Lec 4 Nov 3 2014
Acronyms:
NIS: Nectar in a Sieve
WST: World System Theory
DoL: Division of Labour
WMB: White Man’s Burden
TWCs: Third World Countries
Foreign Investment: Factory in NIS
The British Empire and India
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9wO-NoP7h4 4.20 min WMB
Satyajit Ray's Movie Apur Sansar # The World of Apu Part 5 ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viGwK5iAM9c 9.5 min similar to Rukmani’s
wedding
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjnEfrop6qE 3.4 min Bengal Famine 1943
Poverty & hunger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QI6qg1ERmGE 6 min Famine (watch at home)
Essay topic:
Using the World Systems Theory, explain the causes of Rukmani’s poverty in Nectar
in a Sieve. In your analysis apply all of the following concepts and illustrate each
concept with examples from the book:
1. Power: Colonialism
2. Technology: Factory
3. Labour: Subsistence production
4. Unequal exchange: Export production
5. ‘White Man’s Burden’ (WMB) : Missionary
North-South global Integration into the world system as Core-periphery: Power;
Technology; Labour; WMB.
• Core countries:
• P: Hegemony by military power
• T: Industrial technology of mass production
• U: Appropriate (by unequal exchange) much of the
profits from the global-economy
• DL: Concentrate on higher-skill, capital-intensive
production
• Peripheral countries:
• P: globally powerless & poor economies
• T: Colonial control arrested the local development of technology
• U: unequal because of low value exports & cheap
labour
• DL: supply low-skill labour, labor-intensive production and extract
raw materials for export
Colonial and contemporary countries are well integrated into the world system:
Power; Technology; Labour:
Power: Colonial: Core’s imperialism (total political control)
Technology : Factory
• Resource extraction for mother countries’ industrialization
Labour: DL : colonial division of labour
• A single division of labor within one global market: Core controls capital and
Peripheries supply cheap labour and raw materials
Thesis: (1st example)
• WST explains that from colonial times, using imperial power, Core countries
have globally integrated their colonies as peripheries.
• The Core’s global market strategies of DL, superior technologies and unequal
exchange have impoverished the colonial peripheries.
• However, Core’s missionary attribute TWC’s poverty and lack of
development to the colonized people’s lack of capitalist self-interest. Their
failure to advance is attributed to their interest in the wellbeing of the whole
community rather than in individual self-advancement.
• This view reinforces the Core’s cultural domination through the ideology of
‘the White Man’s Burden’ (WMB).
(WST: PUT-NDL)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbS1VkX3CP0 8.5 min WST explained –Debra
Marshall (review at home)
Thesis: (2nd example)
• WST argues that colonial powers intrude into the TWCs, to establish the
core’s control over the peripheries.
• The core countries integrate the TWCs into the world-system through the
global market using DL, unequal exchange and superior technology.
• The core countries justify this process espousing the ideologies of WMB.
Imperialism and British Rule:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFbZ-uss_VE 49 min (view at home)
NIS: Colonial power imposes capitalism on a subsistence economy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Duxkrv4fSe4 (p1) 6.5min capitalism –Brendan
Mcoony
• Intrusion of a factory commoditizes the land and
turns unemployed tenant farmers as cheap labour.
•
•
•
Market for leather imposes the factory, an industrial (i.e., superior)
technology, on Rukmani’s village
The factory displaces the leather worker and he loses his livelihood.
It symbolizes the superiority of the Western values.
Four arguments that explain the causes of Rukmani’s poverty:
1. Power: Impact of the Core’s global market hegemony on India
2. Technology: Cr controls the political and economic power & superior
technologies to make decisions on Peri.’s land and resources. In Peri.,
control of resources shifts from the community to the market.
3. Labour: Through DL, Cr’s capital indebts and exploits Peri’s cheap labour to
enhance its capital accumulation (profit).
4. The Ideology of the “Whiteman’s Burden” wrongly discredits TWC’s local
values as reasons for their poverty.
Core’s
Power
India under Colonial capitalism
(NIS)
Power
Total Colonial
Control
Technology:
Manual &
Machine
Labour:
(ODL &
Debt)
Subsistence
&
Waged
WMB :
Missionary&
Westernization
path
Power:
NIS:
Under colonialism, the Core’s global market hegemony integrates India as a colony.
NIS – British imperial power extracts the resources of India for Britain’s own
economic development. India’s villages become sources of raw material and land
taxes for the Britain's advancement.
•
•
•
•
•
•
Capitalist firm- investment in leather
Raw material extraction
Industrializing a feudal subsistence economy
The factory dismantled the existing land system
Tenants who grow crops lose their land
The poor lose access to village common land and water.
Argument 1
Core’s Hegemony
impact of global market
on India
Tannery
intrudes
Disintegrates
community
First stage of
integration
Control of land &
subterranean
resources
The Core (AICs) dominates the development and transactions of the global market :
Global Market transactions:
• Commodity & financial instruments traded globally
• International trade based on power bargaining
Core’s (AICs’) power globally expands through its control of colonies. Colonial
economic exploitation leads to Core’s industrialization. Emergence of global market
advanced the Core’s rapid accumulation of industrial capital :
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFa3YfWBCrg 0.47 sec Toussaint on
begin.- colonialism
• 16th –mid 20th C: As traders the British established their colonial control.
Indian villages became sources of land revenue and raw materials for British
industrialization. Colonial revenues are turned into industrial capital
invested for export production through factory as a mass production
technology in NIS.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDIvkTIieHo 8min hulahoop industrial
mass production and profit
Colonialism is the First stage of India’s market integration into global capitalist
control:
• Colonial: (16th C -20th C): Imperial power of the colonizers profit from selling
colonies’ commodities in the global Market, e.g.:
• Rukmani’s village becomes a target for raw materials for the
global market
Power of Colonial capital & beginning of market integration: ( “Nectar …”).
• Colonial trade & capital
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDvnSgJF4SE 9.29 min by
brendan mcooney
• Peri.’s Labour moves to Cr’s capital
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnV_MTFEGIY The Atlantic Slave Trade:
Crash Course World History #24: 11min (watch at home)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QoXKgo_HDY 3 - A Historical Class
Analysis of Guyanese Society - Dr. Walter Rodney 9.5 min - watch only the
first 5 min
• Rise of Industrial capital & factory system
Illustrations of Impact of the Core’s global market hegemony on colonial India
India: Colonial control
1. British colonial capital: market (factory: tannery) power intrudes into
Rukmani’s village (26)
2. Disintegrates the community (46-47)
3. First stage of integration into the world system.
India: Core’s power (Britain’s) and accumulation of colonial capital
1. Colonial trade in raw materials accumulates
capital
2. Industrialization process
• Mechanical production replaces human energy
• Emergence of the factory system
Argument 2: Technology:
In NIS, the factory, an advanced technology of mass production enters the village to
extract leather for the global market. Imperial Britain (Core) has the political and
economic power to make decisions on Peri.’s land use; In Peri., control of land,
shifts from the community to the market.
India:
• Cr’s industrial technology (factory) produces raw materials on the
village land that becomes a market commodity (47)
• British land tax: Rukmani loses her tenancy ( a customary right) to
cultivate the land (75-76)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSP-crYjeoE law of value: technology 8.5 min
socially necessary labour – jobs &wages reduced by technology
brendancooney
Argument 2
Technology : Cr’s control of Peri.’s land
Factory: industrial technology
Loss of customary
right to cultivate her
land
Village land as market
commodity
Technology (colonial economic control of colonies’ resources)
• NIS: Factory technology- changing economic value of land (p.31;p72)
• Loss of cultivable land p47
• Disintegration of the village community pp.75-76
NIS: India:
Impact of the technology – the factory - on village land and subsistence farming:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTLcxny7YSg Inside India: Village Life in
Southern India 14 min The film is from the collection of the West Virginia State
Archives. See it yourself – village life as a contrast to NIS village
What happened to Rukmani’s land?
• Colonial factory’s intrusion turns Rukmani’s land into a commodity for sale
(p. 10, 13, 47, 48)
What happened to local food production?
• Famine as a result of loss of arable land & common land rights,
disintegration of village loyalties and mutual reliance & support (p. 31,72)
What happened to community’s survival?
Rent exacting middle-man, Loss of village networks & informal supports (p. 73, 75,
76)
NIS: New technology of control through taxation- Poverty inevitable due to loss of
subsistence land to factory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUUGBMFpYQY 8 min EIC- zamin-peasants
plight (show 4 min)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18Za0mRXe4E 6.5min land rev system-East
India Co. (unacademy) Colonialism changed the ownership of all landed property in
India to private hands and eliminates villages’ communal land .
1. These changes released a mass of landless workers (serfs) for the global
labour market
2. Throughout the 19th C, the poor lost their subsistence due to loss of land.
3. Millions faced famine every two years.
4. Desperate, starving, land-less Indian peasants - British rule bankrupted the
Indian economy.
NIS: colonial technology of control: Rukmani views the factory as power that
intrudes and impoverishes the village:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrvmL-RDFtI crops-ploughing-construction of
a well.-today’s Indian village 7 min 2012 (view it at home
• Overseer ordering villagers (26)
• Leather worker’s plight (26)
• Land was lost to the tannery )(47)
• Increasing officials with power (47)
• New workers brought from outside (47)
• Trouble: strike for better wages (64)
• Firing of workers (65)
• Son killed in factory (88-89)
NIS: Colonial period- Owners’ and investors’ concept of factory production for the
market :
• Land is more valuable as a commodity (31, 72)
• Moneylender: profit from pawn shop ( 73)
• Foreigners: invest capital for extracting raw
material (26-28)
• Zamindar: profits from increase in land value
Argument 3: Labour:
• Through ODL & NDL, Cr’s capital indebts and exploits Peri’s cheap labour to
increase its capital accumulation.
• Unequal exchange between Cr’s capital and Peripheries’ Labour, produces
profit for Core’s capital accumulation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MlZEfRhTo8 (p2) 4 min what is capitalism –
labor and uneq exch of value (wages)
Argument 3
Labour
ODL
Resource
extraction,
Subsistence
& Poverty
Unequal exchange
between capital and
labour
International serfs/
slaves
cheap labour
WST arguments on Labour:
Integrated Global Market according to WST:
• A single division of labor within a single world market
• Core states - higher-skill, capital-intensive production and appropriate
much of the economic surplus of the whole world-economy.
• Peripheral areas focus on low-skill, labor-intensive production and
extraction of raw materials
• In the colonial period labour moves to capital
• In the Post-colonial (corporate capitalist) period, capital moves to labour
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDvnSgJF4SE 9.3 min
May 2008 capital-value-profit
NIS
India
• Labour on land to produce food for subsistence could not compete with
market demands for land as a commodity.
• Colonial : India’s colonial labour (wages) is unequal in value to British capital
(factory as fixed capital & profit).
Labour & Unequal exchange: Subsistence production
NIC: subsistence tenants were expelled - peasants were drawn into factory as wage
workers – their labour produces more exchange value than the wages they get – the
industry owner’s profit arises from this – India’s unemployed labour shipped as
global colonial labour
NIC:
•
•
•
•
Labour gets poor wages (64)
Colonial : India’s colonial ‘captive’ labour (67)
Profit from export goes to the capital investor: British factory owners
Profit from land goes to the landlord
Rukmani’s subsistence manual labour is a way of life:
• Grows pumpkin (10, 13)
• She predicts market relations (28)
• Tenancy & land ownership: (31, 132)
• Seed (75)
• Drought & water (76)
• Working the land (48)
• Labour supply to Ceylon (67)
Argument 4: The Ideology of the “Whiteman’s Burden” (a blend of colonial power &
religious ideology) discredits the local values to promote westernization
• Superiority of the West and disintegration of the community
• Commodification of peripheral countries’ land and resources lead to poverty
& destitution.
Argument 4
WMB
Missionary
Conceals
raw power
Westernization of
values
Imperial superiority
of modernism
What do the missionary or church think of the poor countries and people?
• Rukmani initially considers the missionary as helpful
• Church considers the poor people as backward and therefore responsible for
their poverty
Why do the missionary & church not continue to help the village or the community?
•
•
•
Colonial or corporate interests
Belief in Whiteman's burden
blame the poor for not being ‘modern’ like the West
Religion conceals the exploitive power of the West’s self interest:
Colonial extraction:
• Market for raw materials (leather)
• Import of technology (factory)
• Instant urbanization (town)
• Impoverishment of rural people
How does White Man’s burden metaphorically explain the superiority of the
Western values?
Eurocentric view of the world and global economy
Missionary (Nectar …p111)
Colonial powers colonize the mind – the
worst form of control)
What are the solutions?
• Reject the historical White Man’s Burden
• Reject the cultural superiority of the West
• Acknowledge the uniqueness of each
country’s social and political culture
• Foster a development path suitable to each
country.
Conclusion:
Integration of markets, technology, and labour into the world system through the
ideology of the West’s superiority :
• Core countries: (see, WST: PUT-NDL)
• P: Militarily strong
• U: Appropriate much of the surplus of the whole worldeconomy
• T: Technological superiority
• DL: Concentrate on higher-skill, capital-intensive production
Integration of markets, technology, and labour into the world system through the
ideology of the West’s superiority : (cont’d)
• Peripheral countries:
• P: powerlessness & poor economies
• U: low trading value & cheap labour
• T: Not allowed to advance their technologies
• DL: focus on low-skill, labor-intensive production
and
extraction of raw materials