Sociology 2111: Week 8
I. Immanuel Wallerstein and Capitalist World System Theory
"The mark of the modern world is the imagination of its profiteers and the counter-assertiveness of the oppressed."
See also Andre Gunder Frank on "the development of underdevelopment"... this phrase puts the theory in a nutshell... the very dynamics by which the rich industrial nations and their mega-corporations maintain and extend their prosperity at the same time produce poverty and underdevelopment in the poorer countries.... or to borrow a phrase from my church, the third world countries are "countries made poor"
1. Development of economies that specialize in a few minerals, agricultural products, or other raw materials for the industrialized "mother" country
2. Suppression of the conditions that would promote industrialization, so that the colony provides a market for manufactured goods from the mother country... e.g., the India market for clothing made in England... in the fifty years after the British conquest of India, India went from one of the world's largest exporters to textiles to a major importer
3. China... not colonies but sphere of influence... as Marx suspected, even the Great Wall not enough to keep capitalism out... true already in the 19th century but so much moreso today
B. World stratification in the post-colonial era (mid 20th century to present)
1. Phase 1: Flow Diagram of Capitalist World System, WW II to about 1980... Effects for core and noncore countries
2. Phase 2: Deindustrialization in countries like the United States and industrialization in the noncore countries... Effects for core and noncore countries
a. Early example of phase 2: NAFTA and Mexico's m aquiladora factories. Maria Patricia Fernandez-Kelly: For We are Sold, I and My People: Women and Industry in Mexico's Frontier
1). The clothing and electronic factories employ mostly young women.
2) No laws protecting labor's right to organize independent unions
3) Few or no environmental protections (and expenses)
b. Current key example: China
Video: "China Blue"
Video: "Is Wal-Mart Good for America?"
1. Notice first what he is arguing against--essentially the view of the Marxist and neo-Marxist "left" theorists, like Wallerstein, who say that globalization is very old, going back at least to Portugese and Spanish colonialism, involving the development of world capitalism (remember Marx: "the cheap price of its commodities is the heavy artillery with which it (capitalism) breaks down all Chinese walls").... The agenda of the European left in particular, drawing on Marx, includes
a. world markets and their effects
b. proletarianization
c. pauperization
d. depressions
e. class consciousness
f. socialism and a world government
2. No, says Giddens. Globalisation is something truly new and in the long run its effects are unpredictable.
a. Era of the nation-state is over... the really important trends transcend national borders
1) Current world economy has no parallel in early times... e.g., vast flows of capital shifted globally at the click of a mouse... a trillion dollars a day turned over globally each day
2) Globalisation is political, technological, and cultural as well as economic
a) Within four years of its creation, 50 million Americans were using the internet
b) Import economic and cultural zones are created within countries that are really oriented to the larger world... Silicon Valley, Hong Kong, northern Italy, Catalonia
c) "Expanding inequality is the most serious problem facing world society" and it's not just Westernisation or Americanisation... "increasingly decentred"
3) "Shell institutions". "We continue to talk of the nation, the family, work, tradition, nature, as if they were all the same as the past. But they are not.... They are institutions that have become inadequate to the tasks they are called upon to perform.... We need to reconstruct those we have or create new ones" (that take account of the basic shift that is globalisation)
B. Democracy (his definition, p. 1)
1. Fully developed for the first time in the 20th century. For example, before World War I, women had the right to vote in only four countries.
2. Number of democratic governments has doubled just since the 1970s.
3. Key role for global communications... see his story about television and the fall of the Berlin Wall (2nd paragraph)
4. Paradox... spreading rapidly, but apparent disillusionment in the mature democracies(declining levels of trust in political leaders and declining voting, particularly among the young)... his analysis: young people actually more interested in democracy, especially in areas like ecology, human rights, family policy, and sexual freedom by cynical about current politicians (Instructor: the Obama phenomenon seems to confirm this for the U.S., at least.)
5. A basic change in the flow of information, creating an open framework of global communications.... no accident that there are more scandals involving politics... so much that has been concealed can no longer be hidden... (Instructor: the Pentagon papers perhaps a precursor)
6. Active communication helps create the eastern European revolutions (largely nonviolent), the overthrow of apartheid in South Africa (largely nonviolent)... (Instructor: few political sociologists saw either one as a possibility.)
7. The new democracy, as he sees it:
a. More transparency
b. Anti-corruption measures at all levels
c. Political parties will have to get used to collaborating with single issue groups, e.g., environmental groups (In Britain, 20 times more people belong to voluntary groups than are members of political parties.)
d. Related to c, a stronger civil society (between polity and economy)
e. Mass media as a democratising force but also a force for the trivialising and personalising of political issues. (Remember C. Wright Mills analysis here.) (Instructor: might the professional mass media be on its way to being replaced by a kind of citizen militia?)
f. Role of transnational organizations, like the European Union, that can press for individual rights within member countries
Democracy as a sturdy plant, that can grow even on quite barren ground.
"If my argument is correct, the expansion of democracy is bound up with structural changes in world society. Nothing comes without struggle. But the furthering of democracy at all levels is worth fighting for and it can be achieved. Our runaway world doesn't need less, but more government--and this, only democratic institutions can provide."