World System Theory

A2 Sociologyfor AQA

Chris Livesey & Tony Lawson

Hodder ArnoldA MEMBER OF THE HODDER HEADLINE GROUP

HE12903 pr.qxp 17/10/06 15:45 Page i

In general, this involves looking at theprocess of development (in relation toconcepts like industrialisation andurbanisation), aspects of development (suchas its impact on employment, education,health and gender) and developmentstrategies (involving an understanding of therole of aid and trade). Finally, we need toconsider the role of economic, political andcultural globalisation in a national andinternational context.

1. Different definitionsand explanations ofdevelopment and underdevelopmentIn this opening section, the focus is on theconcept of development itself – thinkinginitially about how it can be operationalised(in terms of definition and measurement)and, subsequently, about a range of possiblesociological explanations for socialdevelopment.

Preparing the ground:Definitions ofdevelopment and underdevelopment

Although the concept of development iscentral to this chapter (with each sectionlooking at different aspects of this idea), theconcept itself is by no means simple andstraightforward to define, for two mainreasons. First, there are generaldisagreements among social scientists abouthow we can operationalise and explain thisconcept; and second, there aredisagreements about the meaning of theconcept itself. We can illustrate this bythinking initially about social developmentas what Leinbach (2005) terms both aprocess and a condition:

• Process relates to the conventionalmeaning of development – that a society,for example, ‘grows’ or changes in someway and the developmental process isboth:

• Dynamic – it involves movement or

179

World sociology

In this chapter we focus on the concept of development in terms of two major contexts:

• A national context in relation to the various ways our society has changed over time, and

• An international context considered in terms of how the development of our society has both influenced andbeen influenced by developments in other societies.

CHAPTER 3

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 179

WARM-UP: DEVELOPING MEANINGS

‘Development’ can have a number ofpossible meanings. These include:

• improvement• expansion• passing through different stages or

phases• progress• cumulative change• growth – orderly change from simple to

complex or primitive to advanced.

180

A2 Sociology for AQA

change (from, for example, undeveloped todeveloped) and

• Progressive or cumulative – that is,‘development’ also involves the idea thatchange produces a new form of societythat is both quantitatively and qualitativelydifferent to what has gone before.

• Condition: If social development is aprocess, it follows that, at various points,we can identify the extent to which asociety is – or is not – ‘developed’,making it possible to compare the extentof a society’s development in two mainways:

• Historically – how a particular societyhas changed over time (comparing, forexample, Britain in the nineteenth andtwenty-first centuries).

• Cross-culturally, in the sense ofcomparing different societies tomeasure/understand their respectivedevelopmental differences (such ascomparing Britain with both broadlysimilar societies, such as France or theUSA, and potentially dissimilar societies,such as Ethiopia or China).

Weeding the pathIf we view development in these terms – as aprocess of social change where societies havethe potential, both historically andcomparatively, to move from one condition(undeveloped, for example) to another (suchas developed), two things follow from this:

• Measurement: Some sort of scale againstwhich to measure development is needed,making it possible to categorise or groupdifferent societies on the basis of similarlevels of development.

• Linearity: This (conventional) way ofviewing development effectivelycharacterises it in terms of a:• Continuum where at one extreme we

have ‘non-developed’ societies and atthe other we have ‘fully developed’societies.

These ideas suggest development involvestwo important concepts:

Hierarchy: If social development isunequal it follows that some form of societalstratification will exist whereby differentsocieties are grouped in terms of theirrespective levels of development (eithercrudely, in terms of being rich or poor,developed or underdeveloped, or lesscrudely, in terms of things like levels of lifeexpectancy or average income.

In small groups, consider each of thesemeanings in turn and apply them to oursociety (for example, identify things thathave improved over the past century).

As a class, identify and briefly discuss thepossible strengths and weaknesses of eachmeaning in terms of understanding howand why our society has developed.

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 180

181

World sociology

Social change is central to the idea ofdevelopment because it encapsulates twoideas: first, that individual societies change over time, and second that suchchange can be measured against objectiveindicators (such as average living standards).

In general terms, Thomas (2000) suggestswe can define development on the basis ofthree key characteristics:

Large-scale: The focus here is onidentifying and understanding change on agrand scale – in terms of society-wideimprovements in areas such as economicproduction and consumption, levels ofincome and wealth, and so forth.

Evolution: Change is both a continualprocess occurring over an extended periodand cumulative in terms of improvements inthe economic, political and cultural life of asociety. This, in turn, relates to change atboth the individual level (improvements inlife expectancy, for instance) and the societallevel, involving, for example, increasedeconomic production.

Direction: Although development isconventionally characterised as positivesocial change (the idea of individual andcollective improvement), this is notnecessarily the case. Negative changes canoccur, both in terms of individualexperiences of change and in relation towhole societies. Using the evolutionaryanalogy it is possible for biological organismsto evolve, stay the same or become extinct,just as human societies may develop anddecline (in terms of their power andinfluence on a world stage, for example). Incomparative terms, therefore, change is notsimply unidirectional (one-way) – from non-development to development, forexample.

Two further features of development involveseeing it as:

Planned in the sense of the intentionaloutcome of social policies – governmentstaking deliberate steps to develop theeconomic, political and culturalenvironments, for example.

Unplanned: Development may also arisefrom ‘spontaneous behaviours’, whatThomas calls:

Immanent development – something thatsprings from behaviour within a particularsociety. The Industrial Revolution in Britainduring the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies is an example here; a huge range ofscientific and technological developmentscombined to produce rapid and widespreadeconomic, political and cultural changesthat were not consciously planned.

✼ SYNOPTIC LINKStratification and differentiation: Ideasabout social change can be linked to differenttheories of social stratification, changes inthe class structure and social mobility.

Weeding the pathTying the idea of change to either socialimprovements or social degradations createsthree significant problems in terms of howwe operationalise the concept ofdevelopment.

Definitions: Social change does notnecessarily constitute development. Thisfollows, as Matthews (2005) suggests,because change ‘could be part of a process ofdevelopment, but could also be part ofseveral other processes, such as those ofalteration, modification, deformation,

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 181

182


adaptation, regression, degradation and thelike’. In other words, social change becomesdevelopment only when it produces‘increased likeness to some more advancedor better state of being’.

Categorisation: To identify changes thatare meaningful in the context ofdevelopment we must make judgements aboutwhat constitutes ideas like ‘improvement’ ordevelopment, and Barbanti (2004) notes‘there is little consensus’ as to how tooperationalise such concepts objectively, fortwo main reasons:

• Value judgements about what does ordoes not constitute development, asopposed to change.

• Ideological debates relating to whetherdevelopment can be measured in objective,quantifiable ways, subjective, qualitativeways or some combination of both.

Development is, therefore, a:Contested concept that involves debates

not only about how it can be measured – ifat all – but also about the meaning of theterm itself.

Measurement: Although it’s possible tomeasure concepts like development in avariety of ways, such measurements involvetwo main problems:

• Indicators: There are a wide variety ofpossible economic, political and culturalaspects to development and this involvesdecisions about what indicators can beused to measure it. Debates, for example,surround not only things like the choiceof economic indicators, but also whetherdevelopment should be measured inpurely economic terms.

• Reliability and validity: Quantifiablemeasures (such as historical changes in

income levels, poverty or livingstandards) are relatively easy to identify,access and construct in an objective,standardised way. Qualitative measures aremore problematic (questionable) in thesense of being more difficult to define andstandardise, both within and acrosssocieties (making comparisons, forexample, more difficult).

Economic indicatorsAlthough development involves clearproblems of operationalisation in terms ofhow it is defined and measured, it’s possibleto suggest some possible economic and socialindicators of this process:

Economic indicators: Barbanti (2004)notes the conventional way to understanddevelopment since the 1950s has been to seeit ‘as a synonym for economic growth’. Inother words, development has traditionallybeen measured in terms of economicindicators such as:

• Gross domestic product (GDP) – ameasure of the total value of economicgoods and services created by a societyover a specific time period, or:

• Gross national product (GNP) – ameasure (sometimes called gross nationalincome) that includes net income fromabroad (such as the value of foreigninvestments).

Weeding the pathEconomic indicators such as GDP and/orGNP are useful in a number of ways.

Economic development provides a broadway of classifying different societies in termsof their general living standards and can beused to estimate the likely level of many

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 182

183

World sociology

other social factors (such as education,health care, literacy and so forth).

✼ SYNOPTIC LINKStratification and differentiation:Economic indicators (such as income andwealth) are frequently used as objectiveindicators of social class.

Comparisons: They allow us to makebroadly reliable historical and cross-culturalcomparisons (using objective, quantifiablecriteria) of relative economic standing andgrowth.

Classification: Different societies can beeasily ranked (stratified) in terms of theirdifferent levels of GNP/GDP (with theUSA, for example, ranking as the mosthighly developed, and places like Dominicaamong the least developed countries).

ClassificationsIn terms of classification, we can note someof the different ways societies have beenconventionally grouped on a global level.

Three worlds system: A traditional formof classification involves dividing the globeinto three distinct worlds, based on levels ofboth economic wealth and political ideology:

• First world – wealthy, industrialised,technologically developed, capitalisteconomies of Western Europe, NorthAmerica and Japan.

• Second world – relatively poorerindustrial and semi-industrial communistsocieties, such as the USSR (as was) andChina.

• Third world – relatively impoverishedpre- and semi-industrial nations with lowlevels of technological development in

Gross domestic product: selected world areas, 2004

Source: Quebec Institute of Statistics (2005)

Highest Lowest

Africa 510,000(South Africa)

1,100(Guinea-Bissau)

Europe 2,300,000(Germany)

7,350(Moldova)

North and Central America 11,600,000(USA)

270(Dominica)

South America 1,480,000(Brazil)

24,300(Bolivia)

Asia 7,100,000(China)

5,100(Mongolia)

(US$ millions, adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP) – a measure of the relative purchasing power of differentcurrencies)

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 183

184


Weeding the pathAlthough this broad division arguablyreflects the relative distribution of economicdevelopment across the globe (in 2005, forexample, the most economically developedcountries consumed around 80% of theworld’s economic resources, a figure that hadincreased from 67% 50 years previously), the‘two worlds’ distinction has two mainproblems:

• Geography: The divide is notgeographically perfect – Australia is anobvious anomaly.

• Economic change: In recent years thegrowth of economies in China and SouthEast Asia (India, for example) has made asimple north–south divide invalid – interms of GDP (2004), for example, Chinahas the second largest economy after theUSA, with India in fourth place.

Many Worlds system: This classification isrelatively more sophisticated in terms of howdevelopment is characterised, with both agreater number of categories and arecognition that the vast majority of

NorthAmerica

SouthAmerica

Africa

Europe

Australasia

The North–South divide(Source: www.bbc.co.uk)

Africa, South America and South EastAsia.

Weeding the pathAlthough this classification is stilloccasionally used (in the media, forexample), it has largely outgrown anyclassificatory significance it might once havehad in a couple of ways:

• Politics: The break-up of the formerUSSR has made the concept of a ‘secondworld’ based around ‘communistprinciples’ largely redundant.

• Homogeneity: The system is too broad toreliably and validly reflect developmentaldifferences both within and betweenthese worlds.

Two worlds system: An alternativeclassification (proposed by the 1980Independent Commission on InternationalDevelopment Issues – the Brandt Report)focused on the idea of a ‘north–south’ globaldivide. The most developed and wealthiesteconomies are largely found in the northernhemisphere and the poorest, least developedin the southern hemisphere.

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 184

More bite for your buck in Britain?

185

World sociology

societies around the world have experiencedsome form of economic development in thepost-Second World War period. Thus wecan talk about:

• MEDCs – more economically developedcountries

• LEDCs – less economically developedcountries

• LLEDCs – least economically developedcountries.

Weeding the pathThis classification – which can be expandedto include a range of further types (such asNICs – newly industrialising countries) – isboth more sophisticated in the way it definesdifferent levels of development and less tiedto notions of geographic space. However, itstill presents a couple of problems.

Labelling: Although the use of a ‘slidingscale’ reflects the dynamic nature ofeconomic development (and avoids therigidities inherent in both the three- andtwo-worlds systems), there remains a strongcorrelation between MEDCs and the firstworld/north and LLEDCs and the thirdworld/south systems.

Fragmentation: The main problem here isthe number of different levels ofdevelopment it is potentially possible todefine, without necessarily being able toagree a definitive economic definition ofdevelopment. We could, for example,include relative levels of manufacturing andservice industries, consumption patterns oreven the price of a standardised product indifferent societies:

The Hamburger Standard (devised byThe Economist magazine) takes a globalcommodity (such as a Big Mac),

manufactured to exactly the same standardsworldwide, and compares its relative cost indifferent societies to arrive at a generalestimate of economic development – themore developed a society, the greater thepurchasing power of its currency. In aneconomically strong country, something likea Big Mac would cost relatively less than inan economically weak country.

More fundamentally, perhaps, Thirlwall(2002) has questioned the usefulness ofeconomic indicators as measures of development(as opposed to growth), mainly because theyfail to take into account factors (such aslevels of health care, income distribution,literacy and the like) that impact on asociety’s overall development, a criticism

Highestpurchasing power(2004)

Least purchasingpower (2004)

Britain Taiwan

Western Europe South Korea

North America Hungary (!)

Australia Indonesia

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 185

186


that brings into play a range of furtherobservations.

Income distribution: Relatively simpleeconomic indicators of development tell uslittle or nothing about how incomes aredistributed throughout a society (and hencethe overall level of development in thatsociety).

Reliability: Indicators such as GNP/GDPare not necessarily defined or calculated inthe same way in all societies.

Quality of life: Economic growth andprosperity may come at a price – in terms ofenvironmental degradation, large-scaleunemployment, and so forth – for largenumbers of people. This suggests weshouldn’t automatically assume economicindicators measure social development –economic growth, in this respect, shouldperhaps be seen as one possible means toone possible end.

Social indicatorsAlthough economic development is animportant aspect to consider, it arguablydoesn’t tell the whole story – just as, forexample, there’s more to social class thanincome alone, the same is true ofdevelopment. In this respect we can note anumber of possible social indicators ofdevelopment, starting with what Badri(1994) identifies as political factors such as:

Democracy: The basic idea here is thatgreater levels of social development areassociated with a broad range of political:

• Freedoms, such as democratic elections,the right to free assembly and association,peaceful protest, freedom of speech andreligion.

• Rights, such as legal representation, a fairtrial, and so forth.

• Relationships, such as ‘. . . a country’slevel of respect of borders, of others’national sovereignty and abidance byinternational laws and treaties’.

The focus here is on the level of personalcontrol people have over the way they live.On a wider scale, Leinbach (2005) notes theconcept of:

Distributive justice – the idea thatdevelopment should not be seen just interms of political freedoms and rights, butalso in terms of how ‘basic human needs’ aresatisfied. These might include areas like theprovision of and access to:

Public goods and services (such as healthcare, education and the like) as well asgeneral measures of need relating to:

Demographic variables like:

• Infant and child mortality rates: Theserelate to children surviving, respectively,their first year after birth and after theirfifth year.

• Death rates relating to the chances ofpeople dying from both natural and non-natural causes (such as murder orsuicide). These, in turn, can be related to:

• Life expectancy: The average age towhich people in a society live can beindicative of a range of developmentalfactors, and although average lifeexpectancy generally rose across the globeduring the twentieth century (Palacios(2002) notes an average rise from 50 to66 years), there are clear differencesbetween societies at different stages of development. Kinsella andVelkoff (2001) note: ‘On average, anindividual born in an MEDC can expectto outlive his/her LEDC counterpart by13 years.’

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 186

The pottingshed

Identify and briefly explain two factorsthat might contribute to increased lifeexpectancy.

187

World sociology

educationally, for example, such a scale‘could begin with the elimination ofilliteracy and the enrolment of all childrenof school age, continuing up to quality ofeducation in terms of the student–teacherratio, availability of training in various skills,knowledge for all those soon to be on thelabour market, and the opening up ofvarious educational facilities to those outsidethe school and labour market population’.

Weeding the pathSocial indicators of development provide adifferent – and arguably more rounded – wayto measure development. They also providea range of:

Development goals against which tomeasure a society or region’s progress in meeting certain universal life standards.

As with purely economic indicators,however, there are measurement problems:

Reliability and validity questions ariseover how particular countries producestatistical data relating to areas like lifeexpectancy and child mortality, which

Moore (1993) suggests that a range ofdevelopmental factors are responsible forrising national/global average life expectancysince the 1800s; these include medical andsanitation advances coupled with ‘newmodes of familial, social, economic, andpolitical organization’.

Badri (1994) identifies a further range ofcultural indicators that contributes to ourunderstanding of levels of development:

• Levels of adult literacy and educationalopportunities.

• Access to basic services (such as shelter,clean water and electricity).

She argues it would be possible to devise acontinuum or ladder scale against which tomeasure a society’s developmental progress –

Average male and female life expectancy: selected world areas

Highest Lowest

Africa 74 (Tunisia) 38 (Malawi)

Europe 80 (Sweden) 66 (Ukraine)

North and Central America 79 (Canada) 66 (Guatemala)

South America 76 (Costa Rica) 63 (Brazil)

Asia 81 (Japan) 60 (Bangladesh)

Source: US Census Bureau (2001)

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 187

Growing it yourself: Developmentscales

188


creates problems of comparability betweendifferent societies.

Social indicators are also subject todistortion within and between differentsocieties – in the USA, for example, somegroups have higher average life expectancythan others. Young, black, urban, working-class males have lower average lifeexpectancies due to high homicide andsuicide rates. In developing countries,average life expectancy can be lowered byhigh rates of infant and female mortalityduring childbirth (which distorts lifeexpectancy figures for those who survive).

Given that both economic and socialindicators have certain drawbacks whenconsidered in isolation from one another, anobvious thing to do is to combine indicatorsto arrive at a:

Human Development Index (HDI), suchas that constructed by Mahbub ul Haq(1990) and used by the United Nationsdevelopment programme. The index assessesand ranks countries in terms of threeeconomic and cultural dimensions:

• life expectancy at birth• knowledge – measured by adult literacy

and educational provision• living standards measured by GDP per

capita.

Weeding the pathThe HDI has an obvious advantage in thatit doesn’t rank countries according to someform of predetermined ‘development scale’(in the sense of, for example, universalstandards of development/underdevelopment). Rather, it focuses on acomparison between different societies andtheir relationship to each other. This type ofindex also redresses one of the maincriticisms of development scales based oneconomic indicators, namely their possible:

Ideological bias towards Westernsocieties with high levels of economicdevelopment. Using the HDI, it is possiblefor countries with high levels of economiccapital but low levels of investment inhuman capital (through education, forexample) to be ranked as ‘less developed’than less wealthy societies which investmore in social and educational welfare. Inthis respect the HDI measures the:

Ends of social development (what itmeans in terms of raised living standards, forexample) rather than the means to achievesuch ends (economic growth). This type ofindex can also potentially measure levels of:

Overdevelopment – the illnesses anddiseases, for example, that affect affluentsocieties (high levels of heart disease,

In small groups, choose one of the following and devise a continuum/ladder scale toexpress different possible levels of social development.

Shelter Health Politics Economics

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 188

189

World sociology

obesity, and so forth, that may reduceaverage life expectancy).

The HDI is not, of course, without itsdrawbacks, some of which relate to thereliability and validity problems we’vepreviously noted, and others to the idea itneeds to be used in combination with otherindexes (such as those measuring HumanPoverty (HPI) or Gender Development(GDI) – the former introducing an elementof class measurement and the latter reflectingthe idea that gender differences exist in mostsocieties in terms of how economic andcultural development is experienced).

Digging deeper:Explanations ofdevelopment and underdevelopment

Todero and Smith (2005) suggest four mainmodels that explain how and why societiesdevelop.

ModernisationModernisation theory has its theoreticalroots in classical (nineteenth and earlytwentieth century) sociology that involved ageneral (modernist) perception ofdevelopment following a broadly:

Linear trend – from economically,politically and culturally undevelopedsocieties to fully developed social formations.As Capitán and Lambie (1994) put it:‘Modernisation is the process by which thegap between tradition and modernity(development) is progressively closed.’

We can note a couple of examples of thisparticular tradition in terms of:

Classical functionalism that theoriseddevelopment in terms of different stagesthrough which all societies passed. Comte

(1853) considered these in ideological terms;theological, metaphysical and scientific(‘positive’) stages represented a move from asociety based on superstition to one based onscientific knowledge. The motor of change,in this respect, was:

Institutional differentiation –development was driven by evolutionarychanges in social institutions; as institutionssuch as work developed, they forced changesin other institutions (such as education andthe family), thereby creating institutionalspecialisation and evolutionary socialdevelopment.

These general ideas were furtherdeveloped in the twentieth century byParsons (1951), who conceptualiseddevelopment in terms of how social systemsadapt to changing political, economic andcultural environments (such as the processof globalisation in recent times).

Classical Weberian interpretations,meanwhile, saw modernisation in terms of achange from pre-modern (traditional)society to modern (industrial) society.Weber (1905) argued that socialdevelopment, once started, followed aninevitable process of modernisation, featuresof which included industrialisation,urbanisation and rationalisation (behaviourand social organisation based on scientificprinciples). The motor of modernisation, forWeber, was the ideological ideas andprinciples embodied in the Calvinist(Protestant) religion.

✼ SYNOPTIC LINKReligion: Weber’s ideas on the relationshipbetween modernisation and religion areoutlined in more detail in the ‘Differenttheories of religion’ section.

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 189

190


Contemporary modernisation theoriesdeveloped initially in the post-SecondWorld War period, the most well-known ofwhich is associated with Rostow (1960) andhis:

Stages of Growth, a development theorybased around the idea that all societies passthrough five separate (discrete)developmental stages:

1. Traditional society: The initial stage forall societies has three commoncharacteristics:• Technological: Such societies are pre-

scientific. Religion is generally thedominant ideological form.

• Economic production is largelyagricultural with no industrialdevelopment.

• Political: This type tends to be ‘rigidlyhierarchical’, with little or no socialmobility. Social relationships arelargely ascriptive (fixed at birth) andbased around family/kinship structures.

✼ SYNOPTIC LINKStratification and differentiation:Traditional society is often considered pre-modern and its general features arediscussed in more detail in this chapter.

2. Preconditions for take-off: The secondstage is characterised by a range ofdevelopments triggered, in the post-warperiod at least, by relationships withdeveloped societies in the form of:• trade – goods and services are

exchanged in the marketplace• aid – in the form of grants and loans

from developed countries.

This type of development has three basiccharacteristics:

• Technological: Scientific ideas andpractices develop, leading to eithertechnological developments (such asinventions) or the application oftechnologies introduced by or frommore developed societies.

• Economic: Industrial productiondevelops, initially focused aroundlabour-intensive extractive industriessuch as mining, although this maydepend on relationships with other,developed societies (they may, forexample, be instrumental inintroducing different forms ofmanufacturing industry, such asshipbuilding or car manufacture).Agricultural production is stillsignificant, but starts to declinegradually in economic importance.

• Political: Societies develop asrecognisable nation states, often ruledby an elite group (such as amonarchy or military/civiliandictatorship). A key development isthe emergence of a bourgeois(capitalist) class, with the knowledge,skills and motivation to exploiteconomic opportunities; they must beable and willing to invest capital andreinvest profits to lay the foundationsfor the next stage.

3. Take-off is the stage where economicgrowth becomes self-sustaining – levels ofcapital investment (from both within andoutside society) and productivity reach acritical level from which economicexpansion can be sustained. The generalcharacteristics of this stage include:

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 190

191

World sociology

Economic: Manufacturing developsstrongly and in the normal run ofevents one or two economic sectorsdevelop rapidly to provide a motor forfurther development. In Britain duringthe nineteenth century, for example,shipbuilding and clothing manufactureled the developmental thrust. In thisstage indigenous agricultural productiongenerally declines in economic andsocial importance (although variousforms of agribusiness – large-scaleagricultural production run along thelines of manufacturing industry – maydevelop or be introduced by foreigninvestors).Political and cultural institutions developa more mature form; for the former thismay involve more democratic systems ofgovernment, while for the lattereducation systems providing skilled,literate and numerate workers andmanagers start to develop.

4. The drive to maturity – a consolidationphase in which science andtechnological developments areincreasingly applied across differenteconomic sectors.

Economic development involves theproduction of a wider range of goods andservices for both internal consumptionand export; the economy becomes morediversified, in terms of a wider range ofeconomic activity within both themanufacturing sectors and serviceindustries.Political reforms tend to be consolidatedin this phase, with the emergence orextension of democratic processes. Arange of social reforms, some of which arelikely to be government sponsored (suchas welfare systems), may be introduced.

5. Maturity: In the final phase we reachwhat Rostow termed the ‘age of highmass consumption’ (think aboutcontemporary Britain as an examplehere), a situation characterised:Economically by advanced levels ofactivity and development, relating notjust to manufacturing and serviceindustries, but also, in the twenty-firstcentury, to knowledge industries (such asadvanced communications).Politically by an increasing range ofchoices to be made about all aspects ofdevelopment, such as the type of societyin which people want to live and also thetype of society they envisage for theirchildren. These choices are exercised atboth the:• individual level in terms of

consumption patterns, and the• institutional level in terms of, for

example, social infrastructure (whether,for example, to develop state-sponsored welfare systems, as occurredin countries such as Britain andGermany, how the education system is

Preparing to take off or stalled on therunway?

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 191

192


structured, developed and financed andthe like).

Weeding the pathModernisation theory is both a descriptionand an explanation of the developmentprocess in that it represents a way ofunderstanding how development occurs aswell as a blueprint for that process – ideasthat have led to a range of criticisms.

Process: Modernisation is generallycharacterised as a linear, evolutionary processthat, once started, proceeds along a set pathtowards a specific end. This, however,assumes modernisation is an ‘inevitablehistorical process’ (once started it cannot bestopped). However, although modernisationtheory may accurately reflect the experiencesof the first societies to modernise (in Europeand the USA), they did so under differentconditions to those facing, for example,contemporary African societies – the mostobvious difference being the fact thatdeveloped societies exist and may have aninterest in the economic and socialexploitation of less developed societies. Inother words, the conditions under whichdevelopment occurs have arguably changedand we cannot assume modernisation theorywill reliably and validly explain thedevelopment process in, for example, Iraq orEthiopia (if only because when Britain, forexample, modernised, developed societiesdid not exist).

Convergence: If modernisation is aninevitable, linear process, it follows that allsocieties are ‘converging’ in terms of theirsocial, economic and political structures,something ideologically convenient fordeveloped Western societies because it holdsthere is only one way (the Western way)

towards development. This, in turn, can beused to justify:

• Intervention: A range of economic,political and cultural interventions bydeveloped countries in the internal affairsof undeveloped countries can be justifiedon the basis that these are necessary formodernisation.

• Hegemony by developed societies in thesense of prescribing what undevelopedsocieties must do to modernise.

Cultural values: The argument here is thata Western model of development is imposedon the basis of both its utility (it worked inthe past) and its inevitability (it is the onlyway to modernise). As Coury (1997) argues,development ‘is defined in terms of veryspecific Western societies which arecharacterized as being individualistic,democratic, capitalist, scientific, secular andstable’.

Economism: Capitán and Lambie (1994)note how this model is based aroundeconomic factors and measures;development equates to economic changeand growth, regardless of the social andpolitical consequences for a population. Asthey note: ‘Social and political factors areheld to be less important and are simplyassumed under broad concepts such asmodernity and freedom.’

Neo-modernisation theorists like Bergerand Hsiao (1988) and Redding (1990) haveaddressed this issue (mainly in relation toJapan and East Asia) by suggesting thatdevelopment has a ‘cultural trigger’. That is,in much the same way that Weber identifiedCalvinism as the crucial variable in thedevelopment of capitalism and modernsociety, Borrego (1995) notes how neo-modernisation theorists argue Confucianism

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 192

Growing it yourself: Developingdevelopment

Modernisation theory sees ‘developed societies’ as an ideal to which underdevelopedsocieties should aspire.

In small groups, identify the possible economic, political and cultural benefits anddrawbacks of the type of development suggested by modernisation theory.

193

World sociology

played a similar role in East Asia – itscentral beliefs (a ‘high value placed oneducation, a commitment to meritocraticpersonal advancement and a capacity forhard work’) provided the qualities needed toexploit opportunities presented bydevelopments in Western societies; in Japan,for example, development ‘took off ’ onceJapanese companies started to make cheapcopies of US electrical goods.

Structural changeA key criticism of modernisation theory isthat it fails to recognise the idea thatdevelopment is not a ‘one size fits all’ model.Structural change theories, however,recognise that development is a processaffected by the fact that developingcountries are locked into a set of globaleconomic, political and culturalrelationships that affect their ability todevelop. In other words, we should not lookfor a uniform model of development.

The main difference between

undeveloped and developed societies, fromthis position, is a structural one between thetwo types of society. Whereas the former arepredominantly agricultural societies, thelatter are predominantly industrial or post-industrial societies – a key economic fact thatexplains why some societies have developedand why others remain relativelyundeveloped. Initially, therefore,industrialisation is the most important feature of development – where societies are able to industrialise they are able tocreate:

• High-value economies – a range ofproducts is developed and traded.

• Investment and reinvestmentopportunities that promote economicgrowth.

• High-productivity economies that createboth profits for reinvestment andrelatively higher wage levels to encouragedomestic consumption.

The ability to produce a diverse range ofgoods and services, allied to making profits

Benefits of development Drawbacks of development

Higher living standards Environmental problems

Further examples?

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 193

194


to be reinvested in areas such as newmachinery, research and products, representsthe key to understanding the developmentprocess – or, as Todero and Smith (2005)put it: ‘Structural change focuses on thesequential process through which theeconomic, industrial, and institutionalstructure of an underdeveloped economy istransformed over time to permit newindustries to replace traditional agricultureas the engine of economic growth.’ Thefocus, therefore, is on how structuralrelationships, both internal and external, actas constraints on the development process.

Internal constraints include:

• Geographic factors, such as theavailability of natural resources (coal,gold, diamonds, etc.) that can beexploited to developextraction/manufacturing industries, orthe physical location of a country(whether it is landlocked, for example).

• Human capital factors, such as the sizeand demographic composition (age andgender structure) of the population. Alsoincluded here would be things like levelsof general education and skills.

• Government ideologies in terms ofattitudes to foreign investment, aid andtrade, as well as economic and culturaldevelopment (inward foreign investment,for example, is likely to be attracted tolow-wage economies, but if this isencouraged, social inequalities maywiden).

External constraints relate to political,economic and cultural relationships withother countries. To take an extremeexample, Cuban economic development hasbeen hindered because, as Hillyard and

Miller (1998) note: ‘The United Statesgovernment has maintained an economicembargo against Cuba for some 38 years . . .in 1996 the “Helms-Burton Act” extendedthe territorial application of the existingembargo to apply to foreign companies tradingwith Cuba.’

International constraints generally relateto things like the ability to attract foreigninvestment and technology as well as thenature of political relationships withneighbouring countries. Crucially,developing countries also need access toforeign economic markets for trade purposes.

Weeding the pathOne strength of structural change theory isits recognition of how internationalrelationships – and the fact that the worldconsists of countries with different levels ofdevelopment – impact on undevelopedcountries. This general position hassimilarities with modernisation theory inthat it sees the key to development as beingindustrial production (at least initially) andthe idea that development is a relativelylinear, evolutionary process – once a societybegins to industrialise. The developmentprocess is seen as both:

• self-generating – as profits are createdthey can be reinvested, and

• self-perpetuating – once theindustrialisation process has been kick-started it takes on a life of its own, withsuccessive developments buildingcumulatively.

This situation, however, depends to a largeextent on the reinvestment of capital, eitherfrom indigenous capitalist or, more crucially

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 194

The pottingshed

Identify and explain one behavioural andone consumption feature our societyhas adopted from the USA or the rest ofEurope.

195

World sociology

perhaps, foreign investors – and this may nothappen because of:

Capital flight – the idea that foreigninvestors have little or no interest in thedevelopment of the country/economy inwhich they invest. Rather, profits areexported to an investor’s home country, anobservation that links to a furtherexplanation of development.

DependencyDependency theories broaden the focus toexamine the relationship between societies,with particular emphasis on the waydeveloped societies relate to underdevelopedsocieties. In this respect:

Underdevelopment denotes the processwhereby a society at a certain level ofdevelopment becomes less developed as aresult of its relationships with developedsocieties. Chaliand (1977) notes:‘Underdevelopment is marked by . . .distorted and highly dependent economiesdevoted to producing primary products forthe developed world and to provide marketsfor their finished goods . . . the economies ofunderdeveloped countries have been gearedto the needs of industrialized countries . . .The prices of products are usuallydetermined by large buyers in theeconomically dominant countries of theWest.’

Although dependency theories come in anumber of forms, we can briefly note twovariations (dual development and colonialism)by way of providing a general overview ofthis position.

Dual development: Capitán and Lambie(1994) argue that, from this position, globaldevelopment is uneven in the sense thatdeveloped nations represent:

Core or centre economies that dominateworld trade. Their relationship withunderdeveloped nations, for this perspective,is exploitative. Transnational corporations(TNCs), for example, from developednations may operate within anunderdeveloped nation to extract naturalresources (such as coal or oil) or exploitopportunities for cheap labour.

Periphery economies, meanwhile, arethose dependent on developed nations inthree main ways:

• Intellectual: Ideas about economic andsocial development are imposed bydeveloping countries.

• Cultural, whereby developing countriesadopt, according to Capitán and Lambie,‘behavioural and consumption’ featuresfrom developed nations – from theirchoice of dress, through films andmagazines to fizzy drinks . . .

• Technological: Underdeveloped nationsimport technology from developednations rather than developing‘indigenous technologies’.

Ferraro (1996) identifies two ‘keyarguments’ for this position:

• Coexistence: ‘Powerful and wealthyindustrialized nations compete with weak,impoverished peasant societies in theinternational economy.’

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 195

196


• Persistence: This is not a temporarysituation where unequal and exploitativerelationships gradually disappear. Rather,dependency is a condition of the relationshipitself. In other words, dominant societieshave an abiding interest in ‘creating andmaintaining underdevelopment’.

Relations of dominance and dependence arenot simply reflected by the superioreconomic power of one nation over another.Rather, this relationship is integral to theirdealings in that developed societies areinvolved in the:

Economic penetration of under-developed societies through, Ferraro (1996)suggests: the activities of transnationalcorporations within the dependent society;the provision of aid to develop economicand political infrastructures that facilitatethe operations of such corporations; thelending practices of world bankingorganisations ‘and any other means by whichthe advanced industrialized countries canrepresent their economic interests abroad’.In this respect the (in)ability of dependentcountries to develop modern, industrialisedeconomies is conditioned by their:

• External political and economicrelationships (such as the ways under-developed societies are locked intointernational relationships withdeveloped societies).

• Internal political and economicrelationships and how their developmentis affected by external relationships.

A basic example here is the relationshipbetween a relatively developed society suchas the USA and its relatively under-developed neighbour Mexico. Thompson(2004) notes that ‘. . . about 85% of the

goods and services exported by Mexicans aresold in the USA’ and their relationship isone of:

Dominance and dependence – Mexico iseconomically dependent on the USA andthe USA is ‘the dominant global economicand military power’. As Thompsonsummarises this relationship: ‘The USA is ofgreat importance to Mexicans . . . butMexico is not in the forefront of theconsciousness of most Americans.’

Colonial dependence models originatewithin Marxist perspectives, both classical,where the focus has tended to be on theearliest periods of aggressive capitalistdevelopment and exploitation, and neo-Marxist, where the focus in recent years hasbeen less on:

Aggressive colonisation (one countryinvading and ruling another, for example)and more on subtler forms, such as:

Hegemonic colonisation, a situation inwhich underdeveloped societies effectivelybecome ‘client states’ for a dominant powerthrough economic, political and culturalpenetration. A classic example here mightbe the way US and British popular music(‘Rock ’n’ Roll’) has, since the 1960s atleast, become a global culturalphenomenon.

This type of dependency theory focuseson the way capitalist economies in thedeveloped world (Europe and the USA inparticular) have used their dominanteconomic position to exploit the naturalresources and human capital of under-developed countries. As we’ve just suggested,colonial dependence models focus on thevarious ways (aggressively and/orhegemonically) dependent societies are keptin a state of underdevelopment. Theseinclude, by way of example:

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 6

The pottingshed

Identify and briefly explain one way therelationship between developed andunderdeveloped societies reflects aglobal form of class conflict.

197

World sociology

• Direct political rule by dominant powers.• Indirect political rule through the

support of (corrupt) local elites who makepolitical and economic decisions thatfavour the general interests of dominantnations.

• Trade agreements that give exclusiveaccess to, for example, raw materials(such as oil) by transnationalcorporations.

• Aid packages conditional on thereceiving society providing access tointernal markets and the like.

Ferraro summarises this general position(one associated with a ‘neo-Marxist, neo-colonial view of underdevelopment’) bynoting it ‘. . . attributes a large part of thedeveloping world’s continuing andworsening poverty to the existence andpolicies of the industrial capitalist countriesof the Northern Hemisphere and theirextensions in the form of small but powerfulelite or comprador groups in the lessdeveloped countries’.

Weeding the pathDependency theories not only locatedevelopment within a global context, theyalso focus on the idea that internationalinvestment and trade are not necessarilymutually beneficial; on the contrary, theycan be exploitative in situations where thereis an imbalance (economic and/or political)between the various trading partners.Todero and Smith (2005) thereforesummarise this general position in terms of:

Power relationships: In a global contextdeveloped societies dominate on the worldstage. Historically this has led to whatCapitán and Lambie (1994) characterise as

‘a situation in which the economy of certaincountries is conditioned by the developmentand expansion of another country to whichit is subservient’. For Marxist dependencytheories, inequalities between developed andunderdeveloped societies are not simply theresult of ‘historical or demographicaccidents’; rather, unequal development isbuilt into the structure of global capitalism;developed societies dominate at the expenseof underdeveloped nations. In some ways,therefore, dependency theories reflect, on aglobal scale, the concept of class conflict thatis a feature of Marxist theorising; in thisinstance, however, conflict occurs on a vastscale, between developed and under-developed nations.

There are, however, problems with thisgeneral theory.

Persistence: In the first place, it isdifficult to see how the dominated societiesever break away from the ‘vicious circle’ ofdependence and underdevelopment – yetsome formerly underdeveloped societies(such as China and India in recent times) domanage to break away.

Colonisation: Although dependencytheory emphasises the exploitativerelationship between colonisers and thosecolonised, it is possible to argue that thebenefits of this relationship are not totallyone-sided. Former colonies, for example, maybenefit from the development of their

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 197

198


political and economic infrastructure, andtheir relationship with former colonisersmay give them privileged access totechnology, markets, capital investment andthe like.

Externalisation: Dependency theoryviews underdevelopment in terms of theoperation of factors external to thedependent society, with local elites co-optedinto the exploitation process as agents ofinternational capitalism. While this is truein many cases (elite corruption, for example,may contribute to underdevelopment), thisis not always or necessarily the case –indigenous political movements, forexample, have succeeded in developing thepolitical and economic structures of formerlydependent countries while simultaneouslydeveloping a more equitable relationshipwith developed countries.

Trade and aid: It is possible to argue thatsome actions by developed nations to aidunderdeveloped nations are not necessarilyprompted by economic self-interest. Thepromotion of political stability, thealleviation of human suffering and thepromotion of environmentalist policies areexamples of a potentially less exploitativerelationship (although, as with most things,it’s possible to argue that such behaviour‘contributes to the maintenance ofcapitalism’ as a global system ofexploitation).

World system approaches These argue we need to understanddevelopment in the context of:

Global systems and networks: In otherwords, the focus is on understanding hownations are locked into political andeconomic relationships that, in the widest

sense, make them interdependent. Frank(1995) abandoned his previous advocacy ofdependency theory to explore the variousways, both historical and contemporary,‘world systems’ developed:

• Politically, in terms of, for example, thespread of various empires (from ancientRome to modern Britain) and their effecton international relationships.

• Economically, in the modern period,whereby the spread of capitalism hasencouraged the development of a globaleconomic system within which everycountry has some sort of stake.

In theoretical terms a world systemperspective involves, for Capra (1983),seeing systems as being ‘integrated wholeswhose properties cannot be reduced to thoseof smaller units . . . the properties of thewhole are considered greater than those ofits parts’. In other words, to understand bothdevelopment and underdevelopment weneed to explore the complex interplay ofpolitical, ideological and economicrelationships that characterise the globalisedmodern world.

This general perspective has a number ofdimensions and arguments, but the originalstatement of this position comes fromWallerstein (1974), when he argues that,historically, we can chart the developmentof a world system from the:

Pre-modern period (the mid-fifteenth tolate-seventeenth centuries) that representeda consolidation of individual WesternEuropean states (in particular) in terms oftheir internal political and economiccohesion. This consolidation laid thecondition for the:

Modern period, where the developmentof industrial capitalism led, by the

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 198

199

World sociology

eighteenth century, to economic expansionamong many European states through thesearch for new sources of raw materials,labour and markets. This, he argued, was thebeginning of a world economic system thatwould eventually be characterised by thecomplex and interdependent nature ofrelationships within a globalised economicsystem that was:

Interdependent in that we cannot makesense of ideas like development and under-development except in the overall contextof the relationship between nations – boththeir direct relationships (one countrytrading with another, for example) and theirindirect relationships (the effect, for example,of one country choosing to trade withanother to the exclusion of other nations).

World regionsWallerstein’s original formulation focusedon the idea of a world economic systembased around three concepts:

• Core regions represent the most highlydeveloped economies in the modernworld. They were the first to developfully-fledged capitalist economies and arecharacterised by strong centralgovernments, highly developed industrialbases and bureaucratic administrationstructures.

• Periphery regions represent under-developed countries defined, in thiscontext, by their unequal relationshipwith the core regions. Peripheral statesare characterised by weak governmentsunder the control of indigenous elites orrepresentatives of the core regions (whereperipheral states are colonies of coresocieties). Peripheral regions serve assources of raw materials, surplus labour

and captive markets for core regions, andtheir underdeveloped status ismaintained, as Chase-Dunn and Grimes(1995) express it, by being locked into aworld political and economic structurethat serves to reproduce their subordinatestatus – to function as part of the worldsystem, in other words, peripheral regionsby and large have to accept economicpractices that, in the long term, maintaintheir dependence on developed nations.

• Semi-peripheral regions occupy a spacesomewhere between the core and theperiphery. Such regions may aspire tocore membership or they may be formermembers of the core whose economicdevelopment has stalled or declined.Either way, such regions representsignificant elements in the world systemsince, although they are frequentlyexploited by core regions, they in turnfrequently attempt to exploit those on theperiphery of the world economy.

In some situations (such as the formerSoviet Union under communism) somesocieties could stand – at least temporarily –‘outside’ the general world system for as longas their political and economic hegemonycould be maintained over client states (thosewhich were either under occupation orwhich cleaved to the dominant state).

Weeding the pathThis type of analysis locates questions ofdevelopment and underdevelopment withina global context, in the sense that politicaland economic relationships are governed bya nation or region’s position in the globalmarketplace. In this respect, when we thinkabout how or why societies develop or fail to

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 199

200


develop we need to consider the constraintsand pressures that act on societies in thisglobal context. More specifically, worldsystems approaches see:

Capitalism as a ‘world economic system’in the sense that it is the predominant worldeconomic system and the development ofany society – core, semi-periphery orperiphery – is constrained by the need toparticipate in this economic system.

Dependency and domination are featuresof a world system and entry into the worldeconomic system is dependent on theadoption of capitalism. Dependency, in thecontemporary world, is based on a mix ofhegemonic factors, political and cultural aswell as economic – an idea we can note inrelation to a more contemporary take on thisgeneral perspective:

Complexity theories combine both aMarxist realist perspective (Urry (2002), forexample), in terms of their understanding ofsocial structures and systems, and the ideathat, in terms of the development of globalcapitalism, the focus is not just on economicinterdependencies but on a range ofadditional political and ideological factors.Dependency, for example, is not simply‘one-way’ (from the periphery to the core); ithas dimensions that relate to the behaviourof both semi-peripheral and peripherynations in terms of how their behaviourimpacts on the behaviour of core nations (inrelation to environmental policies, theconsequences of rapid industrialisation insemi-peripheral regions such as China inrecent times, and so forth.

Moving onHaving outlined some general ideas aboutthe concept of development and how it canbe theorised, in the next section we can look

more specifically at the related processes ofindustrialisation and urbanisation.

2. Development inrelation to urbanisation,industrialisation and theenvironment

Although there are arguments surroundinghow and why development occurs, anunderlying theme of most theories (there areexceptions) is that of industrialisation; that is,although there are clear theoreticaldifferences between, for example,modernisation and dependency theories,both assume that development involvessome form of industrialisation process – anot unreasonable assumption in the contextof global historical development. Thissection, therefore, explores some generalideas about industrialisation and itsrelationship to urbanisation and theenvironment.

Preparing the ground:Industrialisation andurbanisation

Industrialisation, as we’ve suggested, iscentral to a range of general theories ofdevelopment, from modernisation theoriesthat identify the process as crucial todevelopmental ‘take-off ’, through neoliberaltheories that see industrial production as themotor of development, to structural changetheories that pinpoint the move from rural-subsistence to urban-industrial as the key todevelopment and dependency/world systemsapproaches, which explore the role ofindustrialisation in relation to both nationaland international forms of capitalist

HE12903 ch03.qxp 17/10/06 15:46 Page 200

World System Theory

Documents

Transcript of World System Theory