Poverty AND ITS DIMENSION

Poverty
Poverty, the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or
material possessions. Poverty is said to exist when people lack the means to satisfy their basic
needs. Poverty has been associated, for example, with poor health, low levels of education or
skills, an inability or an unwillingness to work, high rates of disruptive or disorderly
behaviour, and improvidence. While these attributes have often been found to exist with
poverty, their inclusion in a definition of poverty would tend to obscure the relation between
them and the inability to provide for one’s basic needs.

DIMENSIONS
1. DSEMPOWERING SYSTEMS, STRUCTURES AND POLICIES
“Poverty means being part of a system that leaves you waiting indefinitely in a state of fear
and uncertainty.”
“In the system, you are a number instead of a person. You are dehumanised.”
Economic, political and social structures can cause poverty. Policy is operated in a way that
disempowers. Systems designed to support people are not working in ways that people want.
Systemic cuts in funds for needed services have exacerbated inequality.
People spoke to us about a broken system that doesn’t meet people’s needs. Sometimes the
system is even viewed as bullying or unnecessarily harsh. A good example of this are job
centre sanctions, or hostile interventions by social services.
People felt that policy makers were very remote and that they didn’t understand people’s
lives well.

2. FINANCIAL INSECURITY, FINANCIAL EXCLUSION AND DEBT

Financial insecurity means not being able to satisfy your basic needs. Worrying about money
every day causes huge stress and misery.
The cost of living is going up; but benefits are going down or are capped. Even with good
budgeting skills, people couldn’t make ends meet and that they could be floored by an
unexpected bill that needs paying with money you just don’t have. This often leads to debt,
having to borrow from friends and neighbours.

3. DAMAGED HEALTH AND WELL-BEING

Poverty is bad for health and can shorten your life. It has a negative impact on physical,
emotional, mental and social well-being.
Poverty can cause problems with your health and well-being in many ways. Stress can lead to
depression. Not being able to afford healthy meals or have the means to cook fresh food can
lead to ill health and a lack of energy. This affects your life at home and at work. Children
can struggle to concentrate at school. Many people insisted that poverty cuts lives short.

4. STIGMA, BLAME AND JUDGEMENT

Misrepresentation about poverty in the world and a lack of understanding lead to negative
judgement, stigma and blame, which are deeply destructive to individuals and families.
Prejudice and discrimination result in people in poverty feeling they are treated like lesser
human beings.
It only takes one incident of someone abusing the system for some of the press to jump on it
and tarnish everyone on benefits. People complained about being viewed as dossers or lazy.
Your post code can be a source of discrimination, as can your appearance if you’re struggling
to keep on top of life. 

5. LACK OF CONTROL OVER CHOICES

Poverty means a lack of control over choices and opportunities. Over time, this can lead to
increased social isolation and risk, as well as restricting people’s social, educational and
cultural potential. The lack of good options reduces people’s control over their lives and traps
people in repetitive cycles of hardship, disappointment and powerlessness.

Social Mobility
Social Mobility, movement of individuals, families, or groups through a system of
social hierarchy or stratification. If such mobility involves a change in position, especially in
occupation, but no change in social class, it is called “horizontal mobility.” An example
would be a person who moves from a managerial position in one company to a similar
position in another. If, however, the move involves a change in social class, it is called
“vertical mobility” and involves either “upward mobility” or “downward mobility.” An
industrial worker who becomes a wealthy businessman moves upward in the class system; a
landed aristocrat who loses everything in a revolution moves downward in the system.

Primary and Secondary groups 

Primary and secondary groups are kinds of social groups which are composed of at least two
individuals who have certain similarities, interact with each other, and have a sense of unity.
A primary group is usually small which is characterized by personal and relatively long
relationships while a secondary group is large with impersonal and goal-directed
relationships.

Primary Group

A primary group is characteristically small with members who share tight-knit and lasting
relationships such those experienced in marriage, close friendships, and families. Those who
belong to this principal group often express concern for each other, have regular activities
together, and other similar interactions which contribute to the members’ individuality and
psychological wellbeing. The goal of this small collective relationship is the connection itself.

Secondary Group
A secondary group is characteristically larger with impersonal and objective-driven
relationships.  The interactions are often short-term as they are less personal and eventually
drift away after the goals have been met. Thus, the motivation to join these groups are often
extrinsic such as those manifested between clients and agents, among classmates, and among
colleagues. The impact to the members is less significant due to the superfluous connections.
The members do not share a lot of personal information, and do not have regular activities
which promote emotional bonds.

Differentiate between Primary and Secondary groups 

1. Size
Primary groups are often smaller as these connections necessitate the sharing of personal
information. For instance, the people whom we consider as best-friends and family are fewer
than those in our secondary groups such as co-workers and schoolmates. There are more
people in our “acquaintances category”, those individuals whom we do not share our private
thoughts and feelings with.

2. Duration of Relationships
Primary groups usually last longer than secondary groups since the bond is strengthened by
emotional interactions. The relationships in secondary groups are often ended after the
objectives have been met or when the prescribed time frame is over. For example, the
commitment in marriages and friendships are indeed more enduring than the relationships
between student and teacher, and employer and employee.

3. Depth of Relationships
The relationships in primary groups are deep as more personal information are shared,
emotional connections are strengthened, and the bonds are more enduring. On the other hand,
the interaction in secondary groups are generally superficial as it is only created to achieve a
certain goal such as the completion of an academic requirement, realization of a career goal,
and the accomplishment of a service.

4. Motivation
The motivation in primary groups is usually intrinsic since these are maintained by the
connections themselves. People want to commit to such connections because of attraction,
camaraderie, love, altruism, and other intangible factors. On the contrary, the motivation in
secondary groups is largely extrinsic as they are created to obtain economic goals,
educational objectives, political ambitions, and other tangible ends.

5. Stability of Roles
In primary groups, the roles are more stable as the relationships are equally more enduring.
For example, a true best friend is a best friend for a lifetime. On the other hand, the roles in
secondary groups are more interchangeable and less stable due to the similarly temporary and
impersonal relationships. For instance, the roles among co-workers may change due to
promotions or resignations.

6. Time of Development
Relationships in primary groups are often introduced from earlier stages of development. For
instance, families are developed even before birth, childhood friends become best friends,
and people become churchmates since their first church attendance. In contrast, the
relationships in secondary groups are often initiated in the later stages of development such as
those among colleagues and university classmates.

Formal Organization and Bureaucracy

Introduction
As human being we live in an organized word. Organizations of one form or another are
necessary part of our society and solve many important needs. Organization is a dominant
component of contemporary society. They surround us; we are born in them and usually die
in them. Our life space in before is filled with them, they are just about impossible to escape.
All organization has some function to perform and some incentive for their existence and for
their operations. The goals of an organization determine the nature of its outputs and the
series of activities through which the outputs are achieved.

Formal Organization
Formal organizations constitute one of the most important elements which make up the social
web of modern societies. Most citizens of modern societies are born in hospitals, educated in
schools, works in one organization or the other and to the degree that they participate in
religious and political activities; these too, frequently take place in formal or complex
organization. In short members of modern society obtain a large part of their materials, social
and cultural satisfactions from these large-scale organizations. It is, therefore, important to
understand the basic concern of formal organizations, if one is to understand the modern man
and the society in which he lives.
A formal organized social structure involves clearly defined patterns of activity in which
ideally, a series of actions are functionally related to the purpose of the organization. In such
an organization, there is an integration of a series of offices of hierarchical status in which
exist a number of obligations and privileges closely defined by limited and specific rules.
Each of these offices contains an area of imputed competence and responsibility. Authority,
the power of control which derives from an acknowledged status, inheres in the office and not
in the particular person who performs the official role. Official action ordinarily occurs
within the frame work of pre-existing rules of the organization.

Types of Formal Organizations

Utilitarian organizations (also called remunerative organizations) provide an income or
some other personal benefit.
In contrast, Normative Organizations (also called voluntary organizations or voluntary
associations) allow people to pursue their moral goals and commitments. Their members do
not get paid and instead contribute their time or money because they like or admire what the
organization does.

Bureaucracy
“An organization with formal procedures and standards; typically having a clear division of
labor, explicit rules, and a hierarchy of authority”
The work of Max Weber is usually taken as the starting point in the sociology of
organizations. He considers the ideal type of formal organization to be bureaucracy and
modern studies of bureaucracy. The term bureaucracy was created from the French word
bureau, meaning desk or office, and Greek Kratos, meaning rule or political power
Bureaucracies data back to ancient societies across globe. In imperial China for instance
bureaucracy was headed by a chief counsellor.
Within the bureaucracy, the positions were held to determine who heed positions. The upper
levels of the system held mine grades, and the officials more distinctive clothing. The
Confucian classics codified asset of values held by the officials. In modern time’s
bureaucracy is a government administrative unit that carries out the decisions of the
legislature or democratically-elected representation of a state.
Weber believed that a particular form of organization bureaucracy – is becomes the divinity
characteristics of modern industries society. His major interest in the study of organizations,
amongst others, includes the identifications of characteristics of an entity he called
“bureaucracy” and the discovery of the consequences of bureaucratic organizations for the
achievement of bureaucratic goals.

Characteristics of Bureaucratic Organization

1. Specialization
By specialization Weber meant a division of labor in which specific people have certain tasks
—and only those tasks—to do. Presumably they are most skilled at these tasks and less
skilled at others. With such specialization, the people who are best suited to do various tasks
are the ones who work on them, maximizing the ability of the organization to have these
tasks accomplished.
2. Hierarchy
Equality does not exist in a bureaucracy. Instead, its structure resembles a pyramid, with a
few positions at the top and many lower downs. The chain of command runs from the top to
the bottom, with the persons occupying the positions at the top supervising those below them.
The higher you are in the hierarchy, the fewer people to whom you have to report. Weber
thought a hierarchical structure maximizes efficiency because it reduces decision-making
time and puts the authority to make the most important decisions in the hands of the people at
the top of the pyramid who presumably are the best qualified to make them.
3. Written rules and regulations
For an organization to work efficiently, everyone must know what to do and when to do it.
This means their actions must be predictable. To ensure predictability, their roles and the
organization’s operating procedures must be written in a manual or handbook, with everyone
in the organization expected to be familiar with its rules. Much of the communication among
members of bureaucracies is written in the form of memos and e-mail rather than being
verbal. This written communication leaves a paper trail so that accountability for individual
behavior can later be determined.
4. Impartiality and impersonality
The head of a small, nonbureaucratic organization might prefer to hire people she or he
knows and promote them on the same basis. Weber thought that impartiality in hiring,
promotion, and firing would be much better for a large organization, as it guarantees people
will advance through a firm based on their skills and knowledge, not on whom they know.
Clients should also be treated impersonally, as an organization in the long run would be less
effective if it gave favourable treatment to clients based on whom they know or on their nice
personalities. As Weber recognized, the danger is that employees and clients alike become
treated like numbers or cogs in a machine, with their individual needs and circumstances
ignored in the name of organizational efficiency.
5. Record keeping
As you probably know from personal experience, bureaucracies keep all kinds of records,
especially in today’s computer age. A small enterprise, might keep track of its merchandise
and the bills its customers owe with some notes scribbled here and there, even in the
information technology age, but a large organization must have much more extensive record
keeping to keep track of everything.