Wallerstein on World Systems - 0 views
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makes possible analytically sound comparisons between different parts of the world.
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Mike Wesch on 20 May 07This is why Wallerstein's theory gained acceptance in the anthropological community. We are interested in making sound cross-cultural comparisons.
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jcoop11 on 20 May 07I may be reading to much into the wording, but do we really want to "compare" cultures. When we talk about comparing cultures, it seems as if we are holding them to a certain standard.
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Mike Wesch on 21 May 07We are not comparing them to a standard - just trying to see the range of human possibilities - and how humans are interrelated.
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feudalism
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Three primary elements characterized feudalism: lords, vassals and fiefs; the structure of feudalism can be seen in how these three elements fit together. A lord was a noble who owned land, a vassal was a person who was granted possession of the land by the lord, and the land was known as a fief. In exchange for the fief, the vassal would provide military service to the lord. The obligations and relations between lord, vassal and fief form the basis of feudalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudal_system
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These impoverished peasants often moved to the cities, providing cheap labor essential for the growth in urban manufacturing
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Eastern Europe (especially Poland) and Latin America, exhibited characteristics of peripheral regions.
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In Latin America, the Spanish and Portuguese conquests destroyed indigenous authority structures and replaced them with weak bureaucracies under the control of these European states.
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According to Wallerstein, the semi-peripheries were exploited by the core but, as in the case of the American empires of Spain and Portugal, often were exploiters of peripheries themselves. Spain, for example, imported silver and gold from its American colonies, obtained largely through coercive labor practices, but most of this specie went to paying for manufactured goods from core countries such as England and France rather than encouraging the formation of a domestic manufacturing sector.
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Similarly, Protestants, who were often the merchants in Catholic countries, found they were targets of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church, a trans-national institution, found the development of capitalism and the strengthening of the state threatening.
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During this period, workers in Europe experienced a dramatic fall in wages.
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This powerful merchant class provided the capital necessary for the industrialization of European core states.
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With the independence of the Latin American countries, these areas as well as previously isolated zones in the interior of the American continent entered as peripheral zones in the world economy. Asia and Africa entered the system in the nineteenth century as peripheral zones.
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the core enriched itself at the expense of the peripheral economies. This, of course, did not mean either that everybody in the periphery became poorer or that all citizens of the core regions became wealthier as a result.
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Wallerstein asserts that an analysis of the history of the capitalist world system shows that it has brought about a skewed development in which economic and social disparities between sections of the world economy have increased rather than provided prosperity for all.
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This was the first time that an economic system encompassed much of the world with links that superseded national or other political boundaries