Expert answer:Individual Assignment is the working link, and the other files are the contents that need to be read for answering the questions. (you do not need to answer any questions other then in the working link)Please include more details in the answers.Here are some more info for the questions (they are required in order to answer the questions)You will receive an incomplete grade (zero) for minimalist submissions or submissions which do not demonstrate understanding and thorough explanation of the concepts, or which simply copy and paste from the assigned reading.In each of the answers, you should apply facts about commodity chains to illustrate the concepts. Don’t generalize about countries in the zones, but refer to workers, businesses, and states of the different zonesyou may need…Watch video,read the PDF “supply and demand and proximate and Ultimate”,read “Read and View: Unequal Exchange in Commodity Chains” doc.read “Modern Society”View the PPT Modern Societywatch video look African Exploiitation NYT interactive: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/12/14/worl… and this video for the mega city question
link__individual_assignment__modern_society.docx
modern_society.docx
read_and_view.docx
111_modernsociety.2017.pptx
supplyanddemandconceptsproximateandultimateanswers.pdf
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Individual Assignment
Modern Society
●
You will receive an incomplete grade (zero) for minimalist submissions or submissions which do not
demonstrate understanding and thorough explanation of the concepts, or which simply copy and paste
from the assigned reading.
●
In each of the answers, you should apply facts about commodity chains to illustrate the concepts.
Don’t generalize about countries in the zones, but refer to workers, businesses, and states of the
different zones
1. Describe modern society’s economy:
the division of labor (the three zones),
and how they are interdependent. Don’t
generalize about entire countries in a
zone, but refer to the skill of workers in a
zone, the level of technology and
profitability of the businesses of a zone,
and the power or weakness of the states
of a zone. Include the concept of
commodity chains to demonstrate the
division of labor.
2. First,describe the concept of “unequal
exchange” according to the reading in
the module. Then explain unequal
exchange in commodity chains to explain
wealth transfer. Consider the price of
particular goods sold or used in core
zones if those goods had been sourced in
a core zone country. Finally, include a
clear explanation of Ghandi’s argument to
demonstrate you understand unequal
exchange.
3. APPLY the concept of unequal
exchange in EACH of the videos:
(1) tea,
(2) mega-cities
(3a and 3b) Africa’s exploitation (NYT
“Paradox of Plenty”), any two examples
(1):
(2):
(3a):
(3b):
Modern Society: Introduction
Modern society in historical context: world-systems, mini-systems
In human history, there have existed only a few types of societies. These fall into two
general categories: world-systems and mini-systems. For most of human history,
humans lived in mini-systems. Mini-systems included bands, tribes, and
chiefdoms. These were small-scale societies, with each tending to have one language,
religion, and ethnicity. None had governments or writing. Around 6000 years ago, the
first “world-systems” began to form out of chiefdoms that had expanded. Worldsystems were large enough to contain multiple religions, languages, and ethnic groups,
hence they were “worldly” (cosmopolitan). Thus, the term “world” of “world-system”
refers to the multicultural aspect of these large societies. None covered the world
(globe).
All of the past world-systems were agrarian states. Most people were peasant farmers
who were forced to give part of their crops to rulers as a tax. Rulers got enough croptax to establish the first governments (agrarian states). Agrarian states were societies
with one government (unlike modern society). The largest included the Roman empire,
Mongol empire, Chinese empire, and Inca empire. Because they had just one
government that ruled over an extended area, they are also called “empires.” Thus, the
term “empire” or agrarian state refers to a single-state society in which a government
collected taxes in the form of agricultural and artisan goods and got free labor from
villagers and townspeople, and slaves, across a large territory. The rulers used the
collected wealth to enrich themselves directly but also to (1) sustain their armies and
employee tax collectors, engineers, religious authorities and scribes, and (2) to feed
urban laborers and artisans who made weapons, tools, and built roads, palaces,
fortifications, canals, aqueducts, pyramids, etc. Notice that they created a division of
labor.
Most goods and services were not bought and sold in markets or traded, but
expropriated by the government and distributed to other workers. The government’s
collection of the rural agrarian surplus and then the distribution of that surplus to urban
people integrated rural and urban people into a regional world-economy. (Again the
term “world” here doesn’t mean globe, but refers to a multi-cultural “society.”) The
boundary of the society therefore was the boundary of the area that the government
ruled and established an integrated rural-urban world-economy. Many agrarian worldsystems arose and declined between 6000 years ago and 500 years ago.
Then around 1200-1350, the modern world-system formed. It is “modern” not because
it had more sophisticated technology (it didn’t at first). The term “modern” refers to it
being the latest world-system to form on the planet. But the modern world-system is
unique because it is not an agrarian state. It is the first capitalist system and it has
many states. It’s also unique because it is the only world-system to have grown in size
to cover the entire planet. These two aspects, (1) having many states and (2) being a
capitalist world-system explain why it is the first world-system to expand to global size.
The modern world-system began to expand dramatically from 1492 and eventually
covered the entire planet by 1900. It’s expansion caused the collapse of all other worldsystems and most mini-systems. None are left today; there is only one society on the
planet. (There are still some isolated people who resemble band and tribal societies of
the past, but in fact they are not separate societies because they have become citizens
of countries, are urbanizing rapidly, are in conflict with farmers and companies
encroaching on their traditional homelands. All of the few isolated peoples that remain
on the planet live in one country or another, often seek government protection, and thus
have become minority ethnic groups of the country they live in.)
No society has ever expanded to conquer other continents, yet alone the entire
globe. There are two differences that account for modern society’s unique
expansion. First, modern world-system has a capitalist world-economy. Most
production comes from privately run enterprises that exist to ceaselesslyaccumulate
profits (capital). In contrast, in the agrarian states most production was directly taken
from peasant farmers and redistributed by a government. Second, unlike agrarian
world-systems, the modern capitalist world-system does not have one government and
is not an “empire” — it has multiple governments (countries / states) which combined
from a single unified political system which we call the “interstate system.” Every
country is part of the interstate system, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
The term “capitalism” is an encompassing reference to these two defining institutions of
the modern world-system (modern society): (1) the capitalist world-economy and (2)
the interstate system. These institutions are two sides of same coin, meaning that they
are not separate things at all, but actually create and sustain each other and give rise to
the unusual logic of the modern world-systems expansion across the planet.
The Logic of Capitalism
The logic of capitalism, which accounts for the unusual expansion of modern society,
starts with the relationship between any government and the companies in that
country. Most governments seek to help companies in their country do better than the
companies in other countries that they compete with. That is the basic logic of
capitalism. And it can be very ruthless, involving wars among
countries. Governments try to help their capitalists and enterprises do better than
enterprises in other countries in many ways, ranging from government
subsidies, imposition of taxes on imports (tariffs) or quotas (limits on imports), trade
deals like NAFTA, diplomacy, but also outright war and invasion.
But why? How do governments benefit if capitalists within prosper? The answer is that
the success of companies in a country greatly benefits the government. The more
wealth that enterprises in a country make, the more tax revenues the government will
bring in. Governments aren’t trying to get rich. The reason they want more in revenues
is to increase their political and military power over other states. But the reason for this
is primarily to help domestic capitalists prosper further.
The basic logic of their interdependence is circular: a government relies on domestic
companies for tax revenues. So governments want companies to grow so they provide
more tax wealth to expand the state’s military and influence. In turn, companies rely on
the state’s military and influence to help it grow and prosper over enterprises in other
countries that they compete with. When companies prosper, the government gets more
in tax revenues even without raising tax rates. With more tax revenues, a government
can expend its military forces and also provide cheaper financing to domestic capitalists
(e.g. the federal interest rate). In other words, states use the tax revenues they get from
companies to help companies grow over companies in other countries. The more
successful and powerful a state is, the more its capitalists grow. In turn, the more that
companies are successful, the more tax revenues they provide and the more the state
becomes powerful.
Government forces play the fundamental role of securing capitalists’ investments from
potential invaders and protecting their investments abroad and protecting the flows of
goods in commodity chains. The constant competition among governments to build
ever stronger and sophisticated military forces is an essential feature of capitalism and
explains several realities of modern society:
•
•
•
a never-ending arms race over the past 500-700 years
the military industry leading technological and innovation
wars of greater and greater scale and destructive force
In competition with each other, governments also used military forces to expand their
control over new territories. Thus, countries and companies competed to conquer and
colonize new territories beginning in the late 1400s. The logic of capitalism (the relation
between a governments and domestic enterprises) is what explains why the modern
world-system is the first society ever to expand globally.
States Legalize the Capitalist World-Economy
States play an even more fundamental political role in their relationship
with companies. They make private enterprises legal and allow them to
exist. Specifically, governments create laws that allow capitalists to purchase people’s
labor and resources and manufacture goods and services undemocratically, that is,
without requiring that those enterprises be run democratically. Citizens in many
countries have democratic rights of representation in government. Many countries do
not. But even in countries with democratic governments, the workers have no
democratic rights to representation in workplaces, whether private enterprises
or government enterprises. This is the result of laws that governments create that
prioritize private property rights over democratic rights in workplaces. On a society-wide
scale, international private property rights are what make the capitalist world-economy
possible. Capitalism is as much a legal and political system involving government and
lawyers as it is an economic system involving producers and workers. This is another
deeper reason why the interstate system and the capitalist world-economy are mutually
forming sides of one coin (the modern world-system).
The Interstate System
While there is never-ending competition and periodic conflict among countries, there is
also basic cooperation. Without basic cooperation, the interstate system would fall
apart and global commodity chains would not last long. Governments cooperate in very
fundamental ways that make the existence of each possible. Most fundamentally,
states cooperate to establish and maintain their shared borders.
Their mutual recognition of each other’s territories means that all the governments of the
interstate system give each other the political right to govern the people within each
country’s defined territory. That is, each country gets “sovereignty.” Sovereignty
means the right of a government to govern in a territory without outside influence of
other governments, enterprises, etc.
Sovereignty is an essential feature of the interstate system of modern society; it
defines the right of governments to govern inside the specified boundaries and, by the
same token, sovereignty means that other governments do not have the right to govern
in other countries. Modern sovereignty was developed in Europe when the system
began to emerge in the 1200-1400 period. Governments of the Italian city-states
established a system of diplomatic ambassadors in each others’ territories to avoid
warfare. They developed agreements and treaties that form an international legal
system. This system has continued to the present. But keeping the expansion logic of
capitalism in mind, when modern society expanded to the New World and the European
governments conquered the native Americans, they necessarily denied sovereignty
rights to the areas and people that they colonized. To colonize and conquer is to deny
sovereignty rights to those who are conquered.
A colony therefore is not a sovereign territory. It’s just the opposite. It’s a territory that
a powerful country rules. But sometimes powerful countries can also control the
governments of another country without colonizing it. That’s known as
“imperialism.” More specifically, a government of a country with vast military power
can send its military forces abroad, invade and overthrow the government of a country,
and then install a government that it prefers. In fact, for most of the history of the
modern world-system, only some countries have had real sovereignty. Powerful
countries have rather frequently invaded weaker ones and toppled their governments.
Today modern society is composed of very few colonies and mostly sovereign
states. Nevertheless, most states don’t have much power and are dominated by
powerful a few states. This situation developed during two waves of conquest by the
European states. First Europeans colonized the so-called New World continent
between 1492-1650. But then the colonies of the Americas, from French Quebec to the
Spanish south, revolted and became sovereign “independent” states between 17761830. Then the old European states, and some of the new American countries,
including the United States, started a second wave of global conquest and colonization
of the world. The Europeans colonized Africa in the late 1800s, and the US colonized
the rest of the American continent, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Hawaii, and
the Philippines. The two videos, “The Scramble for Africa,” and “Guns, Germs, and
Steel: Into the Tropics” cover this development and provides some insight as to how
Africa became impoverished (a peripheral zone) of the capitalist world-economy while
Europeans became even wealthier.
The text and the PowerPoint provides a brief history of colonization and the interstate
system and then covers the functions of states. Your text and the PowerPoint explain
the six basic functions of governments, and how multinational or international
corporations have become in many cases more wealthy and powerful than many
countries. Corporations have an agenda: to find and exploit the cheapest resources
and sell in markets across the world. They have great influence on governments across
the planet and engage in a type of exploitation known as “neo-colonialism,” which is a
new form of imperialism. A very different kind of change has been the rise of
democracy, first in the wealthy countries when people began to demand the right to a
say in government. But democracy has spread to a number of poorer countries,
certainly not all. Here to we see a larger pattern of global movements and struggles by
people for basic rights, including equality.
The Formation of Modern Society
As you learned from studying commodity chains, people in different countries make
different contributions to the completed production of goods and services. In the Gap
sweat shirt example, some girls in Uzbekistan produced raw cotton, workers in Korea
wove the raw cotton in to fabric, and women in Russia provided cheap labor to sew the
fabric into sweat shirts. There is an overall pattern in the world-economy where some
companies in some countries contribute the most profitable goods and services in these
“global assembly lines,” while companies and workers in other countries are stuck with
the least profitable goods and services. Apple makes more profit from designing the
iPhone and providing digital content, than do factories in China make manufacturing the
iPhone, or companies in Africa or Asia make in mining the raw minerals that go into the
iPhone, as in seen in Conflict Minerals video.
The differences in technology and what companies and workers contribute in these
commodity chains are what result in rich and poor countries. Those countries whose
companies became engaged in the higher-tech and more capital-intensive activities
became the wealthier countries. In contrast, those countries that got stuck with the less
profitable activities of the world-economy became poorer countries. The countries that
are rich today, were not rich to start. Likewise, the countries that are poor today were
not poor to start with. But as some countries colonized other areas of the planet, they
came to control the profitable activities and became rich. The countries that they
colonized became stuck producing the lower-tech activities, namly supplying the rich
countries with raw materials and cheap labor, and as a result, became poor.
Now we can finally grasp the historical origins of commodity chains and the three zones:
•
the “core zones” composed of a few countries whose companies control the most
high-tech / high-profit activities
•
the “semiperipheral zones” which are composed of countries whose companies
engage in a mix of high and low-profit activities
•
the “peripheral zones,” which are composed of many countries whose companies
and people, are stuck with the lowest-tech and lowest profit activities
The three zones of modern society began to formed in the 1200s within
Europe. Southern Europe, including the Italian city-states was a core zone at the time,
Western Europe was a semi-peripheral zone, and Eastern Europe was a peripheral
zone. But starting in 1492, this new capitalist society underwent a dramatic wave of
expansion and colonized the New World (Americas), and later the rest of the planet in
the second great wave of expansion and colonization, as described above.
Between 1850-1900, the European governments agreed to systematically divided up
Africa and the Eurasian continent and as they colonized, they destroyed many societies
and incorporated people into colonial governments and into new commodity
chains. See for example the item in the module titled, “African Exploitation NYT
interactive.” With few exceptions, the semiperipheral and peripheral zone countries
today were all previously colonies of the European countries. The goal of each was to
help its capitalists expand over the capitalists in the other countries. In the process, the
governments and corporations extended the world-economy to these newly colonized
areas in Africa and Asia. And the activities in the colonies was, again, invariably lowtech and low-skilled, low-profit.
The PowerPoint focuses on the first wave of expansion and explains the division of
labor that Europeans created in the Americas. It covers how, for instance, Europeans
transferred low-tech agriculture to the Americas and how colonists created a vast
peripheral zone by using cheap labor to produce goods like coffee, cotton, hemp
(cannabis) for canvas, rice, rum, sugar, etc. Crops like coffee, sugar, and rice that did
not exist in the Americas, along with horses and cattle, and slaves, were transferred by
Europeans to the Americas. After being transferred, slaves and farm workers produced
the coffee, sugar, rum, rice, etc. with slave labor that Europeans shipped to Europe and
elsewhere for sale. While plantation owners in the peripheral zones made great profits,
those profits were not comparable to the profits made by Europeans bankers, insurance
…
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