Principles of Sociology – 30 Discussion week 11
Week 11: Week Eleven - Class Discussion
NOTE
You must not copy and paste information.
Do not copy or paste information / Please …….
(In your own words, referencing)
Your own words, referencing
Only 100 words
Only 100 words
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Instructional Objectives for this activity:
· Discuss social structure and explain how one's location in this structure affects that person's perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors.
· Apply the basic ideas and focus of the following three major theoretical perspectives: the structural-functional paradigm, the conflict paradigm, and the symbolic interaction paradigm. |
To prepare for this discussion, read "Why City Slums Are Better Than the Country: Urbanization in the Least Industrialized Nations" (p. 397) in
Essentials of Sociology
to obtain background information. What solutions do you see for the vast migration to the cities of the Least Industrialized Nations?
In your main post, explain how the sociological perspectives affect an explanation of urban revitalization. Be certain to use all three major sociological theoretical perspectives -- functionalism, conflict theory, and interactionism -- in your analysis. |
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Page 397
At the bottom of a ravine near Mexico City is a bunch of shacks . some of the parents have 14 children. “ we used to live up there, “ Senora Gonsalez gestured to-ward the mountain, “ in those caves. Our only hope was one day to have a place to live. And now we do. “ She smiled with pride at rhe jerry-built shacks each one had a collection of flowers planted in the cans. “one day, we hope to extend the water pipes and drainage perhaps even pave.
Eperanza means hope in Spanish what started as trickle has be-come a torrent. In 1930, only one Latin American city had over a million people now fifty do! The world’s cities are growing by one million people each week (Brockerhoff 2000). The rural poor flocking to the cities at such a rate that, as we saw in Figure 14.11 on page 392 ….. The Least Industrialized Nations now contain most of the world’s largest cities.
The migrants establish illegal squatter settlements outside the city. There they build shacks from scrap biards, card-board, and bits of corrugated moral. Even flattened tin cans are scavenged for building material. The squatters enjoy no city facilities roads, public transportation, water servers, or garbage pickup. After thousands of squatters have settled an area, the city reluctantly acknowledges their right to live there and adds bus service and minimal water lines. Hundreds of people use a single spigot. About 5 million of Mexico City’s residents live in such squalid conditions, with hundreds of thousands more pouring in each year.
Why this rush to live in the city under such miserable conditions? On the one hand are the “push” factors that come from the breakdown of traditional rural life. More children are surviving because of a safer water supply and modern of a dafer water supply and modern medicine. As rural populations multiply, the parents no longer have enough land to divide among their children. With neither land nor jobs, there is hunger and despair. On the other hand are the pull factors that draw people to the cities jobs, school, housing, and even a more stimulating life.
How will these nations adjust to this vast migtation? Gorce doesn’t work. Authiruties inBrazil, Guatemala, and other countirs have sent in the police and even the army to evict the settlers. After a violent dispersal, the settles return and others stram in. the roads, eater and sewer lines, electricity, schools, and public facilites must be built. but these poor countries don’t have the re-these poor countries don’t have the re-these poor countries don’t have the re-sources to build them. As wrenching as the adjustment will be, these counties must and somehow will make the transition. They have no choice.
For your consideration:
What solutions do you see to the vast migration to the cities of the Least Industrialized Nations?
Page 392
Tokyo 36,40,000