What does being a core country mean?

Core countries are the wealthy and robust nations which support all the other sub-periphery and periphery nations. These are industrialized capitalist nations which control the world market while benefiting the most. Core nations are the wealthy nations with vast resources which are favorably positioned as compared to the others. They have powerful world political alliances, military power, and strong state institutions.

The world-systems analysts argue that the future of any country depends on their position in the world’s economy. Core nations benefit the most from the hierarchical structure of global labor and trade. The world-system theory uses the logic that multi-national financial disputes and global wars are attempts to alter the location of the world’s market for specific countries. These conflicts result in some states gaining control over the worldwide market while others are demoted. As the core and periphery groups grew further apart, the theorists created another level called the semi-periphery nations.

Can A Country Be At The Core Level Permanently?

These nations do not remain at the core level forever; throughout history these countries have changed with newer ones joining the list while other being demoted. During the 14th century, Italy was a peripheral nation while Mongolia was a core nation, but currently, Italy is core while Mongolia is a periphery state.

China and India were the wealthiest kingdoms on earth until the 15th century when the European nations took over, although China is still influential in Asia. The European countries remained the core nations until the 20th century when the world wars affected their economies, and the Soviet Union and the United States took over. The Soviet Union was a core nation until the late 1980s; currently, the core of civilization is made up of Japan, Australasia, North America, and Western Europe.

What Are The Critical Qualifiers Of A Core Nation?

For a nation to become a core or remain one, they must keep the possible investors in mind when planning their policies. The core areas change over time because of various factors including regional affluence and geographical favoritism. The changes in the financial plans of multiple firms also play a crucial role in the status of a nation since they react to all the changes in the ever-evolving global market. For a region to be a core nation nominee, they must have a stable and independent government and immense growth potential in the world, and technological advances. One of the primary factors that contribute to a country being a core is creating government policies which will promote funding from other nations and foreign investors.

What Are The Functions Of The Core Nations?

The primary function of these nations is commanding and financially benefiting from the global markets better than the rest. The core nations are the capitalists’ class while the periphery regions are the working class. In the current capitalist-driven world these nations exchange products with the other nations at a different rate and always in their favor. These nations buy products at a lower price and resell them at a higher rate. Periphery regions sell their good at a low price than what they pay to import outside their region and this results in them lacking enough cash to invest in technologies. The core nation’s supports these patterns by lending them cash for investing in the particular type of raw material, instead of helping them establish themselves.

(noun) In world systems theory, a powerful industrial nation that dominates the global economic and political system.

Examples of Core Nations

Note: Based on research by Babones (2005).

  • Australia
  • Austria
  • Canada
  • Denmark
  • Finland
  • Greece
  • Israel
  • Italy
  • Japan
  • United States

Core Nations Pronunciation

Pronunciation Usage Guide

Syllabification: core na·tions

Audio Pronunciation

Phonetic Spelling

  • American English – /kOR nAY-shuhnz/
  • British English – /kAW nAY-shuhnz/

International Phonetic Alphabet

  • American English – /kɔr ˈneɪʃənz/
  • British English – /kɔː ˈneɪʃənz/

Usage Notes

  • “Transitions from the semiperiphery to the core have historically been rare, and have largely driven by chance (e.g., the discovery of oil) or massive transfers (e.g., membership in the EU). Neither mechanism can be relied upon to drive policy in the poorer countries of the world more broadly . . . Keeping in mind that the vast majority of the world’s population lives in the periphery of the world-economy, it would not be an unworthy goal to focus on ways to help peripheral countries attain semiperipheral income levels. While the current research gives no guidance on how to accomplish this goal, it does suggest that such a goal might be productively pursued” (Babones 2005:53).

Additional Information

Reference

Babones, Salvatore J. 2005. “The Country-level Income Structure of the World-economy.” Journal of World-Systems Research 11(1):29–55. doi:10.5195/jwsr.2005.392.

Works Consulted

Andersen, Margaret L., and Howard Francis Taylor. 2011. Sociology: The Essentials. 6th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Brym, Robert J., and John Lie. 2007. Sociology: Your Compass for a New World. 3rd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Ferrante, Joan. 2011. Seeing Sociology: An Introduction. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Griffiths, Heather, Nathan Keirns, Eric Strayer, Susan Cody-Rydzewski, Gail Scaramuzzo, Tommy Sadler, Sally Vyain, Jeff Bry, Faye Jones. 2016. Introduction to Sociology 2e. Houston, TX: OpenStax.

Henslin, James M. 2012. Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach. 10th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Kendall, Diana. 2011. Sociology in Our Times. 8th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Kornblum, William. 2008. Sociology in a Changing World. 8th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Macionis, John, and Kenneth Plummer. 2012. Sociology: A Global Introduction. 4th ed. Harlow, England: Pearson Education.

Stolley, Kathy S. 2005. The Basics of Sociology. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Thompson, William E., and Joseph V. Hickey. 2012. Society in Focus: An Introduction to Sociology. 7th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Wikipedia contributors. (N.d.) Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. (https://en.wikipedia.org/).

Cite the Definition of Core Nations

ASA – American Sociological Association (5th edition)

Bell, Kenton, ed. 2013. “core nations.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Retrieved November 9, 2022 (https://sociologydictionary.org/core-nations/).

APA – American Psychological Association (6th edition)

core nations. (2013). In K. Bell (Ed.), Open education sociology dictionary. Retrieved from https://sociologydictionary.org/core-nations/

Chicago/Turabian: Author-Date – Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition)

Bell, Kenton, ed. 2013. “core nations.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Accessed November 9, 2022. https://sociologydictionary.org/core-nations/.

MLA – Modern Language Association (7th edition)

“core nations.” Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Ed. Kenton Bell. 2013. Web. 9 Nov. 2022. <https://sociologydictionary.org/core-nations/>.

The countries of the world can be divided into two major world regions: the "core" and the "periphery." The core includes major world powers and the countries that contain much of the wealth of the planet. The periphery has those countries that are not reaping the benefits of global wealth and globalization.

Many reasons exist as to why this global structure has formed, but generally speaking, there are many barriers, physical and political, that prevent the poorer citizens of the world from participating in global relations. The disparity of wealth between core and periphery countries is staggering. Oxfam noted that 82 percent of the world's 2017 income went to the richest one percent of people.

The top 20 countries ranked by the United Nations Human Development Index are all in the core. However, of note is the slowing, stagnant, and occasionally declining population growth of these countries.

The opportunities created by these advantages perpetuate a world driven by individuals in the core. People in positions of power and influence around the world are often brought up or educated in the core (nearly 90 percent of world leaders have a degree from a Western university).

The population is skyrocketing in the periphery because of a number of contributing factors, including a limited ability to move and the use of children as a means to support a family, among others.

Many people living in rural areas perceive opportunities in cities and take action to migrate there, even though there are not enough jobs or housing to support them. About one billion people now live in slum conditions, the UN estimates, and the majority of population growth around the world is occurring in the periphery.

The rural-to-urban migration and high birth rates of the periphery are creating both megacities, urban areas with more than eight million people, and hyper cities, urban areas with more than 20 million people. These cities, such as Mexico City or Manila, have slum areas that can contain up to two million people with little infrastructure, rampant crime, no health care, and massive unemployment.

Industrialized nations played a key role in establishing political regimes during postwar reconstruction. English and the Romance languages remain the state languages for many non-European countries long after their foreign colonists have packed up and gone home. This makes it difficult for anyone brought up speaking a local language to assert him or herself in a Eurocentric world. Also, public policy formed by Western ideas may not provide the best solutions for non-Western countries and their problems.

Here are some examples of border clashes between nations of the core and the periphery:

  • The growing fence between the U.S. (core) and Mexico (periphery) to prevent the entrance of unauthorized immigrants.
  • The Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.
  • Air and naval patrols on the waters between Australia and Southeast Asia and between the EU and North Africa to keep out unwanted immigrants.
  • The UN-enforced border separating the Turkish north and Greek south of Cyprus, known as the Green Line.

The core-periphery model is not limited to a global scale, either. Stark contrasts in wages, opportunities, access to health care, and so on among a local or national population are commonplace. The United States, the quintessential beacon for equality, exhibits some of the most obvious examples. U.S. Census Bureau data estimated that the top 20 percent of wage earners made up roughly 51 percent of all U.S. income in 2016, and the top five percent of earners made 22 percent of all U.S. income.

For a local perspective, witness the slums of Anacostia, whose impoverished citizens live a stone's throw from the grand marble monuments that represent the power and affluence of Washington, D.C.'s central downtown.

Although the world may be metaphorically shrinking for the minority in the core, the world maintains a rough and limiting geography for the majority in the periphery.