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The Emerging Social Structure of the World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Alex Inkeles
Alex Inkeles
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Abstract

An assessment of the forms in which, and tlie extent to which, the population of the entire world may be coming to participate in a coherent global social system may be made by crude measurement of variations in the degree of autarky, interconnectedness, dependence, interdependence, integration, hegemony, and convergence. In the recent modern era, we can show that interconnectedness has been rising at an exponential rate across numerous dimensions ranging from the exchange of students to world trade. Interdependence is also increasing, but less dramatically. The greater dependence of less developed countries is unmistakable, but integration has advanced very little in the period after World War II. In studying convergence we must differentiate among modes of production, institutional forms, patterns of social relations, the content of popular values, and systems of political and economic control, each of which may change at different speeds and even move in different directions. The argument that there is substantial convergence in political and economic forms at the national level may be seriously challenged. Marked convergence is widely prevalent, however, in the utilization of science, technology, and bureaucratic procedures, and in the consequent incorporation of whole populations into new social roles. These in turn induce new attitudes and values forming a widespread complex or syndrome identified as modern and postmodern. Countervailing tendencies are, however, evident and should be weighed.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , July 1975 , pp. 467 - 495
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1975

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References

1 There is another related and currently very popular use of the term dependence, which gives prime emphasis to the ability of a nation-state to make decisions about its internal development relatively free of the dominant and/or domineering pressure of more powerful states or economic systems. Thus, contemporary radical political-economists make a great deal of the “dependence” of the Latin American and other less developed countries on the greater political and economic power of the U.S. Government, on “international capital,” and on multinational corporations. The concept is also used to describe cultural phenomena, epitomized by the dominance of products like Coca-Cola, which displace indigenous beverages, or systems of American empirical social research, which are charged with inhibiting the development of distinctive national systems of social analysis. See Bodenheimer, Suzanne, “Dependency and Imperialism: The Roots of Underdevelopment in Latin America,” in Fann, K. T. and Hodges, Donald D., Readings in US. Imperialism (Boston:Porter Sargent 1971Google Scholar); Cockcroft, James D., Frank, Andre G., and Johnson, Dale L., eds., Dependence and Underdevelopment: Latin America's Political Economy (New York: Anchor 1972Google Scholar); Emmanuel, Arghiri, Unequal Exchange (New York: Monthly Review Press 1972Google Scholar); Esseks, John D., “Economic Dependence and Political Development in the New African States,” Journal of Politics, xxxiii (November 1971Google Scholar); Horowitz, Irving L., The Three Worlds of Development (New York: Oxford University Press 1966Google Scholar); and Magdoff, Henry, The Age of Imperialism (New York: Monthly Review Press 1966Google Scholar).

2 The diversity of basic materials to be found within the boundaries of the United States is well known. It is helpful, however, also to see the contrast expressed in statistical terms. For the U.S., foreign trade (in 1965) was only 7.3% of GNP, whereas for Japan it was 20% and for Singapore 238%. See Taylor, Charles L. and Hudson, Michael C., World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators (2d ed.; New Haven: Yale University Press 1972), 372Google Scholar–77.

3 The water mill was one of the few, and certainly one of the most important, mechanical inventions introduced in Hellenic times. Yet Childe reports that a century after Christ such mills were hardly more common than a century before. See Childe, Gordon, What Happened in History (Baltimore: Penguin Books 1942Google Scholar), 235, 251–53. I am indebted to Keith Hopkins for the distinction between Roman invention and Roman innovation, i.e., the adoption and adaptation of the inventions of others.

4 Nathan Keyfitz of Harvard University estimates that 69 billion people have lived on earth since the beginning of the human race. Of this total, roughly 18 billion, or 26%, have lived on earth during the past 300 years; 3 billion, or 4%, are living on earth now. See Keyfitz, , “How Many People Have Lived on the Earth,” Demography, III, No. 2 (1966), 581CrossRefGoogle Scholar–82. We estimated the span of human habitation on earth to be 300,000 years, which yields our calculation that the modern era, covering some 300 years, equals .1% of the span of human occupancy of the globe. Keyfitz took the period of human habitation to cover one million years. Using that base would, of course, make the modern era an even smaller fragment of the span of human habitation on earth.

5 Meadows, Donella H. and others, The Limits of Growth (New York: Universe Books 1972Google Scholar).

6 The figures for percentage of annual increase given in this paper were almost all computed by us from relatively crude time series, and should therefore be considered only approximate. In most cases only summary figures for two points in time were available to us, sometimes thirty or more years apart. Obviously within so great a span the actual annual rate could have varied greatly from year to year and decade to decade. In cases where we could obtain more detailed time series, we checked to verify that the rates of increase had been more or less uniform over the longer span before computing a per annum rate of increase. Thus, we did not compute such a rate-of-increase figure for direct U.S. investment abroad for the total period from 1946 to 1971, because the years from 1946 to 1952 were relatively stable, whereas there was a sharp upturn from 1963 to 1971.

The formula used to calculate annual rates of increase takes beginning year and ending year figures and derives the yearly rate of growth in the following manner:

This formula has been checked by use after the fact where appropriate, and in most cases has proven to be quite accurate. In fact, if anything, there is a slight conservative bias in our growth rate statistics. Discrepancies probably do arise because (1) the table we have been using gives natural logarithms (log.) to five significant figures only and thus contains a certain amount of statistical error; (2) the assumption behind the use of the natural log is that “interest” is compounded constantly, i.e., that the number of times a year that the interest is compounded is taken to the mathematical limit; (3) there is an assumption that the value of the variable increases at a constant rate over the time period.

7 United Nations Statistical Yearbook 1971 (New York: Statistical Office of the United Nations 1972Google Scholar), 78; UNESCO, Statistics of Students Abroad 1962–1968 (Paris: UNESCO 1972), 19–21Google Scholar.

8 Figures are from 40 countries listed in the United Nations Statistical Yearbooks for 1955 and 1971 for which there were data for years 1938 and 1970.

8 Figures computed on the basis of data found in United Nations Statistical Yearbooks for 1955 and 1971.

10 Between 1963 and 1970 the number of overseas telephone calls from the United States increased by about 25% per year. (World's Telephones [New York: American Telephone and Telegraph, January 1970Google Scholar.]) Data for other countries are not at hand, but it seems reasonable to assume that, at least for the other developed countries, rates of increase have not been much lower. Moreover, die U.S. alone accounts for a very large share of all the world's telephonic communication. To assume a worldwide increase in international telephonic communication of 15% therefore seems conservative.

11 Figures computed on the basis of data found in United Nations Statistical Yearbooks for 1955 and 1971. Annual increase of tourists used in these calculations include Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Nedierlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom as countries of origin. The omission of some European countries results in an underestimation of absolute numbers of tourists going from Europe to die United States. This omission, however, is not likely to affect the percentages of change reported.

12 United Nations Statistical Yearbook. 1970, 402Google Scholar.

13 Calculated from data in United Nations Statistical Yearbook 1972, Table 12, p. 43, for die years 1938–1971.

14 Figures taken from U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Survey of Current Business (Washington, D.C. 1973Google Scholar).

15 Skjelsbaek, Kjell, “The Growth of Nongovernmental Organizations in the Twentieth Century,” International Organization, xxv (Summer 1971), 420CrossRefGoogle Scholar–43.

16 Percentages computed on the basis of data reported in Sachs, Moshe Y., ed., World Encyclopedia of the Nations (New York: Harper and Row 1960Google Scholar and 1971).

17 The measures of increasing interconnectedness presented here are almost all absolute rather than relative or proportional. They indicate the number of ties extant, rather than the proportion of all countries, institutions, or individuals having such ties, Since world population is increasing substantially, even holding constant the average degree of connectivity would obviously yield a significant increase in the absolute number of connections to be observed year by year. Therefore, some downward adjustment of our figures on connectivity should be made on a systematic basis. Nevertheless, the adjustment would not lead to a dramatic reinterpretation of the facts since world population has grown at a rate of only some 2% per annum, whereas most of the interconnections we noted increased at a rate of better than 7% per annum.

18 Based on figures reported on Taylor and Hudson (fn. 2), 372–77. By our calculation, the percentage of GNP represented by trade falls regularly as the population of a country increases. Median percentages are as follows: less than 1 million population, 78%; 1 to 10 million, 43%; 10 to 50 million, 33%; 50 to 100 million, 26%; more than 100 million, 10% of GNP.

19 Based on figures from United Nations Statistical Yearbooks for 1955 and 1971. Developed countries in these calculations included most European countries, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Less developed countries included the following few for which complete data were available: Angola, Morocco, Mozambique, Tunisia, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Argentina, and Paraguay.

20 All data on student exchanges are from United Nations sources, especially UNESCO (fn. 7).

21 For example, the reason less developed countries are gaining on the more developed ones in the use of the telegraph can probably be explained by the fact that the more advanced are switching to the long-distance telephone, a more modern, rapid, and flexible form of communication. That would certainly seem to be indicated by the fact that the number of foreign telegrams sent out from the United States remained more or less the same in most years between 1963 and 1970, whereas the number of telephone calls abroad placed from the United States increased at better than 25% per year. (See United Nations Statistical Yearbook 1972, and The World's Telephones (fn. 10).

22 See UNESCO (fn. 7), 30. If we assume a condition in which all young people went as far as the university, and make the further unlikely assumption that all university students would customarily be sent outside the country for advanced training, we have designed a situation such that in time no further increase in the number of students studying abroad could be attained unless the population of young people could be expanded by a rapid rise in births. Moreover, such expansion of the supply of young people could hardly occur at a rate of more than 2 or 3% per year, whereas the current and recent past rate of expansion in foreign study has run at 7 or 8% per year. Thus, with a stable rate of population growth, the rate of increase in students studying abroad could be brought as low as zero even though the frequency of interchange of students was at 100%, i.e., saturation, with all students studying outside their home country.

This hypothetical example may give some satisfaction to our need to find some way of showing that exponential growth has clearly definable limits; we must nevertheless acknowledge that it is improbable that the conditions specified will be reached in the near, or even the distant, future.

23

Excerpted from UNESCO (fn. 7), Table 21, p. 47, which gives the field of study of all students studying abroad from 117 countries.

24 For example, UN statistics show the following: In foreign mail received, 20 less developed countries show an average annual gain of 7.3% from 1938 to 1970. In comparison, 20 developed countries show an average annual gain of only 3.7%. In foreign telegrams sent, 12 less developed countries show an average annual increase of 4.3% from 1938 to 1970, while 22 developed countries averaged only 2.0%. These statistics are complemented by telephone use data. Between 1967 and 1971, telephones in use increased 61.4% in Asia as compared to only 37% in Europe.

25 This is, of course, not to gainsay the fact that some countries are relatively heavily dependent on foreign universities to train their specialists in certain fields. For some evidence, see the section on dependence, below.

26 The United Nations Statistical Yearbook for 1972 shows that in 1953 tourists from Japan to the United States numbered about 17,000. By 1971 the figure was 313,000. The 1953 figure included tourists from Korea, which, if omitted, would probably leave us a figure closer to the 15,000 mentioned in the text. The press reports an enormous surge of additional Japanese tourists to Hawaii in 1973. Some estimates place that flow at an increase of over a 100,000 in a single year.

27 This subset of 79 countries was selected from the full set of 124 presented by Taylor and Hudson (fn. 2), in order to facilitate a comparison with figures for 1959 which had been presented by Russett, Bruce M. and others, World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators (New Haven:Yale University Press 1964Google Scholar). Results of the comparison will appear below. The full set of 124 countries presented by Taylor and Hudson shows the median proportion of trade to GNP to be 39%, The figures on trade as a percentage of GNP, cited above, are not meant to reflect total world trade as a proportion of total world GNP. Since many small countries which enter our set have high ratios of trade to GNP and relatively small GNP's, the median percentage figure we give is bound to be considerably greater than the ratio of total world trade to world GNP. This is especially true when one considers that the countries with the highest GNP's (U.S., U.S.S.R.) show figures for the proportion of trade to GNP which are below 10%. World trade as a proportion of world GNP can be roughly estimated from UN statistics. Considering market economies only, the proportion of worldwide imports to worldwide GNP in 1963 was roughly 10%. By 1970 this figure had risen to nearly 12%. Figures based on United Nations Statistical Yearbook 1972, Tables 146 and 188.

28 United Nations Statistical Yearbook igji, 460–63.

29 One basis for this conclusion is the fact that trade within the set of industrialized countries is much more intense than is trade either between industrialized and non-industrialized sets or within the subset of the nonindustrialized. A more direct test of the hypothesis presented required that we compare the increases in trade with the increase in industrialization for specific countries. W e selected eleven countries on the basis of availability of data, geographic spread, and variation in the degree to which their industrialization increased between 1948 and 1970. For those eleven we then compared the increase in industrialization with the increase in the value of exports over the same period. Th e rank-order correlation of the two sets of figures was .67, indicating a close correspondence between the two types of growth. At the top of the list, Japan's industrialization index increased 25.8 times (1963 = 100), and her trade increased by 20% per year; at the bottom of the list, Algeria's industrialization index increased only 1.1 times, and her exports by only 4 % per year.

30 Figures for countries found in Russett (fn. 27), as well as in Taylor and Hudson (fn. 2).

31 Again we call attention to the fact that thus approaching the association of trade to GNP by country gives an impression of greater interdependence than one would derive by contemplating only the fact that the value of worldwide exports as a proportion of worldwide GNP is in the much more modest range of 10–12%.

32 Childe (fn. 3), 239.

33 It is fascinating to apply diis notion of potential autarky in trade and science to the realm of art. Some critics would assert that all the important sources of real creativity in art are found outside these giants, and that if they were not interconnected with the rest of the world, they would soon become artistic wastelands.

34 These assertions are confirmed by the fact that in 1970 tourism accounted for 8.1%, 5.6%, and 4.5% of the national income in Jamaica, Spain, and Mexico, respectively. By comparison, in the same year foreign tourist receipts accounted for a mere .3% of the national income of the U.S. and .1% of that of Japan. (Based on Tables 157 and 187, United Nations Statistical Yearbook 1972.)

35 If the point was not obvious when this sentence was first written in August 1973, it must surely have become obvious since then as a result of the Arab oil embargo and the resultant worldwide energy crisis.

36 UNESCO (fn. 7), 33.

37 Ibid., 30.

38 Ibid., 55.

39 Ibid., 57.

40 De Seynes, , “Prospects for a Future Whole World,” International Organization, xxvi (Winter 1972), 6Google Scholar.

41 See Goode, William J., World Revolution and Family Patterns (New York:Free Press 1963Google Scholar).

42 Bendix, Reinhard and Lipset, Seymour, Class, Status, and Power (2A. ed., New York:Free Press 1966Google Scholar); see especially in this volume Robert W. Hodge, Donald J. Treiman, and Peter H. Rossi, “A Comparative Study of Occupational Prestige.”

43 See Szalai, Alexander, The Use of Time: Daily Activity of Urban and Suburban Population in Twelve Countries (The Hague: Mouton 1973Google Scholar).

44 Inkeles, , “Industrial Man: The Relation of Status to Experience, Perception, and Value,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 64 (July 1960Google Scholar).

45 Inkeles, Alex and Smith, David H., Becoming Modern (Cambridge:Harvard University Press 1974CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

46 Inkeles, , Social Change in Soviet Russia (Cambridge:Harvard University Press 1968CrossRefGoogle Scholar); see especially chap. 20, “Russia and the United States: A Problem in Comparative Sociology.”

47 It may be argued that increasing affluence has actually had the effect of greatly increasing freedom of choice for the average individual in the United States. The issue is certainly debatable, but it is not the one to which the text is addressed. Rather, the text refers to the ever-widening regulation by the state of matters previously left to individual resolution. For example, we started with each person obliged to look to his retirement as best he can, but in time we have arrived at government social security payments obligatory for most people and increasing government regulation of previously private retirement plans worked out by corporations, unions, and other organizations. Under these new conditions, individuals may be more secure financially, but they also operate within a wider and more penetrating network of regulation and control.

48 The nature of the “post-modern” man is a challenging subject which I must unfortunately bypass here. It is a topic to which I will return in a later and fuller exposition of the ideas presented in this paper.