Resetting our goals?

What is the "development" that is not really so, that I have seen or witnessed in Australia? Well, having been in the country for only two months, I doubt that I would have an accurate insight to answer such a social-structure based question. I believe I need to be here longer to be able to point out the systemic faults in this host country, because everything is rooted in history. However, I can tell you what I have learned from academic readings and lectures.

Education is believed to be a tool to move up
the social stratification (to allow mobility)

In the last 30 years of 18th century, Western sociologists focused on examining Australian society through Karl Marx and Max Weber's models (Germov & Poole, 2015). According to Marx, class inequality is based on the exploitation by capitalists of labor, so that the rich become richer, while the poor become poorer. Later, Weber expanded Marx's model, and claimed that an economic focus is not enough to explain the complexity of any social structure. To Weber, other factors such as property and marketable skills can allow individuals to experience socio-economic mobility and better life chances. In other words, in the contemporary world, everyone potentially has the hope to change their lives if they know how to utilize and "develop" what they have (life chances).



Zoo keeper is an occupation that requires marketable skills and knowledge/expertise on animals

Australia, nowadays, has tried to enhance mobility and life chances so that each individual can somehow have access to the hope of moving up the hierarchy of inequalities. However, in fact, the poor still can stay poor or become poorer, and whoever have has a certain place, a certain social class (based on income/wealth), a certain social status (based on power and prestige) can stay where they are without much struggle to keep what they already have. This is the "development" issue addressed by Gilbert Risk (2007). Although Australia has tried to change the gap in the past and fix the problem of poverty, the poor still experience deprivation or financial hardship (inaccessibility of basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter) and some forms of social exclusion (inability to practice social value activities) (Germov & Poole, 2015). Moreover, as society's complexity grows, it is safe to say that poverty in the present is more stressful than in the past. Beside the concern of starvation, pressure on accessing resources (education, employment, health, housing) with the hope of practicing mobility becomes a real burden (physically and psychologically). Hence, such development to allow "accessibility of all" which the Australian society has tried to reach is still an ideal, and is still not practical.

Nevertheless, poverty only takes 8.5% of the entire Australian population in 2010 (Germov & Poole, 2015). Furthermore, compared to some developing countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam, and many African countries, Australia has already provided accessibility to many more basic resources, to its people, on a large scale. On the other hand, more than half of the populations, in the developing countries mentioned, have to experience desperate poverty, lack of education, and a high rate of crime due to such resource inaccessibility. Hence, Australia's status among countries in this case, is determined by the "development" definition (Rist, 2007), which is based on "actual social practices and their consequences, i.e. things that anyone can identify" as superior lifestyle signs.

Social (developmental) problem, Tourism and Littering, in Vietnam was presented in a Sociology lecture

References:
Germov, J. & Poole, M. (2015) Public Sociology: An Introduction to Australian Society. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. (3^rd edition).

Rist, Gilbert. (2007) “Development as a Buzzword.” Development in Practice 17.4/5: 485-491.