Identifying Global Socio-Spiritual Classes

Abstract

Most of the existing development classifications divide the world into groups of countries according to country-level average values of either GDP or some GDP-related socio-economic indicators. For instance, some of the widely used classifications categorize the world into groups of countries such as rich countries and poor countries; developed countries and developing countries; high-income, middle-income and low-income countries; and North countries and South countries. All these classifications are exclusively based on data dealing with material wealth and therefore are not appropriate and useful for the present study, because in the present study, development is viewed from the perspectives of material growth as well as spiritual growth. Furthermore, in today’s globalized world where capital, goods, people and technology flow freely across the political borders, national borders do not hold as much validity as in the past and individual countries cannot be used as base units for global-level classifications. What one can see in the globalized world is not groups of countries but global-level groups of people or global classes moving across political borders. Even in the countries labelled as being some of the poorest countries, there is a rich class whose income is as high as the rich class of the so-called rich countries. On the other hand, it is not uncommon to find poor people in rich countries. Each class possesses the same characteristics.