Modern World System Research Articles

Geopolitics in the infrastructural ideology of 5G

This paper explores how infrastructural ideologies function as tools in geopolitical struggles for dependence and independence between world powers. Meese et al. (2020) suggest that controversies around 5G stem from infrastructural anxieties best examined in the framework of geopolitics. We build on this work by analysing the emerging infrastructural ideology and sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff and Kim, 2015) of 5G in light of the changing global division of labour. Sociotechnical imaginaries refer to the vision of technologies themselves, while ideologies refer to the totality of social relations, translating the objective reality of material conditions to subjective lived experience (Bory, 2020). The Western imaginaries around 5G infrastructures reflect, deflect, translate and sublimate the infrastructural anxieties tied to the development and deployment of new network paradigms by China as an emerging hegemon. The controversial nature, contradictory content and fragmented presentation of 5G is a necessary part of living through the trauma of lost historical agency on the part of Western superpowers. We engaged in code ethnography (Rosa, 2022) of GSM, internet and 5G technologies, as well as participant observation in the main standard-development organisations of the internet and 5G. Our methodological assumption, taken from world systems theory (Wallerstein, 2004), is that the character and content of imaginaries and their underpinning ideologies creatively translate the position of actors in the global division of labour. This paper contributes to the understanding of the role of media infrastructures in geopolitical power tussles and straddles the fields of materialist media studies, science and technology studies and international relations.

W. E. B. Du Bois’s Global Sociology and the Anti-racist Struggle for Democracy in Cuba (1931–1941)

AbstractDuring the 1930s and 1940s, W. E. B. Du Bois was not only interested in European colonialism in Africa, but he also approached the racial situation in the Americas, particularly Haiti, Brazil, and Cuba. In this article, I examine how Du Bois engaged strategically in a critique of racism in Cuba and the United States. I analyze how Du Bois discussed the Cuban color line as linked to colonial dispossession and explore the formation of the anti-colonial critique within global sociology. Du Bois’s letters, manuscripts, and field notes during his first visit to Cuba in 1941 reveal how, to a large extent, Du Bois shared the prevailing vision of Cuba as a society free from racism. Although Du Bois only partially captured how racism worked in Cuba, he constantly affirmed how the analysis of the Cuban color line implies dealing with the analysis of American imperialism. Thus, Du Bois’s approach to Cuba was fundamental in two senses. First, it led him to consider the contradictions between cultural integration and social and economic equality in a setting other than the United States. Second, Du Bois developed the fundamental place assigned to the critique of U.S. imperialism within global sociology. At the same time, Du Bois’s connection with Cuba elaborates the understanding of Du Bois’s global sociology.

“Filling in the Blanks”: Jaffa's Oranges, an English Suit, and the Rememorying of Palestinian History

Like great port cities throughout history, Jaffa has always welcomed strangers; enough of them to earn its sobriquet “mother of strangers” (umm al-gharīb). The gateway to Palestine and the Levant since ancient times, Jaffa is not only the site of multiple events of biblical or broader religious significance. With the incorporation of Palestine in the late 18th century into the still developing modern world system, Jaffa became a city of culture and commerce, with winding casbahs and tree-lined boulevards, Turkish baths and Jewish bordellos, sand dunes and orange orchards—lots of them, as we'll see—and some of the most striking architecture, never mind coastline, of the Eastern Mediterranean. North African Jews, Haurani Bedouins, Afghan traders, rabbis from Beirut, troubadours from Jerusalem, divas from Mansoura, and more than a few European Christian and Jewish pilgrims, all made their way to and through Jaffa over the centuries, joining a local population that septupled to over 17,000 during the course of the 19th century. They were joined by tens of thousands of Jews for whom Jaffa was a port of entry to Palestine with the onset of Zionist colonization. Jaffa, in other words, is the perfect locale for a novel, especially when, as with award-winning architect and writer Suad Amiry's first novel, Mother of Strangers, most of it happens to be rooted in truth.

Theories of capitalism and coloniality in world systems analysis, the Dar es Salaam School of history and the New Indian Labour History

How might we productively synthesize Marxist and postcolonial thought in order to bring questions of race and class, and imperialism and capitalism, into the same frame of analysis? In this short comment, I show how the Dar es Salam School of anti-colonial history, along with the New Indian Labour History inspired by the Dar School, can creatively bring together theoretical frameworks of different epistemes for a productive synthesis.

Societal Consequences of Modern Hybrid Warfare in Political-Economic and Institutional Discourse

Object: to reveal the features of the societal approach to the study of the modern hybrid war consequences, a striking example of which is the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, based on the study of the reflection of changes in social reality in the unity of political-economic, sociological and institutional discourses.
 Methods: ascension from the abstract to the concrete; dialectical; logical-historical; fractal method of institutional economics; structural-functional and world-systems analysis. Findings: the current Russian-Ukrainian war has clear signs of a modern hybrid war generated by the globallocal hybrid system “peace — war” and combines a whole complex of means: military-political, economic, cybernetic, etc. On the basis of the combination of political-economic, sociological (in a broad sense) and institutional discourses, it is substantiated that the main components of the “peace — war” hybrid system from the point of view of the societal relations transformation are: armed-military, financial-economic and informational-spiritual components. It is shown that through the channels of world perception and positioning they lead to changes in behavioural patterns, through which the response of the actors is carried out, changing the already changing reality. This leads to the closure of changes in social reality through the behaviour of subjects on themselves, gives integrity and acceleration to societal processes.
 Conclusions: the feature of the societal approach is revealed only on the basis of a combination of politicaleconomic (which opens up the possibility of tracing chains of cause-and-effect relationships), sociological in a broad sense (allowing you to look at society as a whole in the unity of its components and measure them) and institutional (giving the key to understanding changes in rules and norms of social life) approaches. This feature consists, in contrast to the social approach (fixing the structural and functional structure of social reality), in the study of social transformations, which actualizes the problems of interaction and reflexivity of social structures and functions. In the conditions of martial law, the role of the trust institution as a defining and integral construct of the socio-economic system’s institutional architectonics, embodied both in trust in the state and power structures, and in trust in new institutions born of hybrid war. The societal approach opens up the possibility of a new look at the problems of the Ukrainian post-war reconstruction, taking into account both the objective logic of social transformations and the need to increase social activity in institutional transformations that involve the formation of a new development model in the European socio-economic space.

LANGUAGE EXPANSION AS A NECESSARY MEASURE FOR THE (ECONOMIC-)IMPERIALIST RELATIONS

In this article, we try to show how language expansion, language strategies, etc. are envisaged in various theories of (economic) imperialism. In order to establish this, we turn to economic interpretations of imperialism, namely Hobson and Lenin, world-system analysis (Wallerstein, Amin, Arrighi) and the Empire theory of Hardt and Negri. By studying them, we singled out the key characteristics of imperialism that are found in most (economic) theories of imperialism, namely: (1) the creation of market relations (and the market in general) between the metropolis/core/imperial country and the colony/periphery/subjugated territory, (2) the presence of an advantage in this relations for the metropolis/core/imperial country, which is most often described as a monopoly position, (3) finally, often, but not always, the economic exploitation of the conquered territories is stated. We note that the market is (in particular) a communicative phenomenon, which at least involves the possibility of understanding between the buyer and the seller; thus, language appears as a condition that enables exchange and even consumption. We demonstrate that the popularization and expansion of the language also means the imposition of competition; therefore, capital competition should automatically imply language competition, and the intertwining of markets also the "intertwining" of languages (and vice versa). Using the example of the Commonwealth, we show how language is capable of forming spheres of influence and the centre of gravity of capital. With reference to Rancière, we note that lingua franca projects are capable of both inclusion in the economic system (regions, countries, etc.) and exclusion from it (poor stratas). Finally, we draw attention to the fact that language is capable of acting as cultural capital in Bourdieu's understanding, and therefore capable of being converted into economic capital.

Prediktori prekarnog položaja radno aktivnog stanovništva Srbije, Hrvatske i Nemačke

Precarious employment is a growing phenomenon in many countries, and it has significant economic, social, and political implications. The article examines the predictors of precarious employment in Serbia, Germany, and Croatia using data from the IX round European Social Survey. The study employs a comparative analysis approach, drawing on the world-systems theory, to identify the underlying factors that contribute to the precarious position of the working population in these three countries. While certain predictors, such as age, appear to be important determinants of precariousness in all three countries, there are also differences that reflect the historical development of capitalist social relations in peripheral positions. Additionally, the organizational dimension of precariousness was found to be an important predictor of precarious employment in all three countries. On the other hand, while the absence of trade union membership, the size of the work organization, and citizenship are identified as statistically significant predictors of precarious employment, these factors do not consistently predict precariousness across all observed countries.

Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalization by Brian Turner: Analytical Approach

In this encyclopedic book entitled (Orientalism, Postmodernism, and Globalism), Brian Turner, the British Marxist philosopher, thinker, and sociologist, discusses the thoughts of prominent intellectuals of modernity and postmodernity, and, most famous orientalists in the history of Orientalism. Turner refutes their opinions regarding the role of religion in societies, and the ability of Islam to be a lever for modernization. After the collapse of Communism and the overwhelming of Western societies in endless social and economic problems, Islam may be the only alternative to Western capitalist hegemony in today's world. Globalization and postmodernism further complicate the notion of “society” and thus challenged the legitimacy and coherence of “sociology” itself, but also they have affected all fields, including Orientalism. Orientalism, under the pluralism of globalization and the violation of all boundaries by postmodernism, seemed an outdated and invalid critical maneuver, not to mention its intrinsic problems.Therefore, Turner wants to take us to a global sociology, through the efforts of social scientists and thinkers who are well aware of the threats, but also the new opportunities posed by postmodernism. Turner singles out special treatment of the postmodern consumer society. He believes that daily life has become part of a global system of commodity exchange and is not easily affected by political leaders, intellectuals, or religious leaders. Therefore, the danger to faith will be in terms of consumerism and its symbols, not in terms of logical arguments and rational research into presuppositions about the West or the East.Brian Turner's ability to bring together such discussions of religion, politics, culture, and intellectuals represents a remarkable integration of cultural analysis into cultural studies. This study aims to provide a critical analysis of Turner's views on the three topics under discussion in the book: Orientalism, globalization, and postmodernism.

Itar And The Security Exception: Lessons For Developing Indonesian Defensive Satellites

Outer space technological development, pioneered by military superpowers including the USA, China, and Russia gives other countries a variety of technologies which they have chosen to use to strengthen their national defence. “The higher the demand, the more expensive it gets.” A country is free to choose what technology to use, but the producer controls who can use their technology. Policies to limit or control space-technology is most clearly reflected by USA policy, named ITAR (International Trade in Arms Regulation), which enables the USA to choose who is able to avail themselves of space technology. A quasi-arbitrary policy like ITAR has harmed the spirit and the soul of international trade law which empowers the “free trade” market that is happening in today’s world. Policy alike has made the US gripped other countries like Indonesia and made them ‘dependence’ on their sophisticated technology and deprived other state’s sovereignty on their space technology, eventually. This study analysed this unprecedented subject through the lens of International Law, especially International Trade Law, encompassing related laws like GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades) and related precedents on WTO (World Trade Organization) DSB (Dispute Settlement Body) judicial decisions. The results of analysis through international law, assisted with dependence theory and world-system theory (1) categorize the related policy as a violation of GATT, specifically to Article XXI (b) point (ii) about security exception and (2) for the future of Indonesian outer space development, this country should utilize a security exception clause to release itself from the atrocities of ITAR policy or other similar policies.

English Language Teaching in Saudi Arabia: A World System Perspective

The paper investigates how English Language Teaching has been adopted to support Saudi Arabia’s integration with Wallerstein’s modern world system, to back its progress from periphery to semi-periphery zone, and to push it from semi-periphery to core zone. To this end, the paper unravels the confluence of the socio-political and economic factors of globalizing Saudi Arabia and analyzes Saudi English Language Education Policies documented in the official papers and textbooks to show how they have been designed to gain Saudis’ consent to accept English simply as a tool to be used at the personal, state, and religious levels.

Глобальная роль доллара и тенденции дедолларизации мировой экономики в новых условиях

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the role of the dollar in the world economy and its formation as a world reserve currency. Based on the methodology of the school of world-system analysis (J. Arrighi, S. Amin, I. Wallerstein, R.S. Dzarazov), the author reveals the mechanism for using the dollar as one of the instruments of unequal exchange between the center and the periphery of the economy within the American systemic capital accumulation cycle. Based on a comprehensive empirical analysis, an assessment is made of the trends in the dedollarization of the world economy in the 21st century. It was found that despite the devastating consequences of the global crisis of 2007–2009. caused by the hypertrophied development of the financial sector of the US economy during the global crisis, the dollar retained a key role in the international reserves of states, in trade and exchange operations in the world economy. In particular, the Russian economy, despite the statements of the authorities about moving towards abandoning the dollar, nevertheless remained highly dependent on it, only partially replacing US dollars with the euro. Real de-dollarization 2022-2023 in Russia became a necessary measure for business, and was associated with the partial blocking of Russian correspondent accounts in Western banks.

Regionalisation and Economic Resilience in a Pandemic: Making a Case for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)

Economic resilience during a pandemic is a critical phenomenon that attracts the attention of scholars, governments, economic planners, and businesses. The adaptability and resilience of an economy to shocks largely depend on its pre-shock health. This article, relying on the narrative review method and Immanuel Wallerstein’s World Systems Theory, situates the diminished capacity of South countries to adequately respond to economic shocks when they occur in the core-periphery, globalised economic order. The article argues that this underlies the disproportionate vulnerability of these countries to global economic shocks and the paucity of economic promise. In addressing this concern, the article posits that economic cooperation and regional integration among peripheral countries present an opportunity for them to boost economic resilience. For instance, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is a veritable model for regionalisation in Africa, providing a pathway for self-reliance and economic self-determination, thus strengthening resilience to global economic shocks, especially those occasioned by public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The task of regionalising Africa’s trade cannot be devoid of initial challenges such as revenue losses from lower import tariffs and disruptions in the labour market. However, the commitments of member countries to the AfCFTA will eventually place the African continent on the trajectory of competitive economic growth and development.

The problem of epistemological critique in contemporary Decolonial theory

ABSTRACT Decolonial theory argues that the coloniality of rational Western epistemology is the cause of all global crises, including violent patriarchy, racism and ecological destruction. Contemporary decolonial scholars consequently advocate de-linking from the colonial matrix of power which defines the modern world system. They promote a move towards an epistemologically pluriversal world, which they consider to be theoretically superior and a politically radical advance over postructuralism, postcolonialism and Marxism, which are denigrated as complicit iterations of Eurocentric coloniality. In this article, I critically respond to Decolonial theory’s reductive generalisations by demonstrating that its ostensibly constructivist articulation of geopolitics and standpoint theory amounts to a simplistic inversion of colonial stereotypes found in postcolonial analyses of colonial discourse. After establishing that Decolonial theory is unwittingly bound to a colonial, albeit inverted discourse of essentialist racialised morality, I exhibit that its stereotypical reduction of Western epistemology to a subject-object dualism misrepresents developments in Euro-American epistemology and continental philosophy of science, citing the case of French historical epistemology. I conclude by demonstrating that Decolonial theory is contradictory and self-defeating because it replicates metaphysical errors in Western philosophy and supports political values closer to the far right than leftist ideals of universality and a common world.

Gender regimes, polities, and the world-system: Comparing Iran and Tunisia

This article seeks to connect gender regime theorizing and world-systems analysis. Through the comparative analysis of the evolution of gender regimes in two Global South countries, I underscore the effects of world-systemic processes – in terms of both the world-economy and the inter-state system – on national-level patriarchal relations, institutions, the nature of the public gender regime, and the direction of change. I argue that as the primary source of inequality and hierarchy at the global level, the capitalist world-system affects national-level societal dynamics and the institutional domains that constitute a gender regime. The two country cases demonstrate the salience of supra-national factors that block women's economic agency, preventing the transition to a more egalitarian gender regime (Tunisia), and strengthening domestic patriarchal forces (Iran).

The phenomenon of unfriendly multilateralism inside the “collective” West

The article examines the evolution of multilateralism on the examples of its unfriendly variety in political sphere. The study focuses not on the relations between the West and non-West, but on the situation inside the former. The examples of unfriendly multilateral structures are AUKUS and the Partners in the Blue Pacific. They are aimed not only at containing China but also at limiting the strategic penetration of Germany and France in the Indo-Pacific region. Concentrating on these examples, the article explores the key reason for the tendency, using the concept of the world-system theory for Euro-Atlantic community and the “collective” West. The core of Anglo-Saxon countries led by the USA and the UK has been strongly concerned of the growing strategic autonomy of the semi-periphery. Its key elements are France and Germany. The study demonstrates the differences between leadership styles, hard and soft hegemony in the US foreign policy as a reaction to the relations between the core and the semi-periphery. It also covers German approach to the EU strategic autonomy in conjunction with Europeanization of NATO and its activities in various fields. One of the conclusions is the absence of examples of unfriendly multilateralism toward the Western partners in policy of key semi-periphery actors.

한국근대사 연구의 주요 분석개념에 대한 재고 - 근대성, 식민지성, 공공성 -

This article considers how to critically reflect on the problems of capitalism and sovereign states. Through the world system theory and Foucault"s concept of governmentality, we explored the relationship between the main concepts of colonial modernity research with capitalism and sovereign order. Colonies think in relation to sovereignty, and modernity in relation to governmentality. Through this, modernity and coloniality can be explained differently.

Рынки микроингредиентов и их влияние на устойчивость продовольственных систем

Commercial micro-ingredients of certain types are a gap in the Russian food industry. This article describes the Russian market for micro-ingredients, their impact on the sustainability of domestic food systems, and state support prospects.
 The study featured the development of micro-ingredient markets in the context of sustainable food systems. It relied on the theory of world-system analysis, as well as on the methods of comparative and statistical analyses. The materials were obtained from the Federal State Statistics Service, the Federal Customs Service, the Russian Export Center, and various rating and information agencies, including publically available data from the UN, the FAO, and the Union of Food Ingredients Producers.
 The authors assessed the impact of micro-ingredient markets on the sustainability of food systems and the effect of global and domestic market trends on the demand and supply of micro-ingredients. When strategizing state support for domestic producers of micro-ingredients, government should proceed from the availability of raw materials and competition. The article introduces a comparative analysis of the Russian market of flavoring agents, which includes both foreign and domestic producers, and the Russian market of citric acid, represented solely by Chinese companies. In the first case, the government should support the existing domestic producers and strengthen their positions in the Russian markets, with prospects for foreign market penetration. In the second case, the Russian food industry has to launch domestic products able to occupy the Russian market and defeat the powerful foreign competitors that are ready to use dumping. The analysis also revealed the main directions of state support for the domestic production of competitive micro-ingredients and their components.
 The results can be used to strategize state support measures for the domestic micro-ingredients in order to improve food security and the stability of the Russian food system to external shocks.

Pre-modern epistemes inspiring a new Global Sociology of Education Imagination

The ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’ of modern education are overwhelmingly produced and tailored by the modern episteme, institutions, truths, and powers of the Global North. To find new ways of thinking and doing sociology, this paper will explore the outlines of a new Global Sociology of Education Imagination (GSEI) inspired by pre-modern epistemes selected precisely because of their distance from modern European standpoints: the ancient lost matriarchal societies and commons-based societies organised around shared goods in pre-modern Europe. Using Foucault’s archaeological methodology, this paper finds inspiration in these epistemes to outline a new GSEI capable of questioning certain tenets of the modern sociological episteme regarding science, knowledge, truth and its order, roles, voices, commitments, and ‘places’. It concludes with an invitation to experiment with a new GSEI inspired by these pre-modern epistemes, as a tool to openly challenge modern (education) domination and make it intolerable.

Reflections on Walden Bello

The online censorship and subsequent arrest of scholar-activist Walden Bello is the latest instance of a disconcerting trend during a period of hegemonic crisis. To understand how a respected scholar ended up in jail and in grave legal trouble on very feeble accounts, we have to unpack the full implications of this case, and place it in relation to ongoing structural changes within the world-system—namely, the decline of the United States as global hegemon, the ascendancy of far-right authoritarianism as a popular political framework, and the use of institutions and technologies developed under liberal-democratic rule by authoritarian regimes for purposes of social control during a period of flux. The crisis offers an opportunity to reconfigure systemic arrangements through coordinated solidarity networks characterized by forms of organization and ways of relating that embody prerogatives and values different from those that predominate in the modern world-system and from those that reproduce the capitalist world-economy; which, more likely than not, will have authoritarian tendencies in the decades to come. As a conclusion, we offer some of the possibilities the global left has for these upcoming decades in regards of large coalitions aimed at changing the structure of the world-system at large.

Einstein’s Problem

This paper focuses upon the human migratory trajectory from eons on planet Earth to slowly moving out into orbital space and whether world-systems theory must craft new theoretical frames to grasp the possible problems arising from the existence of a single social system comprised of actors distributed across terrestrial and orbital platforms, dubbed here as “Einstein’s Problem.”