Chapter 17 Social Change: Development and Global Inequality Key Terms

 Modernization The process of industrialization, economic development, and technological innovation by which a culture achieves high standards of living and maximizes control over the physical environment.  Idea of progress The philosophical doctrine that technological and social progress is inevitable.

 Cultural lags Periods of delay following a change in one part of a society when other parts of the society have not yet readjusted.  Diffusion The process by which innovations spread from one society to another.

 Capitalism An economic system based on free-market exchanges and individual property rights with the result that any individual can benefit from becoming more productive.  Command economies Economic systems wherein property rights are not secure and much productive activity is based on coerced labor.

 Protestant Reformation The separation of Protestant Christians from the Roman Catholic Church during the sixteenth century; usually associated with the founding of the Lutheran Church in Germany.  Spirit of capitalism According to Weber, a nonreligious version of the Protestant ethic; values favoring hard work, thrift, and the importance of economic success.

 Protestant ethic According to Weber, doctrines holding that economic success reflects God’s grace.  State theory of modernization Theory that wherever the power of the state to seize private property is curtailed, free markets will appear, capitalism will develop, and modernization will occur as a result of mass efforts to become more productive.

 World system theory (or dependency theory) Theory stating that some nations become modernized by exploiting other nations and that their continuing exploitation prevents less developed nations from becoming fully modernized.  Core nations According to Wallerstein, those most modernized nations, having diversified economies and stable internal politics, that dominate the world system.

 Peripheral nations According to Wallerstein, those nations in the world system that are forced to specialize in the export of unprocessed raw materials and food to the core nations and that must import manufactured goods. This makes them dependent on the core nations, which in turn force them to adopt economic and social policies that prevent them from modernizing.

 Semiperipheral nations Wallerstein’s term for nations that fall in between core and peripheral nations, being more industrialized than the latter and less industrialized than the former.  Gross domestic product (GDP) The final value of all economic activities within a society. When GDP is divided by the total population of a society, the result is per capita GDP.