Four narratives on the relationship between society and the environment:

1. The conservation view

This view is seen as an authoritarian approach because it does not consider people and it removes their rights. It dictates the policies and rules. People do not have rights, just like during the apartheid era in South Africa. People can be forcefully removed from their settlements without any consequences.

2. The economic view

This view is seen as a capitalist approach because it sees the environment as the commodity that is primarily there for selling and/or buying. The environment is identified as an economic asset to bring about lasting socio-economic development and transformation not only in the specific locality but throughout the country. Capitalists identify opportunities to exploit resources to make money by those who have the means as well as the power. Nature is always exploited. In South Africa, many factories use coal which is a mineral to generate electricity and steam, which then remains the ashes. Ash cannot be used for landfilling and cannot be recycled either. It just causes pollution.

3. The non-state actors view

This views originate from external interested parties such as the academics, scientists, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), etc. outside of the local community. It excludes local community representation or inputs. This view puts a great value on the environment as they believe that it should be protected and respected.

4. The local view

This view is complex and highly differentiated, because it is informed by time, place, individual characteristics and circumstances as well as local power & politics. The nature of the relationship with the environment as shaped by the socio-political context because it is influenced by the policies and practices as framework as well as the direct views and responses of local communities. The communities are more protective of the environment and the scarce resources they need for their livelihoods whether livelihoods are derived from the land or not. For example, in South Africa the farmers use the land as source of food, wood for fuel, construction, shelter, fodder and medicines.

When referring to Buckle’s single factor theory, the premise was that the environment is a critical factor for nations to flourish. It is all about the climate. South Africa is one of the countries that have fertile soil and warm climate. Hence it survives on growing fruits and vegetables and the extraction of some minerals.

Huntington’s single factor theory has a lot to do with the climate. It is linking climate and productivity, with implications for nations over time. The warm temperatures in South Africa, the productivity rate can be higher.

Herbert Spencer’s single factor theory deal with the natural selection / survival of the fittest in the social world. This means that the survival of the species is dependent on the species itself. In order to survive, the need to find a way and pass that on the next generation to ensure that the species does not go extinct.

Anthropogenic refers to environmental changes that are caused or produced by humans whether direct or indirect. Environmental problems that resulted from anthropogenic nature are global warming, ozone depletion, pollution, water pollution, deforestation, just to name a few.

Global warming

The temperatures have been increasing over the years due to the damage occurring on the ozone layer in the atmosphere. The ozone layer is damaged mostly by the anthropogenic nature. Global warming is due to the ozone depletion that is caused by air pollution.

Water pollution

Water pollution is caused by the harmful waste or substances are dumped in the oceans. This has a negative impact on the marine life such as fishes and organisms that live in water, that uses the water or that drink the water. This could be from the by-products that comes from the factories, the unrecyclable material or any other waste.

Deforestation

Deforestation is the removal of trees which make up the forest. This happens when owners of the land or the government feel that the land where the forest is can be used for something else. Or when they want to manufacture furniture and other things from those trees.

The South African Context

Global warming in South Africa is caused by COշ (carbon dioxide) and other hazardous gasses from the factories that are released to the atmosphere. The other cause is from the rural areas where they are still using wood to make fire for cooking and warming themselves. Deforestation can occur due to various reasons. In South Africa, a lot of things are produced from the trees (furniture, papers, pencils, toothpicks, etc.) depending on the type of tree.

Participatory development approach can also be referred to as the humanistic approach and is another variant of alternative theories. Participatory development seeks to involve the poor and local population by giving them the part in the development projects. This approach enables the society to build their own capacity, empowerment, sustainability as well as self-reliance. According to humanistic approach, development is a process that focus on the community’s involvement in their own development by the use of available resources and guiding the future development of their own community. This approach allows people to become the partners in the development process.

In a South African context, such development might not work as well as it does in theory because South African people are not united as we might hope to be. Even amongst the same race communities there is no unity. The concept of uBuntu might still not work in favour of participatory development because most of the people like to be on the receiving end and very few are willing to be on the giving end. In order to archeve the participatory theory, there would have to be coordination among the communities and people must be willing to help others.

Women in development

Esther Boserup is the first person to make an important statement of the position of women in development. She criticised modernisation because the modernisation process supervised by colonial authorities had placed new technologies under the control of men. This modernisation process treated women unfairly and insignificantly by reducing their status, their power and their income. Women in development approach gave voice to women and pushed the issues of gender into the centre stage. Instead of improving women's rights and status, the development process appeared to be contributing to a deterioration of their position. Women were being left out development practice, research and policy and they were not benefiting fully and in some cases their status was made worse by development. The women in development approach argued for the integration of women in development programmes to improve women’s position in society.

Women and development

While the women in development approach argued that women should be brought into the modernisation process, the women and development perspective argued that it was precisely their link with modernisation that had made them more poor. The women and development’s main focus is on the interaction between women and development processes rather than to integrate in development like women in development. Women and development argued that the integration of women into development only made their inequality worse.

Gender and development

Gender and development aimed to bring together both the lessons and limitations learnt from WID and WAD approaches. GAD looks at the impact of development on both women and men. Gender and development argued that women were not a homogeneous group but rather divided by race, class and ethnicity. Gender and development also recognises that women may be involved in development but may not necessarily benefit from it.

The approaches that are most useful in the SA context are WAD and WID.

Compare and contrast the core tenets of the modernisation and dependency theories

Comparison

Similarities

Dependency Theory has been presented as a theory of development that improves modernisation Theory.

The scope-unit of analysis for modernisation and dependency theories is Nation-State

Learning Activity

Discuss any four factors that constitute development illustrating each with examples from the SA context.

Improvements in education and health

Development implies fulfilment of basic human needs, such as education and health. According to the Constitution of South Africa, every person has the right to basic education and primary health care. This is to improve the quality of lives of South Africans and to fight poverty. The South African government has put measures in place to fight poverty, such as skills development programs, National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), free education, etc.

Growth and structural change

Development requires growth as well as structural change and the main focus of an economy’s activity shifts from the primary, through the secondary and finally to the tertiary sector. I believe that South Africa is somewhere between the early stage of development and medium stage, because there are still providing the raw material from nature (such as fruits and vegetables from the farms) and use secondary raw materials to produce certain products (such as electricity).

Political transformation

Political growth must accompany economic and socio-cultural growth, referred to as development democracy. Development require democracy. South Africa is a democratic country and its government is striving to grow the economy and improves the lives of the citizens. During the apartheid era, there was inequalities and discrimination but the democratic government is fighting against any kind of discrimination and inequalities.

Democratic characteristics

Development brings about the improvements in hygiene and sanitation and corresponding decrease in death rates. Development results in liberation of women. These improvements result in the high birth rate and low death rate. In South Africa, every person has the right to live.

Give a thorough definition of poverty as suggested by experts.

Poverty is when the standard of the living of the household is below certain percentages of the equivalised household income.

According to the World Bank in 1990, a poverty line of $1 or $216 was used to measure the poverty line in many developing countries. Townsend argues that the notion of $1 per day per person is not acceptable as it suggests that the needs of the poor countries are less than those of the rich countries.

According to the Bureau of Market research at the University of Pretoria, the Minimum Living Level (MLL) is the lowest amount of money possible which a specific size of a household can live.

The approach used to set the poverty line is calorific approach. The food poverty line is developed based on the nutritionally balanced minimalist diet of a household.  This approach is based on the amount of food consumption but not only that, the non-food items are also included.

The benefits of poverty for the individual and the community.

The benefits of poverty for the individual and the community is that there are people who do the dirty work because they need money. If all the people were rich, no one would want to get their hands dirty and some things would not be done. There would be no people to clean the streets and fix the roads, fix the plumbing, farming, etc. and without those jobs, the world would be a disaster.

The other benefit of poverty is that there are people who do the domestic work. Rich people live in clean places, wear clean and ironed clothes and eat home cooked meals because of domestic workers and have their children well taken off by the nannies. Without them, they would live in messy places without order.

The benefit of poverty is that people recycle to make a living. Recycling is important as it keeps the land clean and others goes to land filling. The world would be filled all the dirty, unwanted things if it weren’t for recycling.

There are securities in many places because of poverty. If we were all rich, who would care to provide security in certain places? Firstly, no one would want to follow, all people would want to lead. Secondly, no one would steal other people’s belongings and thirdly who would even care if they get stolen, they would replace them without a hustle. There would be no order as no one would want to follow the rules or even wait on a queue.  

As much as we all want to be rich, the world needs people who are poor to do the things that other people don’t want to do and restore order.

Class Activity 2

Compare and contrast two theoretical approaches to social problems.

The two theoretical approaches to social problems that I will be comparing and contrasting are structural functionalist approach and conflict approach. The structural functionalist approach’s main focus is the threat to the society. Social problems are caused by society failing to execute their functions accordingly. Whereas the conflict approach’s main focus is the contribution to social conflict. Social problems are caused by the exploitive nature of capitalism (bourgeoisie).

The structural functionalist approach view society as stable and balance, which means it is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, whereas the conflict approach view society as always in conflict and continuously changing.

In the structural functionalist approach, all parts of the society depend on each other to bring stability while in the conflict approach the groups in the society fight over valued and scarce resources.

While in the structural functionalist approach the social problems serve an important function by ensuring that all parties are performing their function, the conflict approach the fundamental faults in the society are caused by the social problems.