Discuss the differences between Third World and UK hunger from a social scientists perspective.

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IN013803                                                                                    Hunger Essay 10/12/02

The purpose of this essay is to discuss the differences between Third World and UK hunger from a social scientists perspective. Social scientists, when looking at a wide issue such as hunger, tend to analyse thoroughly the underlying and triggering factors in each World, to come to an accurate understanding. Contrasts can be drawn between the reasons for hunger in the UK and third World.

First of all, the Third and First Worlds need to be defined so that false assumptions are not made which would distort the facts. The Third World consists of the underdeveloped and developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The First World contains all the industrialised and capitalist nations of the World, including the UK.

In order to contrast Third World and UK hunger, the definitions of First and Third World hunger have to be compared. This is because they vary from society to society. Firstly The generic definition of hunger is ‘an appetite, desire, need or craving for food’(1.)

Secondly, the First World definition for hunger is the appetite, desire and the craving for food. This is not to suggest that the need for food is not evident in First World countries where many, such as the homeless and socially excluded, suffer from malnourishment and undernourishment.

In the context of the Third World however, a normal craving for food, hunger is defined as the need for food. The most important distinction for the social scientist to contemplate is the difference between desire and need.

The extent of hunger has then to be identified in both worlds to understand the nature of the hunger being studied. Malnourishment is the result of inadequacies in the quantity of food in a person’s diet and undernourishment is inadequacies in the quality of food, that is inadequate amounts of essential proteins, minerals, vitamins and water. These are both common in Great Britain. Famine, on the other hand, is a more drastic, wide-ranging food shortage detrimental to the health of so many in Third World countries e.g. Sudan, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone.

 

In addition, the causes of hunger are defined proximate and structural. Proximate reasons tend to be immediately identifiable as playing a distinct role in the creation of hunger for example, ‘war, drought, flooding, late rains and crop failure(5.)’. Structural or material explanations of poverty are of greater  sociological importance because they demonstrate the wider social determinants of poverty. They tend to be long-term factors in the political context and emerge from historically produced factors like ideologies. An example of the effect of an ideology is when a 3rd World government spends money on unnecessary prestige projects for political advantage.

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It is impossible to define hunger, without taking into account the underlying and triggering factors that cause it in the UK and the Third World; so, poverty has to be defined in order that the relation between poverty and hunger can be understood and assessed in both First and Third World terms. There are two definitions of poverty, relative and absolute. Absolute poverty is defined in relation to minimal standards whereas relative poverty has to do with the general standard of living in a society which may not be very poor. The absolute definition, which is frequently applied to ...

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