Essay topic: Applying the World Systems Theory, compare the causes of Rukmani’s poverty in Nectar in a
Sieve with the causes of poverty of those in the Third
World countries as presented in the DVD: The End of
Poverty? Think Again .
Build a comparative framework using all of the following themes and concepts. Illustrate each concept with examples from the book and the DVD :
1. P ower: Colonialism vs. Neoliberalism
2. T echnology of Control: Factory vs. Structural
Violence
3. L abour & U nequal exchange: Subsistence vs. Export production
4. ‘White Man’s Burden’ (WMB) & religion:
Missionary vs. the Bible/ Church

Integration into the world system: Power; Technology;
Labour: (cont’d):
P ower: (two periods: colonial, neoliberal)
• Colonial: Core’s imperialism (total political control)
• Neoliberal: Core’s market control of capital
T echnology of Control: Factory vs. WC & SV
• Colonial extraction for mother countries’ industrialization
•
Corporate global oligopoly for capital accumulation/investment
L abour : ODL (colonial) and NDL (neoliberal)
• A single division of labor within one world market:
Core controls capital and Peripheries supply cheap labour and raw materials

Hypothesis 1: Power: Impact of the Core’s world market hegemony on India & TWCs
Hypothesis 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.
Hypothesis 3: Labour : Through ODL & NDL,
Cr’s capital indebts and exploits
Peri’s cheap labour to enhance its capital accumulation.
Hypothesis 4: The Ideology of the “Whiteman’s Burden”
(a blend of colonial/neoliberal power & religious ideology) discredits TWC’s local values as reasons for their poverty .

Hypothesis 1: Power:
NIS: Impact of the Core’s world market hegemony on
India was under colonialism.
EOP: During post-colonial period, Core’s neoliberal policies enforces its market dominance through its monopolistic or oligopolistic corporations.

•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 commodifies the land and turns unemployed tenant farmers as cheap labour. The factory is imposed on Rukmani’s village as a superior technology symbolizing the superiority of the
Western values .
• EOP:
Neoliberalist policies of WB & IMF: SAP & WC, advance the Cores’ political and corporate interests. These policies advance core’s control of TWCs’ resources for export production.
They ensure their profit accumulation by resorting to strategies of structural violence and religious manipulation to control the poor from rising against economic and social inequities in the postcolonial era.

Examples of Impact of the Core’s world market hegemony on colonial India in comparison to TWCs in EOP.
India: Colonial power
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.
EOP: Colonial control:
1. Colonial land tax, appropriation of common land belonging to the rural poor
2. Resource mining (Bolivia), Dutch in Asia.

EOP: Colonial capital accumulation& total control over colonies:
) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFa3YfWBCrg (EOP Toussaint clip on conquest) (36)
•
Land confiscated & appropriated by colonizers – tax imposed on heads and huts – people could not pay , Massai forced out of landlivelihood lost- dislocated & land never returned to them .
•
Brit- people as property- male labor registration at 16- really slaves – in 21 C they are called captives/ retained - debts generational – work for food- 60-80 mil in the world work as slaves
• Brazil’s gold mines – Bolivian silver mines – Spanish debts to northern Europe did not go to Spain’s coffers. – sugarcane accumulated wealth in UK and the Netherlands
•
Dutch barbaric exploitation of Asia – Amsterdam then London became World’s fin centre

Post-colonial corporate capital accumulation & market control (in EOP )
The policies of IMF, WB, WTO, etc., facilitate MNCs oligopolistic or monopolistic corporate capital to acquire
TWCs’ resources for Core’s capital accumulation e.g., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFL3GY0RU88 debt susan george 1 min
•
Core transfers surplus from unequal exchange of trade and thus create TWC’s debt ; Core supports
MNCs monopolistic control over, and extraction of subterranean resources of TWCs

TWCs: Neoliberal policies: SAP & WC:
MNC’s corporate capital:
Export production, e.g., Bolivia’s drinkable water (Bechtel)
(52-53 http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/19/the_cochabamba_water_wars_marcella_olivera
The Cochabamba Water Wars: Marcela Olivera Reflects on the Tenth Anniversary of the Popular Uprising Against Bechtel and the Privatization of the City’s Water Supply 2010 - 46 min- with transcript
•
Kenya's subsistence land & the Yala dam (Dominion)
56-57
;
Subsistence land lost due to Venezuelan govts’(replace what was grown with imports)
43
, & Brazilian govts’ (South produces cheaper goods for the North) export policies
43
:
•
Trade (subsidy to AIC), debt & MNCs’ monopoly over resources tightens the TWCs’ integration into the global market http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOVW8qVpEOU Stiglitz on subsidy and lower income for farmers ( 56) o Debt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PnQdu16RAA sheen on debt etc

Corp.Capital (cont’d) : MNCs business of infrastructure building, power plants, industrial parks, ports, spiraled the TWCs into huge unplayable debts – debtor syndrome - you owe us - in return unequal power bargaining of oil etc., to benefit their MNCs – (Sus George) S is financing the N - $25,000 a minute – $200 bil/yr.-
Bolivia’s water WB decision and order – rail roads, airlines, Telecoms,
… and water – Pablo Fernandez to pay daily $7.50 for water while his pay is $4.50 – (p.56-57)
Kenya’s farmers’ land – appropriated by Dominion gp of companies.to
grow vegetables and legumes – river dam – flooding – no crop for farmers http://www.fian-nederland.nl/pdf/agenda/2011_05_10%20Landgrabbing%20RtF%20V.U.G.pdf
Yala land grab 2011- PP slides
Yala& Dominion industries: The End of Poverty? Yala Swamp http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yzp2JQcBiY 3.50min

H. 2:
Through its superior Technology, Cr controls 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 village land that becomes a market commodity (47)
•
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

T echnology (metaphors): Factory vs. Structural Violence
NIS: Factory technology- changing economic value of land (p.31;p72)- loss of cultivable land p47- disintegration of the village community pp.75-76
EOP: MNCs’ expulsion of the poor from the land through forced acquisitions – SV to control TWC’s politics and for the accumulation of capital as MNCs profits

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?
•
Poverty 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: colonial technology of control: Rukmani views the factory as power that intrudes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrvmL-RDFtI crops-ploughing-well-constructed.-today’s Indian village 7 min 2012 (see it yourself)
•
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

EOP corporate period:
Technology that controls the politics of TWC and profits of core’s MNCs :
SV http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ5IjSPsC1Y 1min johnperkins on mnc and AIC’s hit men http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqdiyY5waMM Economic Hitmen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AynGBMUgdmg Confessions Of An Economic Hitman (1 of 3) debt–CIA-john perkins-9.5min
In TWCs , importance of SV for the core and their MNCs:
Stages of SV:
1. Economic hit-men
2. CIA’s assassination team
3. CIA Jackals’ Direct intervention
4. Military
• SV protects Cores’ flows of profit & MNCs :e.g., assassination of countries’ Presidents, CIA overthrow of govt in Iran to protect BP; direct intervention to execute of Iraq’s Qasim; assassination of Chile’s
Allende for IT&T and copper MNCs; military war against Saddam H
•MNC makes profit/capital from resource for exports produced on
TWCs’ land

H. 3: Labour :
•
Through ODL & NDL,
Cr’s capital indebts and exploits
Peri’s cheap labour to improve 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)

WST argument on Labour:
Integrated World 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 worldeconomy.
•
Peripheral areas focus on low-skill, labor-intensive production and extraction of raw materials
•
In the colonial period labour moves to capital
•
In the neoliberal (corporate capitalist) period, capital moves to labour

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).

L abour & U nequal exchange: Subsistence vs. Export 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:
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EOP:
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