acronyms: nis: nectar in a sieve wst: world system theory dol: division of labour wmb: white man’s...

Acronyms: NIS: Nectar in a SieveWST: World System TheoryDoL: Division of Labour WMB: White Man’s BurdenTWCs: 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: Colonialism2. Technology: Factory 3. Labour: Subsistence production4. Unequal exchange: Export production5. ‘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

Countries during the Colonial and contemporary periods are well integrated into the world system through: 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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDvnSgJF4SE 9.29 min by brendan mcooney what is capital

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)

PowerTotal

Colonial Control

Technology:Manual &Machine

Labour:(ODL & Debt)

Subsistence &

Waged

WMB :Missionary

& Westernizat

ion 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 …”).

• Capitalism & Colonial unequal trade http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Duxkrv4fSe4 (p1) 6.5min capitalism –Brendan Mcoony

• 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: colonial 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 technologybrendancooney

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 rawmaterial (26-28)

• Zamindar: profits from increase in land value

http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Development/PovertyEnv.asp

Ideology of ‘Whiteman’s Burden’ still continues:

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

, Subsisten

ce & Poverty

Unequal exchange

between capital and labour

International serfs/slaves cheap labour

WST argument 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

NISIndia• 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

Concealsraw 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

world-economy • 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