Crime and Globalization

As we have heard in the lecture, the commitment of crime is more often than not a deviant behaviour exhibited by the disadvantaged and marginalized. It is their way of expressing their unhappiness, their reminder to the world of their existence, and their mode of revenge. What is visible and apparent – their act of crime, is but a means to an end; the superficial symptom to the deep-rooted underlying problems. When we condemn these criminal actions and the state punishes the criminals, we are no where nearer to treating the problems than we are at creating new ones.

Punishment can serve as a deterrent to discourage criminal behaviours, but it does not address the causes of crime. Symptoms suppressed through punishment often resurface as other social problems. An example on the familial level is of a neglected child stealing to gain his parents’ concern, only to become estranged from his family when they scold and hit him without realizing the need to spend more time with him. The child may never steal again, but neither will he confide in his parents ever again. To the parents, they may have achieved their aim of deterring the child from theft. But to the child, not only has he not succeeded in gaining the affection he craves, he may even be convinced that his parents do not love him at all.

The ramifications of punishment are immense, and are further magnified at the state-level. When the state metes out punishment according to the severity of the crime, it is almost like state-sanctioned revenge. It does not address the grievances felt by the actors of crime that spurred their behaviour, and instead, invites greater angst amongst those who feel the same. What then follows is a vicious cycle of crime and punishment.

It can be argued that such deviant behaviour is an ineffective method of expression that often harms the society at large, and thus warrants some sort of punishment. However, not withstanding the fact that harmful behaviour ought to be discouraged, it must be noted that if the actors of these crime have had a better and more efficient way of expressing themselves, they probably would not have resorted to crime. Finding out the root causes of deviant behaviour may be time and resource consuming, but we should not just criminalize these acts, wait for the law to punish the actors and pretend that all problems would be solved if we can throw all of them into jail, or worse still, pretend that there is no problem at all.

The truth is, as with everything else, the problem usually starts small. By giving due attention to the slight symptoms and digging to find out the root causes, many crimes can be prevented. It could even be surprising how some problems could be solved when no solutions are devised, and are actually non-problems in the first place. Especially with globalization, where anything and everything can happen and evolve at a rapid pace, it is all the more important for us to pay attention to the small problems before they turn into huge societal ones.

Women and the Family

Feminism versus Gender Equality

The Feminist Movement used to propagate the concept of gender equality to fight for access to education for women, as well as political rights. Fast forward a few decades, the term “feminism” has evolved to mean superiority of the female gender, and no longer just one that seeks to remove the exploitation of women. While the modern woman now expects to be treated no different from her male counterparts with regards to her salary and opportunities, the traditional expectations that she has of men remains unchanged.

When looking for a potential partner, she often expects the other party to be a “gentlemen”; to hold the door for her, carry her handbag, move her chair and play the proactive role in the courtship.

The modern woman now wants to have the cake, and eat it.

Definition of Social Role by Gender

Women in my grandmother’s era stayed at home, did all the household chores, gave birth to many kids, took care of the little ones and the elderly at home. My grandfather went out to work and was the sole breadwinner of the large family. Life was hard, but they got by. Women then were quietly playing the supportive role for their husbands, and the word “divorce” was unheard of.

Now, most women continue to work after marriage, and are expected to juggle both the roles of a commited and capable worker, and a responsible mother and loving wife. Both roles require polaric qualities from the same individual, and juggling them proves to be a highly challenging task. The result is that marriages are put under the test, and many fall apart.

Although it is arguable that couples in my grandparents’ era were happier, what is reasonable to conclude is that unions then were more lasting, and roles were simpler and more clearly defined than present.

The Balanced Union

It seems like now we’re confused over our roles in the society. Males demand the ladies to be more rational and financially independent, and the ladies want their partners to be more sensitive. At the same time, ladies should remain soft spoken and preferably submissive, while the men must still be macho and always ready to offer the ladies protection. Oh, how confusing.

When pared to the core, every relationship is about striking some sort of comfortable balance between both parties. In the olden days, this was a lot easier to achieve. Each party had a scripted role to play, and knew exactly how to react to situations and problems in accordance to their “designed” scripts. Few questioned the boundaries of these roles, and even those who did seldom challenged them, preferring to suppress their individualism and conform to social expectations so as to preserve the holy institution of marriage and family.

That’s not to say that it is an impossible task to find that same balance in marriages these days. What it takes though, is a lot more understanding of the self and between partners, as well as greater care in not tipping the balance. With more overlaps between the roles performed by each party, couples need to accept the fact that they now have to learn to give and take, and can no longer expect each other to behave in accordance to their prescribed “gender roles”, just because.

For true gender equality to be recognised, gender has to remain a biological term, not a social term.

Work and Trade

With the growth of capitalism and international trade, the tradition means of work has evolved to take on a new form. Many sociologists have taken on different perspectives on the subject, and most notably, the “Efficiency of division of labour” view adopted by Adam Smith and the “Anti-Captalism” stance held by Karl Marx. Today, I will discuss work and trade with references to both schools of thoughts.

Division of labour results in specialization of skills

Instead of producing a full product, workers in the new capitalized industries produce parts of the end-product, and are seldom, or almost never, required to perform the other steps necessary to complete the product. This limitation or reduction in skills performance is arugued by Karl Marx to “deskill” workers, and thus rendering them vulnerable. However, this narrowing of skill performance could also likely lead to the worker becoming a specialist in his task, rather than to “deskill” workers, as proposed by Karl Marx. Instead of having to perform a full spectrum of tasks in order to produce something, the new worker now needs only to concentrate on carrying out one specific task amongst many others, and can thus focus on doing it better and faster.

Specialization leads to knowledge acquisition

Having repeatedly performed the same task, workers now know best how the task can be done more efficiently and effectively, which is supported by Adam Smith’s proposition of the efficiency of division of labour. This knowledge is not gained first-hand by the capitalists who “exploit” the workers, but rather by the workers themselves, through having gone through the same (inefficient/ineffective) work procedures many times over. Hence, workers are the true owners of knowledge in the modern world. It is not true that workers are “losing their skills” and “losing the ownership of their end products”, and on the contrary, workers in today’s world are acquiring something more valuable – knowledge.

Knowledge as the new product

Knowledge is worth more than goods are in the new market, and trade will increasingly be carried out in exchange of knowledge than goods. This is evident in the modern world, where the employment of consultantation services is becoming a commonplace. And since knowledge is becoming increasingly valuable, the new way to building wealth and power for nations will be to focus on acquiring knowledge. As the race for knowledge progresses, the only way to develop stronger capabilities is through finding a niche to focus and specialize in, so that you become an expert in the field. And so, it is foreseeable that the next wave of evolution involves the specialization of knowledge (creation of worth) and the free trading of specialized knowledge (accumulation of value).

From industrializing to industrialized

In the new international division of labour model, we can see that nations have moved from capital accumulation to knowledge accumulation. Services and investments are now more valuable than manufactured goods, and are traded as higher-end products compared to the manufactured goods, as manufactured goods were, when compared to natural resources in the past. Something more significantly different in the new model, however, are the positions in which the trading nations are in. In the old model, nations producing finished-goods acquire raw materials from the nations with abundance of raw materials precisely because they do not possess them.  In the new model, we see that the post-industrial nations, as their name suggests, have once undergone industrialization; and this is seemingly the key to progress. Whilst finished-goods producing nations might have attained their higher status (i.e. wealth and power) despite not having owned raw materials, the new model proposes that to attain the high status in the modern world, nations require some sort of progress through industrialization.  This would highlight to us that rather than a one-way exploitation, the new international division of labour actually leads to the progress of nations by allowing a promotion in status.

An example of this progress from an industrializing to industrialized nation would be India. We have seen how many MNCs relocate their call centre functions to this country in the past decades due to their lower cost of labour (i.e. “cheap labour”), and then in recent years, this country has progressed to become the land of IT experts and is quickly rising to be one of the powerhouses in Asia.

The brighter side

Whilst free trade have brought about many issues such as labour exploitation, dominance of a few big players and the inequitable power distribution among nations, all is not gloom and doom. There are always benefits brought about by globalization and international trade, and the transfer of knowledge, skills and capabilities, the promotion of local cultures and better appreciation of differences are just a few to name. It is also worthy to note that in recent years, there is a popular rising trend of trade responsibility and phrases such as “corporate social responsibility”, “eco-something” and “fair trade” will remain the buzzwords in the years to come.

Inequality and Poverty

Over the weekend the PM made several significant announcements during the National Day Rally, amongst which was the increase of 50 percent in the second installment of the growth dividend due on 1 October. This decision was made to help Singaporeans cope with the higher than expected inflation rate this year.

With rising fuel costs and the soaring in prices of rice, the cost of living in Singapore for the average household has seen a significant spike since last year. The lower income groups are worse hit by these increases, as the costs of their daily necessities such as electricity and rice, where they spend the bulk of their disposable incomes on, have gone up. To address this, the GST offset package and growth dividend are introduced, and they are tiered compensation schemes which award higher monetary values to households with lower income, and vice versa. This is one measure put in place by our government to bridge the possibly growing income disparity between the rich and the poor.

The stepped increase in GST from 5% to 7% over the past year was an unwelcomed move by the public, but is in fact the way to go, in order to move towards a more equitable society. The progressive tax structure is something to work towards, especially in developed economies, to ensure a more even distribution of wealth between the haves and have-nots. It seems to be that what is best for the country often seems like bitter medicine to its people – hard to swallow. Our government has been patient in ‘coaxing’ us into accepting his prescriptions, but not many other governments have succeeded in inplementing such policies, simply because it appears politically unwise to upset the people. I would think that our government has done a pretty decent job in managing between economic growth and income distribution so far, but at the same time, I acknowledge that we probably have it easier than other governments who have far larger populations and greater lands to manage.

As the situation in every country is unique, I personally believe that different prescriptions are required to alleviate the problems of poverty and inequality. There is no one winning model for all to adopt, because poverty and inequality are almost never surfaced in isolation from a host of many other problems. Beyond meeting basic human needs, the reduction of poverty means job opportunities must be created so as to ensure continual source of livelihood and encourage self-reliance. Conservation of the environment and natural resources are also critical in sustainable development of future generations to come. There are many complex and seemingly competing issues to consider, and this is why it is essential that the different states identify their main areas of concern, understand the inter-connections between these problems, before devising a comprehensive set of solutions to be carried out in phases. The solutions will ideally target mainly one issue at a time, taking care not to cause a deterioration in the other areas. A gradual and monitored progress in carrying out the remedies will ensure that sufficient attention has been given to the fundamental problems, before one rushes into the whole idea of growing the economy.

Globalization

Does it bring the world together, or does it tear us apart?

I recall hearing the term “global village” not too long ago, while I was still in JC (yes, three years just seem to fly by like that) and it was a topic for discussion during my GP class. The very fact that globalization has been taking place since long before we even know it, except that it has in the recent decades been accelerated by the proliferation of Infocommunication Technology, and yet it remains a constant topic of interest over the years speaks for itself – that it indeed could be a highly debatable phenomenon.

Or is it?

The benefits that globalization brings seem insurmountable. Economically, its positive effects are apparent. The realization of a global market place means that companies can choose to take their production or operations to shores beyond their own, where material or labour costs are effectively lower, and then pass the savings on to consumers. Consumers will also have more choices when making purchases, because instead of picking only from the limited local produce, they now have much more brands and products of different price points to choose from. This creates free competition and encourages efficiency.

Politically, it doesn’t seem too bad either. With world organizations such as the World Trade Organization, United Nations, World Bank and International Court of Justice being created, at least it seems like there are some sort of regulation for the relationships among countries and that the rights of nations are being taken care of. Socially, the international travels made by people all over the globe enable greater understanding of multiculturalism, could arguably make mankind more accepting towards diversity and, hence, promote peace.

Of course, as to every coin, there are two sides to it. It is not hard to see that in this game of globalization, there are both winners and losers. There is an inequitable distribution of wealth and power among nations, and this leads to the powerhouse(s) enjoying cultural supremacy. Which, I agree, is really kinda sad. As a certain prof once put it, “We’re all becoming American clones!”. And the saddest part? For most of it, we seem to be enjoying becoming just about the same as everyone else.

I’m not approaching this issue on a moral high ground. Just like I can’t deny being more or less a clone myself, I recognise that it is only natural for societies to seek progress, and globalization did bring about progression for most parts of the world. Although I acknowledge that the greatest progression is made in the economic aspect, with the others, such as cultural, debatably regressing, I believe globalization has basically opened up the world for everyone to see. And this is very important. If you have never seen the rich, you will never know that you’re poor. This motivates countries to move forward. The issue lies in that some governments don’t, be it the lack of know-how or resources to. And sure enough I find it easier to mend such problems, at least we know it’s about getting the rich and powerful to help out/stop their exploitation, and at the same time, those in need to help themselves. (I know I make it sound so easy when it’s really not, but it beats not seeing the solution at all, no?)

Ahh.. I can see some of you grimacing in disagreement already. But, would it really be better if we were all self-contained in our own world, just like N.Korea?

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