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URBAN POVERTY

"Urban poverty is brutal", so says the author of the article below, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah. Think about it. Have fun reading.

Chow Kit

I have fallen a little behind with my blog. People have been asking me what I think of the so-called Second Stimulus Package. What I have to say about it can wait a little while longer. My comments would do little to lift the dismay of our citizens and business people with a package as puzzlingly weak, and directionless, as it is large.

Last Thursday I visited Rumah Nur Salam, a centre for homeless children in KL’s Jalan Chow Kit area. Rumah Nur Salam is founded and led by the indefatigable Dr Hartini Zainudin, the daughter of a dear departed friend of mine. I spent some time with the children and toured the centre, which is, as its name implies, a haven of peace in a very troubled area.

Here, in Chow Kit, in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, less than a kilometre from the Twin Towers and a stone’s thrown from PWTC, life is cheap, drug users shoot up in the back alleys and children wander the streets hungry. Infants are bought and sold by syndicates, young children are supplied for prostitution and child-pornography. Hundreds of children are on the streets or homeless. They beg and hustle and sell themselves for sex. They are runaways or abandoned or neglected children, vulnerable to STD and HIV, to drug addiction and to rape and murder. Many among them have no registration papers. Although they may have been born to Malaysian parents they are “stateless” and therefore ineligible for free inoculation, medical education or education. They are abused and traded with impunity by criminals and corrupt officials because when they disappear it is without trace. They are nobody’s constituency.

Homeless children and street children in Malaysia number in the tens of thousands. They are in Chow Kit, but also in Dengkil, Jinjang, Pantai Dalam, Kepong, Selayang, Subang Jaya, Petaling Street and Pudu and in the bigger towns across the country. In Sabah and Sarawak, the problem of stateless children is acute.

I sat down to listen to a small circle of community leaders, social workers and volunteers. Some worked with these children. Others worked with other “at risk” groups such as prostitutes, drug users and transsexuals. What these groups have in common is that they are rejected by society. Many of the leaders come from the very groups they now serve. Having picked themselves up, they immediately felt called to give back to others. The work they do is more than a job. It is a full-time commitment around which they have shaped their lives. Some have served here for decades, walking daily up and down streets that the police recently considered “too unsafe” to keep a beat base open in.

They told me of a set of linked issues: poverty, bigotry, crime, social breakdown and bureaucratic indifference. They spoke about government that could not join the dots between ministries to help people, and of announcements of assistance that amounted to nothing.

Having served a constituency in the depths of Kelantan for forty years, I have seen my share of poverty, but urban poverty is brutal. The family unit is broken. Women and children are left to fend for themselves. The weak are prey to the strong. People are bought and sold like things.
Chow Kit holds up a mirror to our society. It is an image we would rather not see. The way we treat the weakest among us places the worth of our entire society in the balance. In God’s sight this weighs more than all the wealth we could accumulate.

There is another sense in which urban poverty test us. It is the weathervane of our social and economic ills. Since December, the number of abandoned children has risen dramatically. For the children freshly abandoned to the street, and for their parents, the recession occurred more quickly, and undeniably, than for our leaders.

Behind the evasive and woolly talk we have had about growth figures and fiscal stimuli are the absolutely tangible consequences of our policy decisions in the lives of ordinary people. Economic management, or the lack of it, has disproportionate consequences on the life-prospects of the most vulnerable members of our society.

I came away humbled by the visit. The quiet, day by day heroism of the community leaders and volunteers working to make a difference in Chow Kit was a lesson in leadership as service. I am grateful for all that they and the children shared with me with such open hearts.

READ 1

Dear all, please read the NST's six series of "Kampung Baru" development issues. Worth reading.

Theories

Classical 1 - Macro-Sociological (

(Theorists: Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels)

1. People in preindustrial, traditional societies were generic, tribal beings
2. Rise of city was transition from barbarism to civilization
3. People realize political and economic freedom, productive specialization
4. Social evolution of humans not complete until capitalism was transformed into socialism
5. Emphasis of economics and problems of inequality and conflict

(Theorists: Ferdinand Tonnies (1855-1936) German (pessimistic) - macro-sociological)

Considered social structure of city; defined and described two basic organizing principles of human association or two contrasting types of human social life, a typology with a continuum of pure type of settlement:

1) Gemeinschaft (community): characterized country village, people in rural village have an essential unity of purpose, work together for the common good, united by ties of family (kinship) and neighbourhood, land worked communally by inhabitants, social life characterized by intimate, private and exclusive living together, members bound by common language and traditions, recognized common goods and evils, common friends and enemies, sense of we-ness or our-ness, humane;
2) Gesellschaft (association): characterized large city, city life is a mechanical aggregate characterized by disunity, rampant individualism and selfishness, meaning of existence shifts from group to individual, rational, calculating, each person understood in terms of a particular role and service provided; deals with the artificial construction of an aggregate of human beings which superficially resembles the Gemeinschaft in so far as the individuals peacefully live together yet whereas in Gemeinschaft people are united in spite of all separating factors, in Gesellschaft people are separated in spite of all uniting factors

There are three types of Gemeinschaft relationships: Kinship, Friendship, and Neighborhood or Locality"

1.1) Kinship Gemeinschaft is based on Family; the strongest relationship being between mother and child, then husband and wife, and then siblings. Gemeinschaft also exists between father and child, but this relationship is less instinctual than that of mother and child. However, the father-child relationship is the original manifestation of authority within Gemeinschaft.
1.2) Kinship develops and differentiates into the Gemeinschaft of Locality, which is based on a common habitat
1.3) There is also Friendship, or Gemeinschaft of the mind, which requires a common mental community (eg: religion).

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) French (optimistic)
Stresses on social structure of city and Social solidarity--the bond between all individuals within a society. Developed model of contrasting social order types: both types are natural
1) Mechanical solidarity: refers to social bonds constructed on likeness and largely dependent upon common belief, custom, ritual, routines, and symbol, people are identical in major ways and thus united almost automatically, self-sufficient; social cohesion based upon the likeness and similarities among individuals in a society. Common among prehistoric and pre-agricultural societies, and lessens in predominance as modernity increases.
2) Organic solidarity: social order based on social differences, complex division of labour where many different people specialize in many different occupations, greater freedom and choice for city inhabitants despite acknowledged impersonality, alienation, disagreement and conflict, undermined traditional social integration but created a new form of social cohesion based on mutual interdependence, liberating; social cohesion based upon the dependence individuals in more advanced society have on each other. Common among industrial societies as the division of labor increases. Though individuals perform different tasks and often have different values and interests, the order and very survival of society depends on their reliance on each other to perform their specific task.

source: 2001 [E.W.> van der Veen]

Welcome!

1. At the conclusion of this course, you should be able to: acquire an understanding of urban sociology from different perspectives; develop an analytical view of urbanization in advance and developing countries; and be more attentive to the urban issues and menifestations of urban development.

2. Assessment: Coursework (40%) - midterm test (10%); an individual writtten assignment & presentation (10%); and group assignment & presentation (20%). Final examination (60%).

Required Texts

Gottdiener, M. & Hutchison, R. (2006). The new urban sociology (3rd ed) Colorado: Westview Press.

Davis, M. (2006). Planet of slums. London: Verso.