Social Stratification In Slumdog Millionaire

The first real study of social disorganization happened during the 1800’s in France by two men, Adolph Quetelet and Andre-Michel Guerry. They studied social disorganization by taking the recently released criminal records and mapping them. They were able to show that crime is related to places. After Adolph and Andre Michel came Robert Parks and Ernest Burgess who studied the similarities between ecology and urban social structures. Parks and Burgess after seeing how time played a role in how cities are affected, created a theory called the Concentric Zone theory. This theory correlated ecology means of invasion, dominance, and succession and combined it to cities. After Parks and Burgess, two men by the names of Shaw and McKay took up this theory and applied it social disorganization and its effects on delinquents.

Introduction The social issue is a problem within a society. It might influence the society or the society might disagree with it. In 2016, the New York Times published inequality as one of the social issues Americans were facing, According to Pew Research Center, more than 61 percent of Americans said the U.S. economic system favors the wealthy. Sharmila Mukherjee wrote this widening disparity between the rich and the poor, has led to shrinking of the middle class which might tear the democratic fabric of America. American 's concern with what is going on in their society is sociological imagination. Sociological imagination is the understanding of the historical scene in terms of the meaning of the external career and the inner life of the

In the article, “A Million Dollar Exit From the Anarchic Slum-World: Slumdog Millionaire’s Hollow Idioms of Social Justice”, Mitu Sengupta responds to how the slums and its citizens are presented in the film Slumdog Millionaire by Danny Boyle. Sengupta describes the slums as run-down and then goes on to specifically address the poverty that exists in India. When writing about the portrayal of the slums, Sengupta states, “Slumdog depicts the ‘slum’ as a feral wasteland, a place of evil and decay that is devoid of order, productivity and compassion”(599). Sengupta uses imagery to illustrate to viewers the unsanitary conditions that the people of Mumbai experience on a daily basis. Viewers can picture the tattered slums and the surrounding streets

Some people are suffering, how all the rich people smell money, and the poor people smell smoke. In the book The Outsiders, there are two social classes: the Greasers and the Socs. The Greasers are poor people who wear leather jackets and smoke whenever they want to, while the Socs are very rich and they beat the Greasers up just for kicks. In the poem "Poverty And Wealth," the author describes how a bird comes by with two kids. One child goes to a rich guy who wants him to be a lordy ruler of land and sea; the other child goes to a poor guy who wants God’s will that he has another mouth to fill. Both the poem’s theme and the book’s theme share similarities in many ways.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers is a book, by Katherine Boo, that describes an ordinary life of slum-dwellers in Mumbai. India is primarily known as a country currently experiencing a significant economic growth. At the same time the inhabitants of slums daily struggle for their mere survival. One of the main reasons for that is a failure of both governmental and international social programs to reach their objectives. Boo frequently highlights this issue in her book providing numerous examples. Firstly, free municipal education hardly ever is efficient. According to the author, almost 60% of the public school teachers do not have even an undergraduate degree (Boo 85). Mirchi and other similar schoolchildren are not likely to acquire necessary education that could have potentially helped them and their families to escape poverty. Moreover, they risk learning nothing at all since at public school they mostly “play, take recess, play again, then have lunch” (Boo 85). This is not surprising given the fact that the teachers, such as Asha, often ignore their responsibilities and do not go to school (Boo 33). Similarly, educational policies of non-governmental agencies do not always benefit students in need. Oftentimes an institution receives money, starts working, and begins teaching children. However, as soon as the photos are taken and necessary inspections are passed both funds and a person responsible for them disappear (Boo 171). In contrast to public schools, private ones

In the academy award winning film ‘Slumdog millionaire’ directed by Danny Boyle, Main character Jamal Malik played by Dev Patel faces many challenges living on the streets and in the slums of Mumbai, India. During the film, Jamal experiences the death of a loved one and extreme poverty adding to the challenges put upon him. Throughout the film ‘Slumdog millionaire’ Danny Boyle’s challenges help viewers to understand characters and manifest the theme “Brutality of Humanity”. The key challenge in the film that helps us understand the Theme of Beauty and Brutality of Humanity is overcoming poverty. Danny Boyle utilises film techniques such as Costuming, Camera shots and Dialogue to show the theme “Brutality of Humanity”.

In order to raise awareness of the staggering injustices, oppression and mass poverty that plague many Indian informal settlements (referred to as slum), Katherine Boo’s novel, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, unveils stories of typical life in a Mumbai slum. There are discussions on topics surrounding gender relations, environmental issues, corruption, religion, and class hierarchies, as well as demonstrating India’s level of socioeconomic development. Encompassing this, the following paper will argue that Boo’s novel successfully depicts the mass social inequality within India. With Indian cities amongst the fastest growing economies in South East Asia, it is difficult to see evidence of this in the individual well-being of the vast majority of the nation. With high unemployment rates, the expansion of informal settlements and the neglect of basic human rights, one of India’s megacities, Mumbai, is a good representation of these social divisions.

There are significant socioeconomic disparities in the greater Atlanta area. The average mean income for the area is $27,000 per family per year. Of these numbers more than half live below the poverty line and happen to be 80 percent minorities. Minority populations have a higher rate of Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and stroke and tend to have lower birth rates than White Americans. This could be contributed to a lack of access to adequate healthcare and healthcare systems. In conducting reviews of research related to health disparities and lack of access to healthcare for minorities, there are several articles that cite data and methods that show the relationship to minorities with low SES are significantly impacted. According to the peer reviewed article, “Reducing Health Disparities in Underserved Communities” there is a significant disparity in access to healthcare for minorities health services among whites, blacks, and Hispanics over the past two decades. The article also cited several causes to this lack of access such as

“The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.” (Unknown) No one deserves to be looked down upon. No one deserves to be treated differently. Most importantly, no one deserves to feel belittled. In the novel Night, Elie Wiesel, the author and narrator, goes through numerous nights of pain and suffering from incidents as small as being starved to being beaten. This novel illustrates horrific events of Jews, in particular, being segregated from the rest of the world because of their ethnicity. To kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, is a novel that took place around the Great Depression. It demonstrates a symbol of dehumanization and is filled with a town full of racism and segregation. The Universal

The movie “City of God” that was directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund and released in 2002 is a film of despair, offering a one dimensional view of urban culture, in Brazil where social divisions appear too wide to-bridge, and where millions are too brutalized by violence and poverty to contribute to any process of change.

Though the story is fiction, it is based off of Chatterjee’s own life experiences since he himself grew up in extreme poverty. In this story a weaver, Gafur; and his daughter, Amina; are so deep in poverty they do not have enough water or food to feed themselves or their cow, Mahesh. The major social issue that Chatterjee tells in this story is the true ways of the Hindu caste system and the disregard of caste

Asha Waghekar, One of the book’s main characters, is a mother of three and a wife to a drunk. Waghekar strives to become the unofficial slumlord of Annawadi and is willing to pay the cost in doing so. As she works for the corrupt Corporator, Subhas Sawant, Waghekar learns the Corporator’s ways in doing things and stops doing affairs from the heart “Before Asha had learned better, she had performed many such kindnesses for free” (Boo 21). The potency of money persuaded Waghekar to stop assisting individuals in need. Waghekar is a part of a government scheme to make more citizens appear in the slum and causes people to come up with fake businesses to obtain money. One of Waghekar’s friends asks for a fixed loan, as he needs money to save his life. Waghekar in regards of making money proposed, “to come back with a better financial proposal” (Boo 26). Even Waghekar’s daughter, Manju, is disappointed in her mother for turning away a family friend with a failing heart. Neighbors turning on each other to have dominance over the other causes jealousy in which people will not help each other in times of need. As Waghekar does things to gain popularity, another goes through the wretched government’s

This is evident in the book through the Annawadi resident Asha Waghekar, a kindergarten teacher that possesses extensive influence in the settlement, and aims to be the first female slumlord of Annawadi. Asha aims to do this with the help of Subhash Sawant, a member of the Shiv Sena party, a predominantly Hindu party that is highly prejudiced against migrants from northern Indian states, and is the highly corrupted Corporator of Ward 76 in which Annawadi resides. In the book, the clever and corrupt Asha, uses her political connections to position herself to be a minor player in a scam where “Asha, having befriended the bank manager, was helping him select the Annawadians who would get loans—for her own cut of the loan money, she hoped.” (pg.25). This corruption demonstrates a flaw in the Indian political infrastructure because the loans she influences are part of an anti poverty scheme created by the central government with the intention of ushering in growth for entrepreneurial citizens stuck in poverty. This flawed political infrastructure that is rampant with corruption, is one of the biggest constraints on the informal settlement inhabitants. This is demonstrated in the book through Asha, as she controls who does, and who does not get the subsidized government loans, hindering the potential development created by the loans by using them for personal gain instead of for the greater good as they were intended. The flawed Indian political infrastructure plays a role in constraining the inhabitants of the slums by affecting the progress of the development that occurs in both the informal settlements, as well as the economy. The flawed Indian political infrastructure, and the vast corruption within it, has limited the potential progress the country has

Social classes are a form of social stratification that refers to the existence of structured inequalities between individuals and groups in society. A social class is a group of people of comparable status, power and wealth which are usually classified as upper class, middle class, and lower class. For each class, there are some specific opportunities available that influence their social life. We can understand about the particularity of the chances through unequal distribution of these opportunities between individuals in social classes. In here belonging to a social class seems to be an obstacle for some individuals to obtain equal opportunity, unlike upper class people. Therefore, in a stratified society, the individual’s opportunities are always determined by his or her social class. In this essay, I will be arguing that even though mobility exists in the social class system, the opportunity to change status is relatively open for everyone but the distribution of opportunities among the members of a social class is not relatively equal to all. I will demonstrate this point by showing how participation of an individual in a specific social class will decide the opportunities in terms of attaining education and achieving a well-paid job.

In Behind the Beautiful Forevers, by Kathrine Boo, the main characters of the novel experienced many adversities and injustices throughout their stories, like blatant corruptions, exploitations, inequality and etc. Though many of the issues that arose from novel can be regarded as human rights abuse, the most prevalent abuse was the right, or lack of, for Annawadians to have a “standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control”, which is stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (U.N. 1948),