socio-political crisis

Question 1

Socio-Political crises we are experiencing

Answer 1

INEQUALITY

• Economic
• Social
• Political
• Gender
• Racial and ethnic
• Health
• Age
• Class
• Global

Question 2

Robinson 2019

Answer 2

according to oxfam (2018) in 2015 just one percent of humanity owned over half the worlds wealth and the top 20% owned 94.5% of the wealth, while the remaining 80% must make due with just 4.5%

Question 3

Attempts made to fix socio-political crises

Answer 3

Institutional fix

• debt-driven growth
• Reconfiguration of public finance - austerity measures
• Escalation of financial speculation
• Ongoing waves of investment in the overvalued tech sector

Socio-political fix

• rise of neofascist, authoritarian and right-wing politicians
• promise to avert or reverse downward mobility and social destabilization; to restore some sense of stability and security (Robinson)
• mix of nationalism and racism: displacing mass fear and anxiety at a time of acute capitalist crisis towards scapegoated communities, such as immigrant workers, Muslims and refugees in the US and Europe

Question 4

(Dubner and Huggins, 2019)

Answer 4

With the world’s population set to reach 10 billion by 2050, the question is posed, ‘are we going to be able to satisfy all their demands for food, water, energy’

Question 5

(Funke, Schularick and Trebesch, 2016)

Answer 5

‘votes for far-right parties increase strongly, government majorities shrink, the fractionalisation of parliaments rises and the overall number of parties represented in parliament jumps’

Question 6

(Davies, 2015)

Answer 6

‘the average number of anti-government demonstrations triples, the frequency of violent riots doubles, and general strikes increase by at least a third’

Question 7

Capitalism has created this…

Robinson, 2019

Answer 7

‘extreme concentration of the planet’s wealth in the hands of the few and the accelerated impoverishment and dispossession of the majority’
- destabilization of their status and the threat of heightened insecurity, downward mobility and socioeconomic stabilization

Question 8

Inman (2018)

Answer 8

‘income inequality has increased and social mobility stalled across the world’s richest countries since the 1990s’ 
- harder for those born into a lower income family to climb the class ladder