Problems Faced By The Great Cities Of The Slums - 1683 Words

A â€Å"surplus humanity† is urbanization without industrialization and are informal urbanites in the slum. Globalized capitalism forces, such as Structural Adjustment Programs, were imposed by International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Washington Consensus on the developing countries from 1970. These programs are the major cause of the â€Å"surplus humanity†. In Mike Davis’s â€Å"Planet of the Slums†, he says there is a distinction between urbanization that had root in industrialization in the 19th and 20th century and the urbanization that was mainly caused by Structural Adjustment Programs in the last view decades of the 20th century (Davis 2006). Davis discusses Karl Marx and Webber’s social theory that â€Å"believed that the great cities of†¦show more content†¦The established informal jobs were the new primary mode of survival in the majority of the remaining third world cities (Davis 2006, 178). Upward mobility in an in formal economy is practically a â€Å"myth inspired by wishful thinking† (Davis 2006, 179). Through Davis’s examples, he shows us that moving upwards through different social classes is basically impossible regardless of how hard one works. Davis’s two main points for why the opposite of what he assumed happened instead. He explicitly blames the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Former Defense Secretary, Robery McNamara, was the head of the World Bank in the 1970’s. During this time, the world was overflowing with excessive amounts of petrodollars. These petrodollars were just sitting in banks, which were later used as loans to third world areas. However, around the 1980’s, the third world areas that previous accepted those loans went into debt, which caused both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to implement new Structural Adjustment Programs. These new programs ultimately forced these third world countries to readjust their economies according to the Washington consensus. Davis demonstrates how â€Å"national market deregulation [under pressure from Structural Adjustment Programs and International Monetary Fund strategies] pushed agricultural