HIST363: Global Perspectives on Industrialization

In 1979, Immanuel Wallerstein published 'The Capitalist World-Economy', building on a number of theories running counter to prevailing liberal ideas, including Marxism and development theory. The book describes what came to be known as world-systems theory, which transforms dependency theory from something that can be applied to individual countries into a perspective on how the world as a single social and economic system functions. Wallerstein broke down the world into two main zones broadly aligned to the Global North and Global South – the core and the periphery. Wallerstein argues that core nations force periphery nations to sell their natural resources to the core by exploiting market power as a kind of neocolonialism; as dependency theory describes, the core than adds economic value by manufacturing higher-value goods to sell back to the periphery. Because colonialism has robbed the periphery of its ability to innovate and develop secondary sector economic activity independent of the core, this system perpetuates poverty in the periphery, while inequality between the two global zones grows ever-wider.