Modern World System Research Articles

Impact of incessant kidnappings on the external relations: A case study of Nigeria

Nigeria is a West African country, endowed with a rapidly growing population of over 206 million, with over 500 languages and 250 ethnic groups. It's Africa's most densely populated country and the world's largest black nation. The integration of these complex entities into a unified body has proved difficult since the country's 1914 amalgamation. The government is challenged with violence and military dictatorships, endemic corruption, and abject poverty that intensifies heinous crimes, including kidnapping. The menacing impact of the phenomenon ravaged throughout the country resulted in many lives lost, and cripple the economy. Even though it's enshrined in the Nigerian 1999 Constitution, chapter 2, section 14(2b), that the protection of lives and property is the state's core responsibility. The study aims to uncover the effects of kidnapping on Nigeria's foreign relations. The study adopted a qualitative method, using secondary sources and world-system theory. The study found that failure to address the root causes of kidnapping is why kidnapping prevails in the country. Consequently, these study develop some measures and panacea to the country's deteriorated and incessant insecurity challenges. Noticeably, heinous crimes will be eradicated and replaced with economic wellbeing and strengthen the country's external relations.

Globalization and its influence on the development of socio-economic systems

Globalization has become the most important real characteristic of the modern world system, one of the most influential forces determining the course of development of our planet. It covers the most important processes of the socio-economic development of the world, contributes to the acceleration of economic growth and modernization. At the same time, globalization gives rise to new contradictions and problems in the world economy. Now all the countries of the world are, to varying degrees, embraced by the process of globalization. The manifestation of the processes of globalization is multidimensional. Having acquired the features of a process, moreover, contradictory and inconsistent, globalization leads to the manifestation of other processes that come into conflict both with respect to each other and in terms of the initial point of reference, thus demonstrating the dependence of nonlinear dialectics, which produces an increasing influence on regional development and state economic security of both regions and the national economy as a whole. Modern trends in the development of the globalization world convincingly prove the need for a serious understanding of the problems of the genesis and development of national economies in general, and enterprises in particular. The globalization of economic development follows from the deep interdependence of the components of the world economy, from its unity, inconsistency and integrity, is intensifying in conditions of widespread internationalization of production and circulation, intensification of integration processes. globalization in modern conditions, on the one hand, is a condition for the functioning of business entities, and on the other hand, determines the level of competitiveness of their activities. The latter actualizes the need to determine the main directions of the influence of globalization processes on the development of enterprises in order to identify the positive and negative manifestations of globalization for a particular country.

Literature as a Matter of Policy

Literature as a Matter of Policy

Debates on Global Sociology: 'Unity and Diversity' of Interpretations.

This paper critically looks at the ways in which ‘global sociology’ has been debated and conceived in the past decades. It provides an historical overview of various proposals and ideas and the institutional contexts within which they are put forward and criticized. Two different periods are distinguished. Until the early twenty-first century, on the one hand, criticism of the ‘ethnocentrism of the West’ was often supported by ideas and pleas for an ‘indigenization’ of sociological knowledge. A commitment to the unity of science and to its universalist aspirations remained strong, however. In the course of the twenty-first century, on the other hand, criticism of the ‘northern dominance’ in sociology has become much stronger. Instead of a ‘multicultural’ understanding of global sociology, a ‘critical’ sociology that contributes to ‘global justice’ is now often advocated. Based on this historical overview, it is suggested that global sociology might contribute to more self-reflexivity within the discipline. It helps us to see how different contexts reverberate into the ways in which sociology itself is imagined in this world and provides an analysis of the debates for a better understanding of the challenges which sociology currently faces.

Reflecting on the History of Sociology in Nigeria: Strategies to Enhance Endogenous Theory within a Global Dialogue

We present a history of Sociology in Nigeria, within the context of intellectual imperialism and the problems of the colonial library. The development of the discipline in Nigeria took place with a great deal of dependence on Western intellectual and financial resources, which led to what some critics have termed the “captive mind.” This is an intellectual posture whereby Western theory is uncritically embraced, while concepts developed internally are harshly judged or ignored. After reviewing these challenges, we turn to consider some of the most promising and innovative contributions to emerge from within Nigerian sociology, providing for “endogenous theory” that has much to offer a wider global sociological dialogue. We note that such theories can take root from pre-colonial indigenous sources, as well as finding inspiration in the current post-colonial realities that mark these times. Building on these cases, we follow Adesina’s call for a “sociology beyond despair,” arguing for the intellectual and moral imperative of building theories inside of Nigeria and outside of the mold of Western assumptions, while still using and contributing productively to global sociology. To help build on this worthy goal, we consider delimiting the role of Western theories rather than eliminating them, while utilizing the rich potential of “abductive analysis” as a route to furthering endogenous sociological knowledge.

City-State Britain: A Counter-Narrative to ‘Brexit’

ABSTRACT The incipient crisis of the British state, which seems so apparent in ‘Brexit’, the move towards Scottish Independence, and the succession of minority governments, ought to be understood as a historical conjuncture. This conjuncture has entailed a profound reconfiguration of the social relations that constitute the British state-territory in the context of the world-system, making of it something as geographical as it is historical. Understanding this reconfiguration in novel, innovative, critical, productive or even sublative ways seems therefore to be a priority in the study of post-Brexit British politics and global political economy. Furthermore, as ‘Brexit’ has become the dominant narrativization of the objective conditions and subjective perceptions of this crisis, a convincing counter-narrative must be conceived for critical thinking and praxis. In the struggle over how to define our crisis in the British state, and drawing upon Critical Urban Theory, World-System Analysis, and poststructuralist political thought, the paper introduces the concept of the axiomatic city-state. This concept offers not merely an alternative empirical characterisation of the reconfigured British state, but a means of conceptualising broader transformations across the world-system at large. More importantly, it suggests a politically potent means for exploring critical vocabularies, strategies, and perhaps organization into the near future.

Verification of the neo-Marxist concept of global semi-periphery (on the example of the role of the migration factor)

Neo-Marxism world-system analysis was an effective means of the understanding of the postcolonial global order. The concepts of «core», «periphery» and «semi-periphery» reflected the dependent development of states in the global capitalist system. Capitalism structured the global order in the classical Marxist dichotomy of exploiters and exploited which can be represented with various subjects (states, groups of states, territories) and which according to neo-Marxism can’t disappear, because it reflects the essence of global antagonism. However, the realities of global development at the end of the 20th century demanded that neo-Marxism should reconsider the rigid link between the core-peripheral approach and the horizontal vision of the world: globalisation caused massive flows of migrants to highly developed countries and the gradual blurring of the boundaries between the core and periphery. There was the question in neo-Marxism which was about the ability of capitalism to preserve the core-peripheral organisation of the global division of labour. There was the idea that capitalism was able to reproduce core-periphery relations within the core states by including immigrants in the super-exploitation of labour through a covert policy of neo-racism. Such a vertical organisation of the core-peripheral model around the world, which was called dual society in neo-Marxism, would mean the formation of the global semi-periphery. The purpose of the article is to verify the neo-Marxist concept of the global semi-periphery using the example of the role of the migration factor in its formation. The study is based on UN data, as well as studies with a pronounced statistical component. According to the results of the study, it was concluded that the neo-Marxist concept of the global semi-periphery had not been verified by actual empirical material (on the example of the role of the migration factor). The available statistical and analytical data do not allow to totally confirm the neo-Marxist position that the global order under the influence of migration has been transformed and that it works in the conceptual model of a dual society. Globally, migration is not a determining factor in the widespread formation and unification of the dual method of labour exploitation within states. The quantitative data on the flow of migrants, comparative data on salaries in the countries of the core and the degree of concentration of income among certain groups of the population in the countries of the capitalist system state that the world is still largely reproduced in the horizontal core-peripheral model. Thus, there are no empirical grounds for stating the presence of a global dual society under the influence of the migration factor and consequently the presence of a global semi-periphery within the neo-Marxist approach of E. Balibar, I. Wallerstein, M. Hardt and A. Negri.

Graduate employment in higher education: applying bibliometrics to world-system theory

ABSTRACT As massification of higher education developed, employment challenges in changing labour markets aroused the attention of scholars globally. An interdisciplinary approach called world-system theory is applied by scholars from the social sciences, history, anthropology and cultural studies. This study applied the theory in a bibliometric analysis of graduate employment research using R and CiteSpace. It identified the main characteristics (e.g. authors and countries) of relevant research, investigated the social and economic context of certain milestone publications and visualised research hot spots. World-system theory, as a macrosociological approach to describing the world economy and social system, is innovatively applied in illustrating the findings of the current work. Results indicate that core countries not only are economically influential but also dominating the academic research. Scholars in semi-peripheral and peripheral countries are encouraged to establish transnational networks and foster academic collaborations.

Why and Whither the US-China Trade War?: Not Realist ‘Traps’ but Political Geography ‘Capture’ as Explanation

This article attempts to understand the profound political-economic, geographic, and historical force behind the Trump trade policy ‘revolution’ from the perspective of world-systems analysis. The trade war launched by the United States against China is essentially motivated by a profound political-economic and geographic logic: the US and China are competing to ‘capture’ core processes in the world-economy. The real imminent challenge facing the US-China relations and the rest of the world is actually not the so-called ‘Thucydides Trap’ (China challenges American global power), or ‘the Kindleberger Trap’ (America gives up global economic leadership while China is not ready to take over American role). The underlying economic driver of the trade war is the emergence of new core processes in the capitalist world-economy and the attempts by governments to ‘capture’ those processes within cities within their country. As the paired Kondratieff cycle and hegemonic cycle model tells us, economic depression accelerates hegemonic decline, and ushers in a period of restructuring and transition. Therefore, our forecast is that the US-China ‘trade war’ will not stop, and will be an ongoing component of the restructuring of the global geopolitical order in the coming years. trade war, US-China relations, ‘Thucydides Trap’, ‘Kindleberger Trap’, Political- Geography Capture, core processes, Capitalist World-Economy, Kondratieff Cycle, hegemonic cycle, global geopolitical order

Wallerstein on early modern capitalism and global inequality: a reevaluation

A critical review of Immanuel Wallerstein’s Modern World-System is far more than just an obligation sociologists and historians owe to one of the most influential social scientists of the last fifty years. Rather a reconsideration is both timely and urgent for two reasons: On the one hand, the theme he dealt with most intensively—early modern capitalism—is more topical than ever in the early twenty-first century because with the demise of industrial capitalism structural similarities between early modern forms of mercantile capitalism like the putting-out system and today’s attempts of platform or digital capitalism to monopolize market access become more and more obvious. And on the other hand, Wallerstein’s dominant concern with the asymmetrical power relations between center, semiperipheries and peripheries can still serve as a powerful reminder to seriously engage the global dimension of capitalist development today. This article although written from the perspective of a historian will try to do justice to Wallerstein’s theoretical ambitions as well will be extremely simple. It will be shown that although some critical points were well taken Wallerstein’s general approach to early modern capitalism is by no means completely outdated and superseded. Even if some of the answers he gave may seem indefensible today, there can be no doubt that he asked crucially important questions which still are in need of answers today.

Global inequalities avant la lettre: Immanuel Wallerstein’s contribution

This article argues that Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-system approach was instrumental in revealing sociology’s theoretical and methodological blind spots and in formulating a comprehensive framework for the study of global inequalities. In doing so, it anticipated both the critique of Eurocentrism and methodological nationalism put forth by transnational and postcolonial approaches as well as the debates over the rise in global inequalities by several decades. I trace this analytical primacy to several factors: first, to world-systems analysis’ methodological shift from the nation-state to the entire capitalist world-economy as an early global sociology; second, to the relation between the methodological shift to the epistemological critique and their role in Wallerstein’s early approach to global inequalities. Finally, I address the relationship between the self-definition of world-systems analysis as a form of protest against mainstream social science (rather than as a theory) and the theoretical and political filiations with postcolonial and decolonial approaches in order to show how they contributed together to the prominence of global inequalities as a topic.

Modeling the Process of Deglobalization of the World Economy

based on the macroeconomic indicators of exports and direct investment from the country, a model of the process of deglobalization of the world economy, which began in 2008, was developed, which became particularly clear during the pandemic. To determine the countries of the center and the periphery, the k-means method of cluster analysis was used. As a result, a clear illustration of the distribution of the roles of countries in the world economy according to the theory of world-system analysis was obtained, as well as the relationship between the macroeconomic indicators of individual countries and the share of world trade in world GDP was established. The results obtained can be used in further studies, which will be based on the data of the macroeconomic indicators of the pandemic period.

Coverage of Political News in Tweets of International News Agencies: A Comparative Analysis of World-Systems Countries

This article attempts to study the flow of political news in tweets of four international news agencies: AP, AFP, Reuters and Xinhua, for 7 years from 2010 to 2016. Theoretically, the study takes its roots from the World System Theory of Immanuel Wallerstein. We used the content analysis method and examined the coverage of political news about 15 world countries (five core countries, five semi-periphery and five periphery countries) in 6746 tweets of international news agencies. We also analyzed the portrayal, retweet rate, favorite rate, and shared portrayal of world system countries. We found that there are significant differences in coverage of political news about the world countries in tweets of international news agencies. Moreover, Traditional hierarchies and structures of political news flow still exist on Twitter. Core countries are covered as well as shared more and positively as compare to the semiperiphery or periphery countries.

Theorizing Capitalist Imperialism for an Anti-Imperialist Praxis

How does one craft an explicitly left theory of anti-imperialism that would animate an anti-imperialist praxis? World-systems analysis has a long history of engagement with theories of anti-imperialism from an explicitly Leninist perspective. For the founding fathers of World-Systems Analysis—Immanuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi, Samir Amin, and Andre Gunder Frank—anti-imperialism was an early central concern. Each of the four founders of world-systems analysis reads Lenin’s theory of imperialism seriously, but each has slightly different interpretations. One significant commonality they share is that they adopt Lenin’s periodization of imperialism, seeing imperialism as emergent in the late 19th century as part of a particular stage within the historical development of capitalism. However, as I will argue in this essay, perhaps it would be preferable to temporally expand Lenin’s concept of imperialism. Walter Rodney’s concept of “capitalist imperialism,” as I shall show in this essay, similarly calls Lenin’s periodization into question. Thereby, putting Rodney in conversation with Amin, Arrighi, Frank, and Wallerstein, leads me to further historicize world-systems’ theories of global imperialism thereby refining existing theories and levying that to build stronger praxis.

Middle Kingdom Enters Middle East

Through the lens of world-systems analysis, this research argues that Beijing is creating a miniature world-system overlapping with the United States-led world-system via its Belt Road Initiative (BRI). Although China has not yet become a core power, its BRI seems to possess the qualities of a new world-system in the making, within which China enjoys hegemonic traits such as economic and military might and capable alternative institutions. This BRI-bound world-system consists of BRI participant states whose areas and processes are being molded to better fit China as core and hegemon; a phenomenon known as peripheralization. In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) appears to be peripheralizing Arab states into this BRI-bound world-system through China’s growing economic dominance of the region and promotion of new modi operandi. After arguing the emergence of the BRI-bound world-system and establishing China’s peripheralization capacity, Lebanon is taken as a case study of a peripheral MENA state to illustrate how predominant Western hegemony can hamper China’s peripheralization apparatus, forcing it to choose areas/processes of the highest immediate relevance for focused peripheralization efforts.

Global-level relationships of international student mobility and research mentions on social media

This paper explores the structural connectedness and associations of international student mobility and scholarly communication on a global scale. First, it examines the exchange of international students. Next, it investigates network structures of international student mobility and scholarly communication on two social media platforms, Twitter and Mendeley. It also determines which social media platform predicts more inter-country student exchange networks than the other and their statistical relationship. Data are obtained from Unesco for student mobility networks and Altmetric.com for scholarly communication on social media. Scholarly communication activities are measured by two factors: Mendeley-based research citations and Twitter-mediated research mentions. As a result, China and the USA exchanged most international students. The network structures of student mobility and online scholarly communication followed the ideas of World System Theory that describes core, periphery, and semi-periphery areas. The network analyses showed that the USA hosted the largest number of overseas students and was positioned at the center of student mobility and scholarly communication on Mendeley. The UK was in the central position on Twitter. Furthermore, research citations on Mendeley had a higher statistical correlation with international student mobility than research mentions on Twitter had. More importantly, a greater number of research citations on Mendeley predicted an increase in student mobility, and the Twitter network showed the highest density and shortest geodesic distance. The findings of this research may suggest that social media can be used effectively to spread academic ideas in the real and online worlds while considering the features of social media and related policies in different countries. Besides, worldwide intellectual mobility may enhance decentralization and co-development of the global academic society, which would be better assisted by proper utilization of social media.

Speculative Epistemologies of Resistance in <em>Hombres de maíz</em> and <em>Bandarshah</em>

In his two-part “The literary history of world-systems” Matthew Eatough utilizes world systems theory to examine literary studies. He makes use of Baucom’s “speculative epistemologies” to explore the connection between the global economy speculative financial instruments and the rise of the novel in 18th century. But Eatough is interested in tracing the history of literary studies and world systems theory. In this paper, I use speculative epistemologies to indicate ways of knowing that are speculated in fiction. My starting point is the decolonial critique of world system theory, which I use to formulate border reading; a reading strategy that is attentive to indigenous epistemologies. I apply this reading to two entirely different to two works of fiction that have nothing in common save for their articulation of indigenous epistemologies from two entirely unrelated epistemic terrains, two entirely different colonial experiences, and two separate geocultures within the world literary system. Miguel Ángel Asturias’ Hombres de maíz (Men of Maize) and Al-Tayyib Salih’s Bandarshah present viable speculative epistemologies that are profoundly engaged with their respective political contexts Their speculative epistemologies are contextually grounded in the very real experiences of the postcolonial condition in Guatemala (1940s) and Sudan (1960s).

Climate Justice, Systemic Racism and Hyperculturality in the Digital Age: On Reparations for Eco-Culturcide, Climate Change and Environment in a National and Post-Pandemic Context

The impacts of climate change are experienced unevenly, with the most vulnerable: Those who suffer most acutely are also least responsible for the crisis to date. In this presentation an approach is made to climate repairs to face the injuries that result from the Modern world-system.. In the first place, it will try to make a historiographic journey on the management and environmental relationship with the human being in the West, Africa and Abya Yala, passing in second place to 1492 as a critical point of the systemic-climatic crisis and identifying the causes of the current phenomena, ending with a method of praxis, through which, what could be the guidelines for the proposal of climate reparations in Venezuela can begin to be drawn, highlighting the asymmetries produced by systemic racism and touching, in turn, the key points on the approach to environmental justice together with the fundamental role of Afro-descendants in a post-pandemic, hypercultural and hyperdigital context.

‘I left because…’: Caribbean high-skilled emigrants’ reasons to migrate to the US

ABSTRACT The rate of emigration of highly educated people from the Caribbean is one of the highest in the world but little research exists on this phenomenon. This paper helps to fill this gap by focusing on one particular subset of Caribbean skilled emigrants, those working in higher education in the US, including academics and administrators. Drawing on an inductive methodology, and using data from interviews, this interdisciplinary research assesses why these high-skilled Caribbean people emigrate from the region, and the factors that facilitate their immigration to the US. Findings indicate that, ultimately, high skilled emigration of this group is complex, reflecting a compelling interdisciplinary understanding of skilled emigration that has resonance in network, neoclassical human capital, and world systems theories of skilled emigration from the Caribbean.

Facing Each Other: Japanese and Russian Sociologies

AbstractThe history of sociology as a subfield has long aimed to describe the historical developments of the discipline, within which national traditions offer unique voices while also contributing to a global sociology. How do various sociological paradigms and national traditions approach social reality in similar and different ways? This paper examines Russian and Japanese contributions to the history of sociology by reviewing some of their major concepts and perspectives. On this basis, this paper seeks to probe into the past and present self‐understandings of the two sociological traditions, as well as their potentials for a more active role in global sociological discourse. Both countries have a history of protracted isolation, which has made them more or less invisible in the international sociological community. However, Russian and Japanese sociological traditions exist and are ready to be tapped, even as their production and mobilization of intellectual resources remain strongly embedded in their politics, cultures, and societies. A broader aim of this paper is to enhance mutual understandings and future collaborations between sociologists in Russia and Japan.