Although fieldwork in small communities has been anthropology's hallmark, isolated groups are impossible to find today (and probably never have existed).
The modern world system refers to a world in which nations are economically and politically interdependent.
The World System
The world system and the relations between the countries within it are shaped by the capitalist world economy.
The capitalist world system is a single world system committed to production for sale or exchange, with the object of maximizing profits, rather than supplying domestic needs.
Capital refers to wealth or resources invested in business, with the intent of using the means of production to make a profit.
The key claim of world-system theory is that an identifiable social system, based on wealth and power differentials, extends beyond individual countries.
According to Wallerstein, countries within the world system occupy three different positions of economic and political power: core, periphery, and semiperiphery.
The core refers to the dominant position in the world system, and includes the most powerful nations in the world.
Semiperiphery and periphery countries have less power, wealth, and influence than the core does. The semiperiphery is intermediate between the core and the periphery.
The periphery includes the world's least privileged and powerful countries.
The Emergence of the World System
During the 15th century, European exploration linked the Old and New Worlds forever and opened the way for a major exchange of people, resources, products, ideas, and diseases.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, increased demand for particular goods (e.g., sugar, cotton) in Europe fueled the development of colonial plantation economies based on single cash crops (monocrop production).
The emergence of colonial plantation economies in turn fueled the transatlantic slave trade.
The increasing dominance of international trade led to the capitalist world economy, a single world system committed to production for sale or exchange, with the object of maximizing profits rather than supplying domestic needs.
The defining attribute of capitalism is economic orientation to the world market for profit.
Industrialization
The Industrial Revolution refers to the historical transformation (in Europe, after 1750) of "traditional" into "modern" societies through industrialization of the economy.
European industrialization developed from, and eventually replaced, the domestic system of manufacture (or home-handicraft system) in which an organizer-entrepreneur supplied the raw materials to workers in their homes and collected the finished products from them.
Causes of the Industrial Revolution.
Industrialization began with particular, widely used goods—cotton products, iron, and pottery—whose manufacture could be broken down into simple routine motions that machines could perform.
When manufacturing moved from homes to factories, where machinery replaced handwork, agrarian societies evolved into industrial ones.
Industrialization fueled urban growth and created a new kind of city, with factories crowded together in places where coal and labor were cheap.
The Industrial Revolution began in England rather than in France.
The French were able to increase production by simply augmenting—rather than transforming—their domestic manufacturing system.
With a smaller population, England had to industrialize in order to meet mounting demand for staples.
A number of factors favored English industrialization: the country's natural resources; its location at the crossroads of international trade; the demand for staples from English settler families; and the Protestant beliefs and values of the emerging English middle class.
Socioeconomic Effects of Industrialization
The prosperity that resulted from industrialization was uneven.
Although factory workers initially received wages higher than those available in the domestic system, factory owners began recruiting labor in places where living standards were low and labor (including women and children) was cheap.
Many social ills accompanied industrialization, including pollution, crowded and unsanitary housing, insufficient water and sewage disposal, disease, and rising death rates.
Industrial Stratification
Marx saw socioeconomic stratification as a sharp and simple division between two opposed classes: the bourgeoisie (capitalists) and the proletariat (propertyless workers).
The bourgeoisie owned the means of production (e.g., factories, mines, large farms) and dominated the means of communication, schools, and other key institutions.
Members of the proletariat, or working class, had to sell their labor to survive.
Industrialization contributed to proletarianization—the separation of workers from the means of production.
Marx viewed classes as powerful collective forces that could mobilize human energies to influence the course of history. On the basis of their common experience, workers would develop class consciousness, which could lead to revolutionary change.
In today's capitalist world system the class division between owners and workers is now worldwide. However, publicly traded companies complicate the division between capitalists and workers in industrial nations.
Through pension plans and personal investments, some American workers, for example, now have a proprietary interest in the means of production.
Most contemporary Americans think they belong to, and claim identity with, the middle class. However, the American class system isn't as open or undifferentiated as most Americans assume it to be.
There are substantial differences in income and wealth between the riches and the poorest Americans, and the gap is widening.
In contrast to Marx's strictly economic-based view of stratification, Weber argued that there are three dimensions of social stratification: wealth, power, and prestige.
Wealth, power, and prestige tend to be correlated, even though they are separate components of social ranking.
Social identities based on ethnicity, religion, race, or nationality may take priority over class (social identity based on economic status).
Without the periphery, core capitalists would have trouble maintaining their profits and also satisfying the demands of core workers.
The current world stratification system features a substantial contrast between both capitalists and workers in the core nations and workers on the periphery.
Colonialism
World-system theory stresses the existence of a global culture and economy. It emphasizes historical contacts, linkages, and power differentials between local people and international forces.
The major forces influencing cultural interaction during the past 500 years have been commercial expansion, industrial capitalism, and the differential power of colonial and core nations.
Imperialism refers to a policy of extending the rule of a country or empire over foreign nations and of taking and holding foreign colonies.
Colonialism is the political, social, economic, and cultural domination of a territory and its people by a foreign power for an extended period of time.
Imperialism is almost as old as the state, while colonialism can be traced back even further, to 3,000 years ago.
The first modern colonialism began with the European "Age of Discovery"—of the Americas and of a sea route to the Far East.
British Colonialism
British expansion was led by a drive for profit.
At its peak about 1914, the British Empire covered a fifth of the world's land surface and ruled a fourth of its population.
The first phase of British colonialism began with the Elizabethan voyages of the 16th century, and came to a close with the American Revolution.
During its second period of colonialism, which began in 1788, Britain eventually controlled most of India, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and large portions of eastern and southern Africa.
British imperialism was justified by what Rudyard Kipling called "the white man's burden"—a paternalistic and racist doctrine asserting that native peoples in the empire were incapable of governing themselves, and thus that British guidance was needed to civilize and Christianize them.
The British Empire disintegrated after World War II, as a result of nationalist independence movements.
French Colonialism
In contrast to British expansion, French colonialism was driven more by the state, church, and armed forces than by pure business interests.
The first phase of French colonialism was focused in Canada, the Louisiana territory, the Caribbean, and parts of India.
During the second phase of French colonialism, the empire grew to include most of north and west Africa as well as Indochina.
To legitimize their colonialism, the French claimed to be engaged in a "mission civilisatrice"—a civilizing mission (equivalent to Britain's "white man's burden"), the goal of which was to spread French culture, language, and religion (Roman Catholicism) throughout the colonies.
The French used two forms of colonial rule.
Indirect rule refers to the French practice of governing through native leaders and established political structures in areas with long histories of state organization (e.g., Morocco, Tunisia).
Direct rule refers to the French practice of imposing new government structures to control diverse societies, many of them previously stateless (e.g., in many areas of Africa).
The French empire (like the British empire) began to disintegrate following World War II.
Colonialism and Identity
Whole countries, along with social groups and divisions within them, were colonial inventions.
For example, many of the modern political boundaries in West Africa are based on linguistic, political, and economic contrasts that were promoted under colonialism.
Hundreds of ethnic groups and "tribes" are colonial constructions.
Postcolonial Studies
Postcolonial studies examine the interactions between European nations and the societies they colonized (mainly after 1800).
The term postcolonial also is used to describe the second half of the 20th century, the period succeeding colonialism, as well as a position against imperialism and Eurocentrism.
The postcolonies can be divided into settler, nonsettler, and mixed.
Settler countries had large numbers of European colonists and sparser native populations (e.g., Australia, Canada).
Nonsettler countries were characterized by large native populations and relatively few Europeans (e.g., India).
Mixed countries had sizable native and European populations (e.g., South Africa).
Postcolonial studies focus on various topics, including the formation of empires, the impact of colonization, and the state of postcolonies today.
Development
An intervention philosophy is an ideological justification for outsiders to guide native peoples in specific directions.
Britain's notion of "the white man's burden" and France's "mission civilisatrice" were both intervention philosophies.
Economic development plans also have intervention philosophies.
Interventions—whether by colonialists, missionaries, governments, or development planners—are based on the belief that industrialization, modernization, Westernization, and individualism are desirable evolutionary advances and that development schemes that promote them will bring long-term benefits to local people.
Neoliberalism
One currently influential intervention philosophy is neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism is the current form of classic economic liberalism—the view (first proposed by Adam Smith) that government should not regulate private enterprise and market forces.
Especially after the fall of Communism (1989-1991), there has been a revival of economic liberalism, now known as neoliberalism, which has been spreading globally.
Neoliberalism doesn't differ much from Adam Smith's original ideal that governments should not regulate private enterprise and market forces
Neoliberalism entails tariff- and barrier-free international trade and investment. Profits are sought through lowering of costs, whether through improving productivity, laying off workers, or seeking workers who accept lower wages.
The Second World
The labels "First World," "Second World," and "Third World" represent a common, though ethnocentric, way of categorizing nations.
The First World refers to the "democratic West."
The Second World refers to the Warsaw Pact nations, including the former Soviet Union and the socialist and once-socialist countries of Eastern Europe and Asia.
The Third World refers to "less developed" or "developing" countries.
Communism
Communism, spelled with a lowercase "c," describes a social system in which property is owned by the community and in which people work for the common good.
Communism, spelled with a capital "C," was a political movement and doctrine seeking to overthrow capitalism and to establish a form of communism such as that which prevailed in the Soviet Union (1917-1991).
Communist systems were authoritarian (promoting obedience to authority rather than individual freedom), and many were totalitarian (banning rival parties and demanding total submission of the individual to the state).
Several features distinguished Communist systems from other authoritarian regimes and socialist (social democratic) societies.
In the postsocialist (i.e., post-Communist) period, states that once had planned economies have been privatizing previously state-owned resources, as well as undergoing democratization and marketization.
Today research by anthropologists is thriving in postsocialist societies—those that once emphasized bureaucratic redistribution of wealth according to a central plan.
Postsocialist Transitions
Despite attempts to reform the post-Soviet economy according to neoliberal principles, Russia has faced many problems: a declining GDP (gross domestic product), increased poverty, declining life expectancy and a lower birthrate, and corruption.
Corruption is the abuse of public office for private gain.
In postsocialist societies, what is legal and what is considered morally correct do not necessarily correspond.
The World System Today
The process of industrialization continues today, although nations have shifted their positions within the world system.
By 1900, the United States had become a core nation within the world system and had overtaken Great Britain in iron, coal, and cotton production.
Twentieth-century industrialization added hundreds of new industries and millions of new jobs. Mass production gave a rise to a culture of consumption.
Industrialization entailed a shift from reliance on renewable resources to the use of fossil fuels, which are being depleted rapidly.
The United States represents 22.5 percent of the world's annual energy consumption, compared with China's 13.4 percent, but the average American consumes 7 times the energy used by the average Chinese, and 24 times the energy used by the average inhabitant of India.
Industrial Degradation
Industrialization and factory labor now characterize many societies in Latin America, Africa, the Pacific, and Asia, with the common effect of destroying indigenous economies, ecologies, and populations.
As industrial states have conquered, annexed, and "developed" nonstates, there has been genocide on a grand scale.
Genocide refers to a deliberate policy of exterminating a group through warfare or murder. Besides warfare, the causes include foreign diseases, slavery, land grabbing, and other forms of dispossession and impoverishment.
Many native groups have been incorporated within nation-states, in which they have become ethnic minorities.
Some groups have been able to recoup their population, and to maintain their ethnic identity despite having lost their ancestral cultures to varying degrees. As the original inhabitants of their territories, they are called indigenous peoples.
Anthropology Today: Mining Giant Compatible with Sustainability Institute?
The spread of industrialization, illustrated by the mining described in this story, has contributed to the destruction of indigenous economies, ecologies, and populations.
Multinational conglomerates, along with nations such as Papua New Guinea, are repeating—at an accelerated rate—the process of resource depletion that started in Europe and the United States during the Industrial Revolution.
The context of this process of resource depletion is different today, however, given the presence of environmental watchdogs and broader general concern with the consequences of such industrial activity.
This story describes a conundrum confronting the University of Michigan: Is a firm whose operations have destroyed the landscape and livelihoods of indigenous peoples a proper advisor for an institute devoted to ecological sustainability?
