Introduction to Sociology - Assignment Example

Introduction to Sociology (College) Introduction to Sociology Starvation Starvation is the most extreme form of malnutrition. It is a severe fall in vitamin, nutrient, and energy intakes. Prolonged malnourishment can result in organ damage and ultimately death. The World Health Organization says that hunger is the gravest threat to the world’s public health. Surveys show that every year six million children die of huger. Apart from the medical reasons, there are several social reasons for starvation.

Some of the reasons are poverty, unemployment, and other adverse social conditions. To begin with, global food distribution system is totally controlled by the rich and the powerful. The unsafe and undisclosed gambling on the price of coffee, cocoa, and wheat has led to unbalanced food prices. For example, as reported by World Development Movement, in its web article, The great hunger lottery: how banking speculation causes food crises, banks like Goldman Sachs are making huge profits by gambling on the prices of key commodity crops such as cocoa, and wheat.

The report, ‘The Great Hunger Lottery’ describes how frightening is the episode fueled by the financial speculators, and about the dreadful bang on helpless families around the world. It also explains the specific policies formulated in the UK as well as in the US to tackle down the crisis. The industrialized countries are contributing to the increasing hunger in developing countries. In fact, the developed countries have the political, ethical, and legal obligation to end up their ill-conceived policies of the past.

For instance countries like the United States dumps millions of tons surplus wheat into the sea in order to view with the political and economic discomfiture. It is not only the sole responsibility of the developed countries to take steps to put an end to starvation. The developing countries should battle corruption and attain good governance, development on democratization, and peace. 2. GROUP OF 7 (G7) The Group of 7 (G7) is the group of seven leading developed counties, such as Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and USA that gathers for an annual summit meeting to discuss economic and political concerns.

In 1997, the G7 was expanded to become the G8 with the acceptance of Russia as an official member. The G8 is forum created by France in 1975, for the supervision of six economies to which Canada and Russia were added later. Besides that the European Union also is represented within G8, but it cannot host or take the chair. The finance ministers from the G8 countries meet four times a year. There are multiple objectives in the constitution of G8; they involve, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving the global environment, enhancing energy security and cutting air pollution.

The G8 is concentrated on the worldwide initiative on efficient energy use. Along with International Energy Agency, they plan to explore the most efficient means to promote energy proficiency worldwide. The accessibility of weapons and the consequential insecurity can have an adverse effect on the stability and development of a country. As reported (Eds. Kirton & Stefanova, 2004), on realizing the fact that the availability of weapons, especially the small arms and light weapons is an important factor in exacerbating conflicts, the G8 under the Miyazaki initiative has found out that the priority should be given to disarmament(p.270). The G8 holds the view that peacekeeping missions should include post-conflict small arms and light weapons disarmament and demolition factor. 3. Processes of Social Change – William Ogburn William Fielding Ogburn (1886-1959) was one of the American sociologists who brought forward the illustrious theory of social change in 1922.

He explains that technology is the primary grounds for the progress, but it is tempered by the social response to it. Many deemed his theory to be a case of technological determination, but in reality it is far beyond that. Ogburn positions the four stages or processes of technical development as invention, accumulation, diffusion, and adjustment; according to Ogburn (as cited in Hetzler, 2003, pp. 94-95), Invention is the stage where new forms of technology are created. Invention can take place only in a society which has certain level of knowledge and proficiency in the particular area and which has an existing cultural base.

Accumulation is the steady growth of technology. In this process as the old inventions are forgotten new things are invented at pace, and some of them promote accumulation process. Diffusion helps in bringing new inventions as in this process the idea from one cultural group is spread to another or from one ground of activity to another. Thus the diffusion gathers the ideas together. Adjustment is the process in which the inventions are responded to the non-technical aspects of a culture. If there is any slow down from this adjustment process becomes the ground for cultural lag.

(Source: Hetzler, 2003, pp. 94-95). Cultural Lag: The concept of a society taking time to catch up with the technological innovations is termed as cultural lag. Social problems and conflicts are caused by the lag. Cultural lag theory describes the inclination of material culture to evolve changes swiftly and voluminously while non-material culture leans to resist change and remain fixed for a far longer period of time. Adaptation of the new technology becomes difficult as it is influenced by the opposing nature of two aspects.

References “The great hunger lottery: How banking speculation causes food crises”. World Development Movement. Retrieved from http://www.wdm.org.uk/food-speculation/great-hunger-lottery Hetzler, S. A. (2003). Technological growth and social change: Achieving modernization. US: Routledge. Kirton, J. J & Stefanova, R. (Eds.). (2004). The G8, the nations and conflict prevention. UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.