Inequality as a cause of environmental degradation.
Inequality as a cause of environmental degradation.
The paper consists of two large parts. On the one hand environmental degradation is represented as a function of the balance of power between the winners and the losers and on the other hand inequality is seen as the main reason of causing the degradation.
The first part mainly describes the different ways that the winners use to impose the costs on the losers and by winners they mean the people who derive benefits from the negative activity on the environment and by losers they mean the people who bear the costs. One thing really seemed important to me and that was the fact that the activity is socially justified as long as the positive consequences for the winners compensated the costs of the losers.
In the second part they illustrate the relationship between inequality and environmental degradation on the basis of a well explained graph. The wealthy people will tend more to pollute the air in an environment where a lot of poor people live because the poors ability and willingness to pay is too low to avoid it. This will result into a bigger difference between rich and poor and leads to a vicious circle.
James K. Boyce, 1994, inequality as a cause of environmental degradation, ecological economics,66,169-178
The author wants to investigate the influence of structural and cultural processesas well as the influence of gender differences on the committing of crimes.
The first part of the text shows us that something called socioeconomic status (SES) has an influence on violent delinquency. It concludes that boys from lower SES families have a higher chance to get involved in crime. The reason for this is because boys are less supervised by their parents and the parents of lower SES families are more likely to use coercive measures such as commands, restrictions, threats and physical punishment to solve problems.
Another important factor is the interactions that the youthhas with others who are engaged in violent delinquency. Its obvious that there exists a positive correlation between being connected with people who have a history of violence and the opportunity to get into crime.
The second part of the text deals with the gender differences.
Girls who have learned the traditional definitions(= the idea of woman in the middle ages) of gender will be less violent than the girls who havent. By contrast the boys who accept these definitions may be more likely to use physical force and aggression.
We could conclude that the ability to commit a crime or to be violent differs from person to person.
HEIMER, K. and COSTER, S. D. ,1999, the gendering of violent delinquency, Criminology, 37, 277318
