Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 8.9
Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday After-
noon on the Island of La Grande
Jatte by Georges Pierre Seurat
hangs in the Art Institute of
Chicago.
© Bridgeman Art Library/
SUPERSTOCK.
Political geographers took note of one sociologist's
theory of the world economy and added much to it. Build-
ing on the work of Immanuel Wallerstein, proponents of
world-systems theory
view the world as much more than
the sum total of the world's states. Much like a pointillist
painting, world-systems theorists hold that to understand
any state, we must also understand its spatial and func-
tional relationships within the world economy.
Wallerstein's publications number in the hundreds,
and the political and economic geography publications
tied to world-systems theory number in the thousands. To
simplify the research, we can study the three basic tenets
of world-systems theory, as Wallerstein defi nes them:
1. The world economy has one market and a global
division of labor.
2. Although the world has multiple states, almost every-
thing takes place within the context of the world
economy.
3. The world economy has a three-tier structure.
According to Wallerstein, the development of a
world economy began with capitalist exchange around
1450 and encompassed the globe by 1900.
Capitalism
means that in the world economy, individuals, corpora-
tions, and states produce goods and services that are
exchanged for profi t. To generate a profi t, producers seek
the cheapest production and costs. Since labor (including
salaries and benefi ts) is now often the most expensive of
these production costs, corporations often seek to move
production of a good from, for example, North Carolina
to Mexico and then to China, simply to take advantage
of cheaper labor. In addition to the world labor supply,
producers gain profi t by commodifying whatever they
can.
Commodifi cation
is the process of placing a price
on a good, service, or idea and then buying, selling, and
trading that item. Companies create new products, gen-
erate new twists on old products, and create demand for
the products through marketing. As children, none of the
authors of this topic could have imagined buying a bottle
of water. Now, the sale of water in bottles is commonplace.
Second, despite the existence of approximately 200
states, everything takes place within the context of the
world economy (and has since 1900). Colonialism played
a major role in establishing this system by exporting the
European state idea and facilitating the construction of an
interdependent global economy. When colonies became
independent, gaining the legal status of sovereign states
was relatively easy for most colonies. The United Nations
Charter even set up a committee to help colonies do so
after World War II. But gaining true economic indepen-
dence is all but impossible. The economies of the world
are tied together, generating intended and unintended
consequences that fundamentally change places.
Lastly, world-systems theorists see the world econ-
omy as a three-tiered structure: the core, periphery, and
semiperiphery. The
core
and the periphery are not just
places but the sites where particular processes take place.
The core is where one is most likely to fi nd higher levels
of education, higher salaries, and more technology—core
processes that generate more wealth in the world econ-
omy. The
periphery
more commonly has lower levels of
education, lower salaries, and less technology—peripheral
processes associated with a more marginal position in the
world economy.
