Transcript Chapter 17

Chapter 17
Social Change: Development
and Global Inequality
Key Terms

Modernization
The process of industrialization, economic
development, and technological innovation by
which a culture achieves high standards of
living and maximizes control over the physical
environment.

Idea of progress
The philosophical doctrine that technological
and social progress is inevitable.

Cultural lags
Periods of delay following a change in one
part of a society when other parts of the
society have not yet readjusted.

Diffusion
The process by which innovations spread
from one society to another.

Capitalism
An economic system based on free-market
exchanges and individual property rights with
the result that any individual can benefit from
becoming more productive.

Command economies
Economic systems wherein property rights
are not secure and much productive activity is
based on coerced labor.

Protestant Reformation
The separation of Protestant Christians from
the Roman Catholic Church during the
sixteenth century; usually associated with the
founding of the Lutheran Church in Germany.

Spirit of capitalism
According to Weber, a nonreligious version of
the Protestant ethic; values favoring hard
work, thrift, and the importance of economic
success.

Protestant ethic
According to Weber, doctrines holding that
economic success reflects God’s grace.

State theory of modernization
Theory that wherever the power of the state
to seize private property is curtailed, free
markets will appear, capitalism will develop,
and modernization will occur as a result of
mass efforts to become more productive.

World system theory (or dependency
theory)
Theory stating that some nations become
modernized by exploiting other nations and
that their continuing exploitation prevents less
developed nations from becoming fully
modernized.

Core nations
According to Wallerstein, those most
modernized nations, having diversified
economies and stable internal politics, that
dominate the world system.

Peripheral nations
According to Wallerstein, those nations in the
world system that are forced to specialize in
the export of unprocessed raw materials and
food to the core nations and that must import
manufactured goods. This makes them
dependent on the core nations, which in turn
force them to adopt economic and social
policies that prevent them from modernizing.

Semiperipheral nations
Wallerstein’s term for nations that fall in
between core and peripheral nations, being
more industrialized than the latter and less
industrialized than the former.

Gross domestic product (GDP)
The final value of all economic activities
within a society. When GDP is divided by the
total population of a society, the result is per
capita GDP.