Inequality & Post-colony
The postcolony
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==Postcolony==
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A former colony or dominated country, now independent
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All former colonies, taken together (roughly: the 3rd world or the Global South)(ex. 台湾)
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Inherited means of production from the colonial period, inherited the relations of production
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Remaining managers or replaced by local personnel without structural change (integrated)
inequality within and among countries
- GDP - Gross Domestic Product: a measure of wealth produced in a country or other region
- ==Unequal development== “riches 26 people own more than the poorer 50%”
- Wealthy middle class is expanding in several emerging market countries
- Raising their GDP statistics, but does not represent the “truth”
- The great majority of the very poor continuous to live there
- Inequalities tend to rise among rich countries
- Raising their GDP statistics, but does not represent the “truth”
Who to blame for the unequal development?
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Colonial origins of unequal development: developing raw material for their mother country
- Exposed their business interests
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==Settler colonies - where settlers form the colonizing power move to the colony==
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Forager, horticultural, and pastoralist economies were destroyed or incorporated into industrial stage agricultural system
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Land use redefined to amen and into private capital
Recent: conflicts over Amazon region in Brazil (indigenous foragers and non-indigenous private farmers)
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Developmental models
- Meant to address global inequality
- Large-scale government projects (dams, new cities…)
- Typically undertake by the local government and with foreign ad, now less in favour
- Less often recently with the rise of independent countries
- Foreign Aid
- Cash to developing country governments, projects, or associations
- Often strings attached about human right
- Criticisms:
- Does not encourage self-reliance
- Can be siphoned off through corruption
- The human rights issue selectively applied
- Neoliberal market models
- Encourages the free market (don’t ideally get directly involved)
- Encourage open up markets through deregulation reforms
- IMF and the World Bank (international, dominated by the USA and the rich West countries)
- Lend money to countries in need
- Demand free-market reforms
- Criticism: austerity measure are cruel; the reforms can crush economic growth
- Microfinance (very small scale, local lending) [Muhammad Yunus]
- Criticism: high interest, coercion, encourages competition, perpetuate gender oppression
Globalization and beyond
- ==Neoliberal aimed to break down national barriers, against economic protectionism==
- Aided the economic outreach of multinational corporations, located mostly in the rich countries of the West and Japan
- Freedom of movement for capital, but not labor
- Movement of capital outsourcing benefits multinational corporations, mainly in the former colonizing countries
- Movement of labor seldom instituted along the movement of capital
End of neoliberal globalization
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Protectionism against migrants
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Coronavirus (vaccines in local country first)
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Us-centred capital find serious competition, resorts to protectionism
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Russia
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China (2nd riches)
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Defending privilege - capitalists seek to support and protect of th national government
- White supremacy
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Islaophobia - images a vast “radical Islam” conspiracy, migrant “invasion”
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Coronavirus and inequality
- Metical care is too expensive and/or not accessible to the poorest people
- Social distancing is impossible in crowded slums
- Neoliberal polices undid much the social safety network of the welfare state
- Poorer people work in precarious jobs without long-term job security cannot take off work without losing income