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Friday, October 21, 2022

Sexual violence

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sexual violence is any sexual act or attempt to obtain a sexual act by violence or coercion, act to traffic a person, or act directed against a person's sexuality, regardless of the relationship to the victim. It occurs in times of peace and armed conflict situations, is widespread, and is considered to be one of the most traumatic, pervasive, and most common human rights violations.

Sexual violence is a serious public health problem and has a profound short or long-term impact on physical and mental health, such as an increased risk of sexual and reproductive health problems, an increased risk of suicide or HIV infection. Murder occurring either during a sexual assault or as a result of an honor killing in response to a sexual assault is also a factor of sexual violence. Though women and girls suffer disproportionately from these aspects, sexual violence can occur to anybody at any age; it is an act of violence that can be perpetrated by parents, caregivers, acquaintances and strangers, as well as intimate partners. It is rarely a crime of passion, and is rather an aggressive act that frequently aims to express power and dominance over the victim.

Sexual violence remains highly stigmatized in all settings, thus levels of disclosure of the assault vary between regions. In general, it is a widely underreported phenomenon, thus available data tend to underestimate the true scale of the problem. In addition, sexual violence is also a neglected area of research, thus deeper understanding of the issue is imperative in order to promote a coordinated movement against it. Domestic sexual violence is distinguished from conflict-related sexual violence. Often, people who coerce their spouses into sexual acts believe their actions are legitimate because they are married. In times of conflict, sexual violence tends to be an inevitable repercussion of warfare trapped in an ongoing cycle of impunity. Rape of women and of men is often used as a method of warfare (war rape), as a form of attack on the enemy, typifying the conquest and degradation of its women or men or captured male or female fighters. Even if strongly prohibited by international human rights law, customary law and international humanitarian law, enforcement mechanisms are still fragile or even non-existent in many corners of the world.

From a historical perspective, sexual violence was considered as only happening to women and as being commonplace and "normal" during both war and peace times from the Ancient Greeks to the 20th century. This led to the negligence of any indications of what the methods, aims and magnitude of such violence was. It took until the end of the 20th century for sexual violence to no longer be considered a minor issue and to gradually become criminalized.

Definitions

General

The World Health Organization (WHO) in its 2002 World Report on Violence and Health defined sexual violence as: "any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or acts to traffic, or otherwise directed, against a person's sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting, including but not limited to home and work". WHO's definition of sexual violence includes but is not limited to rape, which is defined as physically forced or otherwise coerced penetration of the vulva or anus, using a penis, other body parts or an object. Sexual violence consists in a purposeful action of which the intention is often to inflict severe humiliation on the victims and diminish human dignity. In the case where others are forced to watch acts of sexual violence, such acts aim at intimidating the larger community.

Other acts incorporated in sexual violence are various forms of sexual assaults, such as forced contact between mouth and penis, vulva or anus. Sexual violence can include coerced contact between the mouth and penis, vulva or anus, or acts that do not involve physical contact between the victim and the perpetrator—for example, sexual harassment, threats, and peeping.

Coercion, with regard to sexual violence, can cover a whole spectrum of degrees of force. Apart from physical force, it may involve psychological intimidation, blackmail or other threats – for instance, the threat of physical harm, of being dismissed from a job or of not obtaining a job that is sought. It may also occur when the person being attacked is unable to give consent – for instance, while drunk, drugged, asleep or mentally incapable of understanding the situation.

Such broader definitions of sexual violence are found within international law. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has established in article 7(1)(g) that "rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity" constitutes a crime against humanity. Sexual violence is further explained in the ICC's Elements of Crimes, which the Court uses in its interpretation and application of Article 7. The Elements of Crime establishes that sexual violence is:

An act of sexual nature against one or more persons or caused such person or persons to engage in an act of sexual nature by force, or by threat of force or coercion, such as that caused by fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression or abuse of power, against such person or persons or another person, or by taking advantage of a coercive environment or such person's or persons' incapacity to give genuine consent.

The Special Rapporteur on systemic rape sexual slavery and slavery-like practices during armed conflict, in a report in 1998, stipulated that sexual violence is "any violence, physical or psychological, carried out through sexual means by targeting sexuality". This definition encompasses physical as well as psychological attacks aimed at "a person's sexual characteristics, such as forcing a person to strip naked in public, mutilating a person's genitals, or slicing off a woman's breasts". The Special Rapporteur's definition also refers to situations "in which two victims are forced to perform sexual acts on one another or to harm one another in a sexual manner".

A thorough definition is necessary in monitoring the prevalence of sexual violence and studying trends over time. In addition, a consistent definition helps in determining the magnitude of sexual violence and aids in comparing the problem across demographics. Consistency allows researchers to measure risk and protective factors for victimization in a uniform manner. This ultimately informs prevention and intervention efforts.

Conflict-related and domestic sexual violence

A distinction is made between conflict-related sexual violence and domestic sexual violence:

  • Conflict-related sexual violence is sexual violence perpetrated by combatants, including rebels, militias, and government forces. The various forms of sexual violence can be used systematically in conflicts "to torture, injure, extract information, degrade, threaten, intimidate or punish". Sexual violence can in such cases amount to being a weapon of war.
  • Domestic sexual violence is sexual violence perpetrated by intimate partners and by other family/household members, and is often termed intimate partner violence. This kind of sexual violence is widespread both during conflict and in peacetime. It is commonly believed that incidents of domestic sexual violence increase in wartime and in post-conflict environments.

Victims

Spectrum

All people can fall victim to sexual violence. This includes women, men children, and people who define themselves in other terms, e.g., transgender or non-binary individuals.

Most research, reports and studies focus on sexual violence against women and sexual violence in armed conflicts. The majority of victims are women, but men and children are also victims of sexual violence. The crime may be committed in peacetime or during conflict.

It is possible for individuals to be targeted based on sexual orientation or gender-exhibiting behaviour. Such attacks, which are often called "corrective rapes" have been performed to conform an individual to a heterosexual orientation or to more accepted notions of behaviour for the perceived gender of the victim; asexual individuals are also particularly targeted.

Domestic sexual violence

Domestic sexual violence includes all forms of unwanted sexual activity. It is considered abuse even if the victim may have previously engaged in consensual sexual activities with the perpetrator. Men and women can both fall victim to this type of abuse.

A 2006 WHO study on physical and sexual domestic violence against women conducted across ten countries, finds that prevalence of sexual domestic violence ranges on average between 10 and 50%. Domestic sexual violence is also considerably less common than other forms of domestic violence. The variations in the findings across and within countries suggest that this type of abuse is not inevitable and can be prevented.

Women

Sexual violence against women and girls can take many forms and is carried out in different situations and contexts. The WHO's World Report on Violence and Health lists the following ways in which sexual violence against females can be committed:

  • Systematic rape during armed conflict
  • Rape within marriage or dating relationships
  • Rape by strangers
  • Unwanted sexual advances or sexual harassment, including demanding sex in return for favors
  • Sexual abuse of mentally or physically disabled people
  • Sexual abuse of children
  • Forced marriage or cohabitation, including the marriage of children
  • Denial of the right to use contraception or to adopt other measures to protect against sexually transmitted diseases
  • Forced abortion
  • Violent acts against the sexual integrity of women, including female genital mutilation and obligatory inspection for virginity
  • Forced prostitution and trafficking of people for the purpose of sexual exploitation

There was a study in 1987 that came to a conclusion that women in college have reported being involved in unwanted sex due to men using verbal coercion, physical force, and using alcohol or drugs to intoxicate them.

Sexual violence is one of the most common and widespread violations to which women are subject in wartime. It also figures among the most traumatic experiences, both emotionally and psychologically, women suffer during conflict. Sexual violence, in particular rape, is often considered as a method of warfare: it is used not only to "torture, injure, extract information, degrade, displace, intimidate, punish or simply destroy," but also as a strategy to destabilize communities and demoralize men. The use of sexual violence as a weapon of war was widespread conflicts such as Rwanda, Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Kosovo. The perpetrators of female-directed violence in times of conflict are often armed groups and local people.

Men

As with sexual violence against women, sexual violence against men can take different forms, and occur in any kind of context, including at home or in the workplace, in prisons and police custody, and during war and in the military. The practice of sexually assaulting males is not confined to any geographical area of the world or its place of commission, and occurs irrespective of the victim's age. The various forms of sexual violence directed against males include rape, enforced sterilization, enforced masturbation, and genital violence (including genital mutilation). In addition to the physical pain caused, sexual violence against men can also exploit local ideas of gender and sexuality to cause tremendous mental and psychological anguish for survivors that can last for years following the attack.

Male-directed sexual violence is more significant than is often thought. The scope of such crimes continues, however, to be unknown largely because of poor or a lack of documentation. The under- or non-reporting of sexual violence against males may often be due to fear, confusion, guilt, shame and stigma, or a combination thereof. Moreover, men may be reluctant to talk about being victim of crimes of sexual violence. In this regard, the way in which societies construct the notion of masculinity plays a role. Masculinity and victimization may be considered incompatible, in particular in societies where masculinity is equated with the ability to exert power, leading to non-reporting. The incompatibility between the conventional understanding of masculinity and victimization can arise both with regard to the attack itself and when coping with the consequences of such crimes. Because of under- and non-reporting on sexual violence against men, the little evidence that exists tends to be anecdotal.

In the case that sexual violence against males is recognized and reported, it is often categorized as "abuse" or "torture". This is considered a tendency to hide sexual assaults directed at men as something else, and it is believed to contribute to the poor- or lack of reporting of such crimes, and can arise from the belief that sexual violence is a women's issue and that men cannot be victims of sexual assaults.

Children

Sexual violence against children is a form of child abuse. It includes harassment and rape, as well as the use of children in prostitution or pornography.

Sexual violence is a serious infringement upon a child's rights, and one which can result in significant physical and psychological trauma to the victim. A 2002 WHO study approximated that 223 million children have been victims of sexual violence involving physical contact. Yet, due to the sensitivity of the issue and the tendency of the crime to stay hidden, the true figure is likely to be much higher.

Girls are more frequent targets for sexual abuse than boys. The WHO study found that 150 million girls were abused compared to 73 million boys. Other sources also conclude that girls face a greater risk of sexual violence, including prostitution.

Causes and factors

Explanations

Explaining sexual violence is complicated by the multiple forms it takes and contexts in which it occurs. There is considerable overlap between forms of sexual violence and intimate partner violence. There are factors increasing the risk of someone being coerced into sex, factors increasing the risk of an individual person forcing sex on another person, and factors within the social environment including peers and family influencing the likelihood of rape and the reaction to it.

Research suggests that the various factors have an additive effect, so that the more factors present, the greater the likelihood of sexual violence. In addition, a particular factor may vary in importance according to the life stage.

Some 70% of people who experienced sexual violence were paralyzed before and during the assault. The prevailing view amongst scientists is that this form of tonic immobility occurs in humans when no other options to avoid the sexual violence are available anymore, and the brain paralyses the body in order to allow it to survive with minimal damage.

Risk factors

The following are individual risks factors:

  • Alcohol and drug use
  • Delinquency
  • Empathic deficits
  • General aggressiveness and acceptance of violence
  • Early sexual initiation
  • Coercive sexual fantasies
  • Preference for impersonal sex and sexual-risk taking
  • Exposure to sexually explicit media
  • Hostility towards women
  • Adherence to traditional gender role norms
  • Hyper-masculinity
  • Suicidal behavior
  • Prior sexual victimization or perpetration

The following are relationship risk factors:

  • Family environment characterized by physical violence and conflict
  • Childhood history of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse
  • Emotionally unsupportive family environment
  • Poor parent-child relationships, particularly with fathers
  • Association with sexually aggressive, hypermasculine, and delinquent peers
  • Involvement in a violent or abusive intimate relationship

The following are community factors:

  • Poverty
  • Lack of employment opportunities
  • Lack of institutional support from police and judicial system
  • General tolerance of sexual violence within the community
  • Weak community sanctions against sexual violence perpetrators

There is also post-catastrophe sexual opportunism. Sexual opportunism during and after catastrophic events is largely unreported. Massive spikes in human trafficking of girls and other humanitarian abuses has been reported in events such as after the devastating April 2015 Nepal earthquake.

Perpetrators

Perpetrators may come from various backgrounds, and they may be someone known by the victim like a friend, a family member, an intimate partner, an acquaintance, or they may be a complete stranger. The primary motivators behind sexually violent acts are believed to be power and control, and not, as it is widely perceived, sexual desire. Sexual violence is rather a violent, aggressive and hostile act aiming to degrade, dominate, humiliate, terrorize and control the victim. Some of the reasons for committing sexual violence are that it reassures the offender about his sexual adequacy, it discharges frustration, compensates for feelings of helplessness, and achieves sexual gratification.

Data on sexually violent men are somewhat limited and heavily biased towards apprehended rapists, except in the United States, where research has also been conducted on male college students. Despite the limited amount of information on sexually violent men, it appears that sexual violence is found in almost all countries (though with differences in prevalence), in all socioeconomic classes and in all age groups from childhood on. Data on sexually violent men also show that most direct their acts at women whom they already know. Among the factors increasing the risk of a man committing rape are those related to attitudes and beliefs, as well as behavior arising from situations and social conditions that provide opportunities and support for abuse.

Consequences

"Sexual and gender-based violence destroys people, it destroys local communities and it is extremely difficult to mend the damage. That's why we have to do more to prevent it." — Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide

Sexual violence is a serious public health problem and it has both short and long term negative physical and psychological effects on health and well-being. There is evidence that male and female victims of sexual violence may experience similar mental health, behavioral and social consequences. Watts, Hossain, and Zimmerman (2013) reported that 72.4% of the surivivors had at least one gynecological complaint. 52.2% had chronic lower abdominal pain, 27.4% had abnormal vaginal bleeding, 26.6% had infertility, 25.3% had genital sores, and 22.5% had swellings in the abdomen. 18.7% of the participants also had severe psychological and surgical morbidity including alcoholism. 69.4% showed significant psychological distress, 15.8% attempted suicide, 75.6% had at least one surgical complaint. 4.8% of the participants had a positive HIV status.

In child sexual abuse (CSA) cases, the child may develop mental health disorders that can extend into adult life especially if sexual abuse involved actual intercourse. Studies on abused boys have shown that around one in five continue in later life to molest children themselves. CSA may lead to negative behavioral patterns in later life, learning difficulties as well as regression of or slower development.

The table below gives some examples of possible physical and psychological consequences of sexual violence:

Examples of fatal outcomes related to sexual violence

  • Suicide
  • Homicide
  • AIDS-related

Examples of non-fatal outcomes related to sexual violence

Physical consequences

Psychological consequences

  • Unwanted pregnancy
  • Infertility
  • Sexual dysfunction
  • Chronic pelvic pain
  • Sexually transmitted infections, including HIV infection and AIDS
  • Obesity or anorexia
  • Urinary tract infections
  • Gastrointestinal disorders
  • Gynecological and pregnancy complications
  • Migraines and other frequent headaches
  • Fatigue
  • Nausea
  • Rape trauma syndrome
  • Post-traumatic stress disorder
  • Social phobias
  • Shock
  • Increased substance use or abuse;
  • Denial
  • Fear
  • Confusion
  • Anxiety
  • Guilt
  • Depression
  • Alienation
  • Eating disorders

In some cases victims of sexual violence may be stigmatized and ostracized by their families and others. Societal perceptions that the victim provoked sexual violence lead to a lack of disclosure of sexual assault which is associated with even more severe psychological consequences, particularly in children. Thus, more interventions are needed in order to order to change societal attitudes towards sexual violence as well as efforts designed to educate those to whom the survivors may disclose the assault.

Treatment

In the emergency room, emergency contraceptive medications are offered to women raped by men because about 5% of such rapes result in pregnancy. Preventative medication against sexually transmitted infections are given to victims of all types of sexual assault (especially for the most common diseases like chlamydia, gonorrhea, trichomoniasis and bacterial vaginosis) and a blood serum is collected to test for STIs (such as HIV, hepatitis B and syphilis). Any survivor with abrasions are immunized for tetanus if five years have elapsed since the last immunization. Short-term treatment with a benzodiazepine may help with acute anxiety and antidepressants may be helpful for symptoms of PTSD, depression and panic attacks.

Sexual violence survivors who have lasting psychological symptoms as a result of their trauma may seek psychological counseling and therapy.

Informal treatment, or support, includes social support, which can provide avenues for social justice engagement. Themes of self-reflection, social support, and activism aimed at supporting other survivors and preventing sexual violence are associated with improved functioning and facilitating positive change post trauma. Involvement in anti-sexual violence activism can aid survivors in making sense of the social conditions that contributed to their violation, recover self-confidence, and facilitate peer support, however survivors have also identified burn out to be prevalent in activist work.

Prevention

The number of initiatives addressing sexual violence is limited and few have been evaluated. The approaches vary with most interventions being developed and implemented in industrialized countries. How relevant they may be in other settings is not well known. Early interventions and the provision of psychological support may prevent or minimize many of the harmful and lasting psychological impacts of sexual assault.
The interventions that have been developed can be categorized as follows.

Initiatives to prevent sexual violence
Individual approaches Health care responses Community based efforts Legal and policy responses
Psychological care and support Medico-legal services Prevention campaigns Legal reform
Programmes for perpetrators Training for health care professionals Community activism by men International treaties
Developmental approaches Prophylaxis for HIV infection School-based programmes Enforcement mechanisms

Centres providing comprehensive care to victims of sexual assault

West Midlands Police campaign poster against sexual violence

There is also a public health approach to prevention. Because sexual violence is widespread and directly or indirectly affects a community as whole, a community-oriented approach encourages not just victims and advocates to spread awareness and prevent sexual violence, but allocates responsibility to wider community to do so as well. The CDC's report on Sexual Violence Prevention: Beginning the Dialogue suggests following its four step model.

  1. Define the Problem: Collect data about the victims, perpetrators, where it's occurring, and how often it's happening.
  2. Identify Risk and Protective Factors: Research the risk factors that may put people at risk for victimization of perpetration
  3. Develop and Test Prevention Strategies: Work with community leaders, practitioners to test different sexual violence prevention strategies
  4. Ensure Widespread Adoption: Implement and spread awareness about the successful prevention strategies

Child sexual abuse prevention programmes were developed in the United States of America during the 1970s and originally delivered to children. Programmes delivered to parents were developed in the 1980s and took the form of one-off meetings, two to three hours long. In the last 15 years, web-based programmes have been developed.

Statistics

Sexual violence is a widely underreported phenomenon, therefore available statistics are unlikely to inform about the true scale of the problem. The available data are scanty and fragmented. Police data, for instance, are often incomplete and limited. Data from medico-legal clinics, on the other hand, may be biased towards the more violent incidents of sexual abuse. In addition, the proportion of people who seek medical services for immediate problems related to sexual violence is also relatively small.

Reasons for non-reporting include shame and embarrassment, fear of not being believed, fear of the perpetrator of the crime, fear of the legal process, or disbelief that the police would be able to do anything to help them. Men are even more reluctant to report sexual violence due to extreme embarrassment and concerns about opinions of other people, their masculinity and the fact that they were unable to prevent the assault. Thus information about the extent of sexual violence against males is especially limited. Child sexual abuse is also largely underreported. Most of the data comes from asking adults about their past experiences.

How rape statistics are formulated and how they correspond to the extent of the problem:

One of the reasons for non-reporting is that children lack independent access to resources. They normally require the cooperation of one of their parents who may refuse to believe their child, or may, in fact, be the perpetrator.

Data on sexual violence typically come from police, clinical settings, nongovernmental organizations and survey research. The relationship between these sources and the global magnitude of the problem of sexual violence may be viewed as corresponding to an iceberg floating in water (see diagram). The small visible tip represents cases reported to police. A larger section may be elucidated through survey research and the work of nongovernmental organizations.

Culture

Sexual violence occurs in all cultures with varying definitions of what constitutes it. It is possible that in cultures where man and his manly role are prized better, additional perceived or real power may encourage them to think of their "rights". If a woman resists sexual intercourse, it may be perceived as a direct threat by men to their masculinity, triggering a crisis of male identity and contributing to sexual control and violence as it is seen as a way of resolving this crisis. It has been reported that victims who attempt resistance or escape from the situation are more likely to be brutalized by the offender, thereby giving an inflated sense of power to the abuser as was seen in the New Delhi gang rape case of Nirbhaya in December 2012. It is likely that in patriarchal cultures, any resistance from the woman victim is perceived by the offender as an insult to his "manhood" further provoking him to resort to more violent means to control the victim.

There is a theory that explains sexual violence as socioculturally constructed which disproves the biological framework that suggests sexual violence is a result of a man's sexual urges. This theory looks to prove that sexual violence is a natural behavior that originates from the "biological propensity to reproduce have a net positive effect on the person's (resorting to sexual violence) reproductive success. The sociocultural theory takes into account gender power equations, moral values, male dominance, and attitudes toward violence."

Feminism

Feminist scholars and activists have made unique contributions to the discourse on sexual violence against women and men . They have proposed that the root causes of sexual violence lie in the social structure characterized by severe inequality, in which the male is dominant and the female exploited. Feminists also hold that the weak institutional arrangements in place to address consequences of sexual violence, as well as unfair treatment of the victims (or survivors, an alternatively proposed terminology) are direct reflections of the ways in which society regards men, women and the sexual relations between them. Furthermore, feminist critique has led to a closer convergence between feminism and psychology in the study of sexual violence.

Conveying a connection between gender-based sexual violence and concepts of power-seeking and subordination was pioneered in the 1970s and has proven to be very influential. Within this context, rape has been assessed as a foremost tool of intimidation used by men against women. Similarly, domestic violence can be viewed as a particularly severe form of patriarchal domination and oppression.

Some feminist views on pornography also suggest a link between rape and pornography, by which pornography that degrades, humiliates and exercises violence upon the female body feeds a culture which a culture which validates this kinds of behavior; however, there is little evidence to prove this. There are also feminists positing that certain feminist forms of pornography could actually stimulate emancipation.

An intersection of Marxist and feminist theories has been utilized to offer additional insight into the topic of sexual violence. According to this argument, labor and sex are analogous in the roles they play in their respective overarching exploitative systems: both are produced by the exploited person and both are forcefully taken away from them.

Some feminist scholars have illuminated the idea that all women cannot have uniformly similar experiences of sexual violence or its aftermath. For instance, race and ethnicity are significant determinants of these experiences, which serves to show that approaches that are exclusively feminist or exclusively anti-racist in nature are misguided. Instead, a proposition has been made for use of intersectionality when studying these cases.

Feminist ideas have served as catalysts for transnational movements to combat violence against women, including sexual violence. This agenda has also been adopted by feminist organizations, as illustrated by the current initiative titled the Rape Task Force of the National Organization for Women (NOW).

Among other countries, feminists and women's rights activists in Egypt faced extreme challenges in combatting the grave issues of sexual violence. In 2020, the country witnessed an escalated #MeToo movement. However, it took a few months for the spark to fade. In 2021, the authorities in Egypt arrested six witnesses of a gang rape case that took place in 2014 at the country's Cairo hotel. It highlighted the difficulties that the rights defenders were facing.

History

Antiquity

The oldest textual references to sexual violence can be traced back to, amongst other cultures, the ancient Greeks and Romans, where women were seen as property without any rights over their bodies or sexual integrity. Rape of women during peace times was therefore considered as property crime only affecting their owners: the husbands, sons or brothers. A linguistic clue can still be found in verb to rape, which derives from Latin rapere, which originally meant 'to steal, seize, rob, carry away'; any infringement or damage to a woman or girl was primarily considered to be an offence against her husband if she was married, or against her father if she was not, and a crime against the community and public morality instead of a crime against the individual woman or girl herself. Generally speaking, the victim was blamed for having put the family to shame, especially if she was not married yet and lost her virginity during the rape; many cultures tried to resolve this by allowing the rapist to marry the victim in order to restore the 'family honour' of the latter. During armed conflict sexual violence, particularly rape, was perceived as a normal byproduct of war, as "a socially acceptable behavior well within the rules of warfare". In Ancient Greece, women were sometimes the reason for the attack of a city, conquering women as new wives or concubines, legitimate booty, as slaves or as trophies. The fact that sexual violence to women was commonplace during both war and peace times led to the negligence of any indications of what the methods, aims and magnitude of such violence was; it was face- and nameless.

Middle Ages and early modern period

The European Middle Ages strongly reflected a patriarchal view of sexual violence. During times of peace, female spouses had no right to refuse sex with their husbands. Even though laws punishing rapes existed, sexual violence was usually considered as justified or inconsequential. Usually, depending on the elite's views, which perceived sexual violence as a minor issue, sexual violence was not prosecuted. This view was also transferred to the colonies. In Alta California, for example, the Catholic clergy relied heavily on corporal punishment such as flogging, placing in the stocks or shackling of Amerindian women within their programs of Christianization. Within this context of trying to restore a certain social order, women were often the victims of sexual violence if politically active and posing a threat to the existing order. With regard to times of war, jurists, writers and scholars argued that as soon as war is just, no boundaries would be set towards methods used in order to achieve victory. However, with Alberico Gentili (1552–1608) discussions started that suffering of women should be reduced and rape prohibited during peace and war times. However, this view was not accepted for a long time, as women and children not participating in the fighting were still considered as being the enemy and the patriarchal view on women prevailed during peace and war times.

Codification of laws of war on gender-related crimes (c. 1800–1945)

Gradually, over the centuries laws and customs of war changed in direction of a wider understanding of sexual violence and the need to protect potential victims. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), the US started to codify the customary rules regulating land-based wars. On 24 April 1863, President Abraham Lincoln tried to inter alia regulate the sexual conduct of Union soldiers towards civilians in hostile territory with the Lieber Code, which contained one of the first explicit prohibitions on rape. Paragraphs 44 and 47 of the Lieber Code contained provisions prohibiting several crimes including "all rape" by an American soldier in a hostile country against its inhabitants "under the penalty of death, or such other severe punishment as may seem adequate for the gravity of the offense." Thus, the only enforcement mechanisms were the military commanders themselves, having the right to execute the soldiers immediately.

Scholars usually interpret Article 46 of the Annex to the Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land of the Second Hague Convention (18 October 1907), which stipulated that "Family honour and rights ... must be respected", to be an implicit prohibition of sexual assault or rape. However, because sexual assault was once again conceptualised as a crime of honour against the family instead of a violent crime against the individual person, Clack (2018) regarded this provision as "a step backwards from the Lieber Code".

Control Council Law No. 10 (1945) listed 'rape' as a 'crime against humanity'.

After World War I, a War Crimes Commission was established in order to bring war criminals before justice. Forced prostitution and rape was seen as grave violation of the customs and laws of war. After World War II (1939–1945), under the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (IMT) and the International Military Tribunal for the Far East at Tokyo (IMTFE), the spectrum of sexual violence as war crime was widened even though rape was not explicitly mentioned in the final verdicts. The transcripts of the trials did contain evidence of rape, sexual slavery, sexual sadism, sexual torture, sexual mutilation, forced sterilization, forced abortion, forced nudity, forced pornography and forced prostitution. But only after the Tokyo Tribunal, when Japanese commanders were prosecuted – for the first time based on the chain of command – for not having prevented rape and sexual slavery of comfort women during the Second World War, was sexual violence gradually considered as a grave war crime in itself. This view was expressed for the first time after Nuremberg and Tokyo in the second series of trials for the prosecution of "lesser" war criminals in Allied-occupied Germany, where the Allied Control Council Law No. 10 [de] (Article II §1.c), enacted on 20 December 1945, explicitly listed rape as constituting a "crime against humanity".

International legal framework (after 1945)

After 1945, an extensive amount of both hard and soft law instruments have set rules, standards and norms for the protection of victims of sexual offences. These include the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, United Nations 1979); the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (United Nations June 1993); Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (United Nations December 1993); the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence Against Women (Belém do Pará Convention) (Organization of American States 1994); the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol) (African Union 2003), and the Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention) (Council of Europe 2011).

The resulting, ever growing body of international humanitarian law (IHL) strongly prohibits sexual violence in all armed conflicts, and international human rights law (IHRL) and international customary law strongly prohibit it at all times. IHL ensures women are protected through a two-tiered approach, being covered by general (equal protection as men) and specific protections. IHL mandates special protections to women, according to their additional needs when they are more vulnerable, such as widows, the sick and wounded, migrants, the internally displaced, or those held in detention. Meanwhile, second-wave feminists launched the anti-rape movement in the 1960s and 1970s, leading to national legal prohibitions on marital rape by most countries around the world by the 2010s, while marry-your-rapist laws were increasingly abolished in the same decades.

Groundbreaking case law both by the ad hoc Tribunals of International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) established acts of rape and sexual violence as crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity. ICTR's conviction of Jean-Paul Akayesu for genocide and crimes against humanity on 2 September 1998 is the first case in which sexual violence is perceived as an integral part of genocide as defined in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The first trial solely focused on the perpetration of systematic sexual violence (rape camps) and on crimes against humanity committed against women and girls was the Foča case, a ruling before the ICTY. The Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) also explicitly incorporates rape and other forms of sexual violence in the list of war crimes and therefore recognizes sexual violence as a grave breach of IHL and of the Geneva Conventions.

The UN Security Council, ECOSOC and the UN Commission on Human Rights do not take into account the nature of the conflict with respect to the protection of women in war time.[117] Three reports from the UN Secretary-General and five UN Security Council resolutions specifically address sexual violence. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1888 (2009), in particular, created the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Sexual Violence in Conflict (SRSG-SVC). The Office highlighted six priorities and identified eight priority countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Central African Republic (CAR), Colombia, Cote d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia, South Sudan, and Sudan. SRSG-SVC is also engaged in the Middle East (Syria) and in Asia and the Pacific (Cambodia). Despite strong prohibitions of international law, enforcement mechanisms against sexual violence are fragile or do not exist in many parts of the world.

World-systems theory

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
A world map of countries by their supposed trading status in 2000, using the world system differentiation into core countries (blue), semi-periphery countries (yellow) and periphery countries (red). Based on the list in Dunn, Kawana, Brewer.
 
A world map of countries in 1965 colour-coded into 'blocks' based on trade, military interventions, diplomats and treaties.
  Block A
  Block B
  Block C & with dashed lines indicates colonies of Block C countries
  Block C'
  Block D
  Block D'
  Block E
  Block E'
  Block F
  Block F'

World-systems theory (also known as world-systems analysis or the world-systems perspective) is a multidisciplinary approach to world history and social change which emphasizes the world-system (and not nation states) as the primary (but not exclusive) unit of social analysis.

"World-system" refers to the inter-regional and transnational division of labor, which divides the world into core countries, semi-periphery countries, and the periphery countries. Core countries focus on higher-skill, capital-intensive production, and the rest of the world focuses on low-skill, labor-intensive production and extraction of raw materials. This constantly reinforces the dominance of the core countries. Nonetheless, the system has dynamic characteristics, in part as a result of revolutions in transport technology, and individual states can gain or lose their core (semi-periphery, periphery) status over time. This structure is unified by the division of labour. It is a world-economy rooted in a capitalist economy. For a time, certain countries become the world hegemon; during the last few centuries, as the world-system has extended geographically and intensified economically, this status has passed from the Netherlands, to the United Kingdom and (most recently) to the United States.

Components of the world-systems analysis are longue durée by Fernand Braudel, "development of underdevelopment" by Gunder Frank, and the single-society assumption. Longue durée is the concept of the gradual change through the day-to-day activities by which social systems are continually reproduced. "Development of underdevelopment" described that the economic processes in the periphery are the opposite of the development in the core. Poorer countries are impoverished to enable a few countries to get richer. Lastly, the single-society assumption opposes the multiple-society assumption and includes looking at the world as a whole.

World-systems theory has been examined by many political theorists and sociologists to explain the reasons for the rise and fall of states, income inequality, social unrest, and imperialism.

Background

Immanuel Wallerstein has developed the best-known version of world-systems analysis, beginning in the 1970s. Wallerstein traces the rise of the capitalist world-economy from the "long" 16th century (c. 1450–1640). The rise of capitalism, in his view, was an accidental outcome of the protracted crisis of feudalism (c. 1290–1450). Europe (the West) used its advantages and gained control over most of the world economy and presided over the development and spread of industrialization and capitalist economy, indirectly resulting in unequal development.

Though other commentators refer to Wallerstein's project as world-systems "theory", he consistently rejects that term. For Wallerstein, world-systems analysis is a mode of analysis that aims to transcend the structures of knowledge inherited from the 19th century, especially the definition of capitalism, the divisions within the social sciences, and those between the social sciences and history. For Wallerstein, then, world-systems analysis is a "knowledge movement" that seeks to discern the "totality of what has been paraded under the labels of the... human sciences and indeed well beyond". "We must invent a new language," Wallerstein insists, to transcend the illusions of the "three supposedly distinctive arenas" of society, economy and politics. The trinitarian structure of knowledge is grounded in another, even grander, modernist architecture, the distinction of biophysical worlds (including those within bodies) from social ones: "One question, therefore, is whether we will be able to justify something called social science in the twenty-first century as a separate sphere of knowledge." Many other scholars have contributed significant work in this "knowledge movement".

Origins

Influences

World-systems theory traces emerged in the 1970s. Its roots can be found in sociology, but it has developed into a highly interdisciplinary field. World-systems theory was aiming to replace modernization theory, which Wallerstein criticised for three reasons:

  1. its focus on the nation state as the only unit of analysis
  2. its assumption that there is only a single path of evolutionary development for all countries
  3. its disregard of transnational structures that constrain local and national development.

There are three major predecessors of world-systems theory: the Annales school, the Marxist tradition, and dependency theory. The Annales School tradition (represented most notably by Fernand Braudel) influenced Wallerstein to focus on long-term processes and geo-ecological regions as units of analysis. Marxism added a stress on social conflict, a focus on the capital accumulation process and competitive class struggles, a focus on a relevant totality, the transitory nature of social forms and a dialectical sense of motion through conflict and contradiction.

World-systems theory was also significantly influenced by dependency theory, a neo-Marxist explanation of development processes.

Other influences on the world-systems theory come from scholars such as Karl Polanyi, Nikolai Kondratiev and Joseph Schumpeter (particularly their research on business cycles and the concepts of three basic modes of economic organization: reciprocal, redistributive, and market modes, which Wallerstein reframed into a discussion of mini systems, world empires, and world economies).

Wallerstein sees the development of the capitalist world economy as detrimental to a large proportion of the world's population. Wallerstein views the period since the 1970s as an "age of transition" that will give way to a future world system (or world systems) whose configuration cannot be determined in advance.

World-systems thinkers include Oliver Cox, Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi, Andre Gunder Frank, and Immanuel Wallerstein, with major contributions by Christopher Chase-Dunn, Beverly Silver, Volker Bornschier, Janet Abu Lughod, Thomas D. Hall, Li Minqi, Kunibert Raffer, Theotonio dos Santos, Dale Tomich, Jason W. Moore and others. In sociology, a primary alternative perspective is World Polity Theory, as formulated by John W. Meyer.

The Dependency Theory

World-systems analysis builds upon but also differs fundamentally from dependency theory. While accepting world inequality, the world market and imperialism as fundamental features of historical capitalism, Wallerstein broke with orthodox dependency theory's central proposition. For Wallerstein, core countries do not exploit poor countries for two basic reasons.

Firstly, core capitalists exploit workers in all zones of the capitalist world economy (not just the periphery) and therefore, the crucial redistribution between core and periphery is surplus value, not "wealth" or "resources" abstractly conceived. Secondly, core states do not exploit poor states, as dependency theory proposes, because capitalism is organised around an inter-regional and transnational division of labor rather than an international division of labour.

During the Industrial Revolution, for example, English capitalists exploited slaves (unfree workers) in the cotton zones of the American South, a peripheral region within a semiperipheral country, United States.

From a largely Weberian perspective, Fernando Henrique Cardoso described the main tenets of dependency theory as follows:

  • There is a financial and technological penetration of the periphery and semi-periphery countries by the developed capitalist core countries.
  • That produces an unbalanced economic structure within the peripheral societies and between them and the central countries.
  • That leads to limitations upon self-sustained growth in the periphery.
  • That helps the appearance of specific patterns of class relations.
  • They require modifications in the role of the state to guarantee the functioning of the economy and the political articulation of a society, which contains, within itself, foci of inarticulateness and structural imbalance.

Dependency and world system theory propose that the poverty and backwardness of poor countries are caused by their peripheral position in the international division of labor. Since the capitalist world system evolved, the distinction between the central and the peripheral states has grown and diverged. In recognizing a tripartite pattern in division of labor, world-systems analysis criticized dependency theory with its bimodal system of only cores and peripheries.

Immanuel Wallerstein

The best-known version of the world-systems approach was developed by Immanuel Wallerstein. Wallerstein notes that world-systems analysis calls for a unidisciplinary historical social science and contends that the modern disciplines, products of the 19th century, are deeply flawed because they are not separate logics, as is manifest for example in the de facto overlap of analysis among scholars of the disciplines. Wallerstein offers several definitions of a world-system, defining it in 1974 briefly:

a system is defined as a unit with a single division of labor and multiple cultural systems.

He also offered a longer definition:

...a social system, one that has boundaries, structures, member groups, rules of legitimation, and coherence. Its life is made up of the conflicting forces which hold it together by tension and tear it apart as each group seeks eternally to remold it to its advantage. It has the characteristics of an organism, in that it has a life-span over which its characteristics change in some respects and remain stable in others. One can define its structures as being at different times strong or weak in terms of the internal logic of its functioning.

In 1987, Wallerstein again defined it:

... not the system of the world, but a system that is a world and which can be, most often has been, located in an area less than the entire globe. World-systems analysis argues that the units of social reality within which we operate, whose rules constrain us, are for the most part such world-systems (other than the now extinct, small minisystems that once existed on the earth). World-systems analysis argues that there have been thus far only two varieties of world-systems: world-economies and world empires. A world-empire (examples, the Roman Empire, Han China) are large bureaucratic structures with a single political center and an axial division of labor, but multiple cultures. A world-economy is a large axial division of labor with multiple political centers and multiple cultures. In English, the hyphen is essential to indicate these concepts. "World system" without a hyphen suggests that there has been only one world-system in the history of the world.

Wallerstein characterizes the world system as a set of mechanisms, which redistributes surplus value from the periphery to the core. In his terminology, the core is the developed, industrialized part of the world, and the periphery is the "underdeveloped", typically raw materials-exporting, poor part of the world; the market being the means by which the core exploits the periphery.

Apart from them, Wallerstein defines four temporal features of the world system. Cyclical rhythms represent the short-term fluctuation of economy, and secular trends mean deeper long run tendencies, such as general economic growth or decline. The term contradiction means a general controversy in the system, usually concerning some short term versus long term tradeoffs. For example, the problem of underconsumption, wherein the driving down of wages increases the profit for capitalists in the short term, but in the long term, the decreasing of wages may have a crucially harmful effect by reducing the demand for the product. The last temporal feature is the crisis: a crisis occurs if a constellation of circumstances brings about the end of the system.

In Wallerstein's view, there have been three kinds of historical systems across human history: "mini-systems" or what anthropologists call bands, tribes, and small chiefdoms, and two types of world-systems, one that is politically unified and the other is not (single state world empires and multi-polity world economies). World-systems are larger, and are ethnically diverse. The modern world-system, a capitalist world-economy, is unique in being the first and only world-system, which emerged around 1450 to 1550, to have geographically expanded across the entire planet, by about 1900. It is defined, as a world-economy, in having many political units tied together as an interstate system and through its division of labor based on capitalist enterprises.

Importance

World-Systems Theory can be useful in understanding world history and the core countries' motives for imperialization and other involvements like the US aid following natural disasters in developing Central American countries or imposing regimes on other core states. With the interstate system as a system constant, the relative economic power of the three tiers points to the internal inequalities that are on the rise in states that appear to be developing. Some argue that this theory, though, ignores local efforts of innovation that have nothing to do with the global economy, such as the labor patterns implemented in Caribbean sugar plantations. Other modern global topics can be easily traced back to the world-systems theory.

As global talk about climate change and the future of industrial corporations, the world systems theory can help to explain the creation of the G-77 group, a coalition of 77 peripheral and semi-peripheral states wanting a seat at the global climate discussion table. The group was formed in 1964, but it now has more than 130 members who advocate for multilateral decision making. Since its creation, G-77 members have collaborated with two main aims: 1) decreasing their vulnerability based on the relative size of economic influence, and 2) improving outcomes for national development. World-systems theory has also been utilized to trace CO2 emissions’ damage to the ozone layer. The levels of world economic entrance and involvement can affect the damage a country does to the earth. In general, scientists can make assumptions about a country's CO2 emissions based on GDP. Higher exporting countries, countries with debt, and countries with social structure turmoil land in the upper-periphery tier. Though more research must be done in the arena, scientists can call core, semi-periphery, and periphery labels as indicators for CO2 intensity.

In a health realm, studies have shown the effect of less industrialized countries’, the periphery's, acceptance of packaged foods and beverages that are loaded with sugars and preservatives. While core states benefit from dumping large amounts of processed, fatty foods into poorer states, there has been a recorded increase in obesity and related chronic conditions such as diabetes and chronic heart disease. While some aspects of the modernization theory have been found to improve the global obesity crisis, a world systems theory approach identifies holes in the progress.

Knowledge economy and finance now dominate the industry in core states while manufacturing has shifted to semi-periphery and periphery ones. Technology has become a defining factor in the placement of states into core or semi-periphery versus periphery. Wallerstein's theory leaves room for poor countries to move into better economic development, but he also admits that there will always be a need for periphery countries as long as there are core states who derive resources from them. As a final mark of modernity, Wallerstein admits that advocates are the heart of this world-system: “Exploitation and the refusal to accept exploitation as either inevitable or just constitute the continuing antinomy of the modern era”.

Research questions

World-systems theory asks several key questions:

  • How is the world system affected by changes in its components (e.g. nations, ethnic groups, social classes, etc.)?
  • How does it affect its components?
  • To what degree, if any, does the core need the periphery to be underdeveloped?
  • What causes world systems to change?
  • What system may replace capitalism?

Some questions are more specific to certain subfields; for example, Marxists would concern themselves whether world-systems theory is a useful or unhelpful development of Marxist theories.

Characteristics

A model of a core-periphery system like that used in world-systems theory.

World-systems analysis argues that capitalism, as a historical system, has always integrated a variety of labor forms within a functioning division of labor (world economy). Countries do not have economies but are part of the world economy. Far from being separate societies or worlds, the world economy manifests a tripartite division of labor, with core, semiperipheral and peripheral zones. In the core zones, businesses, with the support of states they operate within, monopolise the most profitable activities of the division of labor.

There are many ways to attribute a specific country to the core, semi-periphery, or periphery. Using an empirically based sharp formal definition of "domination" in a two-country relationship, Piana in 2004 defined the "core" as made up of "free countries" dominating others without being dominated, the "semi-periphery" as the countries that are dominated (usually, but not necessarily, by core countries) but at the same time dominating others (usually in the periphery) and "periphery" as the countries dominated. Based on 1998 data, the full list of countries in the three regions, together with a discussion of methodology, can be found.

The late 18th and early 19th centuries marked a great turning point in the development of capitalism in that capitalists achieved state society power in the key states, which furthered the industrial revolution marking the rise of capitalism. World-systems analysis contends that capitalism as a historical system formed earlier and that countries do not "develop" in stages, but the system does, and events have a different meaning as a phase in the development of historical capitalism, the emergence of the three ideologies of the national developmental mythology (the idea that countries can develop through stages if they pursue the right set of policies): conservatism, liberalism, and radicalism.

Proponents of world-systems analysis see the world stratification system the same way Karl Marx viewed class (ownership versus nonownership of the means of production) and Max Weber viewed class (which, in addition to ownership, stressed occupational skill level in the production process). The core states primarily own and control the major means of production in the world and perform the higher-level production tasks. The periphery nations own very little of the world's means of production (even when they are located in periphery states) and provide less-skilled labour. Like a class system with a states, class positions in the world economy result in an unequal distribution of rewards or resources. The core states receive the greatest share of surplus production, and periphery states receive the smallest share. Furthermore, core states are usually able to purchase raw materials and other goods from non-core states at low prices and demand higher prices for their exports to non-core states. Chirot (1986) lists the five most important benefits coming to core states from their domination of the periphery:

  1. Access to a large quantity of raw material
  2. Cheap labour
  3. Enormous profits from direct capital investments
  4. A market for exports
  5. Skilled professional labor through migration of these people from the non-core to the core.

According to Wallerstein, the unique qualities of the modern world system include its capitalistic nature, its truly global nature, and the fact that it is a world economy that has not become politically unified into a world empire.

Core states

In general, core states:

  • Are the most economically diversified, wealthy, and powerful both economically and militarily
  • Have strong central governments controlling extensive bureaucracies and powerful militaries
  • Have stronger and more complex state institutions that help manage economic affairs internally and externally
  • Have a sufficiently large tax base, such that state institutions can provide the infrastructure for a strong economy
  • Are highly industrialised and produce manufactured goods for export instead of raw materials
  • Increasingly tend to specialise in the information, finance, and service industries
  • Are more regularly at the forefront of new technologies and new industries. Contemporary examples include the electronics and biotechnology industries. The use of the assembly line is a historic example of this trend.
  • Have strong bourgeois and working classes
  • Have significant means of influence over non-core states
  • Are relatively independent of outside control

Throughout the history of the modern world system, a group of core states has competed for access to the world's resources, economic dominance, and hegemony over periphery states. Occasionally, one core state possessed clear dominance over the others. According to Immanuel Wallerstein, a core state is dominant over all the others when it has a lead in three forms of economic dominance:

  1. Productivity dominance allows a country to develop higher-quality products at a cheaper price compared to other countries.
  2. Productivity dominance may lead to trade dominance. In this case, there is a favorable balance of trade for the dominant state since other countries are buying more of its products than those of others.
  3. Trade dominance may lead to financial dominance. At this point, more money is flowing into the country than is leaving it. Bankers from the dominant state tend to acquire greater control over the world's financial resources.

Military dominance is also likely once a state has reached this point. However, it has been posited that throughout the modern world system, no state has been able to use its military to gain economic dominance. Each of the past dominant states became dominant with fairly small levels of military spending and began to lose economic dominance with military expansion later on. Historically, cores were located in northwestern Europe (England, France, Netherlands) but later appeared in other parts of the world such as the United States, Canada, and Australia.

Peripheral states

  • Are the least economically diversified
  • Have relatively weak governments
  • Have relatively weak institutions, with tax bases too small to support infrastructural development
  • Tend to depend on one type of economic activity, often by extracting and exporting raw materials to core states
  • Tend to be the least industrialized
  • Are often targets for investments from multinational (or transnational) corporations from core states that come into the country to exploit cheap unskilled labor in order to export back to core states
  • Have a small bourgeois and a large peasant classes
  • Tend to have populations with high percentages of poor and uneducated people
  • Tend to have very high social inequality because of small upper classes that own most of the land and have profitable ties to multinational corporations
  • Tend to be extensively influenced by core states and their multinational corporations and often forced to follow economic policies that help core states and harm the long-term economic prospects of peripheral states.

Historically, peripheries were found outside Europe, such as in Latin America and today in sub-Saharan Africa.

Semi-peripheral states

Semi-peripheral states are those that are midway between the core and periphery. Thus, they have to keep themselves from falling into the category of peripheral states and at the same time, they strive to join the category of core states. Therefore, they tend to apply protectionist policies most aggressively among the three categories of states. They tend to be countries moving towards industrialization and more diversified economies. These regions often have relatively developed and diversified economies but are not dominant in international trade. They tend to export more to peripheral states and import more from core states in trade. According to some scholars, such as Chirot, they are not as subject to outside manipulation as peripheral societies; but according to others (Barfield), they have "periperial-like" relations to the core. While in the sphere of influence of some cores, semiperipheries also tend to exert their own control over some peripheries. Further, semi-peripheries act as buffers between cores and peripheries and thus "...partially deflect the political pressures which groups primarily located in peripheral areas might otherwise direct against core-states" and stabilise the world system.

Semi-peripheries can come into existence from developing peripheries and declining cores. Historically, two examples of semiperipheral states would be Spain and Portugal, which fell from their early core positions but still managed to retain influence in Latin America. Those countries imported silver and gold from their American colonies but then had to use it to pay for manufactured goods from core countries such as England and France. In the 20th century, states like the "settler colonies" of Australia, Canada and New Zealand had a semiperipheral status. In the 21st century, states like Brazil, Russia, India, Israel, China, South Korea and South Africa (BRICS) are usually considered semiperipheral.

Interstate system

Between the core, periphery and semi-periphery countries lies a system of interconnected state relationships, or the interstate system. The interstate system arose either as a concomitant process or as a consequence of the development of the capitalist world-system over the course of the “long” 16th century as states began to recognize each other's sovereignty and form agreements and rules between themselves.

Wallerstein wrote that there were no concrete rules about what exactly constitutes an individual state as various indicators of statehood (sovereignty, power, market control etc.) could range from total to nil. There were also no clear rules about which group controlled the state, as various groups located inside, outside, and across the states’ frontiers could seek to increase or decrease state power in order to better profit from a world-economy. Nonetheless, the “relative power continuum of stronger and weaker states has remained relatively unchanged over 400-odd years” implying that while there is no universal state system, an interstate system had developed out of the sum of state actions, which existed to reinforce certain rules and preconditions of statehood. These rules included maintaining consistent relations of production, and regulating the flow of capital, commodities and labor across borders to maintain the price structures of the global market. If weak states attempt to rewrite these rules as they prefer them, strong states will typically intervene to rectify the situation.

The ideology of the interstate system is sovereign equality, and while the system generally presents a set of constraints on the power of individual states, within the system states are “neither sovereign nor equal.” Not only do strong states impose their will on weak states, strong states also impose limitations upon other strong states, and tend to seek strengthened international rules, since enforcing consequences for broken rules can be highly beneficial and confer comparative advantages.

External areas

External areas are those that maintain socially necessary divisions of labor independent of the capitalist world economy.

The interpretation of world history

The 13th century world-system

Before the 16th century, Europe was dominated by feudal economies. European economies grew from mid-12th to 14th century but from 14th to mid 15th century, they suffered from a major crisis.Wallerstein explains this crisis as caused by the following:

  1. stagnation or even decline of agricultural production, increasing the burden of peasants,
  2. decreased agricultural productivity caused by changing climatological conditions (Little Ice Age),
  3. an increase in epidemics (Black Death),
  4. optimum level of the feudal economy having been reached in its economic cycle; the economy moved beyond it and entered a depression period.

As a response to the failure of the feudal system, European society embraced the capitalist system. Europeans were motivated to develop technology to explore and trade around the world, using their superior military to take control of the trade routes. Europeans exploited their initial small advantages, which led to an accelerating process of accumulation of wealth and power in Europe.

Wallerstein notes that never before had an economic system encompassed that much of the world, with trade links crossing so many political boundaries. In the past, geographically large economic systems existed but were mostly limited to spheres of domination of large empires (such as the Roman Empire); development of capitalism enabled the world economy to extend beyond individual states. International division of labor was crucial in deciding what relationships exists between different regions, their labor conditions and political systems. For classification and comparison purposes, Wallerstein introduced the categories of core, semi-periphery, periphery, and external countries. Cores monopolized the capital-intensive production, and the rest of the world could provide only workforce and raw resources. The resulting inequality reinforced existing unequal development.

According to Wallerstein there have only been three periods in which a core state dominated in the modern world-system, with each lasting less than one hundred years. In the initial centuries of the rise of European dominance, Northwestern Europe constituted the core, Mediterranean Europe the semiperiphery, and Eastern Europe and the Western hemisphere (and parts of Asia) the periphery. Around 1450, Spain and Portugal took the early lead when conditions became right for a capitalist world-economy. They led the way in establishing overseas colonies. However, Portugal and Spain lost their lead, primarily by becoming overextended with empire-building. It became too expensive to dominate and protect so many colonial territories around the world.

Dutch fluyts of the seventeenth century

The first state to gain clear dominance was the Netherlands in the 17th century, after its revolution led to a new financial system that many historians consider revolutionary. An impressive shipbuilding industry also contributed to their economic dominance through more exports to other countries. Eventually, other countries began to copy the financial methods and efficient production created by the Dutch. After the Dutch gained their dominant status, the standard of living rose, pushing up production costs.

Dutch bankers began to go outside of the country seeking profitable investments, and the flow of capital moved, especially to England. By the end of the 17th century, conflict among core states increased as a result of the economic decline of the Dutch. Dutch financial investment helped England gain productivity and trade dominance, and Dutch military support helped England to defeat France, the other country competing for dominance at the time.

Map showing the British Empire in 1921

In the 19th century, Britain replaced the Netherlands as the hegemon. As a result of the new British dominance, the world system became relatively stable again during the 19th century. The British began to expand globally, with many colonies in the New World, Africa, and Asia. The colonial system began to place a strain on the British military and, along with other factors, led to an economic decline. Again there was a great deal of core conflict after the British lost their clear dominance. This time it was Germany, and later Italy and Japan that provided the new threat.

Industrialization was another ongoing process during British dominance, resulting in the diminishing importance of the agricultural sector. In the 18th century, Britain was Europe's leading industrial and agricultural producer; by 1900, only 10% of England's population was working in the agricultural sector.

By 1900, the modern world system appeared very different from that of a century earlier in that most of the periphery societies had already been colonised by one of the older core states. In 1800, the old European core claimed 35% of the world's territory, but by 1914, it claimed 85% of the world's territory, with the Scramble for Africa closing out the imperial era. If a core state wanted periphery areas to exploit as had done the Dutch and British, these periphery areas had to be taken from another core state, which the US did by way of the Spanish–American War, and Germany, and then Japan and Italy, attempted to do in the leadup to World War II. The modern world system was thus geographically global, and even the most remote regions of the world had all been integrated into the global economy.

As countries vied for core status, so did the United States. The American Civil War led to more power for the Northern industrial elites, who were now better able to pressure the government for policies helping industrial expansion. Like the Dutch bankers, British bankers were putting more investment toward the United States. The US had a small military budget compared to other industrial states at the time.

The US began to take the place of the British as a new dominant state after World War I. With Japan and Europe in ruins after World War II, the US was able to dominate the modern world system more than any other country in history, while the USSR and to a lesser extent China were viewed as primary threats. At its height, US economic reach accounted for over half of the world's industrial production, owned two thirds of the gold reserves in the world and supplied one third of the world's exports.

However, since the end of the Cold War, the future of US hegemony has been questioned by some scholars, as its hegemonic position has been in decline for a few decades. By the end of the 20th century, the core of the wealthy industrialized countries was composed of Western Europe, the United States, Japan and a rather limited selection of other countries. The semiperiphery was typically composed of independent states that had not achieved Western levels of influence, while poor former colonies of the West formed most of the periphery.

Criticisms

World-systems theory has attracted criticisms from its rivals; notably for being too focused on economy and not enough on culture and for being too core-centric and state-centric. William I. Robinson has criticized world-systems theory for its nation-state centrism, state-structuralist approach, and its inability to conceptualize the rise of globalization. Robinson suggests that world-systems theory doesn't account for emerging transnational social forces and the relationships forged between them and global institutions serving their interests. These forces operate on a global, rather than state system and cannot be understood by Wallerstein's nation-centered approach.

According to Wallerstein himself, critique of the world-systems approach comes from four directions: the positivists, the orthodox Marxists, the state autonomists, and the culturalists. The positivists criticise the approach as too prone to generalization, lacking quantitative data and failing to put forth a falsifiable proposition. Orthodox Marxists find the world-systems approach deviating too far from orthodox Marxist principles, such as by not giving enough weight to the concept of social class. The state autonomists criticize the theory for blurring the boundaries between state and businesses. Further, the positivists and the state autonomists argue that state should be the central unit of analysis. Finally, the culturalists argue that world-systems theory puts too much importance on the economy and not enough on the culture. In Wallerstein's own words:

In short, most of the criticisms of world-systems analysis criticize it for what it explicitly proclaims as its perspective. World-systems analysis views these other modes of analysis as defective and/or limiting in scope and calls for unthinking them.

One of the fundamental conceptual problems of the world-system theory is that the assumptions that define its actual conceptual units are social systems. The assumptions, which define them, need to be examined as well as how they are related to each other and how one changes into another. The essential argument of the world-system theory is that in the 16th century a capitalist world economy developed, which could be described as a world system. The following is a theoretical critique concerned with the basic claims of world-system theory: "There are today no socialist systems in the world-economy any more than there are feudal systems because there is only one world system. It is a world-economy and it is by definition capitalist in form."

Robert Brenner has pointed out that the prioritization of the world market means the neglect of local class structures and class struggles: "They fail to take into account either the way in which these class structures themselves emerge as the outcome of class struggles whose results are incomprehensible in terms merely of market forces." Another criticism is that of reductionism made by Theda Skocpol: she believes the interstate system is far from being a simple superstructure of the capitalist world economy: "The international states system as a transnational structure of military competition was not originally created by capitalism. Throughout modern world history, it represents an analytically autonomous level [... of] world capitalism, but [is] not reducible to it."

A concept that we can perceive as critique and mostly as renewal is the concept of coloniality (Anibal Quijano, 2000, Nepantla, Coloniality of power, eurocentrism and Latin America). Issued from the think tank of the group "modernity/coloniality" (es:Grupo modernidad/colonialidad) in Latin America, it re-uses the concept of world working division and core/periphery system in its system of coloniality. But criticizing the "core-centric" origin of World-system and its only economical development, "coloniality" allows further conception of how power still processes in a colonial way over worldwide populations (Ramon Grosfogel, "the epistemic decolonial turn" 2007): "by 'colonial situations' I mean the cultural, political, sexual, spiritual, epistemic and economic oppression/exploitation of subordinate racialized/ethnic groups by dominant racialized/ethnic groups with or without the existence of colonial administration". Coloniality covers, so far, several fields such as coloniality of gender (Maria Lugones), coloniality of "being" (Maldonado Torres), coloniality of knowledge (Walter Mignolo) and Coloniality of power (Anibal Quijano).

New developments

New developments in world systems research include studies on the cyclical processes. More specifically, it refers to the cycle of leading industries or products (ones that are new and have an important share of the overall world market for commodities), which is equal to dissolution of quasi-monopolies or other forms of partial monopolies achieved by core states. Such forms of partial monopolies are achievable through ownership of leading industries or products, which require technological capabilities, patents, restrictions on imports and/or exports, government subsidies, etc. Such capabilities are most often found in core states, which accumulate capital through achieving such quasi-monopolies with leading industries or products.

As capital is accumulated, employment and wage also increase, creating a sense of prosperity. This leads to increased production, and sometimes even overproduction, causing price competition to arise. To lower production costs, production processes of the leading industries or products are relocated to semi-peripheral states. When competition increases and quasi-monopolies cease to exist, their owners, often core states, move on to other new leading industries or products, and the cycle continues.

Other new developments include the consequences of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the roles of gender and the culture, studies of slavery and incorporation of new regions into the world system and the precapitalist world systems. Arguably, the greatest source of renewal in world-systems analysis since 2000 has been the synthesis of world-system and environmental approaches. Key figures in the "greening" of world-systems analysis include Minqi Li, Jason W. Moore, Andreas Malm, Stephen Bunker, Alf Hornborg, and Richard York.

Time period

Wallerstein traces the origin of today's world-system to the "long 16th century" (a period that began with the discovery of the Americas by Western European sailors and ended with the English Revolution of 1640). And, according to Wallerstein, globalization, or the becoming of the world's system, is a process coterminous with the spread and development of capitalism over the past 500 years.

Janet Abu Lughod argues that a pre-modern world system extensive across Eurasia existed in the 13th century prior to the formation of the modern world-system identified by Wallerstein. Janet Abu Lughod contends that the Mongol Empire played an important role in stitching together the Chinese, Indian, Muslim and European regions in the 13th century, before the rise of the modern world system. In debates, Wallerstein contends that Lughod's system was not a "world-system" because it did not entail integrated production networks, but it was instead a vast trading network.

The 11th century world system

Andre Gunder Frank goes further and claims that a global world system that includes Asia, Europe and Africa has existed since the 4th millennium BCE. The centre of this system was in Asia, specifically China. Andrey Korotayev goes even further than Frank and dates the beginning of the world system formation to the 10th millennium BCE and connects it with the start of the Neolithic Revolution in the Middle East. According to him, the centre of this system was originally in Western Asia.

Research

Wallerstein's theories are recognized throughout the world. In the United States, one of the hubs of world-systems research is at the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems and Civilizations, at Binghamton University. Among the most important related periodicals are the Journal of World-Systems Research, published by the American Sociological Association's Section on the Political Economy of the World System (PEWS), and the Review, published the Braudel Center.

Cryogenics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenics...