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Poverty and Economic Inequality. Poverty and Economic Inequality…. Inequality: a condition in which groups of individuals have unequal access to goods, services, resources, and opportunities .
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Poverty and Economic Inequality…. • Inequality: a condition in which groups of individuals have unequal access to goods, services, resources, and opportunities. • So what are the connections to globalization? The point is that globalization is not necessarily creating new problems; rather, globalization is redistributing power and exacerbating and sharpening existing contradictions manifested in patterns of inequality.
Globalization and Power…. • Ultimately, globalization invokes issues of power and the changing distribution of power between the global and the local and among the (local) society, social movements, nation0states, and (global) transnational organizations and institutions. • Globalization is a deeply political and contested process that empowers and strengthens some actors and institutions while disempowering and weakening others.
Globalization and Power…. • Fundamental is the degree to which globalization has shifted power away from the state and nationally based social actors toward global organizations. • With the erosion of the social and fiscal bases of the state, the state is less able to respond to economic dislocations through classic social welfare policies.
Globalization and Power…. • The inability to resolve basic social problems weakens the responsiveness of democratic institutions, creating what has been labeled the “democratic deficit”—or the inability of citizens to shape public policy consistent with their needs. • What can be done? There is a trend for social movements to emphasize autonomy from party politics and to prioritize horizontal organizing around issues of social justice within civil society to pressure government officials.
Globalization and Power…. • A widespread set of issues, from increasing poverty and crumbling social infrastructure to the environment to class labor issues of wages and jobs, are potentially creating the objective basis for a “globalization from below” movement to emerge and respond to the challenges of globalization. As people increasingly inhabit transnational spaces and begin to connect their struggles with similar struggles in other parts of the world, localized forms of resistance may evolve into a global countermovement.
Conclusion…. • With the emergence of neo-liberalism in the 1970s, the pace and nature of change reflecting the greater importance of global processes allow us to talk of a different—though not necessarily new—period in human history. The scope of these changes is vividly manifested in the reorientation and restructuring of U.S. society. • As Peter Drucker points out, the United States is no longer the single most powerful global actor but one of several “centers” in the global economy. This transformation is further reflected in strategic and ideological shifts responsible for changes in the quality and quantity of jobs in the United State. Thus, an understanding of contemporary U.S. society is impossible without reference to globalization. • The inability to resolve basic social problems weakens the responsiveness of democratic institutions, creating what has been labeled the “democratic deficit”—or the inability of citizens to shape public policy consistent with their needs.
