Blogging through Sociology of Development (2020)

What I learned from social development is mostly that in our recent decades our society has developed from a fairly homogenous, orderly and stable society, to a society with enormous variety and diversity. During these classes I know now that social development refers to how people develop social and emotional skills across their lifecycles. It also focusses on the need to put people first, which is necessary for our society, and for the groups of people who are part of it. This makes me realize that our world is constantly changing because of social development. Furthermore, working with Wikipedia was a challenging project. I discovered that Wikipedia made a historical evolution in our society. I would have never thought that Wikipedia would be the biggest web research of all time. It has now become the very best web searching in an ethics of our economy and society. But Wikipedia is an online web search, which is caused by technology. What I’ve also learned more about how technology...

According to the reading about social development and ethnic groups, no country is homogeneous in terms of race, religion, language, script, customs, ideas and ways of life. Society is the collectivities of people demarcated from other collectivities. Since the new objective of social development calls for a shift in emphasis from the individual to larger collectivities, the role of ethnic group in social development has been gaining momentum. In this reading, the author critically examines the role of ethnic groups in social development in the third world countries in general and South Asian countries in particular. The concept of social development is more comprehensive than economic development. Social development is possible only when the group mobilization and action. Ethnic solidarity is only one among many possible forms of collective actions, that have strong implication for ethnic resurgence in modern society. Furthermore, social developement objectives are not always clear, ...

According to the reading, gender and development is an interdisciplinary field of research and applied study that implements a feminist approach to understanding and addressing the disparate impact that economic development and globalization have on people based upon their location, gender, class background, and other socio-political identities. A strictly economic approach to development views a country’s development in quantitative terms such as job creation, inflation control, and high employment. Gender and development consider many of these same factors, however, gender and development emphasize efforts towards understanding how multifaced these issues are in the entangled context of culture, government, and globalization. Furthermore, there is also a term ‘women in development’ which is a theory of development by contesting that economic development had identical impacts on men and women. The focus of the 1970s feminist movements and their repeated calls of employment opportunit...

  In the last decade, social protection has emerged as a policy framework employed to address poverty and vulnerability in developing countries. This report has two main keys: to province an overview of social protection, and to provide an assessment of its potential contribution to addressing poverty and vulnerability in developing countries. It provides some preliminary definitions and tracks the emergence of social protection as a policy framework against a context of poverty and vulnerability trends in the 1980s and 1990s. Rising poverty and vulnerability following the 1980s in Latin America, the financial crises in 1997 In Asia, and the rapid economic transformation in transition economies demonstrated the need to establish strong and stable institutions directly concerned with reducing and preventing poverty and vulnerability. Furthermore, the extension of social protection in developing countries will require overcoming a number of constraints, which are more acute for low-...

In this blog I am writing about the social capital, household welfare, and poverty in Indonesia. While there are many definitions and interpretations of the concept of social capital, there is a growing consensus that ‘social capital stands for the ability of actors to secure benefits by virtue of membership in social networks or other social structures. The analysis in this paper is limit to social capital at the micro level, which means, individuals and households, and at the meso level (community).  The limited resources available did not make possible a sampling framework such that the studies would be representative of the countries at the national level. Instead three of four areas were selected in each country, which represent different economic, social and institutional environments. In the case of Indonesia, the collected data cover the rural areas of three provinces: Jambi, Jawa Tengah, and Nusa Tenggara. These are tropical forest areas which was only recently colon...

The fundamental goal of economic development is not economic growth, but improvement in human welfare, what we often call human development, or social development. A country may grow for limited periods on the basis of mining its natural resources, or by large infusions of foreign aids, but to sustain the growth process there is no substitute for educated people. As an example, in 1960 countries like Korea and Japan had much higher enrollment rates than would have been expected given their 1960 levels of income. The same effects of education show up in other ways at different levels of analysis. More educated workers earn higher income, so that education is a good investment for parents to make in their children. Even more convincing is evidence that education raises the output of farmers, since, for example, a farmers output cannot be higher with education just because his education made it easier to get the job in the first place. Furthermore, and most importantly, education has a h...

Elected officials, chambers of commerce, and various industry groups talk about the importance of economic development. Economic development is a process of targeted activities and programs that work to improve the economic wellbeing and quality of life of a community by building local wealth, diversifying the economy, creating and retaining jobs, and building the local tax base. However, the fundamental goal of economic development is not economic growth, but improvement in human welfare, what we often call human development, or social development. By any sensible measure of human development, the postwar development effort has been an astonishing success. Furthermore, the economic part of it could be thought to be relatively straightforward. Surely, a steady rise in per capita income as conventionally measures is an anchor, while necessary, is certainly not sufficient for development, and even for economic development. The distribution of this rising income among the population is l...

Since the human rights is seen as a normative benchmark for any government claiming legitimacy must surely rank as one of the most inspiring stories of all time. Given the dominance of human rights on the political stage today, it is easy to forget that the international human rights movement is primarily a product. While the outgrowth of the contingent circumstances and concerns of Western countries, the internal human rights movement has sought to escape its culture specific origins by basing its moral authority on universal claims. Asian governments started to champion their own Asian values. They also began to denounce what they considered to be self-righteous preaching by Western states that in many cases were responsible for a colonial legacy of rights abuses in the Asian countries over which they now sat in judgment, and in any event had human rights problems of their own back at home. Although, Asian leaders stopped short of denying outright the universality of human rights, t...

Human rights protect the dignity of every person. You have human rights because you are human, regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, or political beliefs. They apply anywhere, anytime, to anyone. Human rights have a special place in law. They are laid down in the constitution and international agreements have been made about it. As a result, a government cannot simply set aside human rights. Furthermore, human rights are often divided into categories. You have civil and political rights. This includes, for example, the right to a fair trial and the right to freedom of expression. You also have economic, social and cultural rights, such as the right to a decent standard of living, the right to work and decent working conditions, and the right to education. All human rights are equally important and they are all necessary to protect human dignity. The right to equal treatment is therefore part of all human rights. Measures are sometimes needed to achieve equality in human rights. F...

Because of the fast changes in demographics, the world population is aging more quickly than ever before. That aging is not just a Western story, on the contrary, life expectancy has risen more sharply in recent decades in Asia, North Africa and the Middle East. According to the statistics, in a few decades, life expectancy rose by 25 to 30 years, double the increase for us. The trend is noticeable, even today. Many countries, neither the environment nor the public services are meeting the needs of this rapidly growing group of older people. Nevertheless, the often-living conditions of the elderly remain underexposed. For the sake of convenience, we assume that older people in countries without social security are supported in a family context. While in more and more developing countries, the younger generations are moving away to the cities, and the elderly are left behind in rural areas. Furthermore, the current flow of refugees also leaves many elderly people alone in their home co...

Demography shows how the human population is constantly changing. It shows the changes of the structure and distributions of populations, and how populations change over time due to births, deaths, migration, and aging. Demographic analysis can relate to whole societies or to smaller groups defined by criteria such as education, religion, or ethnicity. Because demography is interested in changes in human populations, demographers focus on specific indicators of change, which are the two key indicators birth and death rates. Additionally, demographers are also interested in migration trends or the movement of people from one location to another, for example a person from The Netherlands moves to South Korea to live there. If the movement from one country to another country is increasing, it will be called ‘overpopulation’. In this case it indicates in which the population of a living species exceeds the carrying capacity of its ecological niche. Overpopulation is not a function of the ...

Digital divide is a term that refers to the gap between demographics and regions that have access to modern information and communications technology, and those that don’t or have restricted access. This kind of technology includes the telephone, television, computers, and the internet. Mostly the elderly, people with a migration background, people in a disadvantaged or vulnerable position, may have difficulty keeping up digitally. Media literacy is important to ensure that more people take advantage of the opportunities offered by digital media. Moreover, there is a generation gap between old and young people. Young people, like us, grow up with digital media and often know better how to use media to improve their lives. On the other hand, the elderly has not grown up with the internet and sometimes do not see the point of it. Furthermore, young and highly educated people benefit most from the internet. They are increasingly able to use the internet for their personal growth. For exa...

Technology is needed to develop new technical solutions and products. Technology is mainly about new technical concepts, and as a result it Is closely linked to innovations. However, innovation is generally described as coming up with and developing new ideas. With technology it enables new innovations to be developed and produced, and vice versa. Moreover, technology can also be the knowledge of techniques, processes etc. or it can be referred to machines, computers, devices and factories. As an example of modern technology, is the mobile phone. Everyone uses it because with our phones we can stay in touch with friends, family, colleagues etc.  The introduction to the mobile phone has led to a number of changes in our society, like changing social mores. For example, the author uses a survey from the United States which states that there are specific times when people believe it is okay to use a mobile phone, and other times when it is inappropriate. Moreover, it also shows ...

According to the video, a Black Hole is a name more fitting for the event horizon of an object, where gravity prevents light from escaping, rather than wat that object is. Black holes do not just suck material into them, indeed a star that’s turned into one has a lot gravitational force than it used to and you could normally fly by one far closer than you could fly by a star of the same mass without being harmed in the least bit. Earth is a place where you can’t see events occurring beyond it. The difference is that on earth, if you live in a village you can walk over to the horizon, to see what’s going on, and walk back home to tell everyone what you saw. Obviously if you lived on a planet that was a big balloon, you’d have to walk further to get to that horizon as it’s further away on larger spheres, and you’d have to walk faster than it was expanding in order to take a look and come home. The gravity that gives off, is based on energy, mass that really matters, mass just happens ...

The most common definition according to the Brundtland Report about sustainable development is “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. In this blog I will explain to you about to who this ‘needs’ are referring to. Because the needs of a family of four in The Netherlands are different than to a family of four in Africa. But also, the sustainability for example of the transportation sector is also different than the sustainability of global agriculture. So, the most important thing for you to understand is that this definition doesn’t tell us what sustainability actually looks like in practice. To this point, there are four suggestion to help advance the ‘global sustainability’ narrative. First, within different sectors there are different challenges. If your goal is to create a more sustainable energy system, does that mean reducing carbon emissions or does it refer to c...

Sustainable city is a city designed with consideration for social, economic and environmental impact. These cities are inhabited by people whom are dedicated towards minimizing required inputs of energy, water, food, waste, output of heat, air pollution and water pollution. According to the reading, there are different definitions for this term but many experts agree that a sustainable city should meet the needs of the present without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The key within this idea leads to a great deal of variation in terms of how cities carry out their attempts to become sustainable. To refer as a sustainable city, four domains are obligated: ecology, economics, politics, and culture. If a city accomplishes to establish these four domains, then the sustainability of the city is able to feed itself with sustainable reliance on the surrounding natural environment, and have the ability to power itself with renewable sources of energy. T...

Sustainable development has been defined in many ways, but the most frequently definition is also known as “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. These needs come from resources such as economy and society services. Back in 1987 the term was about sustainable forest management and other environmental concerns. However, as the concept developed, it had more focus on the economic- and social development, and environmental protection for future generations. Moreover, I defined a few definitions of the term but the subject is still been criticized by others. It has been argued that there is no such thing as a sustainable use, and that the meaning of the concept has been stretched from ‘conservation management’ to ‘economic development’. One claim comes from the United Nations, which they say that the term sustainable development is used for both issues that associates with land development and broad...

Human cultural behaviors, ideas, and technologies that can be learned from other individuals, can exhibit complex patterns of transmission and evolution, and researchers have developed theoretical models, both verbal and mathematical, to facilitate our understanding of these patterns. The formation of different languages and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have been developed through a process, are curiously parallel. Therefore, we explore the ways in which cultural evolutionary theory and its applications enhance our understanding of human history and human biology, focusing on the links between cultural evolutionary theory and population genetics, human behavior, and demography. Throughout the years there are many efforts to apply data, linking models of cultural evolution, language, archaeology, and anthropology. To make you understand better I will give you an example: studies of cultural factors, including language and customs, help scientist interpret patterns of e...

The sociocultural evolution theory, describes how cultures and societies change constantly. It traces processes that tend to increase the complexity of a society or culture. Moreover, it also considers process that can lead to decrease in degeneration. According to the reading, sociocultural evolution is the process by which structural reorganization is affected through time, eventually producing a form or structure which is different from the ancestral form. Evolution operates through a number of key stages, that need to be performed successfully for the process to be effective. Through this process of evolution, sociocultural systems can develop to exhibit greater complexity as the parts become both more differentiated and interdependent within the whole. What I find interesting, is to note that evolution is not something that only happens to dinosaurs and monkeys, it is a pervasive phenomenon in our world. It is a process of development for any type of adaptive systems. Within ...

Millenium Development Goal 5. Improve Maternal Health There are eight different comics based on one of the eight Millennium Development Goals. The comic which I found interesting is the comic book about improving Maternal Health. More than 500,000 women die each year from complications from pregnancy and childbirth. In addition, more than 50 million women suffer from ill health and serious pregnancy-related illness and disability. The reason for this is because these women usually undergo their own pregnancy and childbirth without any help from medical professionals, such as doctors and nurses. The comic book shows that the presence of an obstetrician can mean the difference between life and death. The example of “Chakori” was used, she is a woman who knows a lot about childbirth in the book. How the combination with the MDG came about is because the MDG No. 5 of the United Nations aims to reduce the number of women dying from pregnancy and childbirth. They want to achieve...