Download Series: Global Issues in Our Developing World

THE MODERN WORLD SYSTEM
ANTHROPOLOGY: CHAPTER 23
CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: CHAPTER 15
PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY: NOT PRESENT
CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
1.
Know what the world system is, who coined the term, how it originated, and its
constituent parts.
2.
Understand why the Industrial Revolution started in Britain and not France.
3.
Know how industrialization led to social stratification in western Europe. You should
also know how Marx and Weber differed in their analysis of stratification systems
associated with industrialization.
4.
Understand how the world system operates to create poverty in its periphery and how the
periphery has responded. In particular, you need to be familiar with Ong’s case study of
resistance among Malaysian factory women.
5.
Be able to identify the differences between open and closed class systems.
6.
Understand how the world system operates today. In particular you need to know what
the major forces influencing cultural interaction have been for the past 500 years. You
also need to know how the world system and industrialism have expanded at the expense
of the Third World, traditional societies, and indigenous communities.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. The Emergence of the World System
A. The world system is the result of the increasing interdependence of cultures and
ecosystems that were once relatively isolated by distance and boundaries.
B. Of particular significance to the development of the world system was the European Age
of Discovery, wherein the European sphere of influence began to be exported far beyond
its physical boundaries by means of conquest and trade.
C. Influence of the Capitalist World Economy
1. The defining attribute of capitalism is economic orientation to the world market for
profit.
2. Colonial plantation systems led to monocrop production in areas that once had diverse
subsistence bases (beginning in the seventeenth century).
3. Colonial commodities production was oriented toward the European market.
D. Wallerstein’s World System Theory
1. Wallerstein has argued that international trade has led to the creation of a capitalist world
economy in which a social system based on wealth and power differentials extends beyond
individual states.
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2. The world system is arranged according to influence: core (most dominant), to semiperiphery, to periphery (least dominant).
a. The core consists of the strongest and most powerful nations in which
technologically advanced, capital-intensive products are produced and exported to
the semiperiphery and the periphery.
b. The semiperiphery consists of industrialized Third World nations that lack the
power and economic dominance of the core nations (Brazil is a semiperiphery
nation).
c. The periphery consists of nations whose economic activities are less mechanized
and are primarily concerned with exporting raw materials and agricultural goods to
the core and semiperiphery.
II. Industrialization
A. Causes of the Industrial Revolution.
1. The Industrial Revolution transformed Europe from a domestic (home handicraft)
system to a capitalist industrial system.
2. Industrialization initially produced goods that were already widely used and in great
demand (cotton products, iron, and pottery).
3. Manufacturing shifted from homes to factories where production was large scale and
cheap.
4. Industrialization fueled a new kind of urban growth in which factories clustered
together in regions where coal and labor were cheap.
B. England and France
1. The Industrial Revolution began in England but not in France.
2. The French did not have to transform their domestic manufacturing system in order to
increase production because it could draw on a larger labor force.
3. England, however, was already operating at maximum production so that in order to
increase yields innovation was necessary.
4. Weber argued that the pervasiveness of Protestant beliefs in values contributed to the
spread and success of industrialization in England, while Catholicism inhibited
industrialization in France.
III. Stratification
A. Industrial Stratification
1. Although initially, industrialization in England raised the overall standard of living,
factory owners soon began to recruit cheap labor from among the poorest populations.
2. Marx saw this trend as an expression of a fundamental capitalist opposition: the
bourgeoisie (capitalists) versus the proletariat (propertyless workers).
3. According to Marx, the bourgeoisie owned the means of production and promoted
industrialization to maintain their position, consequently intensifying the
dispossession of the workers (a process called proletarianization).
4. Weber argued that Marx’s model was oversimplified and developed a model with
three main factors contributing to socioeconomic stratification: wealth, power, and
prestige (see previous chapter).
5. Class consciousness (Marx) is the recognition of a commonalty of interest and
identification with the other members of one’s economic stratum.
6. With considerable modification, it is recognized that a combination of the Marxian
and Weberian models may be used to describe the modern capitalist world.
7. The distinction, core-semiperiphery-periphery, is used to describe a worldwide
division of labor and capital ownership, but it is pointed out that the growing middle
class and the existence of peripheries within core nations complicate the issue beyond
the vision of Marx or Weber.
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B. Poverty on the Periphery
1. With the expansion of capitalism into the periphery, most of the local landowners
have been displaced from their land by large landowners who in turn hired the
displaced people at low wages to work the land they once owned.
2. Bangladesh is a good example of this in which British colonialism increased
stratification, as only a few landowners own most of the land.
C. Malaysian Factory Women
1. To combat rural poverty, the Malaysian government has encouraged large
international companies to set up labor-intensive manufacturing operations in rural
Malaysia.
2. Factory life contrasts sharply with the traditional customs of the rural Malaysians.
3. Aihwa Ong has studied the effect of work in Japanese electronics factories on
Malaysian women employees.
4. Severe contrasts between the work conditions and the culture of the women generate
alienation, which results in stress.
5. This stress has been manifested as possession by weretigers, which expresses the
workers’ resistance, but has as yet effected little change in the overall situation.
6. Ong argues that spirit possession is a form of rebellion and resistance that enable
factory women to avoid direct confrontation with the source of their distress.
7. Spirit possessions were not very effective at bringing about improvements in the
factory conditions, and actually they may help maintain the current conditions by
operating as a safety valve for stress.
D. Open and Closed Class Systems
1. Formalized inequalities have taken many forms, such as caste, slavery, and class
systems.
2. Caste systems are closed, hereditary systems of stratification that are often dictated by
religion (the Hindu caste systems of the Indian subcontinent are given as an example).
3. South African apartheid is given as comparable to a caste system, in that it was
ascriptive and closed through law.
4. State sanctioned slavery, wherein humans are treated as property, is the most extreme
form of legalized inequality.
5. Vertical mobility refers to the upward or downward change in a person's status.
a. Vertical mobility exists only in open class systems.
b. Open class systems are more commonly found in modern states than in archaic
states.
E. Interesting Issues: Troubles in Swooshland
1. Beginning with a segment on 48 Hours in 1996, Nike came under attack for using
sweatshop labor in Vietnam to bolster their profits in the U.S.
2. In response to the criticism, Nike adopted new labor policies with regard to wages,
working conditions, maximum hours in a workweek, and minimum age for
employment.
F. Beyond the Classroom: The Residue of Apartheid in Southern Africa.
1. During six months of travel in southern Africa, Chanelle MacNab came to see that
Afrikaners were not as bad as their stereotypes portray them.
2. She found that even though apartheid had been formally dissolved, its legacy was
found throughout southern Africa.
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IV. The World System Today
A. World system theory argues that the present-day interconnectedness of the world has
generated a global culture, wherein the trends of complementarity and specialization are
being manifested at an international level.
1. The modern world system is the product of European imperialism and colonialism.
a. Imperialism refers to a policy of extending rule of a nation or empire over foreign
nations and of taking and holding foreign colonies.
b. Colonialism refers to the political, social, economic, and cultural domination of a
territory and its people by a foreign power for an extended period of time.
2. The spread of industrialization and overconsumption has taken place from the core to
the periphery.
B. Interesting Issues: The American Periphery
1. Thomas Collins compared two counties at opposite ends of Tennessee, both of which
used to have economies dominated by agriculture and timber, but now have few
employment opportunities.
2. The population in Hill County in eastern Tennessee is mostly white and opposes labor
unions, which has attracted some Japanese companies to the county.
3. The population in Delta County in western Tennessee is mostly black and strongly
supports labor unions, which has deterred companies from setting up factories in the
county.
C. Industrial Degradation
1. The Industrial Revolution greatly accelerated the encompassment of the world by
states, all but eliminating all previous cultural adaptations.
2. Expansion of the world system is often accompanied by genocide, ethnocide, and
ecocide.
LECTURE TOPICS
1.
Until recently, the world system core has been occupied almost exclusively by Western
nations. Explain why this is so, and that this fact does not imply the superiority of
Western nations. Speculate on changes in the self-image of the West as non-Western
nations, such as Japan, are moving into the core.
2.
Discuss the cultural roots of science and the Industrial Revolution in the West.
3.
Discuss the economic basis for classes. Discuss class consciousness as it does and does
not appear in American social life. Why is it resisted here?
4.
Colonialism has played a major role in shaping the world system. Pick a particular
country or region and use it as a case study illustrating the nature and effects long-term
colonial contact had on the societies involved. Southeast Asia is particularly interesting
because there are numerous countries there, each with significantly different colonial
experiences (Vietnam-France, Indonesia-Holland, Malaysia-Britain, Thailand-never
colonized).
5.
Multinational corporations are relatively new players in the world system. The debate as
to whether they constitute a new form of colonialism is of interest, particularly since it
suggests a new shape for the system.
6.
Discuss industrial degradation in the context of the high gasoline prices and the rolling
blackouts in the United States. How are these issues to be dealt with at the global level?
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SUGGESTED FILMS
Black Harvest
1992 90 minutes
This film is the third in the series of films directed by Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson that
document some of the events during 1930s era prospecting by the Leahy brothers. In this film,
Joe Leahy, the “mixed race” son of Mick, tries to establish a coffee plantation with his
indigenous neighbors. This plantation fails due to a worldwide collapse of coffee prices, which
led to a drop in workers’ wages and to tribal warfare. Direct Cinema. Santa Monica, CA.
Social Issues of Global Importance
1995 29 minutes
This film presents the efforts of participants at the 1995 World Summit for Social Development
to alleviate poverty, establish unity, and create jobs. Speakers featured in the program include
Chilean Ambassador Juan Somavia; Jan Birket-Smith, director of Non-Governmental
Organizations for the Forum; and James Olson, director of International Programs at the United
Nations Association. From Films for the Humanities and Sciences.
Series: Fortress Europe: The Immigration Situation
2001 3-part series
60 minutes each
This series explores the increasingly restrictive immigration rules across Europe and the effort
that is being made to enforce these rules. The film incorporates case studies, archival footage,
and interviews with government officials. Titles in the series: Dying to Get In: Illegal
Immigration to the E.U.; Escape to the E.U.? Human Rights and Immigration Policy in Conflict;
One-Way Ticket to Ghana: Forced Deportation from the E.U. From Films for the Humanities
and Sciences.
An Age of Revolutions
1996 23 minutes
This film explores the role that the French and Industrial Revolutions played in the formation of
18th and 19th century Europe. From Films for the Humanities and Sciences.
Paradise Lost: Traditional Cultures at Risk
53 minutes
This film compares the life of two traditional cultures whose existence is threatened by the
spread of Western society. It presents the Nenetsi nomads of the Yamal Peninsula, Siberia, and
the Caribou Indian tribe of Canada. The Nenetsi are depicted as faring better both economically
and socially than the Caribou Indian tribe, who see the infiltration of Western conveniences as
the cause for the deterioration of their traditional culture. From Films for the Humanities and
Sciences.
Series: Our Developing World: Regional Political Geography
10-part series 30 minutes each
This series investigates global civics in a range of developing nations from all over the world.
Some of the themes discussed in the series include human rights; minority rights; health;
economic and environmental challenges and advances. Titles in the series: Central America:
Costa Rica; Central America: Cuba; South America: Brazil; South America: Paraguay; Africa:
Tunisia, Libya, Egypt; Africa: Sierra Leone, Ghana, Kenya; Africa: Tanzania, Mozambique,
Lesotho; Asia: Mongolia, China, Nepal; Asia: Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam; South Pacific-Oceania:
The Philippines, Kiribati. From Films for the Humanities and Sciences.
Series: Global Issues in Our Developing World
4 part series
30-33 minutes each
This series presents case studies that address problems and issues common to various developing
countries around the world. Each film compares a common theme in three different developing
countries. Titles in the series: Ecology and the Environment: Galapagos, Mauritania,
Madagascar; Economic Development: Colombia, Bolivia, India; Human Rights: Haiti, Turkey,
Oman; Drugs and Health: Peru, Uganda, Turkey. From Films for the Humanities and Sciences.
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The Milagro Beanfield War
1988 117 minutes
Robert Redford directed this film about an impoverished Chicano farmer and his struggle against
a wealthy land developer. Joe Mondragon leads the local farmers of Milagro, New Mexico, in a
fight to preserve their simple way of life. A commercial film by Universal Pictures.
USING THE ATLAS
Use the Chapter 23 map, Energy Consumption per Capita, to discuss the problems
associated with energy production and consumption. Use the map to show the discrepancies in
energy consumption between those countries that have the largest reserves of energy (oil, coal,
etc.) and those that use the most energy. As many of the debates that have erupted over the
causes of the two Gulf Wars have demonstrated, there is a wide range of opinions regarding the
overconsumption of energy. What role can anthropologists play in mitigating this problem and
developing strategies for sustainable development?
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