Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers focuses on the struggles of Annawadi’s residents as many of them attempt to create a better life for their families. A small slum located near the Mumbai airport, Annawadi highlights the juxtaposition of an Indian underclass and the growing economy of the country around them. While so many of these families, through an expanding global market economy, can see the benefits of globalization and capitalism, the potential upsides of these systems maintain out of reach as most Annawadians deal with the harsher realities of poverty, hunger, and exploitation. As the text looks into many aspects of daily life in a particular slum between 2007 and 2011, a debilitating connection can be seen between capitalism…
The most well-known slum in India is Dharavi a section of the city of Mumbai. After appearing in the movie “Slumdog Millionaire,” Dharavi began to gain a lot of attention. It is a busy, bustling, fast moving, densely packed city. Similar to Brazil it has little formal infrastructure, and many of the homes are makeshift. The slums of Dharavi did not emerge until the late 19th century.…
This is a community of primarily trash-pickers and scavengers, with an extremely small percentage of residents with permanent jobs and a barely livable average income. These people live right under the noses of large and gorgeous hotels and airport buildings, watching rich westerners come and go. One of these slum dwellers, Mirchi, captures this stark contrast when he compares his surroundings to beautiful things while his community is so nasty in between. Yet, this book does not portray those in the slum of Annawadi as dirty or bad people whatsoever. While the travelers and wealthy may see the poor as less than them, this book shows that just because those in Annawadi may have less material, they are not of less worth as people.…
For centuries, classism has played a major role in the construction of a society. Before the French Revolution, there were the poor and the bourgeoisie and India has the caste system. In general, classes are divided in to two sections: the rich and the poor. While there have been many strides in ensuring better conditions for the poor; the poor are still subject to poverty. In the United Staes, the poor are disregarded while the middle and upper class have more advantages as they aim to move upward on the economic ladder.…
At the point when taking a glimpse at the Health rates of the urban communities, it observable that the urban…
Both experiences are different, and I was able to learn something about both of them. In particular, I witnessed social equality and inequality as a theme in both of the places I went to. According to Grant and Sleeter (as cited in Banks & Banks, 2012), race and social class are one of the ways to categories people in society. With this in mind, both of the cultural plues that I went to had these to two categories. For example, at H Mart most of the society consisted in race.…
Bookman and Kimbrell (2011) propose that there is a vital need for addition research that investigates the multiple aspects of diversity, especially to address socioeconomic inequality, that affects gender, race, and culture for future study. This study will address race and culture, socioeconomic inequality with the addition of age, and how their intersectionality affects African American…
Inequality: Friend or Foe? Does income inequality exist in America? We can turn on our television and watch shows like “The Real Housewives” or “MTV Cribs” and see very wealthy people living lives full of luxury with expensive cars and million dollar houses. Meanwhile, a walk down a street in New York City will reveal many Americans who live on the street and whose main source of income is what they get from the generosity of others.…
Inequality, Poverty, and Pollution Introduction A. Throughout the United States, low-income and minority areas are among the heaviest populated with landfills, waste sites, and hazardous facilities, inequality in our country is everywhere, including the air in which we breathe. B. Approximately 56 percent of minorities and low-income Americans reside in areas within two miles of hazardous commercial waste sites. Poverty rates are 1.5 times higher in these neighborhoods than anywhere else in the country (Climate Central). C. Hazardous waste, air pollution and high level of toxins are associated with many types of health conditions such as respiratory, and cardiovascular disease. Minority and low-income areas harbor the highest levels of air…
The relationship between housing and wealth has allowed heritage of racial inequality remain to this day by making black families persist on a lower economical level even though they posses the same income as white families. The government plays an important role on these two variables with occurrences such as the 1910 immigrants situation, 1920 alien land acts forbidding non whites the ownership of land, 1930 federal housing administration, Roosevelt’s New Deal, “urban renewal”, Fair Housing Act on 1968 and 50s to 60s house market growth, among others. Owning a house in the suburbs became a new social definition for whiteness; and racial instability has been the result of the government’s slow transition to social equality. On the 1910s immigrants were the ones in America running the factories and mines. They came to the United States to establish in a society that already had a history of racial inequality towards blacks and minorities.…
Lastly, without the poverty, there would not be a place to build expressway and…
Income inequality has become an increasingly talked about problem in America and rightfully so. At the end of 2012 the top one percent of families in the United States accounted for over 20 percent of national income compared to the top one percent accounting for 10 percent of national income in 1970 according to Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez from the London School of Economics. Common sense would suggest that in order to compress this inequality gap, poor people making more money would have a profound effect on decreasing the gap in income, however a closer look at this phenomenon suggests that this is not the case. In a capitalist society your income is a reflection of the value that you bring to your employer, which is a reflection of…
The question of social inequality subconsciously raises the question of identity, social values and racism. The times had changed and the slavery period had passed, however, the imbalance between human identity and its perception remains today. The forms of racism transformed from legal discrimination into masked but obvious problem. A difference in human look, behavior, believes, and customs formed powerful and often false stereotypes in our society, leading to wrong ideas about human being as a whole. Such stereotypes negatively affect human feelings, rights, and lives.…
The culture has been unfairly divided for centuries, including by race, social class and social status. Sociologist, Max Weber implied that individuals ought to be arranged in society by using certain factors. Not to mention there are a number of social classes, each of them consisting of distinctive characteristics. Family structures and neighborhoods are affected in both good and bad ways by these social classes. The social class inequality are perceived differently by the three theoretical paradigms.…
The twenty-first century marks the first time in history that the majority of the world’s population live in urban areas (Buhaug & Urdal, 2013). Urbanization is continuing rapidly, especially in cities of the global South. Poverty is also urbanizing as reflected in the lack of adequate housing, infrastructure and services for a majority of poor urban populations. One third of the world’s population is estimated to be living in slum conditions characterized by high densities of low income residents (Phua & Ooi, 2007). City governments are unable to keep up with the needs of growing urban populations, and government corruption leads to further difficulty in addressing the low standards of living of the urban poor.…