Chapter 12 Overview

This chapter introduces you to the concepts of globalization and global inequality, the theories used to explain globalization and global inequality and the ways politicians, social scientists, and activists have sought to eliminate the global inequality generated by globalization. Globalization is defined as a process of increasing interconnectedness of people, products, ideas, and places across the planet. The increased physical or material connections make people feel closer and disseminate ideas further across the planet than ever before.

This chapter introduces you to the three major theories used to explain globalization and global inequality: modernization, world systems, and world society. Modernization theory explains globalization and global inequality as a result of changes in a society’s internal features as they evolve through a set of stages taking them from traditional to modern due to industrialization and agriculture based on cash crops. World systems theory is influenced by Marxist principles and developed as a critique of modernization theory. It explains how the world is built on a transnational division of labour divided into core, periphery, and semi-periphery nations. Inequality exists because core nations are economically dominant as they exhibit high degrees of industrialization and economic diversification and exploit the periphery and semi-periphery nations, their workers and their resources. World society theory looks to explain globalization and global inequality as the consequences of emerging global institutions and a world culture since World War II.

Finally, this chapter introduces you to a measurement of global inequality, the Gini index, and solutions developed to address it, including development assistance, debt relief and micro-financing.