Understanding the Center-Periphery Model
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ScribdTranslationsUnderstanding the Center-Periphery Model
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ScribdTranslationsCenter-periphery model.
A worldview of the world
Con la caída del modelo bipolar y el proceso de globalización mundial, viejas teorías se
they renew to understand the dynamics of the countries. To the old East-West conflict -
West, ideologically based, is now building a North-South antinomy, based on
strong socioeconomic differences and concentration of power. The core countries,
they promote an accelerated capitalism generating deep inequalities with the
“Peripheral” impoverished nations struggling to leap forward, in pursuit of
of the progress advocated by the most developed nations in the world.
Relationships are intense - because it is a world much more global than before - but they are
unequal and unfair. Only the awareness of the Third World scenario makes him
will allow to get out of this 'quagmire' called underdevelopment, and that, intentionally,
stop the advance of these 'second' nations.
Center-periphery is a model (worldview) of the territorial organization of certain
economic and political systems that occupy a central place in the economic school
developmentalist or structuralistto model thedependency theorycreated shortly
after theSecond RevolutionIndustrial.
According to constructivism, the center-periphery duality is directly related to
the dualityindustry-agricultureand its worldwide distribution according to certain
systems ofinternational division of labor.
The term center-periphery has been particularly successful in referring to the
social and economic inequalitiesand its uneven spatial distribution, especially
in the global context, speaking in this sense of core countries and countries
peripherals, with a meaning similar to other commonly used dualities, such asNorth-South,
developed world-underdevelopedfirst world-third world.
They were the Latin American economists of the ECLAC(Santiago de Chile), among the
that stood outArgentinianRaúl Prebischand theBrazilianCelso Furtadothose who, later
from theSecond World WarWorld, they systematically developed the notion of a
duality center-periphery, to describe a world economic order integrated by a
industrial and hegemonic center that establishes unequal economic transactions with
an agricultural periphery and subordinate to the style of an urban model. The relationship
Unequal center-periphery is the main obstacle for the developmentThe fruit of the
humanity of the economies located on the periphery and theindustrializationof the
same is the only way to become developed societies. the semi-periphery
refers to the interaction of the limits of one population with the beginning of another, that is
small populations that over time become a new city.
The first evidence of the use of the center-periphery duality in
economic processes can be found in the works ofRomanianMihail Manoilescu,
theChilean-GermanErnest Wagemannand the engineer in economics Viggo Axel Poulsen.
This concept was also independently established and developed in large
detail on a planetary scale in the model of the so-called world-system ofImmanuel
Wallersteinand used in critical theory of theeconomic cyclesofGiovanni Arrighi.
Latin American economic thought was the one that most strongly proposed the thesis
of a center-periphery relationship within the world economy as an explanation for the
economic inequality between industrial countries and agro-exporting countries. The
Argentinian economist Raúl Prebisch was the main proponent of the view that proposed
que la economía mundial se articulaba en una relación entre un centro desarrollado y
a underdeveloped periphery. The developed (industrialized) center managed to increase
its productivity rates at a higher and faster level than the periphery
underdeveloped (agricultural and mining), leading to a deterioration of the terms of
exchange or to a commercial system in which the real prices of the products
primary products from peripheral countries were deteriorating compared to those of the products of the
countries in the center. This secular deterioration of the terms of trade was attributed to the
rapid increase in productivity in developed countries through the
technological innovation that characterized the industrial sector and the availability of
natural or artificial substitute products for primary products from the periphery
(Rodríguez, 1980; Love, 1980).
The center-periphery model
The economic and social inequalities that exist between countries and their relations
they allow to differentiate three large domains in the world:
Center. Countries that export industrial products and high-value technology,
they make investments beyond their borders by establishing subsidiaries
they generate or adopt innovations and impose themselves
through the price control of its products. United States, Europe
The West and Japan are its best representatives.
Semi-periphery. In these countries, features of backwardness coexist with others.
modernity, which creates strong internal imbalances. Among them are the
new industrial countries in Asia, those of the Southern Cone of Ibero-America, those of
Eastern Europe, the coastal region of China, certain regions of India and part of
the ancient Soviet republics.
Periphery. It is identified with those countries specialized in production and
export of raw materials or low-value industrial products. They are
countries that are fundamentally based on the exploitation of labor
cheap, but they need to import capital and technology, which usually causes
a high level of debt and scant control over its own resources. The
least developed countries and the poorest in development still suffer from this
dependence.
The geometric metaphor of the center and the periphery is frequently used to describe the
opposition between the two fundamental types of places in asystemthe one who dominates it
and take advantage of this, the center, and those who suffer from it, in a peripheral position. This couple
The concept dates back at least to Werner Sombart (Der moderne Kapitalismus,
1902), if not to Marx (the city/country relations) and was used by the theorists of
imperialism (Rosa Luxemburg, Bukharin), but the economists of the
development inequalities are what gave it its contemporary form (Samir Amin,
Uneven development, 1973). Alain Reynaud developed the notion in geography.
(Society, space and justice, 1981).
Then, one is rigorous not to use this vocabulary in the ordinary sense, which is
it is used particularly in everyday urban life to distinguish what is in the
in the midst of what is outside. In particular, one must be wary of the
representations in fitted halos that can denote both simple
discretizations (aureoles of increasing or decreasing densities), successive stages
(urban growth rings, for example), distributions of phenomena of natural natures
different according to a parameter ofdistance(Thünen rings), as an opposition
between dominant and dominated places.
The concept can be used at all levels of thescalegeographical (center and
periphery within the limits of a town, a city, a region, etc.). But it has
success particularly at the global level, as an equivalent of world couples
developed/underdeveloped world, or North/South. Talking about center/Periphery allows
a description of the opposition of places, but above all it makes it possible to propose a
explanatory model of this differentiation: the periphery is subordinated because the center
is dominant -and reciprocally-. This concept has been used accordingly on
everything in third-world reflections, more or less as an instrument of evil
awareness for the inhabitants of Western countries. Thinking in terms of
centers and peripheries allow for a reflection on thespatial interactionamong the
places in the world: the ties of reciprocal dependence where inequalities are the
rule, but they do not work in one direction only.
For the couple to make sense, it is necessary for relationships to exist between the two types.
of places, that is to sayflows(of people, of goods, of capital, of information,
of decision,...), and that these relationships be asymmetrical (unbalanced flow balance,
hierarchy of power relations...). The center is central precisely because it extracts
the benefit of this inequality and, reciprocally, the peripheral area(s) is characterized by
for a deficit that maintains its position of dominated(s). Thesystemdescribed from this
mode is self-regulated: the center reproduces the conditions of its centrality and
reciprocally to the periphery. To speak of a dominated periphery is, therefore, a pleonasm.
However, precisely because it is based on a logic of exchange
(unequal), the system is dynamic. If certain peripheries can become blind spots.
(these are therefore referred to as abandoned), others may benefit from their
situation(advantage in size at the larger end, in the contact position with the
exterior of the space system...); this may imply polarity reversals in a
logic that remains globally identical, or changes ofsystems.
The center/periphery model consequently has a robust heuristic capacity, with
the condition of not excessively trivializing it. It is advisable to reserve its use for the
formalization of any system based on relations of inequality and not
use it as a simple description of gradient or spatial differentiation.
Sources:
Christian Guatalup. Hypergeo. Paris
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