A key structure of the capitalist world-system is the division of the world into
three great regions, or geographically based and hierarchically organized tiers. The
fi rst is the core, or the powerful and developed centres of the system, originally
comprised of Western Europe and later expanded to include North America and
Japan. The second is the periphery, those regions that have been forcibly subordinated
to the core through colonialism or other means, and in the formative years
of the capitalist world-system would include Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle
East and Eastern Europe. Third is the semi-periphery, comprised of those states and
regions that were previously in the core and are moving down in this hierarchy, or
those that were previously in the periphery and are moving up. Values fl ow from
the periphery to the semi-periphery, and then to the core, as each region plays a
functionally specific role within an international division of labour that reproduces
this basic structure of exploitation and inequality.