Is Global Industrial Development Desirable and Inevitable? (Term Paper Sample)

Is global industrial development desirable and inevitable?
Name
Institution of Affiliation
Introduction
Economic development is mainly defined in regards to social and economic development from a Nation that is agriculturally based to an industrial nation. This paper examines three sociological model in evaluating the development of countries. The paper will also address trade, foreign aid, and debts I developing countries as well as the impact of urbanization with the particular reference to modernization, dependency theory, and world system theory.
Modernization theory.
The modernization theory assumes that most of the wealth nation are wealthy because they were able to recognize the vital beliefs, practices, and value necessary for industrialization, rapid economic developed and trade. On the other hand, underdeveloped countries tend to remain poor because their failed to develop these values, practices, and beliefs but instead continued to exercising traditional practices that cripple industrial development and modernization (Cohen, 2011). The cultural, developmental traits exhibited by wealthy nations are characterized by the desire to work hard, willingness to abandon traditional methods of doing things and adopting a future-oriented thinking. This theory has a direct relevance to most of the European nations. Most European nations emerged as economic superpower centuries ago due to their massive adoption of values and practices the promoted prosperity through hard work. Weber (1904) one of the most prolific scholar of sociology, argued that most of the European were able to prosper due to their reformative actions of diminishing the traditional church perception of spiritual wealth for material success regarding social and economic development (Giovanni & Boike, 2014 ). According to the Weber, the European movement understood the importance of hard work in translating material success in one’s life rather than traditional church argument on spiritual rewards in the afterlife. According to the moderations theory, developing nations will continue being poor if they do not abandon their outdated traditional practices and beliefs. They must learn and exercise proper values and practices that will enable them to succeed on only economically but also socially.
The dependency theory
The dependency theory to challenge the modernization theory in his efforts to explain the global stratification. Despite, ancient Marxists seeing industrial capitalism as desirable since it was an important stage before communism, Neo-Marxists like dependency theorists argue that the society might not reach communism hence industrial capitalism is not desirable. They challenge motors of change advanced in the modernization theory by pointing out that underdevelopment in most nations is due to the capitalist exploitation. The dependency theory blames inequality in global industrial development on the exploitation of the poor nations by the wealthy nations. Concerning this theory, developing nations do not get the opportunity to pursue economic endeavors since in their early stages of their development there were colonized and exploited by the developed nations that colonized them (Barkan, 2009). The European countries who colonized them reaped them off their natural resources and enslaved them by using them as cheap labor in developing their nations. Wealthy nations installed their governance in the poor nations preventing the underdeveloped nation’s local populace from accessing quality education. In the long run, after colonizing these nations for decades and stealing their national resources, the wealthy nations started selling manufactured goods produced from the stolen resources forcing the poor nations to run up huge debts that progressively amount even today.
In the modern day, most global corporations progressively exploit the resources and labor of the poorest nations. Such global organizations operate sweatshops in most of the developing countries, whereby laborers toil in inhumane working environments enabling these multinational corporations to generate billions of dollars in revenue while paying them peanuts. In most cases these organizations work hand in hand with corrupt government officials in these countries in a bid to strengthen their economic stake. A good example of this cases scenario that occurred in Nigeria in the late 1990s. In this particular case, the Royal Dutch/ Shell oil corporation was pumping almost half of the oil that was being extracted at that particular time (Giovanni & Boike, 2014 ). Human right activists and locals started to protest claiming that the corporation was not only paying local workers little wages, but there were also destroying their land for little or no compensation. In the response to the protests and the demands by the activists for proper compensation, the government deployed police at the corporation‘s request, with the organization catering for the expenses of the police. The police confronted the activists and the locals with violence leading to destroying of several villages, the death of over 2000 people dead and severely injuring thousands of locals.
World system theory
Another theory that explains global stratification is the world systems theory. The theory just like the dependency theory argues that wealthy nations benefit from poor nations by exploiting them and their citizens. However, this theory recognizes the minimal benefits that the poor countries tend to enjoy by associating with other nations. The theory suggests that the manner in which a nation is integrated into the global capitalist system influences how it economic development will shape. According to the theory, the world is divided into three hierarchical structure of countries namely; peripheral, semi-peripheral and core. Core nations such as Germany, United States of America and Japan are capitalist and dominant nations that have massive levels of urbanization and industrialization. These nations are capital intensive, enjoy high technological capabilities, high wages and limited or not exploitation of labor. Peripheral nations are mostly African nations and some low income nations in Asia and South America. These nations are mostly agrarian with low literacy level and solely dependent on core nations such as the US for capital. Semi-peripheral nations are nations such as South Africa, Brazil, India, and Taiwan. These nations are more developed than the peripheral countries but not as developed as core nations.
To that end, core nation possess most of the global capital as well as technology resulting in extensive control over world’s trade as well as economic agreements. Peripheral nations avail raw materials and labor to the core nations. Semiperipheral nations exploit peripheral nations just as they are exploited by the core nations together with peripheral nations. Core nations tend to exploit raw material at lowered cost and in most cases set prices of agricultural produce from the peripheral countries regardless of the marketplace dynamics. The US is a good example of a core nation. The country has massive capital and skilled labor that is effectively compensated with minimum exploitation. India on the hand is a semi-peripheral nation. The country mostly depends on investors from foreign countries for capital, but it has a growing technology with a robust emerging middle class. The wealthy people in the country depend on the nation’s relationship with peripheral countries for cheap labor (Cohen, 2011). An example of a peripheral country is Cape Verde. The country allows foreign investors to exploit raw materials as well as the production of cash crops, that are exported almost entirely consumer markets in wealthy nations. Cape Verde is mostly affected by world trade decision and sanctions enacted by wealthy nations.
Impact on trade.
Modernization theory argues that industrial development is vital promoting social and economic development. Dependency theorists on the hand claim that free market is important since it allows trade without restrictions. World Trade Organization (WTO) was incorporated in 1994 to oversee and monitor the global trade. Development theorists argue the removing trade restrictions open markets that are vital for industrial and economic development to all nations (Rivera Theo & Currais, 2010).
Impacts of Aid and debts on developing nations
Foreign aid is regarded as one of the important aspects of the development of poor nations. In 1960s, wealthy nations agreed at the United Nations that they will spend 0.7% of their Gross National Income in poverty reduction in developing countries. These aids have progressively failed to reach the agreed 0.7% with the aid being around 0.2% to 0.5%. Despite the Aid donations failing to honor the pledge made by the world’s superpower decided over 35 years ago the quality of this aid is usually of dubious quality (Dambisa, 2010). For instance, most aid donations are strategically prolonged in serving special interest of donor nations or benefits minority domestic groups. Moreover, little aid reaches groups or nations that are in need of it and most cases the aid is wasted due to overpriced goods for the donor nations such as machinery. Such aid systems designed or manipulated to cater the interests of donors or domestic minority groupings make aid ineffective which translated to a burden to the respective nations regarding massive foreign debts. For instance, over the last six decades over $1, trillion developmental assistance has been channeled to Africa but still the per-capita income remains lower than it used to in the 1970s as over 400 million people living with less than a dollar (Inter-American Development Bank, 1997).
With particular reference to aid and debts, Chad is one of the African count...