Betrokkenheid en onverschilligheid in Azië

Samenvatting

Involvement and Indifference in Asia The severe earthquake that hit the Indian state of Gujarat on 26 Jan 2001 elicited a most impressive response of social concern from the Indian people, especially those belonging to the middle classes. This social concern is closely related to the fact that members of the middle classes were also strongly affected by the earthquake. The help and concern of the Indian people is therefore not a new and hopeful indication of a strengthening of civil society, of building up a more egalitarian society in which there is a transfer of wealth and resources from the elite to the poorer sections of society. On the contrary, there is an increasing indifference among the middle classes in Asia to the plight of the poor in their societies. This widening social distance and increasing espousal of callous views are indications of what Jan Breman has called a social-Darwinist outlook in which members of the Asian middle classes show a brutal indifference or even ruthlessness toward those classed as being socially lower, who are largely to be blamed themselves for their unhappy state. This increasing indifference among the middle class in Asia takes place within a specific context of globalization. The middle class in Asia today has developed a strong transnational perspective in which they feel more at ease with their counterparts in other Asian countries and in Western societies than with the poorer sections in their own society. Although globalization is more inclusive when one looks at the middle classes in Asia, it is at the same time more exclusive in nature when one looks at the lower classes in society. Labor has increasingly become more invisible in the present day global world and its interests are hardly taken into account. 18 References. Adapted from the source document.