Level III

Appendix F

UC Atlas of Global Inequality

UC Atlas of Global Inequality

Unless otherwise stated, the definitions below are from: http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/glossary.html

Civilized countries: to cause to develop out of a primitive state; especially : to bring to a technically advanced and rationally ordered stage of cultural development (according to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)

Developing vs. developed countries : Terms used, particularly by international and governmental agencies, to distinguish poor or non-industrialized countries (developing) from rich, industrialized countries (developed). This is one of a series of paired categories used to make sense of aspects of global inequality. Perhaps the most ubiquitous is the pair originating in Cold War conditions: First World, Third World. In this Atlas, we prefer to use the more precise terms industrialized world, meaning First World, and non-industrialized world, meaning poor countries. [See also Industrialization].

East Asian miracles : Rapid industrialization after the Second World War in East Asia. Initially, four East Asian ‘Tigers’ were identified: South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The group has since been expanded, particularly in the World Bank 1993 study The East Asian Miracle to include other East Asian countries ( Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand).

Globalization, global integration : ‘…a widening, deepening and speeding up of interconnectedness in all aspects of contemporary social life from the cultural to the criminal, the financial to the spiritual’ (Held and McGrew 1999: 2). Several dimensions of globalization can usefully be identified. These dimensions can often be analyzed separately even though they may have powerful interconnections. Economic globalization means the greater global connectedness of economic activities, through transnational trade, capital flows and migration. Environmental globalization could include the increasingly global effects of human activity on the environment. Cultural globalization may highlight the connections among languages, ways of living, and fears of global homogeneity through the spread of North American and European languages and culture. Political globalization may include wider acceptance of global political standards such as human rights, democracy, labor standards, environmental standards, as well as the greater coordination of actions by governments and other institutions across the globe.

Impoverished country: a country made poor by depriving it of strength, richness or depleting its resources. (according to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)

Industrialization : the process through which industrial capacity [see also Industry] is created. And this process is given prominence for at least two reasons. Firstly, historians use the industrial revolution as the starting point of modern history. Secondly, the increased productivity, and increased range, of goods and services arising from industrialization bring the potential for higher living standards, although who will benefit from the expansion of industry is a key question to be asked in any particular case. Industrialized countries are then those that have achieved higher productivity and higher living standards.

Industry: There are three ways of identifying industry or industrial production:

Not agriculture, that is, not production directly from the land;
Mining, Manufacturing and Energy sectors of production;
A ‘way of organizing production that assumes there is a constant process of technical and social change which continually increases society’s capacity to produce a wide range of goods’ (Hewitt et al. 1992: 3-6, quoted in Kiely 1998: 3).

Inequality : State or condition of being unequal. Amartya Sen argues that virtually all political philosophies ‘want equality of something — something that has an important place in the particular theory’ (Sen 1992: ix). Libertarians want equal rights; others demand equal welfare or incomes. Inequalities are commonly used to construct images of the world. Two types of inequality are noted in this atlas: i) international inequality, that is inequality between nations, commonly measured by comparing GNP/capita; ii) national inequality, meaning differences between rich and poor within one country.

Liberalization : The removal by a government of restrictions placed upon the import of goods, the movement of capital, etc.

Nationalization: The action of bringing land, property and industries under the control of the nation.

Openness : the quality or condition of being open, or unenclosed. In international economic terms, openness is portrayed as the alternative to protectionism. Being open to the world economy means having no barriers to international trade, finance and investment. The term includes a set of international flows, some of which, notably finance and capital flows, are controversial, and omits others, notably migration.

Poverty: The Oxford English Dictionary defines poverty as: ‘The condition of having little or no wealth or material possessions; indigence, destitution, want’, and suggests its first use was in AD 1075. In recent years, research tapping the perspectives of poor people has recognized that poverty involves a wider set of deprivations, including vulnerability and exclusion from society, in addition to material destitution.

Poverty line: A level of income below which people are deemed poor. A global poverty line of $1 per person per day was suggested in 1990 (World Bank 1990). This line facilitates comparison of how many poor people there are in different countries. But, it is only a crude estimate because the line does not recognize differences in the buying power of money in different countries, and, more significantly, because it does not recognize other aspects of poverty than the material, or income poverty.

Privatization: The process of making state-owned enterprises private. Also termed denationalization.

Protectionism : Government policies fostering home industries by protecting them from the competition of foreign goods, the importation of these being checked or discouraged by the imposition of duties (tariffs) or otherwise.

Third World: Phrase used originally to distinguish those countries that were aligned neither with the capitalist West, the First World, nor with the socialist East, the Second World. It remains widely used to describe non-industrialized, ex-colonial, or developing countries despite the collapse of the Second World. [See also Developing].

World Bank : The World Bank is one of the institutions established at a meeting in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, towards the end of World War II. The other important institution established at that meeting is the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Bank provides finance for development projects and advice to governments about development questions. Both the Bank’s projects and the advice it provides have gone through distinct phases, associated with changes in global politics and in ideas about development. In the latest phase, the Bank proclaims ‘Our dream is a world free of poverty’ (World Bank 2002). The advice that the Bank has provided has usually been based on a conservative reading of mainstream economic ideas.

References

-Sen, A. (1992). Inequality Re-examined. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.

-Kidron, M and Segal, R (1995). The State of the World Atlas. London: Penguin.

-Milanovic, B. (1999). True world income distribution, 1988 and 1993: First calculation based on household surveys alone, World Bank.

-Thomas, A and Crow, B (1994) Third World Atlas (2nd ed.). Open University Press.

-World Bank (various years). The World Bank Atlas. Washington, DC: World Bank.

-World Bank (2000) World Development Report 2000-1: Attacking Poverty Oxford University Press and World Bank.

-Hewitt, T., H. Johnson and D. Wield. (eds.) (1992). Industrialization and Development. Oxford, OUP.

-Kiely, R. (1998). Industrialization and development : a comparative analysis. London, Bristol, Pa., UCL Press.

-World Bank (2002). www.worldbank.org. June 20 2002.