Unequal exchange and the evolution of the world system: reconsidering the impact of trade on North-South relations

1988 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 495-496
Author(s):  
Isabelle van Notten
Keyword(s):  
World System ◽  
Unequal Exchange ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact

scholarly journals Critiques of World-Systems Analysis and Alternatives: Unequal Exchange and Three Forms of Class and Struggle in the Japan–US Silk Network, 1880–1890

2002 ◽  
pp. 150-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elson E. Boles
Keyword(s):  
System Analysis ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
World System ◽  
World Market ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Wage Labor ◽  
Global Inequality ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Unequal Exchange ◽  
The World

Sympathetic critics of world-system analysis contend that its systemic level of abstraction results in one-sided generalizations of systemic change. Unequal exchange theory and commodity chain analysis similarly reduce distinct and historical forms of labor and their interrelationships to common functional and ahistorical essences. This paper applies an incorporated comparisons method to give historical content to an understanding of unequal exchange and global inequality through a study of the Japan–US silk network’s formation and change during the mid 1880–1890s. Analysis of unequal exchange processes requires, in this case, an examination of the mutual integration and transformation of distinct labor and value forms —peasant sericulture, ?lature wage-labor, and industrial silk factory wage-labor—and the infundibular market forces they structured. These relations were decisively conditioned by new landlordism and debt-peonage, class-patriarchy, state mediations, migration, and by peasant and worker struggles against deteriorating conditions. Indeed, the transitional nature of the silk network’s formation, which concluded the Tokugawa system and decisively contributed to Japan’s emergence as a nation-state of the capitalist world-economy, was signi?ed by the very last millenarian and quasi-modern peasant uprising in 1884 among indebted sericulturists, the very ?rst recorded factory strikes in 1885–86, by women raw silk reelers in K?fu, and by strikes among unionizing workers in patriarchal and mechanized silk factories in Paterson, New Jersey, 1885–86 (Boles 1996, 1998). The “local” conditions of each con?ict were molded by the interdependence of those conditions that constituted a formative part of the world-system and its development. In the face of struggles and intensifying world-market competition, Japanese and US manufacturers took opposite spatial strategies of regional expansion to overcome the structural constraints of existing labor forms and relations. Analysis of the silk network permits the interconnections among seemingly disparate events and forms of collective protest within historical networks to be understood, revealing the world-historical dimensions of local developments and, conversely, the local faces of global inequality.

Urban Class and Communal Consciousness in Colonial Punjab: The Genesis of India's Intermediate Regime

1984 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard G. Fox
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Third World ◽  
World System ◽  
Intermediate Regime ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Core ◽  
Unequal Exchange ◽  
The World ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
The Third World

A cornerstone of Wallerstein's (1974) theory of the capitalist world system is that economic development occurs in certain (core) regions of the world system at the expense of development in other (peripheral) regions. This thesis, accepted in one form or another by scholars following a dependency, neo-Marxist, or unequal exchange conception of economic development (as, for example, Amin 1976 or Laclau 1971; see discussion in Foster-Carter 1973 and Kahn 1980: 203ff) provides the foundation for their avowal of the ‘development of underdevelopment.’ The development of the core industrial capitalist nations required, so they argue, the distorted and repressed economic development of the third world.

WORLD-SYSTEM ANALYSIS AND REGIONAL CONFLICTS

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
V.N. DAVYDOV ◽  
A.K. JORGE ◽  
A. IDRIS
Keyword(s):  
System Analysis ◽  
World System ◽  
The Political ◽  
African History ◽  
Unequal Exchange ◽  
Regional Conflicts ◽  
Regional Projection ◽  
The World ◽  
Significant Research

The article deals with some key problems of relations between the world centers of power and the periphery, to which as African history and today situation show the political centers of successful civilizations transfer their own problems and difficulties: from harmful industries to unequal exchange of goods. Attempts by the outsiders of progress to oppose the expansion cause a tough reaction from the civilization nuclei. According to the authors, I. Wallersteins worldsystem analysis has a significant research potential to study and block the conflictogenic factors of the regional projection.

scholarly journals Breaking Ships in the World-System: An Analysis of Two Ship Breaking Capitals, Alang-Sosiya, India and Chittagong, Bangladesh

2015 ◽  
pp. 25-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Scott Frey
Keyword(s):  
Specific Problem ◽  
World System ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Unequal Exchange ◽  
Production Processes ◽  
The World ◽  
Ship Breaking ◽  
Ecological Unequal Exchange

Centrality in the world-system allows countries to externalize their hazards or environmental harms on others. Core countries, for instance, dump heavy metals and greenhouse gases into the global sinks, and some of the core's hazardous products, production processes and wastes are displaced to the (semi) peripheral zones of the world-system. Since few (semi) peripheral countries have the ability to assess and manage the risks associated with such hazards, the transfer of core hazards to the (semi) periphery has adverse environmental and socio-economic consequences for many of these countries and it has spawned conflict and resistance, as well as a variety of other responses. Most discussions of this risk globalization problem have failed to situate it firmly in the world-system frame emphasizing the process of ecological unequal exchange. Using secondary sources, I begin such a discussion by examining the specific problem of ship breaking (recycling core-based ocean going vessels for steel and other materials) at the yards in Alang-Sosiya, India and Chittagong, Bangladesh. Attention centers on the nature and scope of ship breaking in these two locations, major drivers operating in the world-system, adverse consequences, the unequal mix of costs and benefits, and the failure of existing political responses at the domestic and international levels to reduce adequately the adverse consequences of ship breaking.

Intensity of food deprivation: The integrative impacts of the world system, modernization, conflict, militarization and the environment

2011 ◽  
Vol 52 (6) ◽  
pp. 478-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward L Kick ◽  
Laura A McKinney ◽  
Gretchen H Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Food Deprivation ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
World System ◽  
Military Spending ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
The World ◽  
Military Expenditures ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cross National

US and world military expenditures have increased dramatically in the last decade. Some cross-national treatments identify positive impacts of military spending on a range of domestic outcomes, while many others point to the converse. We review the literature and then focus on under examined relationships, including the impact of military expenditures on the intensity of food deprivation worldwide. We employ a structural equation modeling technique that permits synthetic analyses of direct and indirect impacts of a range of factors specified by the theories. We find world-system context indirectly matters a great deal to the intensity of food deprivation in nations, both in our sample of developed and developing nations, and of developing countries only. So do intra-national and international conflicts, especially insofar as they impact national modernization and military spending. While modernization is moderately enhanced by military spending for our cross-national sample of developed and developing countries, it is not for the sample of developing countries only. This may point to military technology’s spill over effects on other sectors of the economy, but solely for developed nations. For the world over, national modernization, itself a consequence of global power and dependency, directly reduces the intensity of food deprivation, while military expenditures directly heighten it. These differential relationships lead us to advocate for a more synthetic theorizing in studies of food security and hunger, while accounting for global circumstances that produce both similar and different consequences in richer and poorer countries.

scholarly journals Power and Politics in the World-System

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-287
Author(s):  
Jamie M. Sommer ◽  
Andrew Hargrove
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Co2 Emissions ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
World System ◽  
External Constraints ◽  
The World ◽  
Mitigate Climate Change ◽  
Fixed Effects Regression ◽  
The Impact

While various researchers and practitioners agree that it will be hard to restructure our current global and local systems to adapt to and mitigate climate change, there is unsurprisingly great disagreement in how and if this can be accomplished and on what level(s), or if this is even what needs to be accomplished. These conversations have continued with the introduction of the “Anthropocene.” The dominant interpretation of the concept poses several solutions, one being national government restructuring to support environmental efforts and encouraging behavioral change. To join conversations that critically evaluate the conceptualization and implications of the Anthropocene with the world-systems perspective, we consider how the effectiveness of national environmental governance in reducing CO2 emissions varies by a country’s position in the global hierarchy. Using two-way fixed effects regression, this article tests how one aspect of this environmental governance, environmentally related taxes as a percentage of total tax revenue impacts CO2 emissions for 75 countries from 2000 to 2011. Given inequities in the global division of labor, which reinforce the dominance of higher-income countries and the exploitation of lower-income countries, we expect the effectiveness of environmental governance to vary tremendously by global position. Our results support the idea that the impact of environmental governance on CO2 emissions varies across countries at different income levels in the world-system, and this is due to external constraints. Such external influence is unsurprisingly neglected in dominant interpretations of the Anthropocene. In line with previous critical research, we argue that these external constraints undermine climate change solutions because they fail to address mutually reinforcing global, political, economic, and environmental inequalities.

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