Publication: The Relationship between Jobs and Social Cohesion : Some examples from Ethnography
Loading...
Files in English
1,877 downloads
Date
2012-10
ISSN
Published
2012-10
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper uses selected case studies to illustrate some of the complex relationships that link employment and social cohesion. For example, despite harsh working conditions, retail garment manufacturing contributed to the transformation of gender relationship in Bangladesh by giving women the opportunity to acquire skills, control over resources, and greater independence. Conversely, the downsizing of industries in the US, Argentina, Bulgaria, and Guyana not only hurt households financially; it undermined their sense of dignity, self-worth, and trust in institutions, and severely weakened social ties within their communities. Chronic unemployment and underemployment does more than erode social cohesion—in the Arab Spring, it helped catalyze a broad-based social movement that overturned regimes; in the UK, a pervasive sense of exclusion from economic life provoked a disorganized and violent reaction. Since the relationship between jobs and social cohesion is mediated by institutions and policies, policy makers should be more proactive in considering policies to help cushion the impacts of changing labor markets and/or joblessness in the interests of maintain social stability and cohesion.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Dudwick, Nora. 2012. The Relationship between Jobs and Social Cohesion : Some examples from Ethnography. Background Paper for the World Development Report 2013;. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/12144 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication From Farm to Firm : Rural-Urban Transition in Developing Countries(World Bank, 2011-05-26)Around the world, countries are becoming urbanized at an astonishing pace. As countries develop economically, their economies shift from mainly rural and agrarian to increasingly urban and nonagricultural. This rural-urban transformation presents both opportunities and challenges for development. When managed effectively, the transformation spurs growth and reduces poverty. When managed poorly, however, the process can result in stark welfare disparities, the marginalization of entire regions, and poorly functioning cities that fail to realize the potential gains from agglomeration economies. This book investigates the rural-urban transformation underway in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, emphasizing the influence of country conditions as well as the potential of good policies to minimize disparities and ensure that everyone shares in the benefits of urbanization. The first part of this book investigates urbanization and rural-urban welfare inequalities on three geographic scales global, national, and local featuring countries and cities in Sub-Saharan Africa on the national and local levels. The second part of the book sheds light on the texture of transformation in five countries in South Asia, each at a different stage in the process: Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.Publication Better a Hundred Friends than a Hundred Rubles? Social Networks in Transition--The Kyrgyz Republic(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004-06)The purpose of this study, carried out in the Kyrgyz Republic in 1999, was to investigate the impact of socioeconomic change on the characteristics and functions of the social networks of poor and non-poor households in rural and urban communities. A better understanding of the role of informal networks in Kyrgyz society, it was thought, would help development specialists devise more effective ways to reach out to the poor and socially excluded, while ensuring that the benefits of development were not simply captured by those with more effective and far-reaching connections. The .findings reveal the dynamics of how the poor both disengage from and are isolated by and from the non-poor. They further describe how the social networks of poor and non-poor households have polarized and separated in a process that parallels the sharp socioeconomic stratification that has taken place since national independence in 1991. The study examines not only how the networks have separated, but also how each has changed in character.Publication Sharing Power : Lessons Learned from the Reform and Privatization of Moldova's Electricity Sector(World Bank: Washington, DC, 2004-09-19)This study answers two questions about power sector reform in Moldova. First, did reform affect the poor and the non-poor differently? Second, are household consumption patterns different for private and public distribution networks? The study concludes that reforms have not disproportionately affected the poor. The gap in electricity consumption between poor and non-poor is closing, as a result of improvements in the supply of electricity, particularly in rural areas, and the significant growth in income over the past four years. Moldova's residential electricity consumption remains exceptionally low and is probably highly inelastic, especially for the very poor. This implies that unless they are accompanied by increases in income, future tariff increases could create large potential consumer welfare losses-as well as large revenue gains for the utility. It also implies that there may be room for substantial welfare gains by helping households better manage their electricity expenditures. Measures to do so could include introducing prepayment swipe cards for meters, in order to reduce both the costs and anxiety associated with disconnections; encouraging the poor to use more energy-efficient refrigeration and lighting technologies, through vouchers or other similar programs; and having the public sector defray the cost of extending access to clean, inexpensive gas in small towns where people rely on electricity for heating, if it can be done in a way that limits the financial liabilities for the government.Publication A Note on Vulnerability : Findings from Moving Out of Poverty(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-04)Poverty studies typically focus on people who live below the poverty line. Few studies have examined how people are able to not only move out of but also stay out of poverty. The fifteen, country study, moving out of poverty: success from the bottom up, by Deepa Narayan, Lant Pritchett, and Soumya Kapoor, is one of the few large-scale comparative research attempts to analyze mobility out of poverty rather than poverty alone. The study focused largely on rural communities over a 10-year period between 1995 and 2005, when developing countries exhibited overall relatively strong growth.Publication Moving Forward(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-11-14)The erosion of its competitiveness is raising concerns about the sustainability of Bangladesh's growth model based on exports of ready-made garments. To safeguard its comparative advantage in ready-made garments and diversify its exports basket, Bangladesh needs to increase its competitiveness. Improving logistics performance is an important lever with which to do so. Moving Forward: Connectivity and Logistics to Sustain Bangladesh's Success presents a comprehensive assessment of logistics performance and its main determinants. It analyzes freight demand at a spatially disaggregated level, quantifies logistics costs, including the costs of externalities, looks at the factors that determine the stock and quality of infrastructure, and examines the incentives to provide logistics services of a certain type and quality and to charge the observed prices. It also quantifies the potential impacts of removing transport and logistics inefficiencies on Bangladesh's exports and economic geography using a spatial general equilibrium model. Bangladesh's congested, unreliable, and unsophisticated logistics system imposes high costs on the economy. Making it efficient requires a holistic system-wide approach that is based on a comprehensive strategy; improves the quality, capacity, and management of infrastructure; improves the quality and integration of logistics services; and achieves seamless regional connectivity. Moving Forward will be of interest to policy makers, private sector practitioners, and academics with an interest in the performance of Bangladesh's transport and logistics sectors.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Impact Evaluation in Practice, Second Edition(Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank, 2016-09-13)The second edition of the Impact Evaluation in Practice handbook is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to impact evaluation for policy makers and development practitioners. First published in 2011, it has been used widely across the development and academic communities. The book incorporates real-world examples to present practical guidelines for designing and implementing impact evaluations. Readers will gain an understanding of impact evaluations and the best ways to use them to design evidence-based policies and programs. The updated version covers the newest techniques for evaluating programs and includes state-of-the-art implementation advice, as well as an expanded set of examples and case studies that draw on recent development challenges. It also includes new material on research ethics and partnerships to conduct impact evaluation. The handbook is divided into four sections: Part One discusses what to evaluate and why; Part Two presents the main impact evaluation methods; Part Three addresses how to manage impact evaluations; Part Four reviews impact evaluation sampling and data collection. Case studies illustrate different applications of impact evaluations. The book links to complementary instructional material available online, including an applied case as well as questions and answers. The updated second edition will be a valuable resource for the international development community, universities, and policy makers looking to build better evidence around what works in development.Publication Empowerment in Practice : From Analysis to Implementation(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006)This book represents an effort to present an easily accessible framework to readers, especially those for whom empowerment remains a puzzling development concern, conceptually and in application. The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 explains how the empowerment framework can be used for understanding, measuring, monitoring, and operationalizing empowerment policy and practice. Part 2 presents summaries of each of the five country studies, using them to discuss how the empowerment framework can be applied in very different country and sector contexts and what lessons can be learned from these test cases. While this book can offer only a limited empirical basis for the positive association between empowerment and development outcomes, it does add to the body of work supporting the existence of such a relationship. Perhaps more importantly, it also provides a framework for future research to test the association and to prioritize practical interventions seeking to empower individuals and groups.Publication Financing Business Innovation(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012)Innovation is the main driver of long-term economic growth. The accumulation of capital, whether in the form of physical assets such as plants and equipment, or through better human capital, cannot indefinitely sustain growth unless new products, services, processes, and/or business models are developed and implemented. This paper describes the actors involved and the types of funding available at different stages of the innovation process, the rationales for public intervention, and the advantages and disadvantages of some of the most commonly used policy instruments. Innovation activities are more difficult to finance than other types of investment for several reasons. Innovation produces an intangible asset that does not typically constitute accepted collateral to obtain external funding. Also, the technological and market uncertainty of innovation activities makes the returns to investment highly uncertain, creating significant problems for the standard risk adjustment methods used by providers of funds. This paper uses a streamlined version of an innovation process with three stages to categorize the different sources of finance available; in reality, considerable crossover takes places among instruments because innovation processes are not discrete.Publication Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022)Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022: Correcting Course provides the first comprehensive analysis of the pandemic’s toll on poverty in developing countries. It identifies how governments can optimize fiscal policy to help correct course. Fiscal policies offset the impact of COVID-19 on poverty in many high-income countries, but those policies offset barely one quarter of the pandemic’s impact in low-income countries and lower-middle-income countries. Improving support to households as crises continue will require reorienting protective spending away from generally regressive and inefficient subsidies and toward a direct transfer support system—a first key priority. Reorienting fiscal spending toward supporting growth is a second key priority identified by the report. Some of the highest-value public spending often pays out decades later. Amid crises, it is difficult to protect such investments, but it is essential to do so. Finally, it is not enough just to spend wisely - when additional revenue does need to be mobilized, it must be done in a way that minimizes reductions in poor people’s incomes. The report highlights how exploring underused forms of progressive taxation and increasing the efficiency of tax collection can help in this regard. Poverty and Shared Prosperity is a biennial series that reports on global trends in poverty and shared prosperity. Each report also explores a central challenge to poverty reduction and boosting shared prosperity, assessing what works well and what does not in different settings. By bringing together the latest evidence, this corporate flagship report provides a foundation for informed advocacy around ending extreme poverty and improving the lives of the poorest in every country in the world. For more information, please visit worldbank.org/poverty-and-shared-prosperity.Publication World Development Report 2004(World Bank, 2003)Too often, services fail poor people in access, in quality, and in affordability. But the fact that there are striking examples where basic services such as water, sanitation, health, education, and electricity do work for poor people means that governments and citizens can do a better job of providing them. Learning from success and understanding the sources of failure, this year’s World Development Report, argues that services can be improved by putting poor people at the center of service provision. How? By enabling the poor to monitor and discipline service providers, by amplifying their voice in policymaking, and by strengthening the incentives for providers to serve the poor. Freedom from illness and freedom from illiteracy are two of the most important ways poor people can escape from poverty. To achieve these goals, economic growth and financial resources are of course necessary, but they are not enough. The World Development Report provides a practical framework for making the services that contribute to human development work for poor people. With this framework, citizens, governments, and donors can take action and accelerate progress toward the common objective of poverty reduction, as specified in the Millennium Development Goals.