For much of human history, all of the societies
on Earth were poor.
Poverty was the norm for everyone.
But obviously, that’s not the case anymore.
Just as you find stratification among socioeconomic
classes within a society, like the United States,
across the world you also see a pattern of
global stratification, with inequalities in wealth
and power between societies.
So what made some parts of the world develop
faster, economically speaking, than others?
[Theme Music]
How you explain the differences in socioeconomic
status among the world’s societies depends, of course,
on which paradigm you’re using to view the world.
One of the two main explanations for global
stratification is modernization theory, and it comes
from the structural-functionalist approach.
This theory frames global stratification as a
function of technological and cultural differences
between nations.
And it specifically pinpoints two historical events
that contributed to Western Europe developing at
a faster rate than much of the rest of the world.
The first event is known as the Columbian
Exchange.
This refers to the spread of goods, technology,
education, and diseases between the Americas
and Europe after Columbus’s so-called discovery
of the Americas.
And if you wanna learn more about that, we
did a whole World History episode about it.
This exchange worked out pretty well for the
European countries.
They gained agricultural staples like potatoes and
tomatoes, which contributed to population growth,
and provided new opportunities for trade, while
also strengthening the power of the merchant class.
But the Columbian Exchange worked out much less
well for Native Americans, whose populations were
ravaged by the diseases brought from Europe.
It’s estimated that in the 150 years following Columbus’
first trip, over 80% of the Native American population
died due to diseases such as smallpox and measles.
The second historical event is the Industrial
Revolution in the 18th and 19th century.
We’ve mentioned this before, and there are
a couple World History episodes that you can
check out for more detail,
but this is when new technologies like steam power
and mechanization allowed countries to replace human
labor with machines and increase productivity.
The Industrial Revolution at first only benefited
the wealthy in Western countries.
But industrial technology was so productive
that it gradually began to improve standards
of living for everyone.
Countries that industrialized in the 18th
and 19th century saw massive improvements
in their standards of living.
And countries that didn’t industrialize
lagged behind.
The thing to note here is that Modernization
Theory rests on the idea that affluence could
have happened to anyone.
But of course, it didn’t.
So why didn’t the Industrial Revolution
take hold everywhere?
Well, modernization theory argues that the
tension between tradition and technological
change is the biggest barrier to growth.
A society that’s more steeped in family systems and
traditions may be less willing to adopt new technologies,
and the new social systems that often accompany them.
Why did Europe modernize?
The answer goes back to Max Weber’s ideas
about the Protestant work ethic.
The Protestant Reformation primed Europe
to take on a progress-oriented way of life,
in which financial success was a sign of personal
virtue, and individualism replaced communalism.
This is the perfect breeding ground for modernization.
And according to American economist
Walt Rostow, modernization in the West took place
– as it always tends to – in four stages:
First, the Traditional Stage refers to societies that
are structured around small, local communities with
production typically getting done in family settings.
Because these societies have limited resources
and technology, most of their time is spent laboring to
produce food, which creates a strict social hierarchy.
Think Feudal Europe or early Chinese Dynasties.
Tradition rules how a society functions:
What your parents do is what their parents did,
and what you’ll do when you grow up too.
But as people begin to move beyond doing what’s
always been done, a society moves into Rostow’s
second stage, the Take-off Stage.
Here, people begin to use their individual
talents to produce things beyond the necessities,
and this innovation creates new markets for trade.
In turn, greater individualism takes hold,
and social status is more closely linked with
material wealth.
Next, nations begin what Rostow called the Drive
to Technological Maturity, in which technological
growth of the earlier periods begins to bear fruit,
in the form of population growth,
reductions in absolute poverty levels, and
more diverse job opportunities.
Nations in this phase typically begin to push
for social change along with economic change,
like implementing basic schooling for everyone,
and developing more democratic political systems.
The last stage is known as High Mass Consumption
– when your country is big enough that production
becomes more about wants than needs.
Many of these countries put social support
systems in place to insure that all of their
citizens have access to basic necessities.
So, the TL; DR version of Modernization Theory
is that if you invest capital in better technologies,
they’ll eventually raise production enough
that there will be more wealth to go around,
and overall well-being will go up.
And rich countries can help other countries that
are still growing by exporting their new technologies
in things like agriculture, machinery, and information
technology, as well as providing foreign aid.
But critics of Modernization Theory argue that in
many ways, it’s just a new name for the idea that
capitalism is the only way for a country to develop.
These critics point out that, even as
technology has improved throughout the world,
a lot of countries have been left behind.
And they argue that Modernization Theory sweeps
a lot of historical factors under the rug when it
explains European and North American progress.
Countries like the US and the UK industrialized
from a position of global strength, during a period
when there were no laws against slavery or
concerns about natural resource depletion.
And some critics also point out that Rostow’s
markers are inherently Eurocentric, putting
an emphasis on economic progress.
But that isn’t necessarily the only standard
to aspire to.
After all, economic progress often includes downsides,
like the environmental damage done by industrialization
and the exploitation of cheap or free labor.
Finally, critics of modernization theory also
see it as blaming the victim.
In this view, the theory essentially blames poor
countries for not being willing to accept change,
putting the fault on their cultural values and
traditions, rather than acknowledging that outside
forces might be holding back those countries.
This is where the second theory of global
stratification comes in.
Rather than focusing on what poor countries are
doing wrong, Dependency Theory theory focuses on how
poor countries have been wronged by richer nations.
This model stems from the paradigm of conflict
theory, and it argues that the prospects of both wealthy
and poor countries are inextricably linked.
This theory argues that in a world of finite
resources, we can’t understand why rich nations
are rich without realizing that those riches came
at the expense of another country being poor.
In this view, global stratification starts
with colonialism – and it’s where we’ll
start today’s Thought Bubble.
Starting in the 1500s, European explorers
spread throughout the Americas, Africa, and
Asia, claiming lands for Europe.
At one point, Great Britain’s empire covered
about one-fourth of the world.
The United States, which began as colonies themselves,
soon sprawled out through North America
and took control of Haiti, Puerto Rico,
Guam, the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands,
and parts of Panama and Cuba.
With colonialism came exploitation of both
natural and human resources.
The transatlantic slave trade followed a triangular
route between Africa, the American and Caribbean
colonies, and Europe.
Guns and factory-made goods were sent to Africa
in exchange for slaves, who were sent to the colonies
to produce goods like cotton and tobacco, which were
then sent back to Europe.
As the slave trade died down in the mid-19th century,
the point of colonialism came to be less about human
resources and more about natural resources.
But the colonial model kept going strong.
In 1870, only 10% of Africa was colonized.
But by 1940, only Ethiopia and Liberia were
not colonized.
Under colonial regimes, European countries
took control of land and raw materials to
funnel wealth back to the West.
Most colonies lasted until the 1960s, and
the last British colony, Hong Kong, was finally
granted independence in 1997.
Thanks Thought Bubble.
This history of colonialization is what inspired
American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein’s model
of what he called the Capitalist World Economy.
Wallerstein described high-income nations
as the “core” of the world economy.
This core is the manufacturing base of the planet,
where resources funnel in, to become the technology
and wealth enjoyed by the Western world today.
Low-income countries, meanwhile, are what
Wallerstein called the “periphery”, whose natural
resources and labor support the wealthier countries,
first as colonies and now by working for
multinational corporations under neocolonialism.
Middle-income countries, such as India or
Brazil, are considered the semi-periphery, due
to their closer ties to the global economic core.
In Wallerstein’s model, the periphery remains
economically dependent on the core in a number
of ways, which tend to reinforce each other.
First, poor nations tend to have few resources
to export to rich countries.
But corporations can buy these raw materials cheaply
and then process and sell them in richer nations.
As a result, the profits tend to bypass the
poor countries.
Poor countries are also more likely to lack
industrial capacity, so they have to import expensive
manufactured goods from richer nations.
And all of these unequal trade patterns lead to
poor nations owing lots of money to richer nations,
creating debt that makes it hard
to invest in their own development.
So, under Dependency Theory, the problem
is not that there isn’t enough global wealth;
it’s that we don’t distribute it well.
But just as Modernization Theory had its critics,
so does Dependency Theory.
Critics argue that the world economy isn’t
a zero-sum game – one country getting richer
doesn’t mean other countries get poorer.
And innovation and technological growth can
spill over to other countries, improving all
nations’ well-being, not just the rich.
Also, colonialism certainly left scars,
but it isn’t enough, on its own, to explain
today’s economic disparities.
Some of the poorest countries in Africa, like
Ethiopia, were never colonized and had very
little contact with richer nations.
Likewise, some former colonies, like Singapore
and Sri Lanka, now have flourishing economies.
In direct contrast to what Dependency Theory
predicts, most evidence suggests that, nowadays,
foreign investment by richer nations helps, not
hurts, poorer countries.
Dependency Theory is also very narrowly focused.
It points the finger at the capitalist market
system as the sole cause of stratification,
ignoring the role that things like culture and
political regimes play in impoverishing countries.
There’s also no solution to global poverty
that comes out of dependency theory –
most dependency theorists just urge poor
nations to cease all contact with rich nations
or argue for a kind of global socialism.
But these ideas don’t acknowledge the
reality of the modern world economy –
making them not very useful for combating the
very real, very pressing problem of global poverty.
The growth of the world economy and expansion
of world trade has coincided with rising standards
of living worldwide,
with even the poorest
nations almost tripling in the last century.
But with increased trade between countries,
trade agreements such as the North American
Free Trade Agreement
have become a major point of debate, pitting
the benefits of free trade against the costs to
jobs within a country’s borders.
Questions about how to deal with global stratification
are certainly far from settled, but I can leave you with some good news: it’s getting better.
The share of people globally living on less
than $1.25 per day has more than halved since
1981, going from 52% to 22% as of 2008.
Today we learned about two theories of global
stratification.
First, we discussed modernization theory and
Walt Rostow’s Four Stages of Modernization.
We then talked about dependency theory, the
legacy of colonialism, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s
Capitalist World Economy Model.
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