By Comrade Ogbu A. Ameh
The city beckons and magnetizes people with its hypnotic allures since ages across the globe. The pull towards the city from all lifestyles seems a magnetic attraction as people come in drove with different burdens, ambitions, schemes and expectations.
It is in cities that pot Pori of individuals in societies merge into one to form a new identity. Such identities are defined by what the city moulds every individual to become. The silent but strong call to the city impels some desperate individuals to contemplate other cities outside the shores of their national territories.
At different age and in different countries of the world, the catalyst for this compelling pull to the city differs. People have become more integrated across national boundaries on the face of mother earth than ever.
In this age long magnetic pull, the city has overtime become a defining institution that shapes people’s identities, perceptions and ambitions in life. It is from inside the “city” that the Dregs whose identities are defined by its dynamism emerged. It is, the narrative of this segment of the city that this article sets to pre-occupy.
The industrial revolution in Europe helped the development of the middle class and the support or impetus it gave to city life. The opportunity to unite, which the urban factory life portrayed came with it a new consciousness. In the same trajectory, the industrial revolution came with social problems. Concentration of population gave rise to cities, towns, low wages and uncertainty in job creations and employment.
Within these social problems, the city Dregs are produced in large numbers. Their ubiquitous presence in cities and towns of every modern state of the worlds is a characteristic rather than an exception. Among the three theoretical perspectives that guide sociological thinking on social problems; functionalism asserts that, despite the negative effects of social problems, it also serve important functions for society.
In sharp contrast to the above view of social problems, proponents of conflict theory deconstruct it to proffer alternative view. It asserts that social problems arise from fundamental faults in the structure of a society and both reflect and reinforce inequalities. The third view is a clear departure from the earlier two that arose out of two great revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Symbolic interactionism locates it view of social problems at a point of departure from the other two. It view holds that social problems arise from the interaction of individuals. That people who engage in socially problematic behaviors often learn these behaviors from other people.
The city Dregs grow as cities grow too and inequality forces people to live in increasingly poor, crowded and decrepit conditions where crime is rampant.
The Badoo criminal menace in some parts of Lagos State today, spilling into neighboring States speak volume about increasing social inequalities in this time of economic downturn.
Ameh is Founder, Generation for Revolutionary, Change from below, Writes from Akatekwe Kingdom.
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