Planet Of Slums Summary

In Mike Davis’s book, Planet of Slums, slums are referred to as categorized by a mixture of dilapidated housing, overcrowding, disease, poverty, informal housing, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure (Davis, 22). Davis states that these slum conditions are commonly found all over the world in urban poor populations, but not all slums are considered to be poor. There are about 25% of urbanites that live in ‘absolute’ poverty, somehow surviving to as low as one dollar or sometimes even less per day (Davis 25). What are some of the leading causes and reasons for increasing slums? Davis makes the argument that the State has an impact on the growth of slums specifically beginning in the 1950’s and 1960’s

Mike Davis’s book is relevant to the sociology of globalization because by observing some of the topics though a global perspective we obtain an understanding of what is going on in the world and an understanding of how slums are created. It is important to understand how society is structured with sociology and how things are changing around the world. This essay will demonstrate how Planet of Slums is relevant to globalization, as I will discuss the following concepts; the capitalist world structure, criminalization, and exploitation and poor working conditions in sweatshops or factories. I will showcase how these concepts are seen in both the book and topics that have been discussed in class concerning the sociology of

Factory businesses are traveling all over the world and settle where ever they can find the cheapest labor in order to obtain the most profit and the state is the one that allows these money interest factories to do this. In the documentary film, Maquilapolis that showcases a factory near the US-Mexican border in the Tijuana factories, women workers worked long hours and got paid very low wages. These women workers faced exploitation working in poor working conditions where many of the chemicals that contained toxic materials from the factory have contaminated their waters and affecting many of the civilians including children. It was common for factories to constantly move around when they found other places around the world where they were able to hire workers for cheaper pay. In Planet of Slums, Davis talks about how children face high risk of exploitation as he refers to it as a museum of exploitation, these children work instead of going to school in order to be able to provide additional income to support their families (Davis, 186). Many people are suffering and they it is because of how things are structured; there is a great gap between the rich and the poor. Where the rich take advantage of the poor in