Geography

Geographies of Economic development

Economic development?

The concept of “development” in economic terms originates with the Industrial Revolution.

To be developed means to be industrialized.

Highlights the idea that technology can improve people’s lives through aiding in accruing more wealth and leading to new products and innovations.

In recent years, organizations have critiqued the concept

Key concept is: is it industrialized or not?

Geographic divisions of Labor

National, regional, and locally based economic specializations that evolved with the growth of the world-system focused on globally interlinked trade and politics.

Economic opportunity is impacted by where you live and your net works.

Wallerstein’s World-systems theory considers:

The role that space and time play in the power relationships structuring the world economy.

Three-tier structure

The core, periphery, and semi-periphery help explain the interconnections between places in the global economy.

Resources tend to go into the core.

Core is having a higher income and more resources.

Periphery: low income

Semi Periphery: in between

Critique

Misses the importance of transnational corporations

The slave trade and merchant capitalism

The US, Brazil, and the Caribbean got most of the slaves. Brazil had the most.

Organizing the Periphery: The International division of labor

-WST views the world economy as one market that includes a global division of labor

-Demands of the core lead to more complex interdependence

-Colonial Economies: Comparative advantage and specialization

Neocolonialism

Continuation of colonial relationships after formal colonialism ends.

Debate:

Economic and political strategies by which powerful states in core economies indirectly maintain or extend their influence over other areas or people.

vs.

Structuralist theories suggesting that large scale economic arrangements are difficult to change/correct

Division of Labors: Economic sectors

All of these are interdependent

Primary: Natural resources extraction. Where do you get the resources

-Example: mining, logging(forestry), oil, agriculture, fishing.

Secondary: Process, transform, fabricate, or assemble the raw materials derived from primary activities. Actually using the resources

-Example: making furniture, oil refining, do things with the food. For example: growing strawberries and turning them into jam/jelly

Tertiary: Sale and exchange of goods and services

-Example: Restaurants, tourism, retail, having a retail store, hair dressing. Sales exchange for goods and services. No manufacturing.

Quaternary: Handling/processing of information. If you have high levels of Quaternary, you are most likely doing pretty well.

Example: Research and development, technology, design, education

Largely base3d around a capitalist economic structure:

Capitalism is a form of economic and social organization characterized by the profit motive and the control of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of goods by private ownership.

Trying to find the cheapest resources

Uneven development

Is one of economic geography’s central themes and can be interpreted very literally. It means: quite simply, that the development of the economy is uneven. —The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography

“Geographically, the single most important feature of

economic development is that it is uneven.”

-Unevenness doesn’t emerge out of nowhere

-What are the historical and current relationships?

-What policies are in place, and who are they designed to benefit?

Resources and Development

Energy: oil, natural gas, and coal

Cultivable land: Carrying capacity of agricultural land

Industrial resources: lead, copper, and iron

Not everyone has all of the same resources. It is distributed unequally. Resource distribution affects development.