Geography of Inequality
Code: 104260 ECTS Credits: 6| Degree | Type | Year | Semester |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2503710 Geography, Environmental Management and Spatial Planning | OT | 4 | 1 |
| 2504216 Contemporary History, Politics and Economics | OT | 3 | 2 |
| 2504216 Contemporary History, Politics and Economics | OT | 4 | 0 |
| 2504216 Contemporary History, Politics and Economics | OT | 4 | 1 |
| 2504216 Contemporary History, Politics and Economics | OT | 4 | 2 |
Contact
- Name:
- Anna Ortiz Guitart
- Email:
- Anna.Ortiz@uab.cat
Use of Languages
- Principal working language:
- catalan (cat)
- Some groups entirely in English:
- No
- Some groups entirely in Catalan:
- Yes
- Some groups entirely in Spanish:
- No
Other comments on languages
Hi haurà lectures obligatòries en anglès.Teachers
- Antonio Miguel Solana Solana
Prerequisites
There is no requirement.
Objectives and Contextualisation
The course aims to study from a theoretical and practical point of view global inequalities and their local implications from the perspective of social geography. We will focus mainly on urban areas but also on other scales of analysis. The course will begin with a theoretical reflection on the concept of "inequality" and will continue by examining the spatial distribution of wealth and poverty, the geographies of exclusion and discrimination. It will be explored issues related to gender, class and ethnic inequalities, the interaction between globalization and uneven development, historical trajectories and spatial patterns of inequality, migration and human and social mobility, local studies of urban segregation and inequality, and the links between social inequality, environment and nature. Examples from both the Global North and the Global South will be available.
Competences
- Geography, Environmental Management and Spatial Planning
- Combine distinct techniques and methods of representation and spatial analysis in elaborating materials for transmitting results.
- Critically analyse the relationship between society and the region applying the conceptual and theoretical framework of geography.
- Students must be capable of collecting and interpreting relevant data (usually within their area of study) in order to make statements that reflect social, scientific or ethical relevant issues.
- Students must develop the necessary learning skills to undertake further training with a high degree of autonomy.
- Contemporary History, Politics and Economics
- Analyse the sociodemographic, geoeconomic and environmental dynamics at different territorial scales.
- Assess the social, economic and environmental impact when acting in this field of knowledge.
- Manage and apply data to solve problems.
- Relate fundamental questions of the current economic situation with previous economic developments on the basis of the main elements of contemporary economic history.
- Students must be capable of applying their knowledge to their work or vocation in a professional way and they should have building arguments and problem resolution skills within their area of study.
- Students must be capable of collecting and interpreting relevant data (usually within their area of study) in order to make statements that reflect social, scientific or ethical relevant issues.
Learning Outcomes
- Combine distinct techniques and methods of representation and spatial analysis in elaborating materials for transmitting results.
- Consider problems of inequality, population distribution and urbanisation in the world, among other things.
- Examine how different social, economic, political and environmental processes create and transform spaces and social relationships.
- Explaining the structure of today's world from a geographical point of view.
- Identify and understand social and regional inequalities in society.
- Manage and apply data to solve problems.
- Propose viable projects and actions to boost social, economic and environmental benefits.
- Students must be capable of applying their knowledge to their work or vocation in a professional way and they should have building arguments and problem resolution skills within their area of study.
- Students must be capable of collecting and interpreting relevant data (usually within their area of study) in order to make statements that reflect social, scientific or ethical relevant issues.
- Students must develop the necessary learning skills to undertake further training with a high degree of autonomy.
Content
The topics will be:
1. Conceptualization of inequality and social vulnerability.
2. The global scale of territorial inequality. Social inequality, territorial inequality: the perspective of political economy and unequal geographical development.
3. Global change, environmental change: inequality and vulnerability.
4. The local scale of territorial inequality: globalization, cities and inequality.
Methodology
Master classes.
Debates.
Group work / challenge base learning*
Reading of articles.
Oral presentations.
*The course work will consist in the elaboration of an urban and social improvement project focused on public spaces in different neighborhoods of a Catalan municipality. From some previously established objectives and with the will to know first hand the daily experiences and spatial practices of the neighbors of different ages of the chosen neighborhoods, fieldwork will be done in the neighborhood through different qualitative techniques. The contact with different associations and entities of the neighborhood will allow us to get closer to the neighborhood and work together to elaborate a project of improvement in the neighborhoods. Throughout the course, the progress of the work will be presented in class. It is, therefore, very important to build the project following the guidelines set by the teachers.
Teachers will dedicate approximately 15 minutes of some classes to allow their students to answer the evaluation questions of the teaching performance and the evaluation of the subject.
The teaching methodology and the evaluation proposed in the guide may undergo some modification subject to the onsite teaching restrictions imposed by health authorities.
Annotation: Within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.
Activities
| Title | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type: Directed | |||
| Classes in classroom | 40 | 1.6 | 5, 3, 4 |
| Type: Supervised | |||
| Tutorials and evaluation | 10 | 0.4 | 6, 7 |
| Type: Autonomous | |||
| Personal study + compulsory readings | 60 | 2.4 | 10 |
Assessment
Evaluation
The first day of the class will be discussed in detail the evaluation activities. They will be uploaded to Moodle and will be discussed in the classroom.
On carrying out each evaluation activity, lecturers will inform students (on Moodle) of the procedures to be followed for reviewing all grades awarded, and the date on which such a review will take place.
Students will obtain a “Not assessed/Not submitted” course grade unless they have submitted more than 30% of the assessment items.
Reevaluation
There will be a re-evaluation of all those presented tests that have not passed the 5. The re-evaluation of the theoretical exams will be in the form of an exam. The re-evaluation of the rest of the activities will consist of referring the evidence. Re-evaluated activities score between 0 and 5.
The following activities are excluded from the recovery process: oral presentations, group work, tasks related to daily teaching activity.
Plagiarism
In the event of a student committing any irregularity that may lead to a significant variation in the grade awarded to an assessment activity, the student will be given a zero for this activity, regardless of any disciplinary process that may take place. In the event of several irregularities in assessment activities of the same subject, the student will be given a zero as the final grade for this subject.
Notice
In the event that tests or exams cannot be taken onsite, they will be adapted to an online format made available through the UAB’s virtual tools (original weighting will be maintained). Homework, activities and class participation will be carried out through forums, wikis and/or discussion on Teams, etc. Lecturers will ensure that students are able to access these virtual tools, or will offer them feasiblealternatives.
Assessment Activities
| Title | Weighting | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Classroom participation | 10 | 5 | 0.2 | 4, 7 |
| Essay (from required readings) (individual) | 35 | 10 | 0.4 | 5, 3 |
| Oral presentation of the different phases of the project (in group) | 20 | 5 | 0.2 | 1, 4 |
| Project (in group) | 23 | 20 | 0.8 | 6, 2, 10, 8, 9 |
Bibliography
Bauman, Zygmunt (2005). Vidas desperdiciadas. La modernidad y sus parias. Barcelona: Paidós.
Cardús, Salvador (ed.) (2020). Cohesions i fractures a la Catalunya actual. Un informe sobre la realitat social i política de la Catalunya del segle xxi. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
Elwood, Sarah; Lawson Victoria & Sheppard, Eric (2017). Geographical relational poverty studies, Progress in Human Geography, 41(6): 745-765.
Ho, Elaine Lynn-Ee & Maddrell, Avril (2021). “Intolerable intersectional burdens: a COVID-19 research agenda for social and cultural geographies”, Social & Cultural Geography, 22 (1), pp. 1-10.
Hopkins, Peter (2020). “Households, families, and structural inequalities: Reflections on “How the other half lives”, Area, 52, pp. 806-811.
Innerarity, Daniel (2020). Pandemocracia. Una filosofia de la crisis del coronavirus. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg.
Israel, Emil & Frenkel, Amnon (2018). “Social justice and spatial inequality: Toward a conceptual framework”, Progress in Human Geography, 42 (5), pp. 647-665.
García-Hernández, Juan-Samuel & Ginés-De La Nuez, Carmen (2020). “Geografías de la desposesión en la ciudad neoliberal: ejecuciones hipotecarias y vulnerabilidad social en Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Canarias-España)”, EURE, 46 (138), pp. 215-234.
González Pérez, Jesús M., & Piñeira Mantiñán, María José (2020). La ciudad desigual en Palma (Mallorca): geografía del confinamiento durante la pandemia de la COVID-19”, Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles, (87).
McDowell, Linda (2017). “Youth, children and families in austere times: change, politics and a new gender contract”, Area, 49 (3), pp. 311-316.
Méndez, María Luisa & Otero, Gabriel (2018). “Neighbourhood conflicts, socio-spatial inequalities, and residential stigmatisation in Santiago, Chile”, Cities, 74, pp. 75-82.
Modai-Snir, Tal & van Ham, Maarten (2018). “Neighbourhood change and spatial polarization: The roles of increasing inequality and divergent urban development”, Cities, 82, pp. 108-118.
Murphy, Amy Greer (2017). “Austerity in the United Kingdom: the intersections of spatial and gendered inequalities”, Area, 2017, 49 (1), pp. 122–124.
Nel·lo, Oriol (2020). Cohesió social a la Catalunya del segle xxi: les desigualtats socials. Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
Nel·lo, Oriol (ed.) (2021). Efecto barrio. Segregación residencial, desigualdad social y políticas urbanas en las grandes ciudades, València: Tirant lo Blanc.
PNUD (2020), Coronavirus vs. desigualdad (las consecuencias de la pandèmia de COVID-19 serán muy diferentes) https://feature.undp.org/coronavirus-vs-inequality/es/.
Porras-Sánchez, Sara & Donati, Francesca (2021). “Territorio, lugar e identidad en los barrios vulnerables. El Barrionalismo como práctica política”, Ciudad y Territorio, Vol. LIII, pp. 139-158.
Privitera-Sixto, María-Rosa (2020). “Operaciones de gobernanza urbana en el sur “más vulnerable” de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Comuna 8, la producción de nuevas “oportunidades” y viejas desigualdades”, EURE, 46 (138), pp. 117-137.
Ruiz-Tagle, Javier (2016). “La persistenciade la segregación y la desigualdad en barrios socialmente diversos: un estudio de caso en La Florida, Santiago”, EURE, 42 (125), pp. 81-108.
Sassen, Saskia (2015). Expulsiones. Brutalidad y complejidaden la economia global. Buenos Aires: Katz.
Solana-Solana, Miguel; Anna Ortiz Guitart; Antonio López-Gay (2020) “Me están echando de mi casa. Repercusiones personales y sociales de la inseguridad residencial en Barcelona”, Papers. Revista de Sociologia, núm. 106 (1).
Vásquez-Vera, Hugo et al. (2019). “Our lives in boxes: Perceived community mediators between housing insecurity and health using a Photovoice approach”, International Journal for Equity in Health, núm. 18 (1).
Vives-Miró, Sònia, & Rullan, Onofre (2020). “La urbanización de la pobreza: de la acumulación originaria a la crisis habitacional en Ibiza”. Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles, (87).
VVAA (2021). El atlas de las desigualdades. Claves para entender un mundo injusto, Clave intelectual, Traficantes.
Wei, Yehua Dennis; Xiao, Weiye; Simon, Christopher A.; Liu, Baodong & Ni, Yongmei (2018). Neighborhood, race and educational inequality”, Cities, 73, pp. 1-13.
Software
Word, excel, powerpoint. Representation techniques and territorial designs.