SELF AND SOCIETY GLOSSARY

We acknowledge that sociology abounds with terms that can sometimes be unfamiliar and therefore difficult. This is often necessary because analysts of social problems and social processes are attempting to provide more accurate means of understanding reality and this often requires that new terms are invented to explain innovative ideas. Having said this, we also acknowledge that much of the jargon used in the discipline is needlessly obscure.

WE THEREFORE OFFER YOU THIS GUARANTEE:

IF THERE IS ANY TERM USED IN LECTURES OR IN THE TUTORIAL READINGS THAT YOU FIND OBSCURE, THEN LET US KNOW. WE WILL PROVIDE A DEFINITION AND ADD IT TO THE SELF AND SOCIETY GLOSSARY THAT YOU CAN FIND BELOW.

This is a glossary of terms that students have asked to be explained. The definitions are my own and correspond to how they are used in the course. This is an ongoing project, so please send me any concepts that you come across in the course readings or in the lectures that you feel should be included in the list. Thanks to all the students who have contributed terms.

As always, definitions are contentious, so please fell free to contact us if you need further clarification. To aid clarification, references will be added to each definition for further reading

Remember that these are only guides to help you through your reading. A glossary cannot be used as a substitute for understanding sociology, in the same way that you cannot learn a language by reading a dictionary.

... and beware! Sometimes Alastair's accent can occasionally trouble the uninitiated. Last year, a student asked him to explain a word he used in the opening lecture ... 'social corn flakes'. Finally we worked out that it was 'social conflict'. For more strange words you'll not find in a dictionary, check this out.

The Oxford On-Line Dictionary of Sociology can be found here

New words from SELF AND SOCIETY

Bureaucracy - the most commonly misspelt word in sociology - 'any hierarchical form of administration that operates on the basis of standardised impersonal rules and procedures'. Clegg presents a useful summary of the charactersistics of a bureaucracy using Max Weber's definition in Beilharz and Hogan, pp. 426-7. Weber understood bureaucracy to be a core compoennt of the rationalisation of modern society (see lecture Week 7 on classical theory, and lecture Week 3 on education).

Contingent - dependent on a certain chance happening

Cultural capital - the accumulation of values and norms that an individual absorbs from socialisation that are appropriate to and consistent with the dominant values of a society. This cultural capital then allows middle-class and upper-class children to negotiate effectively with the educational system and the job market, providing them with advantages in obtaining prestigious social positions. (reading brick, p. 43)

Empirical reality - the testable and observable parts of the world around us

Equalitarian - the belief that everyone in a society, regardless of class or status, should have the same chances of success as everyone else. In Austrlia, it is often called 'a fair go'. Also referred to a 'egalitarian'.

Essentialism - position that identifies a fundamental or unitary cause or explanation (Greig A. et al., p. 113)

Functionalism: an approach derived from Emile Durkheim that focuses on how the different parts of society must be viewed in terms of how they maintain overall social cohesion. The best analogy for functionalism is to think of society as an organic whole, and to appreciate that the individual parts (or organs) make no sense outside the role they perform in maintaining a healthy equilibrium. (reading brick, p. 31)

Hegemony - dominance (brick, p. 25)

Latent/ manifest functions - That which is 'manifest' is visible, obvious and easily recognisable, while that which is 'latent' is hidden - what we might call the hidden agenda. Holmes et al (reading brick) use this sort of distinction in the context of education and put it in terms of the difference between the curriculum and the hidden curriculum. Robert Merton (Social theory and social structure) makes the following point: ‘… the distinction between manifest and latent functions was devised to preclude the inadvertent confusion, often found in the sociological literature, between conscious motivations for social behavior and its objective consequences’

Macrostructural - those aspects of social life that involve large-scale social processes, such as the state, the national economy, globalisation.

Meritocracy: a society in which one's position is determined more by what one knows and one's achievements rather than who one knows, or one's birth status (ie, ascriptive characteristics). (reading brick, p. 32)

Milieu - environment, or surroundings, as in social milieu. Mills' mentioned 'personal troubles of milieu' (brick p. 11).

Primordial - pre-social, inherent (Greig A. et al., p. 113)

Reproduction theory: a perspective that suggests that social institutions function in a manner that maintains or perpetuates unequal relations among groups of people across generations. This perspective tends to focus on the systematic nature of nequality in modern society. In a sense it is a 'functionalist' theory, in that social institutions 'operate' in a way that maintains the status quo. But note how functionalist theory tends to focus on the seacrch for social cohension, while this theory tends to focus on social (especially class) conflict as an underlying feature of modern societies. The additional questions that reprodction theory asks that functionalist theory doesn't ask is: in whose interests do social institutions function and who holds power? As a consequnce, such theorists would be comfortable with concepts such as 'cultural capital'. (reading brick, p. 33)

Social agents - a term used in social philosophy to emphasise the individual as an active participant in shaping their lives an/or the world around them. The alternative would be a social determinist position which sees the individual as

Social capital - refers to the stock of social bonds that link a person to their surrounding community. These can refer to the organisational and interpersonal connections that a person maintains, but also to more intangible bonds such as trust, respect and reciprocity.

Social Homogeneity - a condition in which all people are alike in some or all dimensions of life: for example, everyone comes from an Anglo-Saxon background, or everyone holds the same beliefs, or everyone has the same level of income.

Social mobility - 'refers to the process by which individuals move from one position to another in society - positions which by general consent have been given spceific hierarchical values.' SM Lipset and R Bendix, Social Mobility in Industrial Society, 1967

Structuration - the idea that we are constantly enaged in creating and reproducing the very institutions that shape us: an attempt to overcome the structure/agancy dilemma in sociology: associated with Anthony Giddens. (Greig A. et al., p. 113)

University - Its an interesting exercise looking at different definitions as it gives us some indication of how people see its role: 1) 'institution for the advancement and dissemination of knowedge; conferring degrees and engaging in academic research; members of such an institution collectively' (Ox Adv. Dict):Not much on student body! Are they even members? The Macquarie Dictionary provides a much more inclusive definition that includes teaching and students.

Agency: In sociological theory, this refers to the ability of individuals to make meaningful choices within the confines of social structures. Purposive action.

Agrarian: the realm of the agricultural and land ownership

Anti-disestablishmentarianism: Originally associated with the movement to separate the Church from the state. More recently, a position that supports the status quo in the context of challenges to its dominance.

Autarchic development: Development policy or model premised on reliance upon internal resources and minimal foreign trade for development. Some observers argue that this is the logical implication of dependency theory, which argues that it is the economic ties with the core that are producing underdevelopment in the periphery.

Autarchy: self-reliance

Bear market: a stock market in which the price of shares is trending downwards. Luke suggests you remember that a bear 'claws down'

Bottom up: In this course, refers to the individual and collective actions of ordinary people to take control over the global processes that have affected their life.

Bull market: a stock market in which the price of shares is trending up. Luke suggests that you remember that a bull 'tosses up'

Capital accumulation circuits: the flow of capital from investment through to production, profit and reinvestment.

Capitalism: social system characterised by the dominance of market forces, private ownership of the means of production, profit-making economic activity and the production of goods and services by legally-free agents

Clash of civilisations: term introduced by Samuel Huntington that suggests that future global conflicts will revolve around the antagonism between incompatible global cultures, such as western liberalism, the Islamic world etc

Colonialism: The annexation and direct government of one country by another

Communism: The Marxist definition is the highest stage of human civilisation where people will give according to their abilities and receive according to their needs, and where the state will ‘wither away’ due to the end of class society

Compound interest: interest calculated on a) the interest accumulated over previous period as well as on b) the original capital invested (simple interest)

Contras: The US-backed anti-Sandinista forces that waged guerrilla warfare from Honduran and Costa Rican territory during the 1980s. While President Ronald Reagan regarded them as the moral equivalents of the American revolution and 'freedom fighters', others considered them to be hired mercenaries intent on returning Nicargaua to an authoritarian regime that represented the wealthy and supported US hegemony..

Core: Set of nations that determines or conditions the direction of development of less powerful nations

Counter-insurgency: Strategies used by the state to thwart attempts by anti-systemic movements to transform power relations

Cultural relativism: Derived from anthropology, a broad perspective that states that the practices of any society must be primarily understood through understanding the role they perform for the reproduction of that society. It therefore suggests that one culture cannot impose its values upon another culture. More conservative contemporary thinkers interpret the term as meaning that all cultures are equal.

Culture: ‘the way we do things around here’. The values and norms (or the 'glue) that binds together members of a social group or a society

Decade of development: The United Nations labelled the decade of the 1960s as 'the decade of development', during which programs would be put in place to bring the newly-independent countries up to the economic and technological level of the advanced world. After a 'second decade for development' during the 1970s, the slogan fell from use, although some commentators refered to the 1980s as the 'lost decade for development' refering to the fact that many parts of the Third World were falling further behid the advanced capitalist world.

Decolonisation: The process whereby former colonised peoples gained their independence from the European powers. The process varied from country to country. While the transtion was peaceful in some countries, it took on violent forms of national liberation struggles in other places.

Delinking: term used by dependency theorists that suggests that development in the periphery can occur through breaking the ties of dependency that creat unequal exchange. Delinking is therefore suggested as a possible path to national development whereby the resources of a nation are dedirected for national development rather than transferred to the core. (see also 'autarchic development', 'unequal exchange')

Democracy: Government through popular consent. In large-scale modern society, the scale of institutions makes participatory forms of democracy problematic, and thus democracy usually refers to representative democracy, where periodic elections are held to elect persons to state assemblies.

Dependency: a conditioning effect whereby one more powerful set of nations determines the direction of development of other less powerful nations

Dependency theory: Intellectual approach that claims that the more developed countries have blocked and undermined the balanced development of less developed nations (see A.G. Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America, London, Penguin)

Developing countries: those nations that have yet to achieve the level of development of the advanced capitalist industrial societies but which are heading in that direction

Development: the movement of society from one (undetermined) stage to another

Development Project: the post-world war two western-inspired vision to bring the post-independent nations growth levels and living standards that characterised the west. (see Phillip McMichael)

Division of labour: the extent to which the functions that maintain society are specialised

Double bind hegemony:

Economies of scale: the efficiencies that result from producing large qualities of a product or service

Elite theory: Intellectual approach arguing that the history of all hitherto existing societies has been the result of actions taken by the ruling classes (see Robert Michels, Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, John Higley)

Elitism: the view of the world from those that control societies productive, political and intellectual resources

Enclave Capitalism: the establishment of a sectoral industry for export purposes within a colony or external territory. These sectors are divorced from the economic and social life of the surrounding nation or colony. Examples from this course include the US concessions in Nicaragua during the period of marine-occupation between 1912 and the early-1930s.

End of History: statement that the history of modernity was dominated by the struggle between the ideas of liberalism and socialism and that the end of the Cold War signaled the definitive victory of liberalism as the only viable path for humanity. (see Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, New York, The Free Press)

Epistemology: the study of knowledge focusing on how we know what we know.

Ethnocentrism: To interpret the world and other cultural practices from the limited perspective of one's own cultural beliefs and norms. (see cultural relativism)

Foucauldian: Perspective based on the ideas of the French theorist Michel Foucault. Within the context of this course, a Foucauldian perspective usually refers to the claim that, after World War Two, the west transformed Third World poverty into a 'problem' that needed to be solved, and thus was created an entire discourse (or set of received truths) that allowed western experts and governments to servey, 'manage' and direct the Third World.

Fourth World: entrapped nations comprising cultures maintaining a presence despite being marginalised by colonial settlement; OR the poorest of the Third World nations; OR the ‘global poor wherever they live (Calvert and Calvert)

Gangster capitalism: the form of primitive capitalist accumulation that Russia experienced after the fall of the Soviet Union. A brutal form of market-oriented economy that is likely to prevail when the 'law' of supply and demand is imposed on a society without the necessary social and cultural preconditions. (see Holmstrom and Smith)

Gini coefficient: an economic measurement for concentration ranging from 0 to 1 for a range of purposes, including industry or inequality. The latter is the measurement of greatest concern in this course on development. A national gini co-efficient of 0 represents a society with perfect equality where everyone receives the same, while 1 represents perfect inequality where all income or wealth is possessed by one person. (For a more methematical explanation see A.B. Atkinson, The Economic of Inequality, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1983)

Global sceptic: term used by Giddens to refer to those who argue that globalisation is a continuation of previous trends and that the structure of unequal relations between and within countries remains fundamental to explaining developmental trends..

Global radical: term used by Giddens to refer to those who argue that the process of globalisation has fundamentally transformed the way people live, think and interact, both personally and in terms of broader social, cultural, political and cultural relations. It heralds a new epoch in development.

Globoloney: a term that sums up the 'global sceptics' view of the 'global radicals'. (see http://www.ngos.net/globaloney.html).

Globalisation: 'a compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole' and 'the processes rendering the world as a whole as a single place' (Roland Robertson)

Globalisation from above: process of global hegemony led by corporations and large government bureaucracies

Globalisation from below: a bottom-up approach to democratising international political econmy involving grass-roots participatory democracy within small, locally based organisations, often coming together and sharing ideas in large global conferences, internet chat-rooms and 'anti-corporate globalisation' demonstrations.

Globalology: term used by Albert bergeson to suggest that sociology at the end of the twentieth century should move away from studying 'societies' towards understanding the world-as-a-whole. Suggests that the study of processes within national boundaries have become less important than the understanding of global culture.

Gross Domestic Product; a monetary measurement of the total flow of goods and services produced by a nation, usually calculated annually using market prices

Gross National Product: GDP plus income accruing to domestic residents from investment abroad minus income earned in the domestic market accruing to foreigners abroad

Growth project: term used by David Christian to define capitalism.

Guerrilla warfare: 'Unconventional warfare' involving the ability to disappear into the landscape or society (see C. Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, London, Penguin).

Gunboat diplomacy: the attempt by governments to achieve their objectives through threatening force. .

Hegemony: domination; OR ruling ideas. The rule of power whereby the thought processes of the dominated are controlled to secure their consent.

Holistic: A perspective that seeks to understand the structure of entire systems in order to understand the role of specific parts of the system. Associated with the idea that 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts'). Within development discourse, world systems analysis is considered much more holistic thatn modernisation theory which explains development in terms of the transformations required within individual cultures.

Human Development Index; composite index of national well-being that includes GNP, adult literacy, life expectancy and purchasing power (see Mahbub al Haq)

Ideology: a set of beliefs, attitudes and opinions which influence the way an individual or group acts

Imperialism: the subjugation, through cultural, economic, political and ideological means, of one culture or nation over another

Import substitution: protectionist policy adopted, usually by less industrialised nations, to protect fledgling industries from more competitive foriegn industries, usually through tariff barriers or quota restrictions.

Indicators of development: factors used to assess whether a nation or social group has moved from one stage of social change to another

Left wing: originally used to distinguish radical young Hegelians from his more conservative followers, now more commonly associated with a socialist political stance that values collective democratic control of society’s resources (or sometimes state control) over market dominance.

Linear development: the idea that history of a society is moving in a particular knowable direction

Machiavellianism: Realpolitik, or where ethics is divorced from political decisions

Macrosociology: the study of large-scale social behaviour, patterned relationships and historical social processes, for example the relationship between nation-states, the role of the media, political ideologies or the transformation of socieites over time

Magnanimity: to show great generosity

Manifest destiny: The faith prevalent in US government circles from the time of the decline of the Spanish Empire onwards that it was inevitable that the Latin American region would one day be part of the US spehere of influence.

Market: an arena of exchange or set of socio-economic relationships where people attempt to maximise their own advantages through the relationship between supply and demand

Marxism: approach to understanding social relationships that focuses on the conflict inevitably generated between people according to their relationship to the means of production

Maturity: term associated with WW Rostow’s modernisation theory according to which nations reach the pinnacle of modern growth where services and welfare become more central that the production of goods; OR stage when an industrial sector reaches its technological limits

Mercantile capitalism: early stage of capitalist development where the centre of profit-maximising activity lies in the buying and selling (rather than production) of commodities (see Immanual Wallerstein)

Mercantilism: body of economic thought in the 16^th and 17^th century that recognised the growing importance of international trade and championed the state intervention in foreign trade as a means of accumulating national wealth

Methodological territorialism: the tendency within sociological theory to privilege the nation-state as a key unit of analysis (ie, sociology has tradtionally been the study of societies within a defined geographical space.) (See J. Scholte, Globalisation, Basingstoke, Palgrove, 2000)

Microsociology: the study of small-scale social behaviour and interaction between individuals and within/between small groups

Model: in this course, refers to a set of policies implemented by a government to achieve developmental goals

Modernisation: the process out of traditional society whereby a nation increasingly proximates higher levels of industrialisation, urbanisation, secularisation, market-oriented economic behaviour, democratisation, economic diversification and a more complex division of labour

Modernisation theory: approach to development that argues that the west moved from traditional society to self-sustaining growth due to a combination of a) a shift in values and attitudes that accepted change and b) the risk-taking behaviour of certain elites. The lack of these factors, it is argued, accounts for why less-developed countries have failed to achieve the level of development characterised by the west

Modernity: the end point in the process of modernisation; OR the latest stage achieved by themost developed nations. By definition, a moving target.

Multinational corporation:

Monroe Doctrine: Declaration by US President in 1823 that warned against any further european colonisation of the Western hemisphere. Associated with 'manifest destiny'.

Nation: according to Held and McGrew (2002, 27), 'cross-class collectivities which share a sense of identity and collective political fate'.

Nationalism: according to Held and McGrew (2002, 27), the force 'that links states to nations'.

Neo-colonialism: a concept used to explain that independence from colonial powers did not necessarily lead to self-generating and self-determining development due to the legacy of colonial socio-economic relations, but instead continued those colonial relationships in a new, more insidious, economic form

Neo-liberalism: the resurgence of neo-classical economics in the last decades of the Twentieth century in the context of winding back the welfare state and encouraging less state intervention while promoting privatisation, corpoatisation and the primacy of market relations

Newly Industrialising Countries: those nations that successfully developed an export-oriented process of industrialisation during the latter period of the Twentieth century, such as South Korea, Taiwan, Brasil, Hong Kong, Singapore (see Nigel Harris, The End of the Third World, London, Penguin, 1987).

Non-alignment: an international political stance during the Cold War that situated a nation outside the sphere of US influence (the First World) and the Soviet sphere of influence (the Second World)

North: term popularised during the 1970s and 1980s that distinguished the South as the less powerful and less developed world, or Third World, as distinct from the more powerful and economically advanced North. It was also an attempt to move the terms of internation developmental debates away from the East-West axis.

Oligarchy: Samll clique or group that monopolises power

Ontology: the philosophy of being, studying the nature of existence and the essence of things

Palimpsest: According to my Oxford Dictionary, a 'piece of parchment or other writing material from which the original writing has been erased to make room for new writing, esp as a source for lost works of the remote past'. (Could someone please explain why I wrote this? It might have post-colonbial connotations)

Paradigm: a set of interconnecting ideas that form a particular way of understanding the world. A 'dominant paradigm' is a world view that holds dominates the thinking and actions of the powerful as well as most other people (see T.H. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions)

Pattern variables: a dualistic set of concepts created by the structural-functionalist American sociologist Talcott Parsons in order to contrast traditional and modern social strutures and sensibilities.

Periphery: term employed by dependency theorists to refer to those areas of the world capitalist system whose development is conditioned by the action of the core; the areas of the world capitalist system where more resources and capital are extracted for the benefit of the core nations than they receive..

Perestroika: the process of economic restructuring undertaken under Mikael Gorbachev during the 1980s aimed at rejuvenating the Soviet economy. (see David Christian)

Pluralism: social conditions where economic and political power is fragmented and distributed evenly across the social spectrum

Positivism: Sociological approach that argues that science can only relate to aspects of reality that we can observe, experience and test. It aims to construct general laws about the real world that refer the the relationship between concepts or things.

Post-colonialism: originally referred to the state of independece achieved by nations after colonial rule was withdrawn. During the last two decades of the century, the term was transformed to refer to a position that sought to destablise the dominance of western Enlightenment discourse and the marginalisation of non-western (colonial ) voices through bringing to the fore the former colonial voice both in the west and elasewhere.

Post-modernism: philosophy rejecting the totalising narratives generated by the Enlightenment and rejecting deeper structural essences that explain cause and effect

Post-modernisation: Title of book by Crook and Waters.

Post-modernity: the condition of existence associated with postmodernism, whereby stable features of modern identity, such as class, dissolve and more fragmented floating forms of identity politics emerge

Post-structuralism:

Pre-dependency: term used within dependency theory to characterise a society prior to its contact with western imperialism. It suggests that, at this stage, the resources of the society were not linked through exploitative relations to the world capitalist system.

Primitive capital accumulation: (PSA) Marxist concept refering to the prerequite period for capitalist economic development whereby the intitial savings for future gowth are made. According to Marx, this period has historically been a bloody process involving the separation of producers from their means of production. Marx, and leter dependency theorists, argued that PSA was also generated from the spoils of colonialism.

Progress: term usually associated with 'development', except with an additional more teleological and relentless sense that time is moving towards a more desirable end. According to Baudelaire (1855), progress is 'like the scorpion that stings itself with its own tail - progress, that eternal desideratum that is its own eternal despair'.

Proletariat: the producing class under capitalist relations who sell their labour power in order to survive

Proxy war: to enage in military conflict using another force; i.e., the contras conducted a 'proxy war' on behalf of the US government

Redistributive project: term used by David Christian to define socialism. He suggests that this project was doomed in the 'Twentieth Century' as the growth project has yet to run its course.

Rest: those parts of the world that have not reached the level of development of the 'west'

Right wing: political philosophies that uphold the status quo from conservatives to reactionaries. A tendency to regard hierarchical relationships and inequality as natural and/or beneficial for society.

Semi-periphery: term employed by dependency theorists to refer to nation states that exist in-between the core and the periphery. They experience exploitative relations from the core but gain from their own imperialist links with other peripheral states

Social democracy: political movement that aims at gradual and peaceful reform within the confines of the capitalist system. Associated with Labour parties and the Second International

Socialism: in Marxist philosophy, the stage of society achieved after the overthrow of the capitalist system and the proletarian revolution, yet prior to the achievment of communism. Under socialism, there are still residues of different classes, even though the state is noe under the control of the majority (the proletariat). For this reason, there is still a need for a state apparatus; OR from a more conservative perspective, any government that advocates higher levels of state intervention

South: term popularised in the 1970s and 1980s to refer to the highlight the fact that the Eas-West Cold War conflcvit was deflecting attention away from the more pressing international issue of gloabl poverty, whereby the South (the less powerful and developed nations) were systematically diadvantaged in their economic and political relations with the North (the more powerful nations).

Sovereignty: stsus whereby a nation has the full competence to determine its path of independence and engage in relations with other nations of their choice

Stages of growth: In this course, the term is associated with the work of W.W. Rostow, who argues that all societies, in their economic dimensions pass through discernible and identifable periods of development from traditional to modern society (see W.W.Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth, Cambridge University Press, 1960).

Structural differentiation: a society which has achieved a complex division of labour

Structural Functionalism: dominant post-WW2 sociological theory which viewed society as a system consisting of mutually dependent parts that interacted to maintain social equilibrium, harmony and stability. The analogy drawn for society is a biological organism. Social change and development results from a transformation in one part of the system causing corresponding changes in other parts to maintain a dynamic equilibrium. (Parsons)

Structuralism: Originally associated with the study of languages, refers in sociology to approaches that seek to identify deeper underlying structures of soci-economic systems. Opposed to 'humanist' philosophy which centres agency, the individual and/or purposive consciousness at the centre of understanding the world.

Subaltern: Literally, 'of the lower ranks'. Term used in post-colonial theory to revise the grand historical narratives that have privileged European thought and action and with a view to bring the periphery and the marginalised to the core and closer to the centre of analysis

Sustainable development: accoring to the World Commission on the Environment and Development (1990) 'development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs'

Theory: an abstract conceptual scheme involving two or more concepts and that posits their relationship.

Third World: Term first employed widely in the first flushes of the Cold War to refer to those nations that wished to remain aloof or non-aligned from both the Soviet Union and the USA. By the late 1960s the term took on a meaning that refered to those nations whose standard of living and levels of economic development lagged behind that of the more advanced industrialised countries. The term is still widely used, although many commentators have deliberatelyavoided it for a variety of reasons, including its numerical irrelevance after the end of the Cold War and, more importantly, the analytical dangers of overgeneralising poverty and inequality in specific geographic settings in a global era. Maoism during the 1960s and 1970s adopted another definition of the Third World that saw the two key superpowers (US and USSR) as the First World, the remainder of the industrialised world as the Second World and the rest of the world (including China) as the Third World.

Top down: in this course, refers to actions taken by those that control or dominate social, political and cultural institutions and impose on those that the system subordinates.

Tradition: Described by Marx as a force of 'dead generations' that 'weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living' (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1851-52).

Traditional society: described and defined by modernisation theorists as the antithesis of the modern west. Stage One in W.W. Rostows 'stages of economic growth'.

Transnational corporations: (TNCs) companies that spread their design, technological, production, marketing and distribution processes across the globe rather than producing goods and services within individual countries. Of the largest 100 neconomic entities in the world, over half are TNCs rather than nation states.

Underdeveloped: developmental term that suggests that a country has yet to reach its full socio-economic potential. Depending on the perspective, this could be seen to be the result of insufficnet modern values and lack of entrepreneurialsm (modernisation theory), or the exploitative ties that have drained the economy of its reserves (dependency theory)

Undeveloped: term that suggests that a society has not embarked on the road to modern economic growth that characterises the West.

Unequal exchange: term associated with dependency theory that refers to the relationship between core and periphery whereby the core extracts more value from the periphery than it provides. While under colonial regimes, this relatonship was maintained by political, adminstrative and tributary rleations, after colonialsm, the relationship was maintained through shifting terms of trade whereby the goods exported by the periphery were falling relative to the goods exported by the core (see Arhiri Emmanuel, Unequal Exchange, New York, Monthly Review Press).

Unilinearism: the idea that all societies follow the same path of development and that some countries are merely at an earlier stage along with earlier pathbreakers trod.

Universal: in this course, refers to an idea that is all-embracing

West: in terms of development disourse, refers to the developmental logic of western Europe and the United States since the beginning of modernity. Sometimes can also refer to the model adopted by other successful 'emulators', such as Japan. After WW2, the term also took on more political connotations that referred to the Cold War conflict between the East (the Soviet spehere of influence) and the West (the US sphere of influence). Thus, nations that had not industrialised, such as Nicaragua, could be considered part of the West due to its strong support for, and incorporation within, the US sphere of influence.

Westernisation: the process whereby countries take on the characteristics of the west, developmentally. The fact that westernisation is often seen as indistinguishable from modernisation reflects the influence that 'modernisation theory' has had upon modes of developmental thinking. In other words, to become more like the west is often viewed as the path of modernisation.

World proletariat: from a classical Marxist perspective, the world proletariat refers to those producers who sell their labour to survive within the world capitalist system and whose unification and solidarity will result in socialist revolution and thus the abandonment of their chains. In a more contemporary context, it could also refer to the global poor (Calvert & Calvert) that are marginalised by the process of corporate globalisation.

World Systems Theory: an adaptation of dependency theory, associated originally with the work of Immanuel Wallerstein, that provided a more global systematic understanding of the history of the phases of global capitalism since the 16th century, including its political and cultural tranfromations and power relations. Introduced the concept of the semi-periphey that helped to explain the upward and dowwnward mobility of certain nation-states within the world capitalist system (see Immanuel Wallerstain, The Capitalist World Economy).