Chap 11 The Modern World System

DID YOU ALREADY READ CHAPTER 11?

• Show your comprehension and apply the new anthropological terms in a thoughtful response.
• Cite pages of the terms you discuss and write ideas in your own words (avoid quoting).
• Your post will count in the AMNESTY period as extra credit towards your blog/blackboard grade.
• If you continue through December consistently, you could make up all the points you missed.

I want to offer some contemporary issues about the world system that are relevant to your future as prospective elites. Read the entire post and then respond to one of the two (2) questions posed below. Reading at least 5 other comments will augment the thinking in your post.

On page 237, Kottak states:

The modern world system is cross-cut by collective identities based on ethnicity, religion, and nationality (Shannon 1996). Class conflicts tend to occur within nations, and nationalism has prevented global class solidarity, particularly of proletarians....The current world stratification system features substantial contrast between both capitalists and workers in the core nations and workers on the periphery.

In 1999, the proletariat from around the world banded together in Seattle at the international meeting of the World Trade Organization (the WTO).


World Trade Organization(WTO) the truth

Where we are today: For a glimpse of how intertwined the US economy is with other countries including core, periphery and semiperiphery nations take a look at this Fact Sheet on the WTO from the Office of the United States Trade Representive. The two page document shows the results of cases filed against other countries and the results of cases filed against the U.S. regarding free trade agreements.

QUESTION #1: Given the stratification of classes within the US and the seeming separation of those in the US from the working classes in other nations, how might global class solidarity become a reality given new technologies, new classes of US educated international students, and the desire to resist global corporate power? How might anthropological methods assist us in learning solutions that benefit everyone involved?

In a journal article published in Human Organization by Weaver, Thomas Summer 2001 we get an interesting analysis of how the modern world system works:

The world economy is made up of "commodity chains"-forward and backward connections in the processing of a commodity within and across these regions. These commodity chains encompass the exploitation of raw materials, labor, its reproduction, levels of processing, transportation, and consumption. The capitalist world-system in this context forces unequal exchange that simultaneously promotes core development and peripheral poverty and dependence (Grimes 2000:34). The collaboration of elite classes between and within core and periphery supports this transformation [italics added for emphasis].

QUESTION #2: First, determine if the country in which you were born is a core, periphery or semiperiphery nation and according to what source? As a prospective "collaborator," as a future member of the elite class, what do you imagine you will do about the "unequal exchange" between the elite and the proletarian classes? How might anthropological methods assist us in learning solutions that benefit everyone involved?

Remember: The impossible is possible. Think Paul Farmer. Think William McDonough (Ted Talkster architect who is building new cities in China). “The impossible - what nobody can do until somebody does” Could you be that somebody in your small or large way? Will you?