Powerful Categories Structure In Global Society Discussion (Essay Sample)

DISTRIBUTION OF LABOUR ALLOWS POWERFUL CATEGORIES STRUCTURE IN GLOBAL SOCIETY
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Introduction
The world has become highly stratified regarding skills, productions style, economic structure, and political formation of various countries. For a better understanding of the social-economic stratification, a world system theory can be used. Global system perspective is a multidisciplinary and macro approach to analyzing the world’s history and social changes based on the systems of the world as the foundation of the social structure (Chase-Dunn, and Hall, 2016). On the other hand, global system is the beyond borders division of labor that divides the world into three job categories including, periphery countries, core countries, and semi-periphery countries. The paper will discuss how the distribution of labor allows great group structure in the international social system. Yes, the division of labor creates robust stratification in the global society by dividing the world into categories depending on their employment strengths.
Levels Of Global Economic Stratification
* Core Countries (Upper Class Economies)
According to world system theory, the first stratification due to division of labor is the core countries. Core nations are those that focus on the highest skills, productions are capital intensive, while the remaining part of the world concentrates on the low-skilled workforce, production is labor intensive, and majorly extraction of raw materials is the core activity (Chase-Dunn, and Hall, 2016). When the world is grouped in this manner, some countries get more dominance over the others. For example, if a country can train a highly skilled workforce, the state would command a lot of power at the expense of other nations that are not able to produce highly skilled workers. Typically, those countries with experienced people command a lot of respect and power since they keep the core competencies in production. The example of countries in the primary country group includes China, the US, the UK, and the Netherlands (Cohn, 2016). These countries have characteristically made huge strides concerning technology and information. Therefore, the countries are powerful since most of the goods and services they produce are premium products. But for these nations to have power over others, they must have individual components to enable them to get ahead of the pack.
Characteristics Of Core Economies
The power comes from first the technological know-how. Due to advanced technology, core countries can enhance their production methods where goods produced not only are of high quality but are also standardized to avoid waste (Staeheli, 2016). Besides, technology gives these countries powers because through technology, and they can train quality personnel who can handle complex assignments. Two, core countries are powerful because their workers efficiently use machines in production. Unlike other countries where production is labor intense, in core countries, production is mechanized. Mechanization leads to more quantity of goods into the economy meaning the population gets more than they demand (Cohn, 2016). Thus the surplus goods are exported to the semi-periphery nation and periphery countries to earn foreign exchange. In a nutshell, the division of labor has created a section of the world that is characterized by many features such as one, economic diversification and rich in resources, both military and economic power, specialization in finance, information, and other industrial services (Staeheli, 2016). The core nations are powerful because their central governments are stronger with large bureaucracies and powerful militaries, they are highly industrialized with specialization in manufactured goods. Besides, the core nations are independent of foreign control and have a strong tax base to sustain their economy.
* Semi-Periphery (Middle-class Economies)
Second, a division of labor creates semi-periphery countries. According to systems view, these nations are the middle class between core nations and periphery countries. While at the level of semi-periphery, the countries aim at not falling the periphery nations and focus on joining the high core countries category (Cohn, 2016). As such, the countries in this group use the protectionist policies aggressively. In fact, they tend to become industrialized and expand their economies. In the modern world, they are called the emerging markets which are developed and have diversified economies that are not dominant in the international markets (Cohn, 2016). Although they are not as powerful as the core countries, the semi-periphery nations have relatively stronger than the periphery countries where they export most of their goods and services. Further, since they have relative technological advancement and competitive economies, they are not subject to external controls. Their governments are stable with relatively large military to support and protect its boundaries and at times exercise their power over periphery countries (Staeheli, 2016). In this regard, the semi-economies are a bridge between core countries and periphery nations. In other words, for core countries to get to periphery countries they have to go through mid-economies and the periphery countries get pressure from core countries deflected by the mid economies before the pressure gets to them (O'brien, and Williams, 2016). However, this may only be true in theory since very often, core countries can get out of their way and negotiate directly with the periphery nations.
Characteristics of middle-class economies
The characteristics of mid-economies include one; they have competitive markets that strive to join the upper class but at the same time work hard not to go back the lower class economy (O'brien, and Williams, 2016). Two, they are relatively semi-skilled workforce where production is not entirely machine intensive. The semi-economies export majorly to periphery markets since they can produce relatively higher goods than what their populations can consume. The middle-class economies have proper government structures that can control its bureaucracies with its regions, but its influence cannot go beyond the international scope (O'brien, and Williams, 2016). The semi-periphery economies come into existence from developing lower class and from the under developing core economies. For example, in Latin America, Spain, and Portugal that were at point core countries fell into semi-periphery categories with the same level of influence (Helland, and Lindgren, 2016). Typical of the two nations is that they were the great exporter of gold and silver from their colonies, but most the experts were used to buy finished goods from the core countries including England and France; hence they remained in the middle-class group. Thanks to technology and the industrial revolution, many nations are joining the semi-periphery level. Some of them include Russia, Brazil, South Africa, Israel, South Korea, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand (O'Brien, and Williams, 2016). In a nutshell, division of labor has created a group of countries that have mid-level economies. Therefore, their powers are limited to the strength of the technology, economy size, political structure, and many skilled workers.
* Periphery Countries (Lower Level Economies)
Three, division of labor has created powerless periphery states. These are a nation that are dominated the semi-periphery countries and by the core nations in regards to production, trade, and finance. Therefore due to the division of labor, some countries have remained underdeveloped with raw material being the core export. The poor state of these countries is due to the exploitation of the core and semi-periphery nations that dominate the market and give them a small share of the global wealth (Staeheli, 2016). Since these societies have fewer resources, their state institutions are weak and depend on support from developed nations. These countries’ economy are underdeveloped because they face the challenges of ...