Semi-periphery countries

The Hereford Mappa Mundi, about 1300, Hereford Cathedral, England.

In world-systems theory, the semi-periphery countries (sometimes referred to as just the semiperiphery) are the industrializing, mostly capitalist countries which are in the process of transforming from the periphery countries into core countries.

Contemporary nations of the semiperiphery are industrialized. Semi-periphery countries are major exporters of minerals and agricultural goods. They major in manufacturing and also export industrial goods and commodities. However, they lack the power and the economic dominance of core nations and still have a lot of unmanaged poverty. They tend to be bigger in land mass, like for example China, because more landmass generally means a bigger market.

The semi periphery is needed to stabilize the system. It absorbs the shock between the low-income periphery states and the high-income core states. They act as a political buffer. Some of these areas had been core-areas of earlier versions of a given world-economy. Some had been peripheral areas that were later promoted, so to speak, as a result of the changing geopolitics of an expanding world-economy.

The semiperiphery, however, is not an artifice of statistical cutting points, nor is it a residual category. The semiperiphery is a necessary structural element in a world-economy. These areas play a role parallel to that played, mutatis mutandis, by middle trading groups in an empire. They are collection points of vital skills that are often poetically unpopular. These middle areas (like middle groups in an empire) partially deflect the political pressures which groups primarily located in peripheral areas might otherwise direct against core-states and the groups which operate within and through their state machineries. On the other hand, the interests primarily located in the semiperiphery are located outside the political arena of the core-states, and find it difficult to pursue the ends in political coalitions that might be open to them were they in the same political arena.

World-systems theorists originally used only the two categories - periphery countries and core countries, but a need for "in between" category became quickly apparent. Hence the semi-periphery category was introduced for societies that moved away from the periphery but have not became core, in other words, societies that remained dependent, and to some extent underdeveloped, despite having achieved significant levels of industrialization.

Examples of semi-periphery countries: Brazil, China, India, Malaysia, Poland

See also

• Core-periphery
• Dependency theory
• Developing country
• Second World

Further reading

• Kaplan, David H.; Wheeler, James O.; Holloway, James O. Urban Geography. York, PA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2004., pg. 412.
• Windows on Humanity by Conrad Phillip KOTTAK. Chapter 17, page 390.

References

Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press, 1976

Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press, 1976