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the transformation of economic Systems 351

Cultural Diversity around the World

The Child Workers

In Afghanistan, Zar Muhammad expresses guilt and sorrow
that his 7- and 8-year-old sons work 12 hours a day making
bricks in the mud. Zar borrowed 10,000 rupees to get
married. He now owes 150,000 rupees. The children have
to work alongside him to try to pay the debt. But the debt Children
continues to grow: rent to the kiln owner for their mud house, work as
electricity, and food, and sometimes emergency medicine for miners, pesticide
the children. They are locked in a cycle that makes Zar and his sprayers, street ven-
sons servants/slaves forever (Kamber 2011). dors, and household
Does the government know about this situation? Of course servants. They weave
it knows. When asked about the 5,000 children who work in carpets in India, race camels in the Middle East, and, all over
the kilns in his area, the district governor said, “I know this is the world, work as prostitutes. In the poverty-stricken areas
not good for kids, but we have to build our buildings, build of some of these countries, people live on less than $1 a day.
our country. The work provides income for the children’s The few dollars the children
families” (Kamber 2011).
earn make the difference
* * * * * between life and death.
In Zambia, 9-year-old Besides poverty,
Alone Banda works in an there is also a cultural
abandoned quarry. Using factor (Hilson 2012). In
a bolt, he breaks rocks many parts of the world,
into powder. In a week, people view children
he makes enough powder differently than we do
to fill half a cement bag. in the West. The idea
Alone gets $3 for the half that children have the
bag. right to be educated and
It is a slow death for to be spared from adult
Alone. Robbed of his burdens is fairly new in
childhood and breath- history. A major factor
ing rock dust continu- The answer to “What is the proper role of children in an economy?” varies by shaping our views of life
ously, Alone is likely to social class, culture, economic development, and historical period. On the left is economics, and when
come down with what is a boy working in a Pennsylvania coal mine about 1908. On the right is a girl prosperity comes to
the quarry workers call a working in a rice field in Madagascar today. these other countries, so
“heavy chest,” an early will this new perspective.
sign of silicosis.
The amount Alone makes is pitiful, but without it, he and For Your Consideration
his grandmother would starve to death. As one mother said, ↑ How do you think the wealthier nations can help alleviate
“If I feel pity for them, what are they going to eat?” (Wines the suffering of child workers?
2006a). ↑ Before industrialization, and for a period afterward, having
children work was also common in the West. Just because our
* * * * *
economic system has changed, bringing with it different ideas
As in the photo I took of an 8-year-old girl in India (page of childhood and of the rights of children, why do we have
193), some children work in construction, others in factories. the right to impose our changed ideas on other nations?

It is the same with the global village. Think of the globe as being divided into three
neighborhoods—the three worlds of industrialization and postindustrialization that we
reviewed in Chapter 7. Some nations are located in the poor part of the village. Their
citizens do menial work and barely eke out a living. Life is so precarious that some even
starve to death, while their fellow villagers in the rich neighborhood feast on steak and
lobster, washed down with vintage Chateau Lafite Rothschild. It’s the same village, but
what a difference the neighborhood makes.
Now visualize any one of the three neighborhoods. Again you will see gross inequali-
ties. Not everyone who lives in the poor neighborhood is poor, and some areas of the