Development, Urbanization, Migration, and Quality of Life - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 90

comparative and technological advantage of particular ter-
ritorial sites for particular parts of the production process.”
Parts of the same product may be produced within the
same industry at the same time in different countries.
As you will see in the upcoming regional chapters,
the meaning, practice, patterns, and consequences of de-
velopment are in constant flux. What does development
mean to you? How has it changed your community or
city? Think about these things, because according to the
Chinese philosopher Hsun-tzu (300-230 BC), “Through
what is near, one understands what is far away .”
A more recent theory argues that in an interdepend-
ent world, it is essential that balance be achieved to en-
sure mutual benefits through the control of trade
between the many rich, industrialized countries that are
in the Northern Hemisphere and the many poorer, for-
mer Third World countries that are in the Southern
Hemisphere. This North-South dichotomy partitions the
world into essentially superior and inferior realms and
serves the notion of socioeconomic divergence between
the haves and have-nots. It also connotes the notion of
underdevelopment whereby the South' s lack of develop-
ment is at least partly a function of the North' is develop-
ment. Note that highly developed Australia and New
Zealand are in the Southern Hemisphere.
Y ou will remember from Chapter 1 that Immanuel
Wallerstein proposed a world systems theory whereby all
countries are inexorably connected through a global net-
work of capitalism. Of course, as we have already seen, not
all countries are equal. Neither are all regions within a
country . Although there is an endless accumulation of cap-
ital within the system, it is distributed unevenly among
many competing agents. Despite indigenous development
models, inequity between and within countries remains
apparent and is often fueled by foreign investment.
The core-periphery concept explained in Chapter 1
expresses the idea that the world comprises powerful
centers and less-powerful edges. This concept applies in
any context and at any scale. For instance, the world
could be generally portrayed as having a Northern core
and a Southern periphery . Or, in terms of Japanese in-
vestment in Asia, Japan is a core while its collective
recipient countries form a periphery .
Although China and India have fast-growing
economies and have increasing influence around the
world, they are not yet global cores. However, they are not
peripheries either. Both these countries are considered to
be semi-peripheries within the larger world system.
China, for example, imports raw materials from peripheral
African countries into its own coastal core region to man-
ufacture steel in order to construct a railroad into Tibet—

one of its peripheral regions. It also exports vast amounts
of products to the United States—the world' s primary core.
An urbanized, capital region is usually the core of its
own state, with rural areas comprising the periphery . For
example, Bangkok is Thailand' is core and Kuala Lumpur
is Malaysia' is Some countries have several regional cores.
For example, China' s Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and
Hong Kong are all cores with surrounding peripheries.
India' s Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkhata, and Chennai are simi-
lar cores. Cities also house core elite groups who hold
relatively more power than the peripheral rural popula-
tion. However, it is important to recognize that although
effective power lies with the urban elite, potential power
lies with the rural masses.
Geographer Debra Straussfogel (1997) explains that
core and periphery bracket a continuum that “represents
one horizontal level within the larger global structure.”
She describes development as a process “whereby one
structural configuration is transformed into another.” As
development alters socioeconomic spaces, restructuring
takes place at multiple levels, thereby repositioning the
country on the scale of “coreness” or “peripheryness.”

POST -DEVELOPMENT THEORY
Post-development theory holds that pigeonholing coun-
tries into Western-contrived categories is pejorative and
associated with old colonialist paternalism and racism.
Founded in “we-they” thinking, ideas of evolutionary
progression along a path toward technological achieve-
ment and democratic institutions became moral justifi-
cation for the application of Western and Northern social
and economic principles to international relationships.
These principles have one thing in common: they
begin with the notion of deprivation (judged by Western
standards) and culminate with the concept of develop-
ment incorporating measures of resource exploitation,
urbanization, industrialization, and material consump-
tion. Fraught with conflict and contradiction, such appli-
cations have long been contested by “recipient” nations.
Post-development adherents, such as Arturo Esco-
bar and Jeffrey Sachs, believe that modern development
theory is academically and politically construed. What
once was a dream has progressively turned into a night-
mare. Money and labor are directed at “problems” de-
fined and evaluated in line with pre-existing social
theory by academic “experts” in collusion with often
Western-educated politicians. Thus, development is
socially constructed. T o quote Escobar (1995):
For instead of the kingdom of abundance pro-
mised by theorists and politicians in the 1950s,