The Diffusion Theory of Innovation - Term Paper Example

Colonialism and Development at a Glance Introduction Colonialism as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary is a policy by which a supreme nation “maintains or extends its control” over a country’s resources and its people. In the history of colonialism, Portugal and Spain started the new age colonialism in the 15th century that brought about not just expansion of territories but cultural and religious influences as well. Other colonial empires followed in the 17th century such as the Dutch, the French, and the British empires. During 19th century, other colonizers emerged like the American, Belgian and German empires. Although the mentioned colonizers have the same objective of extending their dominion, each employed different methods in implementing control over their declared territories. The French colonized other countries using centralized system of governance in Paris leaving the countries without the freedom to deal with their local issues (Grier 319). The French government was also strict about the use of its own language in its territories and education was not in its primary agenda resulting to illiteracy of the people in the colonized countries. The British colonization used the decentralized form of government controlling the constitution and foreign relations of its colonies leaving the international trade, public lands, as well as trade surpluses under the control of the government of its colonies (Grier 319). The British also employs free trade agreement in its colonies and optimizes education of its people. The Spanish colonization on the other hand is the epitome of mercantilist government with strict restrictions on trade leaving no room for the colonies to bargain with other countries but only to Spain herself (Grier 320). Bearing either positive or negative impacts, the people of the colonized country still has the authority and power on whether to accept dominion or revert to new perspectives that can bring socio-economic growth to their land more than what the colonizers has to offer. To elucidate how colonialism affects the development process of the colonized countries, this paper will discuss the legacies of colonization on the macro level with references to specific economic situations or country experiences which depicts their score in development. Colonialism and its effect on development The theory of colonialism states that there are two models to colonize a country, the mercantilist and the liberalist models. The mercantilist model of colonialism uses the central force of the state to control the assets of the country by instituting trade policies and tariffs, as well as controlling labor and wages (Lange, Mahoney, and vom Hau 1416). It was this model that promoted social hierarchy which gave birth to capitalism when the state has full control to deny or provide trade access to certain groups making resources to be concentrated only to the few hands of the elites. The liberalist model on the other hand promotes private properties and commercial production wherein the role of the state is to create and enforce a law and to provide necessary infrastructure that would assist the peace and order, and trade markets of the colonized countries (Lange, Mahoney, and vom Hau 1416). Emergence of new colonialism. The fervent desire of a country to accumulate economic resources on top of other countries has led to the birth of the new age colonialism in the 20th century as the new development practices of some first world countries. The new colonialism exhibits the mercantilism scenario wherein the colonized state is more interested in short term gains than in long-term investments. The difference is that “instead of countries taken by force, they sell themselves” (Altman 56) and countries are not called as colonies but economic allies. The new colonialism promotes state dependency to the foreign investors and people’s dependency to the state and its governing politicians. The dependency theory developed in 1950’s evolves on the relationship between the central and peripheral industry wherein the development of the peripheral state is dependent on the institutional progress of the central or dominant country. A case sample is in 2009 when South Korea has placed interest to buy and develop farmlands in Cambodia, the Cambodian government forced the families of poor farmers out of the land they have been tilling for generations when the former closed the World Bank project that issued land titles to the farmers (Altman 58). The Cambodian government decided to do so because of its inability to provide the technology and investment needed to improve the agricultural lands. In the Philippines, land with minerals such as gold, copper and silver were leased by the government to international mining companies from Canada, China, and Europe which forced the indigenous populations out of their ancestral lands. Beyond the landless population is the primary concern on the depletion of the non-renewable resources and destruction of the environment which has been told to be contributory to the man-made disasters in the country. Due to lack of resources to invest in new technology, and inability of the government to develop and market indigenous materials, the poor people are forced to sell their lands assets to the government and the latter in turn is also obliged to sell or lease the land assets to foreign investors with the hope to gain enough cash flow to run the priority government programs. This situation depicts a cycle of dependency from bottom to top of the hierarchy. Although the new wave of colonization does not involved direct seizure of land and its people, what’s worst is that the colonizers are not concern about alleviating the poverty conditions in the country where it invested (Altman 61). Hence, the probability of the dependent countries to develop as well as the probability of the poor to improve their standard of living is very small. There are other discourse though which says that the new colonialism could be beneficial to a country like in the case of Haiti which has been struggling with the small arable farms lands can benefit from a foreign investor that will introduce new technology and gather the farm lands to produce more crops and offer higher labor services (Altman 63). But still, the positive and negative impacts of the new colonialism rest on the shoulder of the governing officials in the allied countries. The return of investments and welfare of the people depends largely on the economic and social projects created by the state since the foreign investors does not really care much about the long-term welfare of the host country’s people so long as it is in adherence to their agreement with the state policies. With corrupt government officials, how will this new form of development aid the country and its people? The diffusion theory of innovation by Everett Rogers stressed the element of the social system as the final key to a successful result on any innovation introduced in a country (Rogers 24). Accordingly, the social system is “a set of interrelated units that are engaged in joint problem solving to accomplish a common goal (24).” However, if the state decision is being carried out only by few people in the elite society, the rewards from the foreign trades will be concentrated to the few hands running and controlling the business industry in the country. In such scenario, proliferation of the poor will continue and insurgency will arise like in the case of uprising in Nigeria against Niger Delta, the government, and its corporate partners, due to failure in sharing the oil assets to the local tribes (Altman 64). Globalization. The development theory on globalization is the widely discussed and debated economic theory since it came about in 1970s. Amidst debates on the precise nature of globalizations are the five fundamental principles that define what globalization is and how it works. According to Scheuerman on his article “Globalization”, the first principle of globalization is on deterritorialization wherein various social activities takes place using technology notwithstanding geographical locations, second is “the growth of social interconnectedness”, third is the advancement in speed and velocity of social activities with the development of transportation, communication, and information technologies, fourth is the long-term process of globalization, and fifth is on understanding globalization as a “multi-pronged process.” Giovanni et al. from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that the citizens from counties involved in globalization benefits from “access to a wider variety of goods and services, lower prices, more and better-paying jobs, improved health, and higher overall living standards.” They further revealed that in the past 20 years, the percentage of people living on less than $1 per day has been reduced in half from its original statistics. The same group also showed that the world Gross Domestic Product (GDP) value of trade has increased from 42.1 percent in 1980 to 62.1 percent in 2007, as well as increase in the number of foreign workers from78 million in 1965 to 191 million in 2005. Moreover, Giovanni et al. revealed that a 6.5 percent increase of the world GDP was gained from foreign investment in 1980 and rose significantly to 31.8 percent in 2006. But how significantly do all these numbers affect the developing countries? In 1989, the privatization of water resources in Wales and England contributed to 46 percent increase in cost due to inflation and causing 200 percent shutdown of services to households that can’t afford to pay bills (Jeter 78). From August 2000 to December 2002, there were 115,000 cholera cases in South Africa due to intake of unsafe water in mineral contaminated rivers. When the World Bank convinced the African National Congress to privatized public services, cost of water skyrocketed leaving plenty of Africans unable to pay their bills forcing them to go back to traditional water sources (Jeter 78-85). Development of natural resources is parallel to development of human resources, when a country aims to develop its resources, it would need humans to think of innovative ideas and physical labor to complete the process. In a country with huge population but with inadequate employment opportunities, the most natural thing that the people would do is to fly towards the rich country to seek for a job and eventually settle there for good. In the United States, the 1.2 million immigrants in 1999 rose to approximately 2 million in 2008 (Altman 73). The rise in immigration and employment in the developed countries contributes to the brain drain phenomenon in the developing countries. In 2009, the Arab League reported approximately 100,000 doctors, scientists and engineers leaving Middle East with the majority never returned to their homeland (Altman 85). An article by Tubeza on “Brain Drain” in the Philippines showed a 148 percent increase of professionals in science and technology that includes doctors, nurses, midwives, and engineers who opted to work abroad from 1998 – 2009. Tubeza said that because of the brain drain, the Philippines is left with only 165 research and development personnel per million Filipinos which is more than half below the recommended 380 personnel by Unesco needed for economic development outputs of the country. With globalization immigration made easy, the few affluent and professionals in the developing countries who aim to live a better life will opt to reside abroad leaving their homeland with the poor who cannot afford to migrate much less get education for themselves. The social interconnectedness of globalization due to technological advancement has brought billions of people together in social networks such as the Facebook, and Twitter. It has also brought media into the new light in delivering public news and current events to the people at the most crucial and appropriate time. It updated people from all over the world on the various situations in different countries paving way for huge prompt assistance in terms of national disasters like the 9/11 disaster in US, Japan tsunami, and Haiti earthquake among others. Recent technological developments like the internet has connected the world cost effectively and much faster when communicating and sending relevant information across the globe, however, technological advancement has its own disadvantages. The rise of communication through electronic mails and instant messaging contributed to the declining demand in postal services resulting to low return of investment and massive retrenchment in the workforce. The most concrete example is the ongoing financial crisis in the U.S. Postal Service. De Haven’s article on “Privatizing the U.S. Postal Service” revealed that the “electronic communications are making physical mail delivery less relevant” contributing to low revenues in addition to its expensive operating expenses, union workforce, and congressional interference. Accordingly, USPS lost $20 billion from 2007 to 2010 increasing its debt from $2.1 billion to $12 billion. With this kind of consequence, one cannot help but think whether this technology has been contributory to economic success or more on failure. Free trade and health risks. The colonizers get into the business of coveting foreign lands and people due to opportunities in trade of goods most especially those that were not available or were limited in their countries. Today, it doesn’t take a colonizer to get into the business of international trading, rich and poor countries alike can import and export raw materials, goods and food products to support either the needs of their people or the needs of the foreign countries. In 1944, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was established to reduce trade barriers and facilitate negotiations with the member countries. In 1995, the World Trade Organization (WTO) replaced GATT as a permanent institution that administers and enforces multilateral trade agreements between member nations (Saker et al. 13). Conversely, alongside the business of free trade is the risk of spread of infectious diseases that can be carried by the products. According to the World Health Organization, the avian outbreak in Hong Kong and China in 1997 has infected humans and spread across Asia, Europe and Africa in 2003 and 2004 causing poultry infections and human deaths. Just recently this December 2011, Hong Kong once again found chickens infected from H5N1 virus forcing their government to stop importation from China and burning thousands of poultry products leading to loss of income of the poultry growers. Outbreaks of other infectious diseases are told to have parallel relationship with trade and development. When a country lost in trade and tourism revenue, the health services also loses investment support from the government compromising public health safety. In 1990s, the Asian financial crisis was seen to have negative impacts on the spread of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases (Saker et al. 14).” In Africa, structural adjustments lead to budget reduction on control strategies for vector-borne diseases and resurgence of parasitic infections like African trypanosomiasis (14). International trade in pharmaceutical products poses a big threat as well to drug resistance since there have been no sufficient regulations to control on the distribution and misuse of drugs such as the multidrug resistance tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and resistance to antiretroviral for HIV (Saker et al. 16). The downside on the impacts of trade leads to numerous debates on how it can better respond not only to the economic security of a country but on its social welfare as well. Conclusion The imbalance negative and positive effects of the development strategies employed during the post-colonial period until today raises arguments on how the civil world can protect its people and assets while on its way to progress. Some argued that it can never be a balance development because the current capitalism only perpetuates more poor countries while making the rich countries richer. This is so because democratic policies needed trust, belongingness, and commitment that are present in the national level is missing in the intercontinental level. In contrast, some believe that strengthening of existing transnational institutions like the United Nations to further transnational democracy is one way to solve the current crisis that plague the countries worldwide. But how far can a country amend its policies in order to align with the transnational democracy? What if alliance would mean deterioration of the people’s welfare, should a country’s government risk? This is where the debate on the theory of political realism comes in. The theory of political realism founded by Machiavelli, Hobbes and Thucydides suggest that a country acts in quest for personal interest, power, and security over ideology, moral, and social concerns. In the previous country experiences, it can be observed that the countries, whether rich or poor, acted for self-interest and power for the few elites notwithstanding the negative effects of their ambitious programs to their own people or to the inhabitants of their so called economic allies. The UN bodies can only do so much by trying to link the countries together and building a common safe ground but the self-interests of the countries will still prevail. The new economic crisis that started in the US in 2007 led to the fall of other countries that depended largely on the US economy and dollar investments, a show on how dependency can reciprocate badly to the poor dependent countries. Globalization with the aim to bring the world as one has caused enough negative impacts already in rich and poor countries alike leaving people to think if it is better to trade independently using local currencies than to join world markets that only increases national debts and devaluates local currencies. The world though can still be connected in contrast to political realism when people from the bottom economy bonds together like the occupy Wall Street protest that has been staged in numerous countries around the world. This is another proof though that development without social and moral concerns can never be a success. Changes however cannot be done in the transnational level down to national level; it must be the other way around to ensure that citizens are well provided with a decent living. There is no single development model applicable for all countries thus; development must be approach per national level. Give and take the cited facts in the previous pages of this paper, the solution lies in the hands of the great majority in each country who labor to produce its desired economic needs and not in the hands of global conglomerates. Works Cited Altman, Daniel. Outrageous Fortunes. The Twelve Surprising Trends that will Reshape the Global Economy. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC., 2011. 49-89. Print. American Heritage Dictionary. Colonialism.Web. 18 Dec. 2011. De Haven, Tad. “Privatizing the U.S. Postal Service”. Downsizing the Federal Government. Cato Institute, November 2010. Web. 18 Dec. 2011. Giovanni, Di Julian et al. “Globalization: A Brief Overview.” International Monetary Fund. May 2008. Web. 17 Dec. 2011. Grier, Robin M. “Colonial Legacies and Economic Growth.” Public Choice 98 (1999) : 317- 335. Web. 18 Dec. 2011. Jeter, Jon. Flat Broke in the Free Market. How Globalization Fleeced Working People. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009. 75-96. Print. Lange, Matthew., Mahoney, James., vom Hau, Matthias. Colonialism and Development: A Comparative Analysis of Spanish and British Colonies. American Journal of Sociology. AJS Volume 111 Number 5 (March 2006): 1412–62. Web. 19 Dec. 2011. Rogers, Everett M. Diffusion of Innovations. New York: Free Press, 1983. 11-24. Print. Saker, Lance et al. “Globalization and infectious diseases: A review of the linkages.” World Health Organization, 2004. Web. 19 Dec. 2011. Scheuerman, William. "Globalization". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 Edition). Web. 17 Dec. 2011. Tubeza, Philip. “Brain Drain Worse, Study shows.” Inquirer.net. Philippine Daily Inquirer. 15 Feb. 2011. Web. 17 Dec. 2011. World Health Organization. “Influenza at the Human-Animal Interface (HAI).” Influenza. WHO, 2011. Web. 17 Dec. 2011 Read More