Search

During the late 20th century, income inequality rose in most countries around the world, and by a substantial amount in some cases. By contrast, income disparities have stabilized during the post-2000 era, and have even begun to decline in a small majority of states. What accounts for this recent change? Unfortunately, existing work is not well-positioned to address this question. Researchers commonly restrict their attention to affluent nations or use empirical models that have not kept pace with either the changing landscape or the availability of newer measures, all of which suggests a path forward in this area of research. This article focuses on the post-2000 era, drawing from a large global sample (1284 observations across 129 states), while utilizing novel measures that better reflect the contemporary period. The study reports results from Prais–Winsten regression with panel-corrected standard errors and two-way fixed effects. The models show that income inequality is shaped by the major employment sectors (agriculture, industry, and services), the relative supply of unskilled/skilled labor (as indicated by population growth and tertiary school enrollment, respectively), globalization (international trade and migration), state characteristics (the size of government and regulation of labor), gender dynamics (female participation in paid work and government), and the unemployment rate. In sum, the results reveal a set of equalizing and disequalizing factors that shape each country's income distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2009 and 2014, South Africa experienced widespread protests. In contrast to prominent examples of global protest during the same period, they were localized and did not push for broad political and economic transformation. To explain these features, this article draws from three ethnographic and interview-based case studies of local protest and organizing within informal settlements in and around Johannesburg. The author argues that urban poverty and the experience of market insecurity, on the one hand, and democratization and the experience of state betrayal, on the other hand, gave rise to specific political orientations. Residents responded to market insecurity by demanding collective consumption for place-based communities, and they responded to state betrayal by demanding fulfillment of a national liberation social contract through administrative fixes. Both strategies confined activism to the local level and limited broader challenges. The findings have implications for research on both the urban poor and social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population aging is a nearly universal trend that is placing new importance on how societies view and treat their elderly. Past research has established that perceptions of the elderly vary across countries. This article empirically explores three competing theoretical explanations on potential reasons for these differences: the Value Orientation perspective, the Competition over Resources perspective, and Political and Economic Structure. Using Wave 6 of the World Values Survey, various sources of country-level data, and hierarchical logistic regressions the article provides insights as to which theoretical position holds the most weight. The analysis improves on past research by using a large and diverse sample of countries from every region of the world. Contrary to popular thought, and the traditional Value Orientation perspective, it is found that Asian, Middle Eastern, and Sub-Saharan African countries have significantly more negative views toward the elderly than Western countries. In addition, the study finds that countries with higher average lifespans and more elderly as a proportion of the total population actually have more favorable attitudes toward the elderly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing literature on contested urban politics has revealed the political agency of seemingly marginal urban residents, including those experiencing the threat of eviction. Yet with much of this work highlighting single instances of successful resistance, the agency of informal urbanites can be overstated and much of what is understood as resistance may actually be confinement. This article addresses this issue by situating an ethnographic analysis of residential evictions in Delhi and Mumbai in historical perspective. Analyzing the character of insecurity since the 1950s, it demonstrates that historically rooted antagonisms and mobilized responses to insecurity have produced political stalemate. The comparative analysis reveals that while evictions in Delhi and Mumbai today occur in places with different histories and characters of insecurity, ongoing contestations between residents, activists, and local government in both cities have produced similar conditions of confinement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decades, the region of Latin America has been through many changes, with the reduction of inequality levels and a political trend which has seen the election of female politicians throughout the continent, including a revival of gender politics and feminist movements. Countries like Brazil are still home to gender discrimination and inequality, with high levels of domestic violence towards women, low levels of political representation, a culture of machismo and the predominance still of stereotypical gender representations in the media. Questions asked include how the media can better contribute to assist in gender development and nation-building. How can online platforms make a difference? This article provides a critical summary of feminist theoretical perspectives on the potential of online communications for the advancement of women’s rights, further providing a brief case study of contemporary Brazilian feminism and the mobilization around women’s rights, particularly in 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young women in their late teens and early twenties are especially susceptible to HIV infection in developing nations, as incidence of HIV is growing most rapidly among females aged 15–24 years. While prior research considers the role of various social and economic gender stratification measures to explain trends in the female HIV burden, the potential influence of unemployment has not yet been considered, nor has there been explicit focus on the empirical drivers of young women’s HIV. This article considers the role of unemployment in predicting the female HIV burden among 15- to 24-year-olds using regression analyses. The results demonstrate that unemployment among young women significantly impacts the proportion of female HIV cases among those aged 15–24. However, labor force participation also does not guarantee against HIV transmission. These results support ideas related to the increased likelihood of concurrent partners, transactional sex, and ‘sugar daddies’ among young women who are unemployed, having a lack of means to meet their resource needs otherwise. The patterns revealed demonstrate the importance of economic insecurity through unemployment in contributing to the HIV burden among young women in developing nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Declining public confidence in science is a concern in the US and Europe, but it is unclear what predicts confidence in science in developed countries, let alone in developing countries. This article examines how development and ‘risk society’ shape individual attitudes toward science across 47 diverse countries, using four theoretically driven measures of risk society. It is found that people in affluent societies have lower support for science than those in less affluent societies. Specifically, individuals holding post-materialist attitudes and living in countries with greater human and economic development (measured by higher internet access and tertiary enrollment, and lower infant mortality) have lower confidence in future-oriented science. The article concludes that the scientific gains that are brought by affluence are accompanied by heightened fears of human-made risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a study on dignity and the politics of dignity in postcolonial Egypt, and focuses on the historicity and socioeconomic background of two events: the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis during the rise of post-independence nationalism and the 2011 Egyptian Revolution during the Arab Spring. This study reviews the importance of the concept of dignity in philosophy and the social sciences, specifically pertaining to the development and postcolonial need for dignity and recognition, which the author terms ‘dignition.’ The central question here is how the conception of dignity has evolved between the two events and what the implications are for the consequent understanding of dignity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do certain pairs of countries establish free trade agreements (FTAs)? Existing studies on FTAs have examined internal attributes of countries such as neoliberalism or the interest of domestic political elites. FTAs as a type of market integration across national borders create high uncertainties in the absence of supra-national political authorities. To explain how countries cope with uncertainties, this article presents the institutional embeddedness argument to explain FTA formation among countries from 1957 to 2008, focusing on the effects of IGO ties and other types of relationships between countries. The findings demonstrate that, controlling for trade and political alliances, IGO ties positively enhance the chance of an FTA. Social and cultural IGOs also promote FTA formation as much as economic IGOs. More importantly, the effect of socio-cultural IGO ties increases as the distance between countries increases. These findings suggest that institutional ties between countries are an important channel for enhancing socio-cultural awareness, affinities, and trust as well as sharing economic and technical information for FTAs as an institutionalization project of market integration between countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on cosmopolitanism as an object of sociological analysis, through an empirical study of Canadian development workers who were posted in Pakistan for extended periods of time and have subsequently resumed their lives in Canada. These global migrants developed various attachments to Pakistani culture and people through their transnational experiences. Employing a continuum of cosmopolitanism, the article describes these attachments, which, it argues, form the basis of a tentative and ambivalent culture of cosmopolitanism as it is lived by these development workers on their return to Canada. The study’s aim is to clarify the concept of cosmopolitanism by documenting the emergence of a new sociality characterized by global connectivities that engender justice-oriented alliances and solidarities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

By the turn of the 21st century the concept of globalization had earned its place in the social sciences and debate turned more squarely to the theoretical significance of globalization. Yet not all scholars were happy with the notion of globalization. Some claim that is merely a new name for earlier theories and concepts. Among those who reject new paradigmatic thinking on the current age is Immanuel Wallerstein, the world-renowned sociologist and ‘father’ of the world-system paradigm. This article is intended as an appraisal of Wallerstein’s œuvre in the context of the debate on global transformations in the late 20th and early 21st centuries and from the vantage point of the present author’s own critical globalization perspective. The first three parts summarize and assess Wallerstein’s theoretical system and his many contributions to macro, historical and comparative sociology, to development studies and international political economy. The fourth discusses Wallerstein’s assessment of the evolution of the world capitalist system in recent decades, including his views on the concept of globalization, and the fifth focuses on earlier and more recent critical appraisals of his work, including the present author’s own, in light of the recent transformations in world capitalism identified with globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the impact of foreign investment on development from an organizational perspective, by examining the role of foreign subsidiaries in the economic growth of less developed countries between 1970 and 2000. Two aspects of foreign subsidiaries are considered. The first is the total number of foreign subsidiaries located in a given country. The second dimension is 'foreign subsidiary concentration', the percentage of foreign subsidiaries located in a given country owned by corporations headquartered in a single country. Several findings emerge from structural equation models of 41-70 less developed countries between 1970 and 2000. First, overall growth of foreign subsidiaries between 1970 and 2000 has a positive effect on economic growth in less developed countries. Second, relatively high levels of foreign subsidiary concentration in 1970 inhibit this expansion of foreign subsidiaries. Two other aspects of foreign investment, foreign investment concentration and foreign capital dominance, also retard the expansion of foreign subsidiaries. Further analyses suggest that political corruption may, in part, mediate these relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science and scientific production have been widely promoted as powerful tools for advancing national economic and social development. While much progress has been made in determining whether this is the case, less understood are the underlying factors influencing national scientific activity in the first place, especially during its 20th-century global expansion. In order to advance our understanding of the development of science and world polity, this study investigates in-depth when and under what functional and institutional conditions countries chose to join any of the scientific unions comprising the ICSU, the preeminent and oldest international science institution in the world. According to analyses of historical data for 166 countries from 1919 to 1990, functional arguments are only important predictors of the rate at which nation-states join scientific organizations early in the 'science diffusion' process. After 1945, institutional factors best account for worldwide national scientific activity: The joining rate increases more quickly during the post-Second World War era with the rise of the world system. This article also provides evidence of both convergence in the evolution of national scientific activities and of the great invariability in the impact of functional and institutional factors for core and peripheral countries over time. The article concludes by discussing the implications of this research for the future study of national scientific production and development in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]