PSYC30825: Community, Health, and

Applied Social Psychology

Globalization, Poverty and Social Justice:

Session 6 with Dr Glenn Williams

OverviewThis week – Globalization,

Poverty and Social Justice

• Poverty - its multi-

dimensional nature

• The impacts of globalization:

– Consumerism, unsustainability, urbanization, greed, widened inequalities, blinded to poverty, media controls, lacking a voice

• Ideologies to sustain

domination and oppression

• An Empowering Global

Community Psychology:

– Linking the global and the local

– Participatory democracy

– Human rights preserved

– Encouraging sustainable living

Last week – Tackling

prejudice and

discrimination

• Spotting the paradigm

• ‘Show-and-tell’ on research

into prejudice and

discrimination

• Theoretical perspectives on

prejudice and discrimination

• Research and ways of

tackling prejudice and

discrimination

Consider this…

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See the hand out:

• What are your views on the Students Against Sweatshops

campaign?

• What other activities could students do to improve conditions

for employees in developing countries?

Your Views

• Consumers protecting

producers

• Strict definition of sweatshops

needed and needs monitoring

• It’s good.

• People needs somebody to look

out for them and they don’t

have the ability to look out for

themselves

• Aimed at US audience; could

aim internationally

• Promoting equality – fairness

within industry

• Big names targeted (Primark)

• Pact with self and others –

boycotting shopping at larger

companies and unethically sourced

organisations

• Word of mouth – leaflets, social

networks, facebook, youtube

• Abercrombie and Fitch – targeting

smaller sized persons; people

boycotted clothes and gave them

away to homeless people

• Get in touch with higher powers

(govt.), national media

• Aim at schools, unis, with

workshops (posters/leaflets)

• Educate about issue and then

action later

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Poverty – “More than Income Alone” (Sloan, 2010)

• Absolute vs. relative poverty:

– “A linen shirt […] is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably, though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into, without extreme bad conduct.” (Adam Smith, 1776, Book 5, Chapter 2)

– Stigma and shame as components

– Shame results from not being able to exercise basic capabilities consistent with society that one lives within (Sen, 1999)

• World Bank Voices of the Poor Project:

– “Poverty is like living in a jail, living under bondage, waiting to be free” (Jamaica)

– “Lack of work worries me. My children were hungry and I told them the rice is cooking, until they fell asleep from hunger” (Egypt)

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Absolute Poverty –your views

• Not being able to have basic needs to

survive such as food and water, daily

• You do not have anything and lack the

majority of basic human essentials such

as food and water

• Lack of basic needs fulfilled (no food,

water, shelter)

• Can’t afford education, lack of

food/water

• Lack of basic needs (e.g. money);

thinking about Maslow’s hierarchy of

needs

• Unable to afford certain basic goods and

resources (e.g. water, clothing, shelter)

• Warm clothes

• Having literally the bare minimum… no

money for basic needs

• No food to survive, shelter, clothes for

warmth, water

• Struggling to meet basic human needs

such as food, shelter and safety and

other needs (physical, emotional,

psychological, freedom, security)

• Lacking the basics (food, water, housing,

money)

• Food and water

• Lack of basic survival human needs (e.g.

water, food, housing)

• Without basic essentials – clean water,

food

• No job, no education

• Lack of water, food, shelter (i.e.

housing), access to healthcare, access to

education (i.e. reading/writing)

• not enough money to live, no food,

water, shelter, life’s necessities

• No food, homeless, no clean water, no

time to play

• Having no physical/financial or basic

needs and no way of obtaining them so

low self-esteem, no empowerment, no

bright future6

Relative poverty – Your views• No family, no friends, no thoughts, do not have

good quality life

• Cannot buy what they want; no love

• Not having enough money to meet life’s basic

needs; to live in a house, eat 3 substantial meals

a day, keep warm

• Poor in relation to others, dependent on where

you live. Don’t have new clothes, don’t have a

nice house, don’t have nice food.

• Not having enough compared to the people

around you (e.g. UK/West – no mobile phone,

clothes, computers, gadgets)

• Not meeting needs – psychologically, emotionally,

& physically. Not having a sense of belonging and

value.

• Lack of non-essential items which are unrelated to

basic needs for survival (anything besides food,

water, shelter, security, phone and nice clothes

• Lacking a particular make of car

• Not being able to afford a car once you have

passed your driving test

• Lacking something in comparison to those individuals

around you (e.g. all my friends have nice clothes

except me; fancy food, games, not as much money

as friends, not being married by certain age)

• No smartphone, can’t afford night out, no comforts

(e.g. games), not having holidays abroad

• Lack of money

• Not having good education, not having expensive

products

• You cannot afford anything than the minimum that

daily life requires.

• Don’t have technology (TV)

• Materially poor in comparison to others

• Lacking items which make life comfortable (not

necessities); lacking things which others around you

may have but you do not need

• No up to date materialistic things; something you

want over what you need

• The extent to which household’s financial resources

fall below average income threshold for the economy

• Having little social desirable objects and difficulty

obtaining them

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Multi-Dimensional Poverty

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Poverty Index

Social isolation

Financial Strain

Materialdeprivation

Psycho-socialstrain

Civic participation

Environment

From Tomlinson, Walker & Williams (2007)

Low confidence Social

Dysfunction

Anxiety & depression

How Household Poverty Impacts on a Child

9

.07

.09

.08

–.09

.16

.18

.07

.08

–.12

.08

–.11

–.19

.09

–.12

Psycho-social

strain

Home life

Educational

orientation

Anxiety

Delinquency

Poor

Environment

Social isolation

Civic

participation

Material

deprivation

Financial strain

Positive relationship

Negative relationship

Household Child

–.16

From Tomlinson, Walker & Williams (2008)

Globalization and Its Impacts

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Importance of Ideology for Domination and Oppression

• In this sense, ideology is not neutral and non-value-

laden.

• Instead, critical community psychologists see ideology

as ‘false consciousness’ (i.e. accepting the status quo as

static and impervious to change).

• Ideology continues through cognitive, behavioural,

emotional and institutional/organisational processes.

• Ideologies of choice, control, individualism, freedom are

entangled with an overriding ideological structure of

corporate globalization that feeds an ethos of

consumerism, which needs continual feeding…

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Consumerism

12

Rapid Urbanization

13

Corporate Greed

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Why Free Trade is not Fair Trade (see Galloway, 2010)

• North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) – foreign companies

can sue governments that prevent the company from operating if

the company believes their ‘rights’ have been infringed

– In 1997, Canadian government outlawing additive of MMT to petrol (seen as hazard to health and environment). The manufacturers successfully sued for US$13m.

• General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)

– Also, in 1997, the World Trade Organization argued for the cessation of long-standing agreement between European Union and small banana farmers in the Caribbean as it contravened GATT. The Prime Minister of St. Lucia argued that these countries wouldn’t have a chance of dealing with the EU if preferential treatment wasn’t being given.

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Widening Inequalities

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Being Blinded to Poverty and Its Impacts

17

Media Controls through Globalization

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Depriving People of a Voice

19

Introducing an Empowering Global Community Psychology

•Participatory democracy

•Protecting human rights

•Balancing the global with the local

•Encouraging sustainable lifestyle

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Participatory Democracy

• Moving away from Westernised Individualism through development

of collectives that can exert influence, can make decisions, and can

hold budgets.

• This builds up local ties with those in community.

• Examples are:

– community gardens,

– food cooperatives,

– ways of sharing tools/skills in the neighbourhood (e.g. Ithaca, NY – system of ‘time dollars’ / ‘green dollars’ to move away from working for cash. Offers skills and support and is similar to ‘Time Bank’ concept in the UK for volunteering)

– Campaigns for community banking services

– Credit unions

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Protecting Basic Human Rights

• See United Nations’ The Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

– http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

• Sen (1999) – economic development needs maintenance of civil

liberties (e.g. freedom of speech, freedom of assembly).

• United Nations Development Programme (1994) – Human

Development Report arguing for Freedom From Fear and for

Freedom from Want.

• With human rights protected, community organisers/activists/labour

leaders can work without fear of reprisals from governments or

corporations.

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Balancing the Global with the Local

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Encouraging Sustainable Lifestyles

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Suggested Readings

•Marsella, A.J. (1998)Toward a ‘Global-Community Psychology’. Meeting the needs of a changing world. American Psychologist, 53 (12), 1282-1291.

•Nelson, G. & Prilleltensky, I. (2010) Community Psychology:In Pursuit of Liberation and Well-Being. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan [chapter 15 by Ted Sloan]

•Tomlinson, M., Walker, R. & Williams, G. (2008) Child poverty and well-being in the here and now. Poverty, Issue 129, Winter, 11-14.

Next week…Effecting Social Change Through Activism

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