Globalization, Inequality, and the Resource Curse

Core-periphery models describe the global economy as structured around a wealthy, technologically advanced "core," historically Western Europe, North America, and Japan, and a "periphery" of less-developed regions that have historically supplied raw materials and cheap labor to the core while remaining structurally dependent on it, a framework developed substantially through world-systems theory associated with sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein and dependency theory associated with economists such as Raúl Prebisch and André Gunder Frank. These frameworks emerged largely from Latin American and African experience with colonial and postcolonial trade relationships, in which former colonies continued exporting unprocessed commodities — copper from Zambia, cocoa from Ghana, bananas from Central America — while importing manufactured goods at persistently unfavorable terms of trade. Contemporary geographers often refine the model by identifying a "semi-periphery" of rapidly industrializing economies such as China, Brazil, and India that occupy an intermediate position, exporting manufactured goods to the core while still importing capital, technology, and, in some cases, remaining dependent on core markets and finance. Critics of core-periphery frameworks argue they can understate the internal diversity of both categories and the real mobility some countries, notably the East Asian Tigers, have achieved between them, while defenders maintain the model still captures durable structural inequalities in global trade, finance, and technology that persist despite decades of globalization.