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Thunderclouds Over the Emerging Countries and the Middle-Income Trap

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Brazil - Emerging Forever?

Part of the book series: Societies and Political Orders in Transition ((SOCPOT))

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Abstract

The chapter discusses the shortcomings and vulnerabilities of non-Western countries’ success stories over the last years. According to the author, the development of knowledge-based economies in emerging countries, including China, is under question today due to various socioeconomic and socio-cultural reasons. The author points to ‘the great advice’ of Alexander Gerschenkron—to study unsuccessful modernisations—and asserts that Brazil gives us a good example of such a case. The chapter places emphasis on the Brazilianisation of China and the West. The middle-income trap concept and its interpretations are also scrutinised. Such consideration allows approaching Brazil from the point of view of the middle-income trap problem, taking into account the significance of social actors who are capable of finding an escape from the aforementioned trap.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In 2008 the British ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair marked the worldwide significance of Amazonia, not only for Brazil but for all humankind, with far-reaching conclusions about monitoring this large area and establishing the international control of it.

  2. 2.

    ‘This is not China that exports but the ensemble of Asia which exports via China’, Diana Hochraich noted sarcastically in connection to this (Hochraich 2007: 190).

  3. 3.

    ‘…the diffusion of technology and information (including how to manage or rather not manage economic policy at macro and micro levels) may be proceeding so rapidly that catch-up—through not necessarily at a frenetic and uniform pace—is now becoming the norm rather than the exception that it has been until recently’ (Subramanian 2011: 75).

  4. 4.

    Strictly speaking, this juvenile character of our social sciences is profoundly rooted in the culture and world-view of modernity, and this world-view had long ago become part of the specifically western tradition. Charles Perrault, who not only composed tales about Bluebeard, Le Chat Botté (Puss in Boots), Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, also wrote the esthetical-philosophical treatise, expressing this world-view in a concentrated and simultaneously belletristic form. He asserted that new is always better than old, modern is better than ancient and therefore the future has to be better than the past (Perrault 1692).

  5. 5.

    The concept of conservative modernisation will be considered in the next chapter.

  6. 6.

    Körber comprehended the relative backwardness of Austria in comparison to Germany and other leading West European countries. Indeed, in spite of the notable industrial output growth in Austria proper in the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, even in 1911–1913, on the eve of the war, agriculture accounted for 49 per cent of the national product, whereas the share of industry only 37.9 per cent. Then foodstuffs, textile and clothing industries prevailed in total industrial output, a notable boom in metallurgical and engineering, machinery-building branches notwithstanding (Milward and Saul 1977: 296–314).

  7. 7.

    The least-developed, middle-developed and highly developed countries, respectively.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Polish Institute of Advanced Studies, Warsaw, Poland

    Victor Krasilshchikov

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  1. Victor Krasilshchikov
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Krasilshchikov, V. (2022). Thunderclouds Over the Emerging Countries and the Middle-Income Trap. In: Brazil - Emerging Forever? . Societies and Political Orders in Transition. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50208-9_3

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