Journal of Social History

Schafer, Wolf.
The Uneven Globality of Children
Journal of Social History - Volume 38, Number 4, Summer 2005, pp. 1027-1039

George Mason University Press

The article shows that geography is still destiny for millions of children. Based on global UN data about various demographic factors and the urban explosion after 1950, the geography of regional poverty and power reveals three major trends. First, over 50 percent of the world population will live in cities after 2007. Second, by 2030, the cities of the poor countries of the world will house four times as many people as the cities of the well-to-do countries. Third, the population living in urban slums—the most rapidly growing structure of the urban landscape in the less developed world—will double to almost 2 billion in the next 15 years. The rifting apart of affluent and poor urban environments thus marks the "uneven globality" of children today. A theoretical note on global homogenization, its political potential and differential force in the socionatural system of global technoscience and local cultures, concludes this contribution.