THE IMAGES
OF INTERNATIONAL STRATIFICATION IN LATIN AMERICA(1)
A Reputation Study based on Social Science Students
By
SIMON SCHWARTZMAN and MANUEL MORA Y ARAUJO
International Peace Research Institute, Oslo
Journal of Peace Research (Oslo), 3, 1966,
pp. 225-243.
Summary
1. Introduction
2 The
"subjective" rank-order
3.The ideology of
stratification.
4. Determinants of the perception.
of stratification
5. The effect of nationality
Notes
1. Introduction
A survey of the perception of inter-national stratification in Latin Ainerica
was launched among Latin American students of social sciences in Argentina,
Brazil, Chile and other Latin American countries during the first semester
of 1965. The sample, which was non-representative , included 327 Latin Americans
plus a control group of 35 Norwegian students. In this article, the major
results of this survey are given, preceded by a short discussion of its
theoretical framework. The general characteristics of the sample may be
seen in Table 1(2)
Stratification is a key concept for the nomothetical approach to international
politics. This concept, basic in classical political sociology, may be employed
in international politics with in principle the same theoretical relevance
as well as the same methodological problems.(3)
Theoretically, the main point is that the units tend to distribute themselves
in the social setting according to rank-dimensions; and this distribution,
which is differential, has specific and systematic consequences for the
unit's internal processes, for the patterns of interaction between units,
and for the dynamics of the system as a whole. In political sociology, the
social setting is countries and the units individuals or groups; in international
sociology, the social setting is the inter-national system, and the units,
countries. At the national level, the structure of stratification influences
individual psychology and behavior, the patterns of interaction between
individuals, and the dynamics of the whole national system. And correspondingly,
for the international system, the stratification of countries is of consequence
to the dynamics of the national processes, the interaction patterns between
countries, and the dynamics of the international system as such.(4)
The parallel does not stop here. As in classical studies on stratification,
the concepts of 'class'' vs. 'feudal' societies can be profitably applied
to the international system. The question of whether the Latin American
subsystem falls in one or another of these two concepts is the first theoretical
problem confronting us.
We can discuss these two types of stratification system in terms of two
dimensions, one referring to the value system and the other to the structure
of interaction between the units.
The existence of a common set of scarce values is a pre-condition for the
existence of any system of stratification, since stratification means precisely
that some units are 'high' whereas others are 'low' in these values. What
differentiates the feudal system from the class system is that, in the former,
there is general acceptance of the unequal distribution of the scarce values,
while in an open-class system there is general agreement that any unit can
aspire to and eventually reach the high levels of stratification. Or, as
Max Weber defines it: in a class system all the values can be obtained in
the market, while in a feudal system some values are the privileges of some
statuses
As far as interaction is concerned, in the feudal system this is concentrated
at the top level; the low-rank units are connected with the top ones, but
not among them. selves. This kind of structure implies rigid boundaries
between strata, with no mobility or passage from one stratum to another
If we consider interaction structure a an indication of degree of accessibility
t( high-rank positions, a simple typology of stratification systems could
be the following (Figure 1):
The general hypothesis is that there is a clock-wise evolution, starting
at the upper left corner of this Figure. From the open-class systems on,
we can think either of a regression to new feudal systems based on new status
criteria, or of a disappearance of consensual values, perhaps leading to
disintegration.
The international system is today in the transitional phase. The existence
of the common value 'development', and the general assumption that any single
country should develop, is the sign of the end of a feudal era. But the
degree of accessibility to the high-rank positions is very low, as expressed
by the feudal interaction structure we have seen for Latin America.(5) And this is, after all, what the problem of underdevelopment
is about: the diffusion of values that cannot be reached by the low-countries
because of the rigid stratification of the international system; this brings
tension, conflicts and numerous kinds of violent possibilities.(6) This article is not the place for a full development
of this point, but we can point out some consequences of feudal stratification,
as traced by the stratification approach to international politics.
First, the lack of egalitarian interaction among the rank-and-file countries
impedes the drive towards regional integration, which is supposedly needed
more at this level than at any other. A correlated consequence is the increase
or stabilization of patterns of subordination, dependence and exploitation
from the high-rank countries towards the rank-and-file.(7)
Second, real or perceived rank-position seems to be relevant for the countries'
internal political processes. The general consequences of the center-periphery
theories regarding the formation of absolutist vs. gradualist ideologies
seem to apply equally well to individuals and nations.(8)
Nationalism itself, ideologies of development, and different forms of symbolic
participation are all influenced not only by the absolute rank of the countries
but also by the special types of equilibrium between their many rank dimensions.(9)
Finally, the rank-congruence (similarity of rank-profiles) between any pair
of countries seems to be a decisive variable for the prediction of the development
of stereotypes, sympathy or antipathy, etc., between them.(10)
The parallel between the international and national Systems holds true also
at the methodological level. The structure of international stratification
can be established either objectively by measuring the relative
position of the countries on some theoretically relevant rank-dimensions
(power, economic development, modernization of the social structure, health,
etc.), or subjectively, by trying to grasp the images of stratification
actually present in the minds of the countries' inhabitants. A third approach
could consist of a sociometric technique where the rank of the countries
would be defined by the differential selection these make of each other,
this selection being expressed, for instance, by the establishment of embassies
or other diplomatic legations.(11)As far
as the Latin American subsystem is concerned, these three approaches lead
to very similar results; thus we may conclude that this rank-order is independent
of the techniques used to measure it.
2 The "subjective" rank-order
The major aim of this survey was to get an independent check on the image
of stratification that emerged from our provisional objective measurement.
The objective measurement consisted of an additive index of 10 items considered
to be relevant rank~dimensions. These rank dimensions belonged to two non-correlated
clusters, one of size, or power (Gross National Product, population, area);
the other of average development (urbanization, industrialization, communications
, literacy, relative size of middle and high strata, percentage of white
population). Per capita income occupied a middle position.(12) The rank-order that emerged from the survey
was strongly correlated with this index, as predicted by the hypothesis
that in a feudal-like system there is a social image of generalized rank-roles
played by the units. Our findings show that the rank-position of a country
is the result of the combination of the two above-mentioned clusters. Differences
between the two rank-orders can be explained by the fact that the objective
measurement gave more relative weight to the average indicators than to
the absolute ones.
The resulting rank-order for the 20 Latin American republics is given in
Table 2, together with objective rank-order. The subjects were asked to
place the 20 countries in either of three groups of high, middle and low
levels of prestige or importance, to which the values 3, 2 and 1 were assigned,
and the average was then calculated for each country. Three of them (Argentina,
Mexico and Brazil) were almost unanimously placed as high class, and a group
of Central American countries, as well as Bolivia and Ecuador, consistently
placed as low class countries.
A complementary aspect of the subjective rank order is the size of each
stratum , as shown in Table 3. It is clear from this Table that Latin American
students tend to limit the size of the high class group and to perceive
an extensive low stratum; while the Norwegians, whose knowledge of Latin
America is extremely scanty (as we shall see later on) , tend to project
on Latin America the ideology of a welfare, middle class society which is
their own. Furthermore, we can see that students in Argentina and Brazil
tend to limit the high strata to these two countries and to Mexico, occasionally
including one more, while the Chileans tend systematically to include their
own country at the top level, sometimes bringing along a fifth one.
While in "The Latin American System of Nations - A structural analysis"
we were concerned with the effects of stratification, measured by rank-order
of the countries, on the international and national systems, here our main
concern is with what could be the determinants of this rank-order as perceived
by our respondents. In other words, our independent variable in that article
becomes here the dependent one.
3.The ideology of stratification.
Let us first examine the reasons students gave for their ranking of the
countries. They were confronted with a list of 16 possible reasons, or criteria,
which they could consider more or less relevant for this purpose. The technique
of questioning was a combination of "rating" and "ranking', and the results
reduced to a 5 point scale. The average values for each item, according
to national groups, can be seen in Table 4, where more than 3 indicates
strong approval, around 2 indifference, and less than 1 strong disapproval.
What emerges from Table 4 is that prestige is identified with development,
and above all, with industrialization. On the other hand, factors like size,
racial composition and sports are systematically refused as possible criteria
of stratification.
Viewing this table from the perspective of the class vs. feudal alternative
mentioned earlier, we might say that the ideology is purely classist, oriented
towards inability, emphasizing the dimensions that stand for achievement,
and denying the significance of what could imply ascription, or of what
is not connected with development.
Although this is the general ideology, there are some variations among the
national groups that are worth examining.
1. For the Norwegians, industrialization is clearly seen as contributing
to the achievement of a high standard of living and political freedom for
the whole population; and achievements in these spheres are also seen as
important determinants of international rank-position: the Norwegians place
literacy and standard of living immediately after industrialization, followed
by 'representative political system'. On the other hand, political factors
that could be seen as important for the achievement of these goals are considered
irrelevant. In short, what matters are the already existing achievements.
2. While the Norwegians stress existing achievements, Brazilians and Argentineans
regard as most important the possibilities of mobility the countries have.
Industrialization, then, is by far the main criterion , followed by education,
economic and political factors.
3. The ideology of the Chileans is peculiar in this respect. They rank education
higher than industrialization, and what could be termed high or middle class
education higher than literacy (i.e. low class education). As Chile has
already achieved a fairly high level of average education, while its economic
potentialities are much smaller than those of Brazil or Argentina, it seems
that the Chileans refuse to engage themselves in the struggle towards development,
at least on the same lines as Brazilians and Argentineans They maximize
the importance of what they have, which might be expected from the Striking
differences between Chilean self-perception and the perceptions the others
have of Chile, as we saw in Table 2.
A more refined analysis of the ideologies of stratification can be obtained
studying the matrix of inter-correlations between the 16 variables, as shown
in Table 5.(13)
The graph analysis of this matrix(14) permits
the detection of the following types or variants of the ideology of stratification:
1. 'Leftism-anti-imperialism' corresponds to those who emphasize
the relevance of the organized working class and in-dependent foreign policy.
These two variables are strongly correlated; both correlate negatively with
average education, and positively with urbanization, although the latter
two are independent. As the correlations are not excessively high, we can
say that the preference for these criteria is not caused by a consistent
and closed ideology alone, and we may well go on looking for other components
that enter in the selection of these criteria.
A first variant of this group are those who put urbanization together with
the other two main variables. Urbanization is connected with industrialization,
which is negatively correlated with average education. On the other hand,
urbanization is connected with standard of living, which correlates positively
with per capita income. This seems to be a kind of leftist ideology concerned
with economic development, while the variant opposing the relevance of average
educational level seems to correspond to a more 'pure' leftist group.
2. 'Democratic' ideology is expressed by the cluster that connects
political stability, economic stability and representative political system.
In contrast with the first group, this one does not view the process of
development as a political struggle against the high rank countries, but
rather as a process implying a higher commitment to the rules and values
of the high levels of the inter-national system.
3. 'Technocratic', or "scientific', ideology is represented by
those who stress tile level of scientific and technological development,
by-passing political stability, per capita income, middle class and racial
elements.
4. While these three ideologies are internally consistent and non-correlated
among themselves, the other criteria do not form any consistent ideology,
as far as this concept implies a logical and coherent articulation, of attitudes
and values. Items like standard of living, expensive middle class, white
population, etc., enter in the graph with equilibrated cycles, which indicates
precisely this lack of consistency.
A third insight in the ideologies can be obtained if we look at the distribution
of the ideologies according to nationality. We made two additive indices
of ideology, one for the 'democratic' group (items: representative political
system, political stability, economic stability) and another for the 'leftists'
(independent foreign, policy and organized working class). Only few cases
show high values on both indices, and they were excluded, together with
those with low or middle values on both indices (see Table 6). As for the
technocratic group, we took those who are in the upper third of the 5 point
scale for this criterion. The distributions can, be seen in Table 7; we
should notice the slight overlap between the 'technocratic' group and the
other two.
It appears reasonable to organize these ideological orientations by means
of three dimensions of concern: 1) Process of development vs. achievements
already attained; 2) political vs. non-political elements; and 3) the
differing degrees of concern with the low strata of the society,
This may then be mapped as follows:
This typology is obviously tentative and does not correspond fully to what
we got from our previous analysis. The pure anti-imperialist orientation,
without leftist components, docs not appear in our sample, even if we could
distinguish two variants in the leftist-anti-imperialist group. As for the
democratics, it is possible to argue that they are also concerned with the
process of development, while we could also say that the technocratic group
should rather be placed in the last column. But there is no doubt that the
democratic group is much more concerned with the 'problems' of underdevelopment
as something that could spoil the international image of the countries,
than with the process of development, or even with achieving this development
for their low strata, which would place them in the empty space in the upper
row.
We shall not try to indicate all the possible determinants of these ideologies
here. These obviously depend very much on background characteristics of
the subjects, a kind of data we are not dealing with here. If we consider
that there is not very much difference in this respect, since we are dealing
with the same social strata, we should conclude that the contextual variable
'nationality' is the main determinant of the attitudes. We shall develop
this point further on, but first we must see how the ideologies and other
factors actually influence the students' perceptions of the system of stratification.
4. Determinants of the perception. of stratification.
So far we have examined what could be called the attitudinal level, that
is, what the students say they do when, ranking the countries. Let us now
pass on to the level of actual behavior, and see whether ideologies and
values really determine the assignment of class positions or not.
That expressed ideology does not correspond to actual behavior we can, see
from the fact that the three big countries are systematically placed at
the top in spite of the fact that two of them, Brazil and Mexico, have relatively
low levels of average development, while small but relatively well developed
countries, like Uruguay, Costa Rica and Chile, are ranked lower. Size has
obviously a strong impact on, the ranking of the countries, in spite of
being contrary to values at the conscious level.
How far the three main ideological orientations mentioned above influence
the perception of stratification can, be seen in Table 8. There are some
differences between the two first groups for Cuba, Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina,
Chile and Costa Rica, which are all consistent with the ideologies. The
leftists tend to place Cuba in a high position, while Bolivia, with its
historical revolution, also finds a better place among them. The independent
foreign policy of the Chilean, government, among other things, seems to
help elevate its status among the leftists, the contrary holding for Brazil.
And the democratics give some value to the high levels of political and
economic development of Costa Rica.
But, in general, the differences are very small. In spite of the fact that
there is a clear and consistent image of international stratification for
our respondents, there seems to be no explicit or conscious ideology to
explain or determine this image - as if the respondents had this perception
in spite of themselves. We shall leave the level of the expressed values
and look for some less explicit determinants.
As expected, perception of stratification does not differ very much from
the scale that emerges from the additive index we made from objective measurements
(see above). The 'objective rank' of a country determines very much the
rank people attribute to it. The Spearman rank-correlation coefficient between
the subjective and objective index is as high as .94 for all the Latin American
group.
On the other hand, we can split the additive index into its items, and see
which of them are more correlated with the subjective ranking (Table 9).
We can see that the attribution of high class position is related to high
positions in the rank dimensions corresponding to large modern sectors in
the countries (industrialization, urbanization, and GNP). It is much less
related to other indicators of development, or only the size factor (area
and population). Clearly, when our respondents think of prestige, they are
thinking not only of development, but of development in countries that really
matter, in terms of potential international participation. The image
of international prestige appears to be shaped by messages of different
kinds, transmitted by channels of diffusion, depending on the existence
of large modern sectors in the countries. Thus, in spite of their high levels
of development, countries like Uruguay and Costa Rica are unable to be perceived
in the international scene in the same way as Mexico and Brazil.
Let us now consider how much knowledge the students have about Latin America.
The knowledge questions in the questionnaire were of two kinds. First, the
respondents were asked to give the name of the capital, a population estimate
and the name of the head of state of the 20 republics. Secondly, they had
to check one among three possible values of per capita income, literacy,
percentage of population in industries (as an indication of industrialization)
and the percentage of white population, for each country. With these items
a general index of knowledge was made.(15)
Table 10 shows the different perceptions of stratification for each level
of know-ledge. It would seem that, the higher the level of knowledge, the
clearer is the idea of a stratification system: the students with high knowledge
are more consistent in attributing high rank to the three big countries,
and also in attributing low rank to the small ones. In general, students
with low knowledge discriminate less, so they give higher prestige to low
prestige countries and lower prestige to high prestige countries.
But the differences are really very small. If we compare the subjective
ranking for each level of knowledge with the objective scales, we find only
small variations, the most salient of which can be seen in Table 11.
A possible inference is that those with low knowledge, when they have different
perceptions from those of high knowledge, tend to guide themselves mainly
by elements of an adscriptive nature, whereas the latter tend to orientate
themselves by more accessible elements.
Another possibility is to see whether the assigning of general rank-position
is correlated with the perception the students have of the position the
countries occupy in some specific rank-dimensions. The students had to
pick one among three values of per capita income, industrialization, literacy
and percentage of white population for each country, from which we could
establish the rank-order according to each of these rank-dimensions, The
rank-correlations between these rank-orders and the class-rank order show
that, when a country is perceived as having high class position, it is
also perceived as having high levels of industrialization (.94), per capita
income (.90) and literacy (.76), and, to a lesser degree, of white population
(.47).
It is also possible to compare the answers with the actual figures, and
see whether there is underestimation or over-estimation of the countries'
positions in these rank-dimensions. If we do so, we can get the general
tendency to over or underestimate Latin America for each of these dimensions,
with a simple additive index.
Table 12 shows the matrix of inter-correlations between the measures of
estimation. Interestingly, overestimation (or underestimation) of industrialization
is correlated with the other three dimensions, but these are not inter-correlated.
We could interpret this result as a kind of halo effect from industrialization
to the other dimensions, that does not go from one of the others to another.
Another interesting fact is that the subjective rank-order is more correlated
with the perception of industrialization than with the objective rank-order
of industrialization, as we saw in Table 9.
We may now describe how the perception of stratification is formed along
general lines; its graphic features can be seen below.
The image of stratification is determined by the generalized rank-roles
played by the countries as a combined function of their potentialities
of power and levels of development. Since this is a general role, knowledge
of the countries' rank position does not depend on knowledge about specific
facts concerning the countries. But the ideology of achievement does not
allow our respondents to see the contra-diction between their ideology
and their actual perceptions; this cognitive dissonance is solved by attributing
relatively higher levels of industrialization to the countries that are
also big and powerful. And now it is possible to transfer this perception
of industrialization to other, less important, rank-dimensions.
As we have noted, other factors, such as political ideologies and general
level of knowledge, also have some impact on the formation of the image
of stratification, causing, however, only minor variations in the general
picture. But there is one factor that seems to have a relatively more
important effect, namely the nationality of the respondents.
We shall dedicate the last section of this article to investigating the
effect of this contextual variable.
5. The effect of nationality
If we look again at the typology of ideologies established in section
3, we can see that these ideologies are very similar to political orientations
towards national, rather than international, affairs. Nor is this surprising,
since internal political problems of underdeveloped areas tend to be formed
by the perception of the ways and possibilities of mobility the countries
have in the international system. These are, for our respondents, mainly
industrialization and education. A strong determinant of the selection
of ideological orientations is, of course, the position the subjects occupy
in the national stratification structure. We could expect a conservative
ideology if they belong to the high strata, a leftist one if they belong
to the rank-and-file, and different forms of nationalist and 'developmentist'
ideologies if they are rank-disequilibrated. But another determinant is
the perception of the relative openness or closeness of the international
channels of mobility; this depends strongly upon the achievements the
country has already attained in some relevant rank-dimensions.
In, this respect, Chile differs significantly both from Brazil and Argentina.
The latter have not only almost endless natural resources, but have also
already reached high levels of economic development and internal dynamism.
Brazil differs from Argentina in that the former shows much stronger internal
differentiations and in-equalities, lowering its average figures of development.
But on the whole Brazil and Argentina occupy, together with Mexico, an
unquestioned high position in the Latin American system. Only the Chileans
perceive themselves as belonging to this high group. In comparison, Chile
is a small country, where the potentialities of an autonomous economic
development are much smaller. As a compensation, Chile shares with Argentina
high levels of educational and cultural development.
We can expect that, in a relatively low position, and with strong aspirations
of mobility determined by their high position on education, the Chileans
will be much more interested in the Latin, American system than the other
two - and in fact they know much more about Latin America than the others
do (Table 9-A), and more about Brazil and Argentina than these countries
do about Chile (Tables 15, 16, 17).(16)
Three factors seem to be working here: the under-dog effect, which makes
them more interested in their position in the system than the top countries
are; the rank-disequilibrium effect, which accentuates their concern with
their low position; and the relative closeness of the main channel of
mobility, industrialization, combined with the scarcity of the main adscriptive
element of prestige, power. Having reached high levels of education, their
low international position is regarded unfair, and this feeling combined
with the adscriptive nature of the international system is enough to create
a kind of anxiety regarding the national place in the international system.
The Chileans are more aware than any about the high places that Argentina,
Brazil and Mexico occupy (Table 2), but it is they who refuse most strongly
the relevance of size as a criterion of international prestige (Table
4).
The different ideological orientations of the three national groups, and
also the different concern with Latin America they have (as indicated by
knowledge) can be seen, in Table 13. And the effect of nationality can be
still more clearly seen in Table 14, where ideology and knowledge are kept
constant.
What Table 14 shows is that all the three variables have some impact on
how international stratification is perceived, but the effect of nationality
is greater than the other two. In fact, nationality seems to interact
negatively with the other variables, since ideology and knowledge practically
do not influence the perceptions the Chileans have of Brazil and Argentina.
In other words, what Table 14 says Is that the best predictor of perceptions
of rank-positions is, after the combination of power and development the
country has, the nationality of the perceiver.
Although we cannot infer from Table 13 that the students in Argentina,
Brazil and Chile have really different ideological orientations, due to
the non-representative character of our sample, we have nevertheless some
indications that this is so. If we calculate the perceived distances between
the rank-positions in industrialization, per capita income and literacy,
in Tables 15, 16 and 17, we can obtain some idea about how the groups
perceive the problems of their own country.
These figures can be discussed only in relative terms, since the definition
of what is 'high' or 'low' income, literacy and industrialization was
established more or less arbitrarily in the questionnaire. But we can,
see nevertheless that the Brazilians locate their biggest gap in the difference
between industrialization and income, and they also perceive a gap between
industrialization and literacy that does not exist in the cases of Argentina
and Chile. Both Argentinians and Chileans, on, the other hand, locate
their biggest gap between income and literacy, and for Chileans the gap
between industrialization and income does not seem to be so important.
If we combine these perceived disequilibria, which correspond quite well
with the known facts, with the characteristics of the countries' positions
in the structure of stratification we discussed before, we get the following
picture:
The hypothesis, developed by Peter Heintz, that when the individual's
rank-disequilibrium coincides with the countries' disequilibrium the subject
identifies his own problems with those of his country, seems to hold quite
well. Chile has practically no leftist students, and the proportion of
democratic subjects among the Argentineans is greater than among the Brazilians.
A leftist outcome can be expected when the subject's rank-dis~ equilibrium
(education higher than economic and political power) is contrary to that
of his country; this is the case in Brazil. And, as a matter of fact,
it is well known that leftist groups are much stronger among Brazilian
students than among Chileans, where Christian Democrats predominate. Argentina
lies in between. Our limited data reveal the same picture.
Disproportionately high education has another consequence. In Brazil and
Argentina, there exists potential mobility through industrialization,
whereas in Chile this is not the case. We might think, then, that Argentineans,
and especially Brazilians, view education as but one of several means
for development; but the Chileans would consider it as the very definition
of a country's rank-position. And a curious transformation occurs here.
Education is a classical example of an accessible status. For the Chileans,
however, it seems to work as an adscriptive criterion of international
rank-position, giving them high international status despite their lack
of power and their low potentialities of development. That this contradictory
use of adscriptive elements is not a simple speculation of ours we can
partially infer from the fact that it is the Chileans who place more importance
on race. They have an image of their own racial composition completely
out of proportion with both the actual figures, and the perceptions of
Brazilians and Argentineans, as we can see in Tables 15, 16 and 17.(17)
These Tables present the reciprocal perceptions in the triangle Argentina-Brazil-Chile.
Let us summarize the findings:
1.Argentinians perceive themselves as white, literate, industrialized
and with low income. They place themselves in a lower class-position than
do the Brazilians and Chileans, but still consider themselves a top country.
They perceive Chile as having the same rank-profile (also white, literate,
with low industrialization and lower income, in this order), but lower
in each of these values than Argentina.
Among the three, it is the Argentinians who place Chile lower in class-position.(18)
Argentinians perceive Brazil as industrialized, low literacy, low income
and non-white population, in this order. They rank Brazil lower than do
the other two.
2. Brazilians perceive themselves as industrialized, mainly white, more
literate than the Argentinians think, and with low income. They perceive
Argentina the same way as Argentineans do, and tend to agree with the
Argentinians' perceptions about Chile.
3. Chileans perceive themselves as white, literate, industrialized and
with a fair level of income, in this order. But they tend to increase
the values of all these elements, and the perceptions they have of themselves
do not coincide with the perceptions the other two have about Chile. They
rank Argentina higher on income than the others do; Brazil, higher on
income and lower on white population than themselves.
4. As to knowledge, Chileans know more about Argentina and Brazil than
Brazilians and Argentinians know about Chile; Chileans know more about
Argentina than about Brazil.
We shall not comment in detail on these Tables. They are generally consistent
with what we have developed thus far. Rather, we shall close this article
with some general hypotheses regarding the determinants of reciprocal
perceptions between countries.
Taking pairs of countries, we may ask whether they have the same total
rank-position in the structure of stratification (or rank equivalence),
and also whether their rank configuration, (or rank-profiles), are
similar or not: that is, whether they are high or low on the same rank-dimensions
(rank-convergence). A simple typology will be, then,
With respect to perceptions, according to Tables 15 to 17, or according
to actual figures, Argentina-Brazil corresponds to II, Chile-Argentina
to III, and Brazil - Chile to IV.
The hypotheses relative to each cell of this Table run, as follows:
I. A sympathetic and cooperative relationship demands both rank
congruence and rank equivalence, a demand none of our pairs fulfils. And
since these interactions are low at the bottom in a feudal-like structure,
only in a high-ranking pair like Brazil-Mexico could an intense and stable
pattern of cooperation be expected, even if the political differences
between these two countries put them very far from each other today.
II. Rank incongruence implies lack of a common ground of contact. The
combination of rank-incongruence and rank equivalence, as the combination
of poor white and rich Negro, tends to be the most potentially explosive
situation. The fact that Argentinians reduce the levels of Brazilian literacy
and whiteness more than the others do seems to indicate a competition
that might be stronger. If these two countries were not oriented mainly
out of the system.
III. Having two similar rank-profiles in different rank-positions forms
the basis for a stable asymmetrical relationship,
unless an element of rank-disequilibrium is introduced in the low-rank
unit of the pair. In other words, a significant distance must be kept
between them on all rank dimensions. When rank-inconsistency
is introduced, the low-rank unit may become aggressive, depending on the
ascribed or accessible nature of the relevant rank~ dimensions. If we
accept our interpretation of the Chilean high position in education as
an ascribed position, we can interpret the well-known hostility of Chileans
towards Argentina, which also appears in our data, as similar to the authoritarian
syndrome: accepting the high position of the other, over-evaluating one's
own position, excessively emphasizing ascribed elements, and explaining
the high position of others by elements different from those on which
one's own country scores high.
IV. This case is typical of non-interaction, and this pair is indeed the
one with least mutual knowledge. This lack of actual interaction can be
the basis of a harmless reciprocal sympathy. As a case in point, Brazil
(and also Mexico) are often perceived by Chileans in a positive way, and
vice-versa. But the development of interactions in this pair can lead
to a configuration similar to II, with all its potential conflicts.
It is therefore a rather pessimistic picture that emerges from this analysis,
since the possibilities of a positive cooperation are one out of four,
and only part of this one. It is obvious, nevertheless, that the interactions
between countries are not only or even mainly, determined by the stereotypes
and images held by their populations, and that these images are determined
by many other factors than those we infer from the hypothesis above. The
only thing we can say thus far is that, although not decisive, the perceived
image is a factor of international relations well worth studying.
Notes
1. A Spanish version of this article is being simultaneously
published in the Revista Latinoamericana de Sociologia n. 2,
1966, under the title "Imágenes de la Estratificación Internacional en
América Latina'. Portions of this paper were presented at the Second Nordic
Conference on Peace Research, Hilierod, Denmark, February 11-13, 1966.
This study is part of Program 21, The Structure of the World Community,
now in progress at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo,
under the direction of Johan Galtung, and can be identified as PRIO Publication
21-3. The authors are indebted to Johan Galtung for the administration
of the questionnaire to the students of the Latin American Faculty of
Social Sciences (FLACSO), Santiago de Chile, to applicants to this Faculty
in different Latin American countries, and to students of the University
of Chile. We are also indebted to Professor Fabio Wanderley Reis for the
administration of the questionnaire to the students of sociology at the
Faculty of Economics, University of Minas Gerais, Brazil.
2. Needless to say, our sample is biased and is not
to be taken as representative of the countries where the questionnaire
was applied. A survey like this one - and this article, as a consequence-
is mainly concerned with the detection of relevant hypotheses, and much
less with strict proofs and generalizations, which belong to another phase
of research. We could expect different results if we had taken our sample
from different social strata, or from different countries. On the other
hand, our technique of analysis consists of exploring all possible implications
of the small variations that an article concerned with stringent proofs
would perhaps consider non-significant. Less than by random sampling techniques,
we think that our results should be generalized by replications of the
study to other social groups in different countries.
3. For a full development of the use of rank-analysis
in international relations, see Galtung, Johan: International Relations
and International Conflicts: A Sociological Approach, PRIO Publication
21-7, Oslo, 1966 (mimeographed).
4. That is to say, the international system of stratification
has its consequences for the national systems, and its processes. And
conversely, a nation's participation in the international system, in terms
of drive towards mobility, for instance, depends on the characteristics
of the national stratification system. The interplay between these two
stratification Systems is being developed by Peter Heintz, from whom many
of the theoretical points of this article are taken, of course without
his responsibility for our interpretations. See Un Paradigma Sociológico
del Desarrollo, ed. Eudeba, Buenos Aires (forthcoming). Our quotations
are from the preliminary draft.
5. Galtung, Johan; Mora y Araujo, Manuel; Schwartzman,
Simon: "El Sistema Latinoamericano de Naciones: Un Analisis Estructural',
América Latina, Rio de Janeiro, I, 1966 ("The Latin American
System of Nations: A Structural Analysis', English version forthcoming
in the Journal of Social Issues, 1966).
6. Peter Heintz states this as follows: "If such a
value (development) really existed we could characterize these structures,
specially the international structure, as a class-type structure. Furthermore,
we define the specific problematic of underdevelopment as a consequence
of the transformation of the international structure towards a class-type
structure.' (Op. cit., p.21.)
7. Schwartzman, Simon: 'International Development and
International Feudalism', Proceedings of the Inaugural Conference
of the International Peace Research Association, Gronigen, Netherlands,
July 1965 (forthcoming).
8. Galtung, Johan: 'A Structural Theory of Aggression',
Journal of Peace Research, 1964, pp. 94-119.
9. "'there can be some correspondence between some
individual statuses and some societal statuses. The relations between
them is established (. . .) through the individual status with reference
to the societal unit which belongs to the international structure. This
national status incorporates the rank and the status configuration of
the nation in the international structure and at the same time is used
for the interpretation of other individual statuses which correspond to
societal statuses" (Peter Heintz, op. cit., p.22). We should notice that
Heintz calls 'status' what we call "rank-dimensions"
10. We shall see this point in the last section of
this article.
11. The sociometric technique was used by Singer,
David: "The Composition and Status Ordering of the International System,
1814-1940', World Politics, 1966, pp. 236-282. He determines
the countries' rank-positions by the number and rank of the diplomatic
legations, in a historical study that goes up to 1940, when the sociometric
network becomes too saturated.
12. For the details of this index, see Galtung, J.;
Mora y Araujo, M.; Schwartzman, S., op. cit.
13. We used the 'gamma' correlation coefficient, working
with tricotomies of the combined index of ranking and rating for the 16
items (for Table 4 we had used this index with 5 values). Since some items
have in general high values, and others low, we cut the original scales
in three groups of more or less the same size. The consequence of this
technique is that the negative correlation between, let us say, industrialization
and average education, does not mean that the people who think education
is important also think that industrialization is not important, but simply
that they give relatively less importance to this factor than to the other.
14. This graph analysis was originally developed by
Rubem Kaztman, of the Bariloche Foundation, Buenos Aires. Only correlations
greater than .20 were used. See the corresponding 'Research Note' in Revista
Latinoamericana de Sociologia, n. 2, 1966.
15. Each item was tricotomized. The percentage of
subjects with high knowledge is the following, for the different national
groups:
16. This finding is consistent with the results
obtained from a comparative study between Norway, France and Poland, which
showed that the lower the position a country has in the international
system, the higher is the interest it has in its own as well as others'
place in the system: this we call the "under-dog effect'. In this study,
based on Gallup sampling, it appeared that Norway knows more about Poland
and about France than these two know about Norway, and Poland knows more
about France than France about Poland. Cf. Elvang, Birgit: Social Position
and Foreign Policy Knowledge in France, Norway and Poland: a comparative
study, paper presented to the Second Nordic Conference on Peace Research,
Hilierod, Denmark, February 11-13, 1966.
17. This distortion in the perception of the racial
composition is common for the three countries, although most marked in
the Chilean group. It seems that, because of the difficulty of obtaining
more accurate knowledge on the subject, this item is especially subject
to the projection of stereotypes, in spite of the fact that it is strongly
rejected as a relevant criterion of prestige, at the manifest level. Table
14-B, extracted from Tables 15, 16, and 17, shows how this projection
works.
18. There is a tendency for each country to have its
favorite under-dog. Argentinians rate Chile down: Chileans, Bolivia; and
Brazilians, Uruguay. The favorite under-dog must be a smaller, competitive
neighbor, who answers this kind of treatment with some nationalistic aggressiveness.
Although not so clear for Brazil and Uruguay, this is striking for the
pairs Argentina-Chile and Chile-Bolivia.
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