The Global Sociology Blog

So, first, Afghanistan is declared the most corrupt country after Somalia (which barely qualifies as a country anyway), then, this:

Unicef’s state of the world’s children report 2009: Where is the worst place in the world to grow up? Afghanistan | News | guardian.co.uk via kwout

What a shocking surprise that eight years of war have not improved the standard of living of the population, especially women and children.

Oh, and on a related topic, this was interesting:

Unicef’s state of the world’s children report 2009: Where is the worst place in the world to grow up? Afghanistan | News | guardian.co.uk via kwout

Any fan of football (soccer for Americans) has heard of it – the infamy:

The hand that gave France its qualification for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. For non-soccer fan, especially on this side of the Atlantic, that move is not allowed. It’s cheating. And this started a storm. Remember Howard Becker, deviance only matters if it is seen and noticed by the audience. In the age of widespread media and the Internet, this particular act of deviance did not go unnoticed even if the referee did not see it.

And once deviance is noticed, sanctions follow. But what kinds of sanctions? Informal ones for sure as large numbers of people expressed their anger in a variety of fora all over the Internet. Thierry Henry and the French team got called all sorts of names for this. Henry for the deed, and the French team for accepting its qualification based on cheating.

Social stigma is also part of the game:

Hands-on Thierry Henry becomes public enemy numéro un | Football | The Guardian via kwout

Note how the hand, a violation of soccer’s norms is depicted as “crime” and an inflammatory one at that. Audience perception is central indeed in the very definition of seriousness of the deviant act. In Europe, soccer is serious business. Part of it, of course, has to do with the fact that both teams were playing their qualification for the world’s most important soccer event, the World Cup. The stakes were high. Played at a local level, this would have been a simple incident, sanctioned by a red card (because done so closed to the goal cage) and maybe a suspension.

Well, Henry might not be suspended and the international soccer authorities have ruled out the possibility of a rematch, but certainly, France’s participation to the World Cup is now stigmatized, tainted and comments about the way France got there will be made at the Cup and its defeat at whatever stage (if that happens) will be depicted as well-deserved. And even if France were to win (an unlikely proposition at this point), the win itself will be tainted.

And because this incident happened at a high-stake international game, criticisms are heaped not just over the player himself, but the entire team and the country.

An additional aspect of personal stigma that Goffman studied is how stigma completely reconstructs the stigmatized person’s identity around the stigma itself so that the stigma becomes the individual’s master status, pushing into the background any other other identity that the individual possesses:

Hands-on Thierry Henry becomes public enemy numéro un | Football | The Guardian via kwout

It is too early to tell whether the stigma will “stick” and for how long. Certainly, again, this will hold through the World Cup. And this will require acts of contrition of Henry’s part (he has already done that).

At the same time, European soccer players are brands in themselves and attract sponsorship individually as part of their usual team. This is another potential source of sanctions. Will Henry lose his sponsors and therefore part of his earning? THis might be so as the stigma now attached to Henry might reflect on his sponsors.

Sleight of hand could cost Henry a fortune as sponsorship slips from his grasp via kwout

As with the case of Caster Semenya, the deviance is socially produced, collectively noticed. But the difference with Henry, is that Semenya had to face potential formal sanctions based on formal procedures that affected her basic gender identity. In Henry’s case, so far, the sanctions are only informal in nature but stronger in intensity. In Henry’s case, his “nice guy” identity as well as his status in the international classification of soccer player will take a major hit along with his monetary value. But because Henry’s sport is team-based, his offense spill over onto the entire team.

However, in Semenya’s case, the formal procedures guaranteed a conclusion, which was reached today (with a lot left unsaid and ambiguities):

Caster Semenya found ‘innocent of any wrong’ to retain 800m gold medal | Sport | guardian.co.uk via kwout

Will Semenya retain a trace of the stigma? Will this be mentioned if she competes again? The stigma might be “easier” for Semenya to shed as her sex is not something she can control where Henry’s act was plainly under his control. Semenya cannot help who she is whereas Henry could have avoided the deviant act that stigmatizes him.

But either way, in both case, the deviant label was applied based on not just visibility but notice. Semenya’s performance was questioned because groups decided she “looked” masculine (by socially defined criteria, such as heavy muscularity). Henry’s hand was captured on video for the world to see and social context made his deviance a “crime” of “inflammatory” nature.

In light of yesterday’s post on the publication of the latest Corruption Perception Index, and the sorry state of affairs in Afghanistan (which earned the next to last spot with only Somalia faring worse) as described in the BBC today. One notes three traits in corrupt practices in Afghanistan:

BBC News : Afghan corruption a political obstacle via kwout

And the second one

BBC News : Afghan corruption a political obstacle via kwout

And the third one

BBC News : Afghan corruption a political obstacle via kwout

To broaden the discussion, let me re-post my summary of Keith Darden’s article:

Keith Darden has a pretty interesting article in Politics & Society (Vol. 36, No. 1, March 2008, 35-60), titled The Integrity of Corrupt States: Graft as an Informal State Institution (abstract).

In this article, Darden sets out to refute the common assumption that widespread corruption and graft are indicators of institutional breakdowns which result in ineffective states. While this assumption is not entirely untrue, Darden notes that there exists a fairly large set of states with widespread corruption AND functioning state institutions.

“I argue that graft often serves as a form of unofficial compensation that reinforces rather than undermines the formal institutions of the state and can provide leaders with additional means to control subordinate officials. In sum, despite the deleterious effect that graft may have on democracy and economic development, there are circumstances under which graft may reinforce the state’s administrative hierarchies.” (36)

In which case, Darden speaks of institutionalized graft.

In this article, Darden eschews the never-ending debate on the definition of the state by focusing on one specific aspect that the major schools of thought on the subject recognizes:

“The institutional mechanisms used to secure the loyalty and obedience of officials with the state’s administrative hierarchies.” (37)

Any state form needs to be able to extract compliance from state officials in order to fulfill such functions as tax collection or the maintenance of law and order in addition to the provision of other services. What is the role of graft in this? As Darden explains, the major support for the theory of graft as state-weakening comes from the agency theories of economics. In this perspective, graft is a violation of the basic contract between state leaders and state officials when the latter substitute personal financial enrichment for the fulfillment of their stately tasks against a salary. And officials do so especially when they know that the systems of surveillance and sanctions are defective. Hence the lack of effectiveness of the state.

For Darden, this is not an entirely false picture but it is not the entire story and it is based on a narrow conception of state institutional form: the Weberian bureaucracy with all its well-known characteristics, a model which works well for the established Western democracies but not beyond those.

“It is not difficult to find cases where (1) graft is allowed as part of an informal agreement or contract between leaders and their subordinates, or, (2) the state is not grounded in the rule of law and functions largely through informal institutions – stable rules that are not written down or codified as law. (…) Corrupt practices and other violations of the law may signal the absence of a Weberian bureaucracy but do not necessarily imply absence or weakness of administrative hierarchy. It is possible to achieve a stable administrative hierarchy without the law-based bureaucracy that Weber saw as typical of modern organization or the web of personal obligations of traditional rule.” (38)

For Darden, a fairly large number of countries fall into that category (widespread graft + robust state capacities and hierarchies) based on the 2003 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI 2008).

2008/cpi/surveys_indices/policy_research via kwout

The CPI is considered one of the most reliable analytical measure of corruption at the global level. Countries are ranked based on a score between 0 and 10 where 0-3 is considered most corrupt and 7-10 least corrupt. Among such states with high corruption and high state capacity, we find Algeria, Kenya, Nicaragua, Romania, Russia, Papua New Guinea, and Ukraine.

When it comes to graft, Darden distinguishes between three types of graft in relation to the state:

1. State-weakening graft: graft that undermines administrative hierarchies.

   “Graft unconditionally weakens the administrative hierarchy when it serves to buy disobedience – when officials take “a remuneration for what you are not supposed to do.” (…) In such cases, the role of graft follows precisely the logic identified by agency theorists.” (41)

2. State-benign graft: graft that has no effect on administrative hierarchies.

   “Some forms of graft may have little effect on the functioning of the administrative hierarchy – it plays little role in determining whether officials loyally perform their obligations. It is simply a form of theft. This is common in environments where bribery takes the form of a convention, and officials receive additional informal payment for tasks that they are obligated to perform anyway. If everyone knows that bribes must be paid for officials to perform their functions and everyone pays bribes as a result (assuming that all can afford to do so), then a graft-ridden state of this type differs from a functioning graft-free bureaucracy only in the way that private wealth is distributed (it is reallocated from citizens to officials). Graft is “benign” in these cases only in the sense that it neither enhances nor undermines loyalty in the administrative hierarchy of the state.” (41)

3. State-strengthening graft: graft that reinforces administrative hierarchies

   “In such cases, administrative compliance is based on an informal contract between state leaders and their subordinates in which graft plays a critical role. In contrast to the benign case, state-reinforcing graft provides the basis, in whole or in part, for official loyalty and obedience. The illegal practices we identify as corruption reflect the fulfillment rather than the violation of an informal “contract.”" (41)

And he identifies two mechanisms related to state-strengthening graft as a means to obtain compliance.

1. Graft can serve as an alternative mode of compensation or as a second salary. The proceeds of theft or embezzlement or bribery are distributed to carry out the duties of the state. It is graft that guarantees the effective functioning of the state.

2. Graft provides state leaders with means of coercion over their subordinates. If the officials do not fulfill their end of the bargain (discharge their official state duties in an efficient manner), they risk losing not only the money they get from graft but potentially to be among the few prosecuted and incarcerated for corruption.

“State leaders must be able to monitor their subordinates (1) to ensure that they are complying with directives, (2) to guarantee that they take no more than the allotted amounts, and also (3) to maintain a complete record of their illegal activities in the event that sanctions should be required.” (43)

For Darden, it is important to note that such a state would still fit the Weberian characteristics of monopoly, hierarchy and impersonal authority. Such a state is able to function relatively effectively in terms of waging war, maintaining law and order, managing infrastructures and institutions, controlling political dissent, etc. Darden illustrates such state-effectiveness with the very enlightening (and entertaining) example of Ukraine under the rule of Leonid Kuchma. Such a study is made possible due to the fact that Kuchma’s interactions were recorded by a member of his security detail. These recordings allow access to the inner mechanisms of state-strengthening graft. Through them, we can see the different aspects of graft and its management in Ukraine.

In the case of Ukraine, the system of state-strengthening graft is accompanied by strict monitoring (to make sure that officials do not take more than their cut and adequately cover their tracks), intensive surveillance (another well-functioning state apparatus), and permits widespread intimidation and enforcement.

In the Ukrainian case, Darden identifies four types of officials:

1. Criminal: those whose loyalty lies outside of the state structure, such as gang members.

2. Selfish: those who are in it for personal enrichment and tend to take more than their share.

3. Disloyal: those who secretly support political rivals.

4. Compliant: those who conform to the state hierarchy.

The first three categories are those who can expect sanctions from the state as a result of extensive surveillance. The compliants reap the rewards of their loyalty but they are also subject to monitoring (precisely to ensure their compliance). Such extensive state-surveillance apparatus seems to be especially present in the former republics of the USSR, as legacy from that regime.

The massive use of surveillance for political repression and the mobilization of officials to “get the votes” when election time comes explains the stability and resilience of such states and regimes. Their weakness is that everyone knows what is going on and these regimes tend to be highly unpopular (see the Orange Revolution in late 2004 – 2005). Pakistan under Ali Bhutto and Peru under Fujimori are other good examples.

But the main point stands, there is no necessary negative correlation between graft and state capacity. As Darden concludes:

“This alternative view of the relationship between graft and the state may explain both the pervasiveness of graft and the objective stability of states that were hitherto classified as weak. If the pervasiveness of corrupt practices only signaled the breakdown of political authority, then political leaders would have clear incentives to overcome it, but if graft plays an important role in the informal institutions of state administration and political domination, then leaders have every incentive to sustain it.” (54)

Via Sean Carroll on Twitter,

The 1960s make it all really visually cool but those were brutal years for the Global South.

And yes, where are the non-Western Empires?

Hungry America: food insecurity, state by state | News | guardian.co.uk via kwout

And here are some more specific data about this appalling state of affairs and what should be the shame of the nation considering how much money have been funneled to financial institutions and will be funneled to the health insurance sector:

Record numbers go hungry in households in the US | World news | guardian.co.uk via kwout

Maybe it is time for the UN to send some food aid to the United States? Because heaven forbid that this country reconsider its economic organization of food production and distribution, including the enormous subsidies going to the Big Corn.

It is indeed misleading to speak of “food shortage”. Food is available but healthy food is unaffordable for many households. It is a redistribution problem, not a production one.

Transparency International has just published its 2009 Corruption Perception Index and as usual, it is a valuable source of information.

First, the usual animated map:

What´s new in CPI 2009/2009/cpi/surveys_indices/policy_research via kwout

The Top 10 (least corrupt countries):

CPI 2009 Table/2009/cpi/surveys_indices/policy_research via kwout

No real surprise here.

And the bottom ten (most corrupt countries):

CPI 2009 Table/2009/cpi/surveys_indices/policy_research via kwout

No surprises here either. As noted, war-torn countries are characterized by failing states, bad or non-existent governance.

This video is interesting as well as it addresses the issues of massive disbursements of monies to banks by states as part of stimulus policies:

When it comes to corruption, what afflicts poor countries:

BBC NEWS | Business | War-torn nations ‘most corrupt’ via kwout

And what afflicts middle and high-income countries as well:

BBC NEWS | Business | War-torn nations ‘most corrupt’ via kwout

That’s what Dean Baker suggests:

An Unemployment Solution: Pay People to Work Shorter Hours – CEPR via kwout

The social benefits of this seem obvious, from greater family time to time for other pursuits which might lead to healthier results (mentally and physically) but this goes against the puritan ideology that non-work time is equivalent to sitting on one’s hands.

Not unique to the United States (Via):

This Live Journal entry (via Unusual Music over at Alas, A Blog) is a must-read on the different tropes that Hollywood has developed to deal with racial composition in movies and how white and non-white characters are distributed and combined in the narratives and cast. The entry is chock full of popular culture references that most of you will recognize.

This is a great illustration of structural racism: how an entire industry perpetuates racial stereotypes and generate white supremacist narratives even if individual producers and shakers and movers are not themselves individually racist. It also reveals how “white male” this industry still is and how it impacts the narratives that ultimately get produced.

This is a good illustration also of the way culture and popular cultural products produce, and reproduce, the “natural” sense of white people as superior to people of color so that these narratives are easily accepted by the majority white audience for whom these movies are produced. The default moviegoer is assumed to be a white man, less so but still as well, sometimes, a white woman.

Go read the whole thing and come back for a perfect example below the quote.

Sakura of DOOM – Wiscon 31: What These People Need Is a Honky via kwout

How many of you have seen Baz Luhrmann’s Australia? Here is the trailer:

So, look at the cast: aristocratic British white woman (Nicole Kidman’s character), ruggedly individualist white man (Hugh Jackman) who “married” an aboriginal woman (big trope) so that he is slightly more sensitive to the Aboriginal culture (she died, conveniently, so he can fall in love with the white aristocratic women, after some mild class clash). A few nasty white men (especially David Wenham) depicted negatively (this is the 21st century after all and we are all enlightened people, we know racism is bad). You also have a few aboriginal characters, principally, the mixed race child (BIG trope) who has a hard time finding his place as he belong nowhere: not in the white society, not in the “black” society (big time cliche if there ever was one). We also have his mother (who conveniently dies as well so that the boy can be “adopted” by Nicole Kidman and so that the three of them, with Hugh Jackman, can make up a “normal” family). And then, again because this is the enlightened 21st century and new age nonsense is omnipresent, we have King George, the “true” Aboriginal grandfather of the boy, who has almost mystical powers (because we’re not supposed to diss indigenous culture anymore, that’s too colonial).

And yet, at the end of the movie, the social arrangements have not changed. The heroism of the white characters has not changed the fact of Aboriginal oppression and the exploitative nature of colonialism. What we have is an aristocratic white women on a journey of self-discovery (love and motherhood) and a white man recovering from loss thanks to their adventures defending colonial interests (Kidman’s cattle business) while saving poor little Aboriginal children (never mind that they also do not change the system that socially and institutionally mistreated “half-caste” children… Kidman’s outburst at the oh-so distinguished charity ball has no long term consequences). As the movie aptly tells us before the credits roll out, that system persisted until the 1970s. But hey, the Kidman character has it both ways: first, she saves a little Aboriginal boy and adopts him, and THEN, sacrifices her motherly love to send him back to his grandfather for his “walkabout” rite of passage into his own culture.

As always in US-produced movie, lower-class white people can only be of two kinds: those who accept their station in life and do not challenge the class status quo. In this case, it is the Jackman character. He even states that he stays out of the way of the aristocrats and they do the same (of course, out of love, he will violate that rule). He lives most of his life with Aboriginals, but they work for him and they call him “boss”, even his ex “brother-in-law”.

The other kind of lower-class white people is represented by the Fletcher character (played by David Wenham). This type of lower-class character wants to move up the social ladder but does so dishonestly or even by committing murder. In many movies and books and TV series I have watched, the only way for lower-class people to move up is to submit to upper-class people, accept their dominance, work their you-know-what up for them and be individually rewarded for it by social promotion. But you always have these damn ambitious characters who can’t do it the right way (submission and acceptance of exploitation). These bad lower-class characters, of course, get their comeuppance at the end, as Fletcher does. They are also shown to be rotten through and through: Fletcher is racist and a rapist, he is the biological white father of the mixed race boy that Kidman adopts as he repeteadly rapes the boy’s Aboriginal mother.

This pattern of lower-class distinction characters, incidentally, is something I noticed for the first time when a friend of mine gave me a series of mysteries by Mary Higgins Clark. Once you notice that pattern, you will notice it everywhere in popular entertainment.

All this can only work if audiences are not socialized into identifying structural and systemic aspects of films and books and TV programs, such as class and race. At the same time, these cultural products work to reproduce such systemic blindness and focus everyone’s attention on individual drama which then functions as ideological cover.

In an otherwise very interesting post by Yves Smith (whom everyone should read), I noted this:

Krugman on the Need for Jobs Policies « naked capitalism via kwout

There is indeed quite a bit of reluctance in the United States to examine how other countries deal with common social problems for fear that we might discover that they do better. This is especially true on social policy and redistribution issues generally. Part of it is protection of the ideology of American exceptionalism: how can the US claim to be number one if other countries have found better solutions to some social issue?

The other part of the story has to do with the protection of entrenched interests that might actually be detrimental to the overall health of the economy, as Yves Smith demonstrates above. And the ideological straitjacket might not generate the most skilled people.

As they say, read the whole thing and bookmark Naked Capitalism if you haven’t already.

L’augmentation des violences interpersonnelles est infirmée par les enquêtes de victimation – Délinquance, justice et autres questions de société via kwout

Let me translate this real quick: police statistics state that interpersonal aggressions (verbal or physical) increased by 25% between 2001 and 2008 in the greater Paris region with similar proportions nationwide. However, victimization studies reveal a different trend: stability. All types of aggression have decreased from 6.7% in 2001 to 6.4% in 2009. This almost perfect stability is found category of aggressions by category.

So does one explain all this? As the report states,

The first thing to conclude is that police statistics are not the best tool to measure the evolution of delinquency (what a surprise) and yet, politicians based their communication almost entirely on these, especially when it suits their purposes (such as, for instance, claiming huge spike in the amorphous “insecurity” right before an election).

The second thing to note is that an increase in complaint filing for aggression does not mean a corresponding increase in aggressive behavior but might be more revealing of a trend towards the criminalization of any type of behavior judged deviant.

Tango rocks! (No, really)

Via Visual Economics:

An interesting flip side of this would be to determine what people are getting for what they pay. What kind of social redistribution mechanisms are in place (if any)? For instance, the notoriously generous Scandinavian countries do not rank exceptionally high on government spending compared to the rest of Europe and other countries of the Global North. And look at Canada compared to the United States.

It would be nice to have a more detailed visual on what the money is spent on. But this is still a very cool visualization. There is only so much one can put on before the whole thing becomes undecipherable.

Via Yannick Claude, that is what sociologist Robert Castel states in this interview in L’Humanité.

Robert Castel : « La précarité est devenue un état permanent » – l’Humanite via kwout

For Castel, precarization is a systemic condition, not a nasty side effect of the current crisis. This systemic state is grounded on global competition and deregulation. This is savage capitalism. At the heart of these changes in capitalist regime, Castel sees also a major transformation in the organization of labor and a degradation of professional statutes. Precarization is now anchored at the heart of employment and contributes to permanently high unemployment and underemployment rates.

And so precarization can no longer be seen as a “rough patch” that one has to get through on the way to more stable employment. People are forced to settle in precarious employment and situations, what Castel calls the “précariat” as a new under-waged condition displacing traditional employment and its benefits and guarantees. And precarization no longer affects only the already disadvantaged categories although it still affects them in larger numbers. There is then a stratified precarization with a primary precarization affecting part of the educated middle class (similar to primary and secondary labor markets).

In a country such as France, where a lot of social protections are tied to employment, this degradation of labor increases the level of inequalities. When one considers how much social cohesion is grounded in these protections, then, for Castel, there is serious structural problem: everyone, all workers, had access to resources and minimal protections in order to avoid marginalization. his did not create a situation of perfect equality but everyone could remained anchored into, and part of, society, still embedded in networks of interdependencies and exchange. Now, a lot of people are falling through the cracks, outside of this system of protections.

This results in a familiar trend already identified by Zygmunt Bauman and Ulrich Beck: individualization, or what Castel calls desocialization / decollectivization (a more loaded term in English than in French, so, desocialization works better here). The big unions are fragmented along with other large labor collectivities (and here, one can see the France Télécom situation as a good case of anomie once the desocialization of labor runs its course). The individual is left on her own to struggle against structural conditions, it is up to them to find individual solutions to socially and structurally-created issues. At the same time, for Castel, many do not have the resources to deal with their new individualized condition.

For Castel, a society of individuals is not viable. Only the state can play the role of unifier and protector. Otherwise, the one finds oneself in a situation of society-wide anomie, a war of all against all. Only the state can maintain some sense of collective interest and provide some measure of protection and redistribution. These are necessary foundations of the social contract and social solidarity.

Contrary to current policies, if it is not possible to reverse precarization as systemic condition, Castel states, then there needs to be new rights. Lifelong employment is no longer the norm and one will have to change job several times and constantly retrain in order to avoid the dreaded condition of being “unemployable”. It is at these times of transition and change that strong rights are needed. Unfortunately, Castel does not give examples. I would think  though that this is the one of the strongest arguments in favor of universal, non-employment based health care and retirement pensions. Also, people should get benefits attached to continuing education along with strong options for subsidized childcare and education. This is especially the case as precarization might push more people into the workforce and couples will need relief from childcare if both parents have to work.

The invaluable Center for Economic and Policy Research has issued an interesting report looking at the state of unionization in the United States over the past 25 years.

The Changing Face of Labor, 1983-2009

I especially like this graph:

Unsurprisingly, there are also major changes in the racial and ethnic composition of the unionized workforce:

But overall, the trend is downward when it comes to unionization, especially for younger workers:

This decline, of course, is associated with deindustrialization, as the conclusion of the report confirms: