Globalization, industrialization and social class in less developed countries, 1980--2005

This dissertation analyzes the industrialization and social class structures of less developed countries during the latest wave of economic globalization. Industrialization and social class have always been among the central topics in sociology. With the latest wave of economic globalization, manufacturing, which had been primarily carried out in the early-industrialized countries, spread around the world. This had a significant impact on the industrialization and social class structures of less developed countries. This dissertation assesses the effect of the latest wave of economic globalization through three sets of empirical analysis. First, I conduct a statistical analysis of industrial employment in 64 less developed countries. Second, I conduct a case study on industrialization and social class structure of Turkey. Third, I conduct a comparative analysis of industrialization and social class structure in South Korea, Malaysia, Costa Rica, Tanzania, and Turkey. This multi-method approach reveals that industrialization expanded in most less developed countries during the latest wave of economic globalization. Although the rising productivity and economic development mainly explain industrialization in less developed countries, exports significantly contributed to the rise of manufacturing employment as well. This dissertation contends that economic globalization caused proletarianization, represented by the expansion of the manual labor class and the informal employment, and polarization, demonstrated as the swelling of social classes at the bottom and the top of social class structure. This dissertation also shows that the globalization of the less developed countries varies by the role of international trade and foreign direct investment. Although there are not any countries that solely depend on international trade or foreign direct investment, the countries that are characterized by the prominence of exports of manufactured goods experienced an expansion of low-skilled labor classes. The countries that received significant amounts of foreign direct investment, however, as well as sending significant amount of exports, experienced the expansion of skilled-labor classes. The service sector expanded in all less developed countries. The most striking feature of the expansion of service sector has been the expansion of professional and managerial social classes in all countries. By also showing the near universal concurrent expansion of entrepreneurial classes, defined as the employers and the self-employed, this dissertation provides support for the claims regarding the emergence of a global capitalist class. However, the expansion in the service sector was not limited to professional and managerial classes. Routine non-manual classes also expanded in most countries analyzed in this dissertation. Overall, globalization combined with economic development to trigger deep changes to the labor markets and class structure of less developed countries over the past several decades.