Change and Development

The Challenges of Globalism

ANTH 307
 Processes of Long-Term Cultural Change

• Bates identifies 5 general processes involved in long-term culture

change.
• These are regularities manifested over thousands of years, but they are
not inevitable nor universal.
• Still, culture change tended to go in these directions:
1. Intensification – increase the product that is derived from a unit of land or labor.
2. Specialization – increasingly limited range of production activities in which a single
individual is likely to be engaged.
3. Centralization – political power and economic decisions become concentrated in the
hands of fewer and fewer individuals or institutions.
4. Stratification and inequality – society becomes divided into groups with varying
degrees of access to resources and power
5. Settlement nucleation – tendency for nucleation or clustering of settlements of
increasing size & density.
 Individuals and innovation
• People are usually conservative
 hesitant to change ways of doing things
that appear to work.
 Pursue cheapest possible solution –
strategy that involves least possible loss
of future adaptive ability, minimum
sacrifice of flexibility.
• Entrepreneurs are willing to take
risks, break with tradition.
• Operate on boundary between
traditional and modern.
• Bates’ example is organic farming
in U.S. and its gradual acceptance
from 1970s to the 1990s.
Vive Fred Kirschenmann!
 Gender, inequality & cultural change
• “In every society gender relations are
part of a contested domain.”
• Myth of the Male Breadwinner
 Helen Safa’s study of rapid entry of
women into industrial workforce –
Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic,
Cuba.
 Some differences but in all cases:
• Effort made to diversify economies &
launch export industries.
• Net family income did not rise as many
of new jobs taken by women were
offset by jobs lost by men.
• Puerto Rican men at least had option
of migration to U.S. mainland and
sending remittances home.
 Paradigms of development
• Modernization theory – Walt
Rostow (1960), The Stages of
Economic Growth: A Non-
Communist Manifesto.
• Development process seen as
comprised of stages all countries
must pass through.
1. Traditionalism
2. Preconditions for take-off
3. Take-off Walt Whitman Rostow, economist and advisor
to U.S. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
4. Drive to maturity
5. Age of high mass consumption.
• Major problem is that 40+ years
of development assistance worth
billions of dollars has not
alleviated worldwide poverty.
 Linear stages model
• Stage 1 Traditional Society
 Characterized by subsistence economic activity –
 output is consumed by producers rather than traded
 agriculture is most important activity
 production is labor intensive, using limited quantities of capital.
• Stage 2 Transitional Stage/Preconditions for
takeoff
 Beginnings of an industrial revolution with development
of manufacturing
 surpluses for trading emerge
 emerging transport infrastructure
 entrepreneurial class emerges
 strong national government.
 Linear stages model
• Stage 3: Take Off
 Industrialization increases
 workers switch from agrarian to manufacturing jobs
 growth concentrated in a few regions of country & in one or two
industries
 society driven more by economy than tradition.
• Stage 4: Drive to Maturity
 Diversification of production supported by technological innovation
 new forms of industry emerge
 reduced poverty & rising living standards.
• Stage 5: High Mass Consumption
 Most of society lives in prosperity
 Consumers are offered both abundance and a multiplicity of
choices
 Production and consumption of durable goods as opposed to
simply subsistence concerns.
“Fallacies” of Conventional Development Theory

1. Underdevelopment is caused by one or a few

problems that can easily be fixed given “rational
policymaking”.
2. Development can be measured using one or a
few major indicators.
3. The West is always the appropriate model to
use when creating policies.
4. Economic growth itself is always a worthy goal.
5. The developing world is homogeneous.
6. Growth will occur at same rate everywhere
once conditions are optimized.
 Development
• Conventional approaches to development are top-down,
conceived on a macro-level.
• Process is centralized with decisions made at the top by
“experts”.
• In this type of view, problems such as malnutrition or
unemployment are often seen as resulting from
indigenous lifestyle.
• In reality these problems may be relatively recent – the
result of world system’s impact and the incorporation of
indigenous people into the global system.
• By contrast anthropologists are usually more aware of
local-level realities on the ground.
• They are more likely to be aware of broad spectrum
implications of development that more narrowly focused
“experts”.
 Development
• In reality the problems may be relatively
recent
 result of world system’s impact and
incorporation of indigenous people into global
system.
• By contrast anthropologists are usually
more aware of local-level realities on
ground.
• Are more likely to be aware of broad
spectrum implications of development that
more narrowly focused “experts”.
 Dependency theory
• Capitalism and Underdevelopment in
Latin America (1969).
• Poverty not caused by lack of
entrepreneurial spirit; rather by
economic and political exploitation.
• In the best interests of the West to keep
the developing world dependent –
 those countries supply raw materials and
Andre Gunder Frank
then import finished products.
• Elites in developing countries
compromise their nation’s well being
and profit in process.
• Corollary – world systems theory
associated with Immanuel Wallerstein.
Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale
University Sociologist
 World System Theory
Key assumptions:
1. Social scientists should study
wholes – world system.
2. World System is integrated
economically rather than
politically and world’s nation-
states are economically
interdependent.
3. This economic differentiation
consists of three basic categories:
a) core – developed nations of North
America & western Europe.
b) periphery – “Third” world,
underdeveloped nations (most of
Africa, large parts Latin America
and parts of Asia).
c) semi-periphery – buffer states
with more economic
opportunities for development.
(e.g., Mexico, South Africa,
Venezuela).
 Key assumptions of world system
theory

4) Internationally structured inequality is a

deeply rooted historical product.
5) Social processes in particular regions
can only be understood in terms of place
and function of those regions in the larger
world system.
 Integration of Post-Industrial World
 Multinational corporations, or MNCs;
Transnational coporations, or TNCs.
 Coca Cola, McDonalds, Nike, IBM,
Exxon/Mobil, AOL/Time Warner, Wal
Mart, etc.
 Many have operating budgets far
beyond those of most nation-states.
 Since they are not rooted in one
place, MNCs insulated from many
political and market pressures. http://www.mcdonaldsindia.net/
 North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) and European
Union (EU) facilitate global
organization of production, exchange,
consumption.
 Integration of the
Post-Industrial World
 Neoliberal paradigm implemented through
structural adjustment programs, or SAPs.
 These policies were enacted by the World
Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)
as conditions for continuance of existing loans
and the future extension of new loans.
 Involve privatization of public sector and
subsequent government downsizing.
 Many of the services that were previously
provided by governments were cut or turned
over to private enterprise.
 SAPs
 Governments of developing nations urged to:
 eliminate controls on foreign trade.

 devalue local currencies.

 dismantle domestic price controls.

 decrease government spending and

employment.
 divest themselves of productive assets and
enterprises such as railways, energy
provision, airlines, etc.
 Privatization became favorite catchphrase.