Category: Global Development

  • The cost of living crisis – was it always inevitable? 

    is the cost of living crisis caused by a growing global middle class pushing up the price of scarce resources?

  • COP 27 – A Sociological Analysis

    COP 27 – where 198 nations met to discuss climate change and agreed to do very little about it!

  • Is the Environmental Crisis Built on Systemic Racism..?

    You’re more likely to live next to a waste incinerator in the UK if you’re black compared to if you’re white, and thus more likely to be breathing in toxic fumes. The same trend is also true globally: ‘people of colour’ living in the global south are more likely to suffer environmental harms associated with…

  • Sociological Perspectives on the War in Ukraine…

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is having profound negative implications for not only Ukrainians but also the populations of every European country, and Russia itself. This post explores some of the sociological concepts we might use to better understand the war and its consequences…. Students need to be able to apply contemporary events to their answers…

  • Not All Afghan Women Feel Oppressed by the Taliban…

    If you want an alternative point of view on the Taliban’s take over of Afghanistan, you should try following @janeygak on twitter. She is pro-Taliban, anti-American, anti-liberal, and very active on twitter – constantly putting out tweets and re-tweets, such as this, stating that she doesn’t care about inclusivity or diversity in the Taliban government…..…

  • Japan to Release Fukushima Nuclear Waste into the Sea

    Japan announced today that it’s going to release one million tonnes of contaminated water from the old Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea – which will no doubt have negative consequences for fishing around Japan and maybe in neighbouring countries. It was 10 years ago when an earth quake ruined the nuclear plant, putting…

  • Sociological Observations on the UK’s Vaccine Role-Out

    The UK has vaccinated more people (proportionate to population) than any other country: This is probably due to a combination of the following: A successful ‘social policy’ initiative by the UK government – a sustained focus on getting as many people as possible vaccinated in as short a time as possible and the funding to…

  • How Pollution and Toxic Waste harm development

    Western models of development are built around high levels of production and consumption to increase economic growth, and all other things being equal, the more we produce and consume, the more pollution and waste we produce. According to the World Health Organisation, Air Pollution kills 7 million people a year, most of whom live in…

  • Global Warming and the threat to Human Development

    This post explores the extent to which Global Warming poses a threat to continued social and economic development. According to the latest data from Climate.gov global warming is currently causing sea levels to rise by 0.3 centimetres a year, which means that sea levels may have risen by up to 2.5 metres by 2100.  …

  • Why are so many Nigerian schoolchildren being kidnapped?

    More than 600 students have been abducted from schools in the North West of Nigeria since December 2020. The latest Mass kidnapping was in late February 2021, when over 300 girls were kidnapped from a secondary school, although they were released after a relatively short period of time afterwards. This rather grim trend is clearly…