Unit 6 vocab: Human Geo

Commodity chain

Commodity chain

Series of links connecting the many places of production and distribution and resulting in a commodity that is then exchanged on the world market.

developing

With respect to a country, making progress in technology, production, and socioeconomic welfare.

-major areas of concern when measuring development (economic welfare, technology, and production, social welfare).

GNP (Gross National Product)

The total value of all goods and services produced by a country’s economy in a given year. It includes all goods and services produced by corporations and individuals of a country, whether or not they are located within the country.

GDP (Gross Domestic Product)

The total value of all goods and services produced within a country during a given year.

Per capita GNI

The Gross National Income of a given country divided by its population.

-limitations: unable to demonstrate the gap between genders or among regions, average citizens’ material standard of living, and the degree of overall participation in the country’s economy.

Formal economy

The legal economy that is taxed and monitored by a government and is included in a government’s Gross National Product (GNP); as opposed to an informal economy.

Informal economy

Economic activity that is neither taxed nor monitored by a government; and is not included in that government’s Gross National  Product (GNP); as opposed to a formal economy.

Modernization model

A model of economic development most clearly associated with the work of economist Walter Rostow. The modernization model (sometimes referred to as modernization theory) maintains that all countries go through five interrelated stages of development, which culminate in an economic state of self-sustained economic growth and high levels of mass consumption.

context

The geographical situation in which something occurs; the combination of what is happening at a variety of scales concurrently.

Neo-colonialism

The entrenchment of the colonial order, such as trade and investment, under a new guise. The major world powers continue to control the economies of poorer countries even though they are now politically independent states.

Structuralist Theory

A general term for a model of economic development that treats economic disparities among countries or regions as the result of historically derived power relations within the global economic system.

-think countries face different circumstances than the countries of Western Europe

-hard to change due to dependency theory.

Dependency theory

A structuralist theory that offers a critique of the modernization model of development. Based on the idea that certain types of political and economic relations (especially colonialism) between countries and regions of the world have created arrangements that both control and limit the extent to which regions can develop.

-based on generalizations about economic change & little attention to geographical differences

dollarization

When a poorer country ties the value of its currency to that of a wealthier country, or when it abandons its currency and adopts the wealthier country’s currency as its own.

World-systems analysis

Theory originated by Immanuel Wallerstein and illuminated by his three-tier structure, proposing that social change in the developing world is inextricably linked to the economic activities of the developed world.

Three-tier structure

With reference to Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-system theory, the division of the world into the core, the periphery, and the semi-periphery as a means to help explain the interconnections between places in the global economy.

Millennium Development Goals

Key goals that are set to improve the living conditions of people in the countries with the lowest standards of human development.

trafficking

When a family sends a child or an adult to a labor recruiter in hopes that the labor recruiter will send money, and the family member will earn money to send home.

Structuralist development loans

Loans granted by international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to countries in the periphery and the semi-periphery in exchange for certain economic and governmental reforms in that country (e.g. privatization of certain government entities and opening the country to foreign trade and investment).

neoliberalism

Idea derives from the neoclassical economic idea that government intervention into markets is inefficient and undesirable, and should be resisted wherever possible.

-heart of the conditions that were attached to loans and refinancing programs

Vectored diseases

A disease carried from one host to another by an intermediate host.

malaria

Vectored disease spread by mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite in their saliva and which kills approximately 150,000 children in the global periphery each month.

Export processing zones (EPZs)

Zones established by many countries in the periphery and semi-periphery where they offer favorable tax, regulatory, and trade arrangements to attract foreign trade and investment. (focus on manufacturing for export) Ex. maquiladoras.

Special economic zones

Specific areas within a country in which tax incentives and less stringent environmental regulations are implemented to attract foreign business and investment.

NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)

Agreement entered into by Canada, Mexico, and the United States in December 1992 and which took effect on January 1, 1994, to eliminate the barriers to trade in, facilitate the cross-border movement of goods and services between the countries. (without tariff)

-cross-border disparities, illegal immigration, and terrorist infiltration issues increased.

Desertification

The encroachment of desert conditions on moisture zones along the desert margins, where plant cover the soils are threatened by desiccation—through overuse, in part by humans and their domestic animals, and, possibly in part because of inexorable shifts in the Earth’s environmental zones.

Island of development

Place built up by a government or corporation to attract foreign investment and which has relatively high concentrations of paying jobs and infrastructure.

NGOs (nongovernmental organizations)

International organizations that operate outside of the formal political arena but that are nevertheless influential in spearheading international initiatives on social, economic, and environmental issues.

Microcredit program

Program that provides small loans to poor people, especially women, to encourage development of small businesses.