Sociopops – Pulp – Common People and a modification

A classic from the 90s – if you can figure out the meaning behind the tune then you will appreciate why it is an uber-appropriate choice for the spoof below –

Incidentally, ‘Rorxz’s’ comment (from youtube) on the video above was ‘I love this song, but still understand that the Conservatives are the shit’ –

Hard to top that by adding on some sociology I know but I feel obliged to inform/ remind you that compared to the subjects in Pulp’s orginal the class differences between Cameron – and most of the rest of us are huge -so one has to wonder how much empathy Cameron, and many other members of the cabinet can really have for the ‘commmon people’

Apologies for some of the links not working below – I’m still getting my head around the technicalities of embedding youtube clips – I think if I insert links after the embeds the links don’t work maybe? All part of the learning process – you can always cut and paste them into a browser for now.

Cameron is 5th cousin to the queen – http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article745903.ece, he is a multi millionnaire and went to Eton and Oxford – where he was a member of the elite Bullingdon club – please see the following links for details

Newspaper: various articles from the Guardian website. The link below provides a hub of links to articles about Oxbridge and Elitism:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/oxbridgeandelitism

Documentary: Cameron: Toff at the Top First broadcast on Channel 4 in 2007 this documentary outlines how David Cameron comes from a very privileged background. In the clip below, the (rather cynical) narrator is looking at the Bullingdon Club, an elitist dining club in Oxford:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NUMmGmrEag0&feature=PlayList&p=C2F717977F8B8B0C&index=30

Newspaper article from the Observer. Goes well with the above link. Demonstrates the kind of jobs members of the Bullingdon Club go into.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/oct/30/fashion-bullingdon-george-osborne-oxford

Newspaper: Articles from the Guardian website An extract from this article: Nearly a third of MPs and almost two thirds of members of the House of Lords attended private schools, compared with 7% of the wider population. Find out more at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/dec/12/highereducation.uk

Newspaper: Articles from the Guardian website exploring the link between elite education and the Conservative Party, 2008 A more in depth article than the one above, focusing on the Conservative Party. Among other things it points out that

Of the 27 members of David Cameron’s shadow cabinet, 17 went to private schools. Last summer, a smattering of reports drew attention to the fact that no less than 14 Tory frontbench spokesmen were educated at Eton.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/may/09/oxbridgeandelitism.highereducation1