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Global social inequality
Economic inequality in society
Economic and social inequality today
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The interconnectedness of the Rich and Poor
Imagine living on less than one dollar a day, thats what more than fifty eight percent of
Haitians live on. This is Haiti. The country where close to eighty percent of the population is poor and half live in extreme poverty, which starkly contrasts to the fourteen percent poverty rate
of the United States. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, by Tracy Kidder tells the remarkable and immensely inspirational story of Dr. Paul Farmer. Farmer works in Haiti at a health clinic where he seeks to provide medical care as well as compassion to Haiti’s economically disadvantaged. In one particular scene in the book, Farmer stands atop a hill and reflects
upon the effects of the Peligre Dam and how it interconnects with the rich and poor. Farmer’s main point about the dam was that it was created by the wealthy elite with the interests of only the elite. The facade of the project was that it was supposedly created to help the economy and agricultural efficiency of Haiti, but in reality it exploited the nation’s poor. Kidder writes, “This view drowned farmland, the result of a dam that had made some of his patients the poorest of the poor, was a lens on the world. His lens”(44). Farmer saw directly how the dam displaced farmers who were forced to move to the hillside which allowed for little to no farming due to erosion. Others were forced to take exploitative jobs in the city. These both perpetuated the community’s poverty and made incidents of starvation and malnutrition more prevalent. Farmer has learned how dam really effected people by his interactions and conversations with his patients and looking out on the city only reinforced in his mind that a change needed to be made. The kind of inequality described as a result from the Peligre Dam is a from of structural violence. It’s a form of indirect violence in which social and political structure prevents people from meeting their basic needs. The Peligre Dam exemplifies this when the communities surrounding the dam were displaced and had are harder time getting food, a basic need and in Farmer’s mind a basic human right. The Haitian proverb,”Giving people medicine for TB and not giving them food is like washing your hands and drying them in the dirt”(34) gives rise to another example of structural violence. Doctors and other professionals believed that patients stopped taking their medication when they felt better, because they believed that their illness came from sorcery. Farmer conducted a case study and found that patients stopped taking their medications do to a lack of necessities not beliefs in sorcery. Farmer implemented a program in which TB patients received not only medication, but a monthly stipend that covered food and transportation costs. The program was extremely successful, a TB patient hadn’t been lost in twelve years. The social system in place before Farmer’s program only created suffering, because patients didn’t have the right necessities and assistance to consistently take their medications and the healthcare professionals of Haiti didn’t understand the social and economic causes behind the illness. Kidder writes, “The world is full of miserable places. One way of living comfortably is not to think about them”(8). Structural violence can go unseen and many of the elite may not know how their social and political decisions have profound and devastating effects on the poor and how they directly correlate with the access to health care. References Kidder, T. (2003). Mountains beyond mountains: The quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a man who would cure the world. New York, NY: Random House.
In Part II of A Sand County Almanac, titled "The Quality of Landscape," Leopold takes his reader away from the farm; first into the surrounding Wisconsin countryside and then even farther, on an Illinois bus ride, a visit to the Iowa of his boyhood...
In the memoir Within Reach: My Everest Story by Mark Pfetzer and Jack Galvin, the author Mark Pfetzer is faced with an extremely amazing yet scary challenge of climbing Mount Everest. Each event is the story has something to do with the nature that is around them at that moment but Pfetzer shows the readers that nature can be a way of life.
The population of a community is vital to ensure that the needs of that community are met. A greater population allows for a larger vote in a democracy meaning a higher probability of attaining what that population wants. Indigenous communities were left hopeless when European settlers took over and slashed the numbers of their community making it impossible for them to ever overpower the Canadian government. The book “Clearing the Plains” by James Daschuk explains this critical period of time in which the population of Indigenous people dwindled based on the political, economic and ecological circumstances that were evident creating a society where Indigenous people lost their say, however Daschuk fails to mention the effects this population deflation has on society today and the racism that our society has perpetrated on Indigenous people.
Paul Farmer was a kind, devoted doctor who sacrificed his life to help those in need in Haiti. His work involved curing sick people from tuberculosis (TB), making sure the disease did not spread, and making the towns in Haiti a better, cleaner place to live in. There were and still are many social injustices that Haiti is still struggling with today. For example, they have TB outbreaks because there’s no healthcare in the country for the poor. This has increased the outbreak of TB and many other diseases. Also, their poor living conditions aren’t sanitary thus increasing the probability for diseases to spread. There are many more social injustices in Haiti.
Rising from the Plains by John McPhee is about an influential geologist, John David Love, interpreting the geologic history of Wyoming. The surface area of Wyoming has been subjected to many geological formations from the rise of the Rocky Mountains through the Laramide Orogeny in late Cretaceous time to the deep structural basin known as the Jackson Hole with rock dating back to the Precambrian period. Throughout each time period of the Earth’s history, the surface of Wyoming has experienced significant changes that have affected the physical landscape, as well as living organisms, even to this day. In this story John David Love shares his knowledge of the geologic history of Wyoming with John McPhee as they travel across Wyoming taking in the vastness that the landscape of Wyoming presents.
Why are these background informations useful? Because these informations provide us some important basic knowledges of Haiti. As a country mainly composed of ex-slaves, Haiti is mainly composed of people of African origin. However, why is Haiti so poor compared to its other black majority neighbors such as Saint Kitts and Neves and Barbados? Because Haiti did not attain its independence through peaceful means. Haitian revolt against the French, and they indeed won, against Napoleon Bonaparte[2].
“The only real nation is humanity” (Farmer 123). This quote represents a huge message that is received in, Tracy Kidder’s, Mountains Beyond Mountains. This book argues that universal healthcare is a right and not a privilege. Kidder’s book also shows the audience that every individual, no matter what the circumstances, is entitled to receive quality health care. In the book Kidder represents, Paul Farmer, a man who spends his entire life determined to improve the health care of impoverished areas around the world, namely Haiti, one of the poorest nations in the world. By doing this the audience learns of the horrible circumstances, and the lack of quality health care that nations like Haiti live with everyday, why every person has the right to healthcare no matter what, and how cost effectiveness should not determine whether or not these people get to live or die. Two texts that also argue this idea are Monte Leach’s “Ensuring Health Care as a Global Human Right,” and Darshak Sanghavi’s “Is it Cost Effective to Treat the World’s Poor.” Leach’s article is an interview with Benjamin Crème that illustrates why food, shelter, education, and healthcare are human rights that have to be available to everyone. He shares many of the same views on health care as Farmer, and the two also share similar solutions to this ongoing problem. Leach also talks about the rapidly growing aids epidemic, and how it must be stopped. Like farmer, he also argues that it is easier to prevent these diseases then to cure them. Furthermore, Sanghavi’s article represents many of the questions that people would ask about cost effectiveness. Yet similar to Farmer’s views, Sanghavi argues that letting the poor d...
...The fields are not just circles in the earth; the ground is no longer soil, its just dirt. I find it disheartening; the mountains were their life and its being stolen from them.
It’s stated more than once in this story that a true and honest living is not easily come by for any native of Haiti and they earn very little money when a job is available. The people are paid an insubstantial wage, live in shantytowns, and often times go to bed with their stomachs distended from a voracious and unforgiving hunger. In The Norton Mix Introduction to Literature, Danticat shows these significant consequences of the Revolution through stating that when it got really bad for the family, they would boil ground sugar cane so that it would get rid of the hunger pangs that often tormented the children of the poor (p. 229). The way they live shows the negative effects of the Revolution by showing that although they are technically free, they are still oppressed through economic conditions and puny and sporadic
The word community is defined as a group of individuals residing in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. We all, whether we know this or not, belong to particular communities and even sub communities (self contained community within an unusually large area). One particular community that I've been a part of during my entire life is the Haitian community. An Haitian Community is usually a place where a group of Haitian nationals reside, we share many cultural beliefs and practices together. In this paper I will be investigating some of the beliefs and practices of the Haitian Community.
In the chapter One Island, Two Peoples, Two Histories: The Dominican Republic and Haiti the present day differences of Haiti and The Dominican Republic are explained through the political, social, and ecological history of both locations. The Dominican Republic, although it is still considered a developing country, is in a objectively worse state than Haiti. Haiti’s environmental policies failed so horrendously in the past that the area is in a visible state of disarray. With only 1% of the country still forested, not only is the visual draw of the country lessened, but the prospect of wood trading that the forests once offered is almost obsolete. This greatly effects the outside world’s image of Haiti which, given the financial gain tourism
Food in their culture many Haitians cannot afford food so many types healthy options are not available rice and beans are a national dish every day, many Haitians only eat twice a day, in the us we eat fruit whenever we want weather its night or day and in Haiti they eat fruit but it’s often given as a treat also as bed time
While the bottom 80% is making no more than $118,000 a year, which is the 80th percentile, and have a median annual income of $48,000. The 1% makes up of around 750,000 of the 150 million families in the United States. Therefor the one percent ends up taking of 25% of all income generated by the United States economy. That is an increase of three times since the Ronald Reagan Era when the one percent only received 8% of the total income in 1979. The last time the one percent owned this much of the income total was in 1928, which was right around the time of the great
Corruption and abuse have been cancerous hallmarks of Haiti’s political system and leaders. Until recently, power switched hands quickly and brutally as dictators faced assassinations, coups, and international interference. The instability of political roulette has made it difficult to accomplish or establish any social, economic, or environmental plans or policies. Racism is a rampant residual from the colonial era. Wealth and power are controlled by the mulatto elite and little concern or regard is shown for the poor. Few social programs have been created to assist the poor as resources are diverted away from communities and into the hungry pockets of the corrupt. Differences in languages and religions also echo the past. The ruling class speaks French and is predominately Roman Catholic while the majority of Haitians speak the slave language of Creole and practice the voudon (voodoo) religion. The focus of power resides in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Rural communities are ignored and struggle to survive by farming. During the colonial era, much of Haiti’s land was deforested to accommodate sprawling plantations. Wood is also used in the building of homes and as a primary fuel. The removal of trees caused severe erosion and the loss of the nutrient topsoil which washed into the ocean, impacting marine life and fishing. Farmers have moved to Port-au-Prince to seek employment. The desperate
money to put food on the table one day and the next day they might not have any