World Systems Theory

Dane Fuentes Sociology 10/19/12 World Systems Theory Immanuel Wallersteins World Systems theory is the theory of how international corporations and industrializing nations have dominated the world over the last 500 years. Wallerstein in addition takes a look at how periphery and semi-periphery nations have become dependent on core nations, due largely to their lack of varied resources and impelled by the need to survive.Wallerstein goes on to explain how colonialism has been replaced by neo-colonialism, a rude(a) form of using people, land, and resources purely for economic gain. This neo-colonialism, he claims, will pass by to a perpetuation of wealth and more strict ascribed statuses and orbicular stratification. adept way neo-colonialism is highly visible, is in the presence of sweat shops or maquiladoras. Maquiladoras are sweat shops that are owned by multinational corporations that are crude in developing and under-developed countries.These sweat-shops do not give thei r workers any rights. There is no job security, benefits, or retirement pensions. mountain work, until they can no longer work, and then perish. The worker is then replaced, perchance by his children, and the corporation moves on, never noticing the now disenfranchised worker who has to catch a new means of survival and, in his desperation, perhaps turn to crime. The IMF and World bound are two multinational corporations that also whitethorn have contributed in many ways to the massive inequality that is the global economy.These financial institutions provided aid to needy countries. However, in exchange for this aid, the IMF and World Bank asked for very strong influences in those needy countries as well as heightened interest rates on the loans themselves. The countries are then, in turn, caught in a cycle of conceding to the Banks demands and paying their national debt. Many underdeveloped countries, such(prenominal) as Ghana and The Philipines, cannot pay these debts, so i n turn, these debts grow.At the same conviction, the multinational corporations are syphoning out resources due to their influence within those countries, leaving clean-handed wastelands and poverty-stricken, disenfranchised people in their wake. Therefore, it may be seen that the multinational corporations may have sought to help these developing countries in a time of need, but in truth they were seizing an opportunity to indirectly cloud the land from under the people living on it. This forms the basis of neo-colonialism.