Joe Feagin's Article In Terms Of Globalization

6 Pages 1581 Words

Joe Feagin’s article starts in a most surprising way. Just given the title of president of the American Sociological Association, Mr. Feagin starts talking about the economy in this article, which seems off to me. As the article progresses, the audience learns just how entwined the economy, politics, and sociology are. The first matter discussed is globalization, and more specifically four main problems of globalization, which negatively affect the world.
The first issue Mr. Feagin points out is that even though the “common-people” watching the news hear that the economy is on the road to recovery and even soon it will be booming again, this is only true of the wealthiest of the world. According to Feagin’s article (2001):
In the United States alone “The top one-fifth of households now has nearly half the income; the bottom one-fifth has less than 4 percent. The top 1 percent of households holds more wealth than the bottom 95 percent, and the wealthy have doubled their share since 1970.”

The ocean that divides the worlds of the wealthy and the common worker continuously grows further apart everyday. Beside monetary status, this divide causes even deeper issues within the working class and the poor, in terms of Dr. Das Gupta’s five basic living rights: food, shelter, healthcare, education, and job.
The second issue Mr. Feagin touches on is of global capitalism being very profitable for the corporate executives, yet devastating the third world countries that are performing the services to produce the goods for the companies. These companies search for the country who has the cheapest raw materials and labor, then go into the country and ravish the land, destroying the natural beauty and depleting the lakes, rivers, ponds, and anything else they can steal for a next to nothing price tag. One example I have is from NOW with Bill Moyers. On the Sunday program entitled “Rich World Poor Women”, there was ...