It is definitely applaudable that there are nations in the world today that, instead of resulting to violence and war, use the venues available to them to resolve conflict without bloodshed. For example, the recent contest between Singapore and Malaysia for the Pedra Blanca island residing on the borders of the countries was resolved without violence. The matter was referred to the International Court of Justice and both countries accepted the ruling of the court. Another example would be the United Nations, with the request and backing of majority of its member states sanctioning Iran for its nuclear activities. The racially Islamic political party in power in Iran has been in loggerheads with many western leaders. These leaders foresee a threat if Iran gains capabilities to produce weapons of mass destruction and build up its nuclear arsenal. Therefore, these leaders, instead of launching a violent military assault on Iran, they have come together to put trade, travel and other forms of restriction on Iran so as to coerce the government into giving up its attempt to defy the west. Although this may seem as very oppressive, guns and war are left out of the picture and the toll on human life is negligible.

But even when there are avenues to reach the final goal without violence, some countries still resort to violent means. Back in 2001 when the World Trade Centre was attacked in the United States, after a confused few weeks, the US government made a pre-emptive strike on Afghanistan to ‘bring them to justice’. Hundreds of lives were lost on both sides and until today, the US has not been able to successfully charge and convict the main conspirators of the attack. Soon after Afghanistan, the US focused its attack on Iraq, claiming that Saddam Hussein, the then ruler of Iraq, had stock piles of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) hidden in bunkers in Iraq. On both occasions the US did not have the blessings of the UN but it still went ahead with the war in the name of spreading the ideology of democracy and keeping the world safe from ‘axis of evil’ states. Not only did the US fail to find any WMD, it also failed to successfully end the war as it had planned, letting it drag on with increasing casualties and depleting resources.

At the venture, one has to wonder why any country would choose to rage war than to continue non-violence. Throughout history, wars have been fought for many reasons. War has been rage for territory and dominance, a chance to prove one’s courage and even to revenge past grievances. Using force to achieve results sometimes makes it possible to achieve the desired outcome quickly and without compromise. When Germany lost the Second World War to the Allied Powers in 1945, its surrender was total and many restrictions were imposed on it to hinder its development. Also, dominance, many a times, can only be portrayed with excessive use of strength and force. Recently, Russia reminded its neighbours that it is still a world power to be reckoned with when it easily over powered Georgia’s borders during Georgia’s dispute with South Ossetia. Violence definitely has a tangible effect on any society and this might be the reason why countries or organisations may result to it.

Criminality in general exists in individual and social groups. Though scientist have argued that it is genetic, sociologist and psychologists have found more credible ground in explaining it through the backgrounds of criminals and the circumstances they were in when they committed the crimes.

The psychogenic approach to explain crime comes from the arguments put forward by Freudians. They say that early childhood experiences and emotions with disturb or distort the development of a socially accepted and proper character may result to anti social tendencies in adulthood. These tendencies many a times manifest themselves as criminal behaviours[1]. This argument claims that the situations and surroundings a child is brought up or grows up in are responsible for the eventual outcome of the child. It is undeniable that crime still exists in this day and age. Therefore it would be wise to look at what are the reasons behind the situations criminals come from and the circumstances they have gone through.

To do this, one must look at the cultural and social structural factors surrounding the criminal and ask if they beneficial to him or are they leaving him with no choice but the resort to unlawful means.

One of the factors experienced by many criminals is inequality. Many of today’s social institutes are set up and run by the middle to upper class people. Quality education is only provided to those who can afford them. Necessities are often located near the rich and are far away from those who would already have difficulties getting to them. These factors are very biased against the lower worker class of people. They do not give the opportunity for the poor to work their way up and escape from their cycle of poverty and break into the higher levels in society. The divide between the rich and poor is even clearer in capitalist economies were the working class people work to make the upper class capitalist even richer while they themselves remain poor. This obvious disparity would cultivated much displeasure in the hearts of the workers and make them harbour intent to either take revenge on their employers or obtain their level of wealth through unlawful means.

Another common factor experienced by criminals is unemployment. Today, with globalisation happening in break neck speeds, it is increasingly easy to move resources and means of productions to where labour is the cheapest. This is happening in many developed countries where corporations from these countries move their factories to developing and third world countries so that they can produce their good at a very low cost. Though this might be financially beneficial to the corporations, it is not as good for the country of origin as there would be a factory load of unemployed people. Without an income, people would find it increasing hard to survive in a country with a high cost of living. The constant bombardment of advertisements and commercial schemes would be a constant pressure to succumb to the materialistic ways for the world and resort to theft or burglary. Studies have also shown a direct relation between crime rates and unemployment rates. Researchers examined national crime rates between 1979 and 1997 and found much of the increase in crime during that period can be explained by falling wages and rising unemployment among men without college educations[2]. This result was only true for crimes that had economical motive behind them. Crimes like murder and rape did not show a clear change with a change in unemployment rates. Nevertheless, majority of the crimes committed during the period in question were indeed financially motivated.

If the goal of law enforcement bodies is to abolish crime from the streets, wouldn’t it be wise to tackle the problem from the roots. Although punishment has been a very effective deterrent from crime for many people, it does not address the primary question of why people commit crimes. It does not entertain the notion that criminals had no other choice but to commit crimes because of the pressure society has weighed upon them. And even if one is to look into the reasons behind these situations, making effective changes would be very hard. Firstly, if social equality is to be achieved, the rich would definitely not agree to distribute their wealth. Secondly, even if everyone was to adopt the level of equality as the communist, they will not be spared from corrupt officials and bureaucratic red tape. This would in turn lead to more worrying issues as oppression and the absence of human rights. It labour is to be protected within a country; the cost of productions will be greater than otherwise. With privatisation and free market policies being implemented in many countries, capitalist would not support the idea of spending more than the minimum amount of resources they will have to spend to produce a commodity. Sadly, government bodies cannot enforce legislation to prevent this as these capitalists are at many a times the people who funded the government into office. Unless, radical changes are brought about by the masses, if for see that law enforcers would not have to worry about job security in the near future.

Three of the many main roles a family has been expected to play through the ages have to be protection, the spread of culture continuation of the economy. Firstly, the family is relied upon as a source of protection. A family can have members who are unable to fend for themselves. They frequently are the infants, the elderly and the sick. These members turn to their able bodied counterparts in their family for protection, be it from hunger or physical or emotional harm, as a mean of survival. Secondly, the family is expected to inculcate culture into its occupants. Rules, values and beliefs are expected to be taught by parent to their children so that they can assimilate into the society at large without much hindrance or friction. Also, it helps to ensure the heritage that the family derives from is not lost and will be carried on for generations to come. Thirdly, the family is expected to be a mean of production and consumption to ensure the economy survives. Members in a family come together to produce supplies to meet the demand for their goods and buy supplies needed for their daily life. This ensures a constant exchange in wealth and helps to maintain a healthy economy.

But changes in society in general have blurred the level of involvement a family has in fulfilling these two roles today. Initially, majority of the world’s population were living in agrarian societies. Here, the family, as a collective body, played an important role in production. A family had to be large so that there can be as many hands as possible mending the fields to obtain maximum yield. To ensure this, families in these societies were ‘extended’. Brothers and sisters often lived under one roof with their parent, husbands, wives and children. The family also looked after each other as everyone was interdependent and an illness or accident could affect the whole family. When men were out working on the field, women usually tended to the needs of the young and elderly back at home. Culture was also passed down the generation so that the modus operandi continued, ensuring the survival of the family.

But in today’s post industrialized society, the situation seems to be starkly different. For once, the family is no longer a production utility. Farms have been replaced with factories as a place to work in. Therefore, a family is not relied upon for the productions of a good. Factories where many people from different families come together to work have taken the agrarian family’s role as a producer. There is no need for families to be extended so they have split to live with only their immediate relations. With the increase in the spread of democracy, elected governments in many countries have set up policies that look after the welfare of their voters. For example, the PAP in Singapore has set up the Medisave, Medishield and Central Provident Fund (CPF) policies to ensure that Singaporean would not be left helpless once they retire or are unable to work. These policies also reduce the dependence family members would have on their peers if they were ever to experience either situation. With the increase of educational opportunities, not only started at an earlier age, the average school leaving age is also increasing. Children these days are learning more about how to behave and react to authority and specific situations from nursery schools and kindergartens. Some families with career minded working parents often hire nannies to look after their children during a large portion of their childhood. These nannies are the primary actors interacting with the children and teach them right from wrong. This just shows that values and norms today can and are increasingly being learnt outside of the family.

Looking at these issues and changes, one would be able to derive at a grim conclusion that the word ‘family’ is losing its meaning. With more services available, the traditional roles of a family are being performed by unrelated people and social institutes. I think this is a worrying trend that is catching on, especially when great importance is placed on financial and professional success in our society today. I think it is necessary to start establishing the importance of a family as, even if the non-family bodies are able to perform the roles, they will last together as a family would. Teachers will go away upon graduation, nannies will not be needed after a certain age and government policies can change with a change in regime but only the members of a family will remain members of a family till the end.

The process of production itself has been changing through time. In the era prior to industrialisation, division of labour in producing a commodity did not really exist. A commodity would be produced, from start to finish, by a single skilled worker or a group of skilled workers, constantly participating in every step of the production process. But this was set to change. In 1776, Adam Smith, an economist, believed that dividing labour would increase efficiency. Therefore, the division of labour would be the key to produce output efficiently (i.e., at minimal cost and minimal wastage). According to Adam smith, if every sector of the work force were to have a specific role to perform in the production of the final good, the sector would only specialise in churning out their specific portion of the final good that they are responsible of. For example, instead of one sole person drawing up plans for a new building, sourcing the resources needed, building the building itself, advertising and marketing it and finally leasing it, every step of the process can be delegated to a or a group of specialists who have done such work before and would be able to do it faster and with minimal resources as they are trained and experienced in that field of work. Hence, capitalists have been increasingly adopting Smith’s idea of production.

Although the capitalist maybe making a good profit, we must start to ask what division of labour mean to the society at large and what does it costs.

Division of labour greatly de-skills a worker. Any person can be trained with relative ease to replace a labourer. It also makes it hard for the labourers to move across professions without retraining. Therefore it becomes possible for labourers to be exploited by the capitalist. Labourers’’ wages and conditions can be manipulated to suit the capitalist better. The labourers themselves cannot do much about it as the nature of their work has become very elastic and they can be easily replaced and in the fear of not being able to find new work if they are let off due to their revolt. Keeping to the nature of capitalist wanting to maximise profit, they would be only paying their labourers minimum wages. This situation would only worsen the already wide wage gap that exists between the capitalist and labourers in the society.

Also, capitalist wanting to find even cheaper cost of labour, start to search elsewhere on the globe for countries that fit their bill. As the world becomes more and more globalised by the day through the numerous free trade agreements signed between nations and states, mobility of resources becomes very easy and cheap. It becomes more profitable for them to ship their resources to these countries to manufacture them there and ship the finished products back to their country to put on the final label before selling them. This is very prevalent among developed countries in the 20^th and 21^st century. Corporations like Nike and General Motors are moving away from their countries of origin, the United States, to countries with cheaper labour like China and Pakistan. One direct consequence of this shift would be the loss of employment in the developed country. Another would be the troubling fact that the shift would be to countries that do not have firm labour laws and supervision. In 2007, there was a report on the BBC titled “India child garment workers found”[1], about 70 child workers in India have been discovered working in a Delhi textile factory. Although the child workers were working on many different garment lines, one of the lines being belonged to the international corporation Gap. In the same article, it is disturbing to read that “20% of India’s economy is dependent on children under 14-years-old.”[2] With capitalist exporting their productions to such countries, it only encourages such practices to continue.

Although I have only mentioned two of the concerns for the society brought about by the capitalists’ aim to maximise profit, division of labour to increase efficiency and increased mobility of resources due to globalisation, there are many more affecting society in various magnitudes. Therefore, it is clear for the need of a government body to regulate such problems so that no one will be exploited or left behind while society changes and progresses.

In 2004, the leader of Catholics in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, said that poverty was humanity’s “greatest scandal and scourge” today. With around half world’s population survives on less than 2 US dollars a day[1] and 40% of the world’s population only account for 5% of the world’s income while the richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of it[2], I think I have to agree with him on that.

Poverty has plagued the world since the dawn of civilisation. Ever since property and wealth ownership has been properly demarcated, there were those who controlled the resources, the rich, and those who were dependent on the resources, very many times they are the poor.

Through the ages, social scientists have come up with many explanations on why people are poor, do they choose to be poor or if it is beyond their controls. One of the explanations they have come up with is that of ‘cultural poverty’. Cultural poverty refers to cyclical reproduction of poverty from generations to generations. To illustrate, a baby being born to a very poor family or society would not be brought up with the nutrients that would help to maximise his potentials. He would be living a poor area with poor sanity and hygiene, making him susceptible to disease. Being poor, he would not have been able to get a proper education and would have entered the work force at an early age. Without proper qualification, he would have got a low paying employment. Without a good income, he would most likely have to rent an apartment for shelter and this rent will put a constant strain on his income. If he was to get married and have a family he would be even more financially strained and would not be able to support his family. At this point, his off springs would start to live a life similar to his and the cycle of poverty starts again with a new generation. People experiencing the culture of poverty tend to fatalistic as they do not believe that they have any control over their lives, anti-authoritative as they would have lost faith in the governing body to alleviate them from their poverty and be present orientated as they would think only about the immediate present as the future is an uncertainty to them.

Thankfully, this culture is not very predominant in Singapore. Statistics show that in 2006, 18% of the population here earned less than S$1,000 while 6% were earned more than S$8,000[3]. This shows that about a fifth of the country is not employed in high paying jobs and also that Singapore has a very wide income gap. (Singapore’s Gini coefficient in 2006 was 0.472, 0 corresponding to perfect equality and 1 corresponds to perfect inequality)[4]. Even though the sense of poverty experienced by the low wage earners here is nothing compared to the poverty experienced by those in sub-Saharan Africa, I believe it is still significant in the local context as living in a country with a high standard of living like Singapore is not cheap.

I think Singapore has been able to avoid the problem of cultural poverty mainly through good governance and foresight. The Singapore government has many avenues of help for the financially challenged.

One example would be the rent and utilities assistance scheme that is administered by the Community Development Councils (CDC). Another would be the Home ownership plus education scheme or popularly known as HOPE. These schemes relieve the financial burden of living here to the certain extent. These examples are just 2 of the many assistance schemes that the government provides to its citizens. These schemes are very important as they help Singaporeans with, firstly, escaping the routine of the culture of poverty. Newer generations of Singaporeans are given opportunities that were not available to their seniors. Secondly, they will not feel fatalistic as they have more control over their lives and feel that they can shape it the way they see fit. Lastly, they would not be anti authoritative as theses opportunities were provided by those in authority and lastly, they would plan ahead into the future as there is increasing stability in their lives.

Even though the income gap in Singapore seems to be big, increasing number of Singaporeans are starting to earn more than their parents did when they started to work. These new generation of Singaporeans are more educated and qualified because of the opportunities provided for them by the government. This ensures that poverty will not become hereditary and prevents the culture of poverty from growing roots here.

Webster’s dictionary defines globalization as, “the development of an increasingly integrated global economy marked especially by free trade, free flow of capital, and the tapping of cheaper foreign labour markets”. With the increase in the exchange of information from one country to another through the media and the internet and also the improving physical ease of moving to and through most of these countries has made this world a borderless society. This has significantly increased trade and movement of demography in the world. As a result, some societies face new social problems while others seem to have alleviated theirs.

International trade has been one of the foremost forms of globalisation to take place in human history. This exchange of commodities has made resources that were once not available, but greatly needed, to certain country within reach. For example, crude oil from Middle Eastern countries to countries which do not have their own natural reserve or in the case of Singapore, fresh water, from its neighbours in Asia. Without these important resources, countries would be in dire conditions. Its citizen would have to pay a very high price for the existing bleak stock of these resources in the country. Only the rich few in the up strata of the society would be able to enjoy them and the rest, which make up the majority, would be suffering to find other means to meet their needs. This dire state has occurred numerous times during war when trade gets restricted and food becomes scarce. In these situations, the price of food becomes extremely inflated and majority of the people who are unable to afford it eat their every meal like it was their last. Globalisation generically helps to avoid the drastic lack of vital resources in any country.

Also, globalisation has made it easier for countries and societies to improve themselves intellectually. Ideas and thoughts brought up by many thinkers in the world these days can be conglomerated with ease through the internet. For example, new advances in the field of medicine in the United States (US) can easily be shared with doctors and researchers in China. This greatly reduces wasted of resources and repetitive work done by the professional. This also helps to quicken the advances made in that field as, regardless or geographical location; the scientist would be working in tandem. All in all, the time for these advances to be approved and implemented to the general public would be shortened. Hence everyone would be eventually benefiting.

Although the process of globalisation can be very useful to various societies, as mentioned above, it can also be a doubled edged sword. With lesser restrictions on movement of goods and services between countries, many corporations in developed countries are increasingly looking abroad for cheaper labour. Corporation like Nike, which originates from the US, manufactures their goods in developing countries like Pakistan and Indonesia. It is cheaper for these companies to make their goods abroad and ship them back to be sold than to produce them locally. This results to the loss of jobs available to Americans and hence has a negative dent in the unemployment rate of the US. Although this is just a small example of one company, there are many others who are doing the same and the compounded effect can be negatively significant. This shows that globalisation can also have a negative impact on a community or country.

Globalisation can be a tricky issue. Even though it has been going on since the first interaction between two societies, it has greatly increased in speed in the recent century. It has been shown that globalisation can be both beneficial and also harmful to societies. It can provide desperately needed resources to countries that do not have them and help to improve and build on worldly knowledge. Yet it can also in reduce the opportunities available to people in some societies. The hard part now is for government bodies to evaluate and come out with ways to maximise gain and reduce loss through globalisation. Globalisation is here to stay and the onus is upon us to use it wisely.