Hi. This is Pat Johnson your sociology
instructor and today I'd like to talk to you a
little bit about two competing theories explaining poverty. Now we can think up lots of reasons why
there might be poverty in some countries in the world. There
could be a lack of natural resources. There could be natural disasters. There
could be war. There could be all sorts of reasons why
a country might be poor. In sociology we have two main
competing theories about why there is poverty in some
countries in the world and not in others. The first theory that explains why some
countries are poor is modernization theory. Modernization
theory looks at poverty in some countries as caused
by a lack up modernizing. In other words jumping on the bandwagon of industrialization and using technology to produce more food, to gain specialization, to push the society into the modern era. So, why might some
countries not modernize when others have already
gone through that process? Well if you think back to the paper you
wrote on the article "The Promise," think about Anafghat's society. They had many cultural practices that did not
encourage modernization for example education, expecially among females, was not
something that was emphasized. So what's the role of the wealthy country in relationship to a
poor country according to modernization theory? Well these theorist think that it's the job
up the wealthier countries to help poorer
countries. For example they could provide
technological aid. They could help the poorer countries
control population growth. Remember we found a positive correlation
between population growth and the high poverty rates in a country. Another way of saying that would be the
lower the income, the higher the number of kids,
and that would be a negative correlation. But the rich countries should, according
to modernization theory, help the poor
countries control their population, help them acquire technology, loan them resources so that they can up modernize and move into the future. The competing theory is a social conflict theory and this theory is dependency theory. And dependency theory doesn't like
capitalism, it doesn't want wealthy countries messing in the business of poor countries.
And so dependency theory thinks that some countries are poor because they've been exploited either by wealthy countries themselves through colonization and if you look in
your textbook on page 260 you can see a map of Africa and you can see how many
countries are yeah how many countries and Africa were
colonized and as a result of not so scrupulous political practices kept the country's poor. The other reason that
dependency theory gives for wealthy countries causing poor countries to stay poor is the
modern technique of neo-colonialism. Neo-colonialism
refers to a multi-national corporation going into
a country and exploiting the resources. For example there should be a youtube
link in the general YouTubes for this chapter
talking about oil exploration, obtaining oil, off the coast of Africa. So companies like ___ oil will going
in, not caring that much about environmentalism and keeping the waters and the countryside healthy, but they'll go in and explore and pump oil and buy it from those countries. And
usually there's a lot of corruption where maybe some
government officials are gaining but not the people themselves and so they will obtain things like oil and then the country itself doesn't
have enough infrastructure to refine the oil and so the
companies will sell gasoline back to the country at inflated prices. So again dependency
theory is all about exploitation of wealthy companies, wealthy countries and causing just poverty in these countries. So again this is a
social conflict theory. It doesn't like capitalism it doesn't like that poor countries are exploited. So if you
see these two theories, dependency theory and
modernization theory, are actually competing theories about why
some countries are poor. Modernization theory again believes that
it's a role of the wealthy country to help the poorer
countries and they do this through helping them acquire technology and making them come into the 21st century, and then dependency theory wants wealthy countries to stay away because
they cause exploitation of the resources and
the people. So think about those two theories --
which one makes more sense to you? Take a look at the additional
YouTubes in the link at the bottom up this module and
come to your own conclusion.
