World-system Theorists Research Articles

Global Inequality Challenge: An Analysis of the Disparities in Wealth and Power

Global inequality is central to the explanation of the disparity between the global North and global South in terms of level of development. World systems theorists have pointed to colonial exploitation of the South by countries in the North as the cause of the disparities in wealth and power between regions. This paper examines global inequality challenges to identify the disparities in wealth and power between the North and the South. The study relied essentially on qualitative data predicated on secondary data. The paper adopted world systems theory as its framework of analysis. The paper showed that the unequal relationship between the global North and the global South was made possible by the colonial exploitation of the South by the North. By adopting the world system theory, the paper revealed how unequal division of labour, terms of trade imbalance, and Bretton Woods Institutions (IMF and World Bank) reinforced global inequality. The study recommended, amongst other things, that the South address internal conditions impeding their development; IMF and World Bank-assisted projects should not be attached with strict conditions.

Political Economy of the Middle East: Historiography and the Making of an Episteme

The Great Divergence accelerated a process of Western European states dominating the majority of the world’s geography and people economically and geopolitically. Given the stakes of this shift and its ramifications for all of the history that followed, and the significant way that the divide continues to shape our world, this phenomenon is subject to considerable debate within the historiography. This paper uses the Great Divergence as a departure point to analyze the different schools of political economic history, from the flawed sociologies of the early 20th century theorists to the World Systems Theorists and beyond. A key aspect of this epistemic transformation was the methodology and source material used, the choice of which made obvious the potential biases each work was liable, particularly in the works of the Orientalists, who promoted a school of thought that aided and abetted colonial capitalism. This paper tells the story of the emergence of modern political economy through the study of the Middle East, a region that was both subjected to, and existed in defiance of, the academic epistemes of the 20th century.

“Algiers and the Algerian Desert”: Decolonization and the Regional Question in France, 1958–1962

This article demonstrates how Algerian decolonization played a key role in shaping the discipline of territorial planning (aménagement du territoire) in metropolitan France. A number of liberal economists, including François Perroux, articulated notions of economic space that eschewed the nation-state as a unit of analysis. In colonial Algeria, this discourse was subsequently adopted by officials who sought to integrate Muslim Algerians into the French Republic. Discussions on territorial planning in late colonial Algeria echoed debates in the United States regarding the “social uplift” of African Americans in the South, which also attempted to stem the rising tide of separatism. In the 1950s, liberal understandings of the relationship among cultural specificity, territorial scale, and economic development were challenged by a host of actors, including Algerian nationalists who espoused ideas that would later appear in the analyses of world systems theorists. After the victory of the Algerian FLN (Front de libération nationale) in 1962, discussions on regional identities provided an important tool for political claims on both sides of the Mediterranean. Moreover, techniques of territorial planning developed in Algeria were imported to the Hexagon in the aftermath of Algerian independence.

Capitalism and extreme poverty: A global analysis of real wages, human height, and mortality since the long 16th century

This paper assesses claims that, prior to the 19th century, around 90% of the human population lived in extreme poverty (defined as the inability to access essential goods), and that global human welfare only began to improve with the rise of capitalism. These claims rely on national accounts and PPP exchange rates that do not adequately capture changes in people’s access to essential goods. We assess this narrative against extant data on three empirical indicators of human welfare: real wages (with respect to a subsistence basket), human height, and mortality. We ask whether these indicators improved or deteriorated with the rise of capitalism in five world regions - Europe, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and China – using the chronology put forward by world-systems theorists. The evidence we review here points to three conclusions. (1) It is unlikely that 90% of the human population lived in extreme poverty prior to the 19th century. Historically, unskilled urban labourers in all regions tended to have wages high enough to support a family of four above the poverty line by working 250 days or 12 months a year, except during periods of severe social dislocation, such as famines, wars, and institutionalized dispossession – particularly under colonialism. (2) The rise of capitalism caused a dramatic deterioration of human welfare. In all regions studied here, incorporation into the capitalist world-system was associated with a decline in wages to below subsistence, a deterioration in human stature, and an upturn in premature mortality. In parts of South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America, key welfare metrics have still not recovered. (3) Where progress has occurred, significant improvements in human welfare began several centuries after the rise of capitalism. In the core regions of Northwest Europe, progress began in the 1880s, while in the periphery and semi-periphery it began in the mid-20th century, a period characterized by the rise of anti-colonial and socialist political movements that redistributed incomes and established public provisioning systems.

Review

Review

Melville's Quixoticism and the Modern World-System

Melville's Quixoticism and the Modern World-System

En las Entrañas de los BRIC: Analisis de La Natureza Semiperiférica de Brasil, Rusia, Índia y China

The objective of this investigation is to do a broad revision and reconstruction of the concept of semi-periphery, where the original ideas of Immanuel Wallerstein can be articulated to the developments made by other contemporaneous world-systems theorists. Once this goal is accomplished, the study of the semiperipheral nature – both internal and systemic – of the so-called “BRIC” countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) in the international context of Post-Cold War.

Explaining the world as a system: can it be done?

Explaining the world as a system: can it be done?

Crossing Frontiers: Theoretical Innovations in the Study of Social Movements

For better or worse, scholars who write about the origins, activities, and consequences of social movements often talk past each other. Babel occurs partly because social movement scholars are trained in different disciplines with dissimilar analytic concepts, presumptions about relevance, and methodological techniques. In addition, one finds in every discipline competing (if not clashing) intellectual currents and political orientations, which contribute to the multiplicity of voices and perspectives on any topic. For instance, one can find social-movement analysts in departments of political science who are Marxists, mass-society theorists, world-systems theorists, subaltern-studies folks, post-cultural-studies scholars,

Before Orientalism: London's Theatre of "the East" (review)

Reviewed by: Before Orientalism: London’s Theatre of “the East”, 1576–1626 Ania Loomba Before Orientalism: London’s Theatre of “the East”, 1576–1626. By Richmond Barbour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Although colonialism has been central to the analysis of early modern Europe, literary and cultural critics have been slower to turn their gaze eastwards. In the 1980s, critics such as Stephen Greenblatt and Peter Hulme made the Americas central to the study of early colonial relations, and English literary critics for a generation after tended to privilege the ‘New World’. The dominant model of colonial relations that emerged from this scholarship was that of asymmetry between powerful Europeans and the natives whom they regarded as linguistically and culturally ‘naked’.1 Coincidentally, this model of colonial relations dovetailed with Edward Said’s influential study of the relations between Europeans and non-Europeans in a different era and in a different part of the world—Orientalism also dealt with the ways in which Europeans inscribed, silenced and represented those whom they had colonized, and it too inspired a large body of postcolonial critique. Not surprizingly, literary critics who have, over the past decade or so, begun to examine the contact between early modern Europe and the East have critically engaged both these bodies of work. They have found alternative models of cross-cultural contact in hitherto neglected literary criticism, such as Samuel Chew’s The Crescent and the Rose (Oxford University Press, 1937) which offered an account of English Renaissance literature’s obsession with Muslims; in medieval literature and history, via books like Dorothee Metlitzki, The Matter of Araby in Medieval England (Yale University Press, 1977) and in world-systems theorists such as Janet L. Abu-Lughod Before European Hegemony; The World System AD 1250–1350 ( Oxford University Press, 1989). As several recent books and articles have argued, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Asians were hardly Europe’s silent other, and nor was Europe’s encounter with Asia either new or startling for either party.2 Rather, European encounters with the East had a long and complex history, and early modern Europeans both feared and admired Eastern monarchies, most notably the Turks, even as they were desperate to gain a toehold in the great Asian trade circuits. The English especially were plagued by their own belatedness and ineffectuality in these attempts. This is also the central argument of Richmond Barbour’s Before Orientalism, which examines assorted literary and cultural texts from early modern England—most notably, Richard Knolles’s massive and influential account of the Turkish empire, The Generall Historie of the Turkes (1603); Christopher Marlowe’s blockbuster Tamburlaine the Great (1597); William Shakespeare’s rewriting of a classic cross-cultural encounter, Antony and Cleopatra (1606–7); various Jacobean masques and mayoral pageants including Ben Jonson’s famous The Masque of Blackness, (1605) which featured Queen Anne and her maidens in blackface; the travel writings of Thomas Coryate, England’s first ‘tourist’ in Asia ( 1612–1617); as well as documents pertaining to Sir Thomas Roe’s embassy to the court of the Mughal emperor Jahangir (1615–18). All of these writings, Barbour shows, betray both English insularity and English insecurity vis-à-vis the East. Placing these texts within the contemporary contexts of travel, trade and the theatre, Barbour traces in English writings a growing rhetorical binarism between East and West, between Muslim/ Turk and Christian, and between the contemporary decay and hoary past of the Orient. Barbour explains the disjuncture between such rhetoric and the actual position of England by asking us ‘to distinguish early modern Europe’s strategic and economic relations with, from its domestic constructions of, Asia. Agents committed to sustained negotiations in Asia typically learned more plaint, polyvalent attitudes towards various ‘others’—including those Europeans who ‘turned Turk’—than did consumers of their adventures at home in England (5). Thus its is not surprising to find that writers who never left England, such as Knolles, were more binaristic in their thinking than those who, like Coryate and Roe, actually negotiated overseas travel, or that most travel writings were more open to cultural differences than most domestic theatricals which catered to the demands of a local audience...

What is World Systems All About? An Introduction for Human Ecologists

Ecology teaches us that all things are related, whereas human ecology focuses on the interrelationships of human beings and of human beings in their environments. Studies by world systems theorists lie within that large framework, and focus on two major themes of direct interest to human ecologists: analysis of historical data to predict, and issues related to power. The scholars who call themselves world systems theorists study, examine and analyze historical data, including information on the economy, in politics, and on related areas, to try to understand the past and predict the future. A second arena concerns the gathering up, holding, and use of power, illustrated for example, by economic and political decision-making and decision-makers. Power, of course, defines those with the strength and position to make and enforce decisions that affect others, that is, a core and a periphery. Human ecologists can generate important studies and focus their analyses by becoming more acquainted with the concepts and approaches of world systems theorists.

From comparative historical analysis to “local theory”: The Italian city-state route to the modern state

Many explanations have been offered for why the dominant city-states of Italy declined, giving way to the larger, national states of Western Europe. Some, like World Systems theorists, have seen the decline of the Italian city-states as the result of the shift of trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, while others, like Richard Lachmann, have focused on institutional arrangements that rendered these systems less resilient when faced by external threats. This article focuses on the relations of local institutions with the interests of capital, and on the role of contentious politics within the city-state that developed as a result of this interaction. Taking as my starting point the comparative historical analysis of statebuilding in the work of Charles Tilly, in Coercion, Capital and European States, the article places contentious politics as a bridge between the Tillian categories of capital-domination and statebuilding, using the case of Florence in the late 14th and early 15th centuries to etch the skeleton of that bridge. With Tilly, I argue that the class interests of the urban elites that were built directly into the mechanisms of city-state politics worked at cross-purposes to the collective requirements of statebuilding. Next, I argue that Tilly pays too little attention to the specificities of the Italian case and gives short shrift to its internal political processes. Finally, I argue that class domination working through institutional conflicts led to periodic outbursts of conflict and built a lack of trust into the structure of governance. I conclude by suggesting why the Italian city-states, at least, were inhibited from taking the nation-state route to the modern world until quite late in their histories.

A Clash of Civilizations or of Paradigms?

What is perceived by Huntington and many who think like him as an inevitable clash of civilizations is actually produced by the uneven modernization that has caused some parts of the world to lag behind others. Despite the serious resentment and conflict this has produced, social evolutionary pressures will force all societies to modernize, so that the major technological and cultural gaps between various parts of the world will greatly diminish in the future. Anti-modernizing policies that are rooted in poor social theory, and that feed on the resentment of people in societies whose modernization has lagged can, however, greatly retard modernization and increase human suffering and conflict. It is therefore a useful task for social scientists to consider what theories best explain social change in order to guide policies in the most beneficial direction. Classical functionalist-evolutionary theories do this far better than more recent theories such as those proposed by Huntington, by world system theorists, or by postmodernists.

THE QUEST FOR SPACE IN THE GLOBAL SPIRITUAL MARKETPLACE

AFRICAN RELIGIONS IN EUROPE The globalization concept Globalization is a concept that is gaining increasing prominence in academic discourses such as communication, economics, sociology, political science, cultural studies, advertising, environmental studies, religion etc. Hitherto, a legion of world system theorists have been primarily concerned with politico-economic phenomena, without an adequate approach to so-called issues of culture in such a framework, nor even a unified approach in which cultural specificity is an aspect of other social phenomena. Robertson and Hannerz, for instance, have complained of the lack of culture in the analyses of world system researchers. [1] A marked trend towards the globalization of all sorts of relations has been observed over several decades and has, directly and indirectly, led to a system of extensive international economic and political cooperation. The place of Africa at the periphery and semi-periphery of the global economy and polity is apparent, and was so especially in the 1990s. This somewhat disadvantaged status is probably untrue. Africa has conspicuously demonstrated vigour and vitality, and been pivotal for the dramatization of religion. This paper will show that Africans are involved in the globalization process; they have moved from a local phenomenon to a global context. They are not only searching for more space in the global religious marketplace, but their presence has in fact become conspicuous on the religious terrain. African new religious movements and globalization in Europe There are three basic categories of African Christian religious groups in Europe. In the first and most popular of these are religious groups that exist as branches or parishes of mother churches with headquarters in Africa. Examples are the Celestial Church of Christ Worldwide, the Church of the Lord -- Aladura, the Redeemed Christian Church of God, the Church of Pentecost International, and the Kimbanguist Church. The second category refers to those groups that began and have their headquarters in Europe, but also had the intention to establish or open branches in Africa and elsewhere. Examples are the True Teachings of Christ's Temple (Holland), the Christian Outreach Mission Church (Hamburg), the Aladura International Church (London), Victory Ministries e. V. (Oberhausen), and the Born-Again Christ Healing Church (London). The third category of African Christian religious groups is made up of inter-denominational groups or para-church organizations, which exist as somewhat loose groups (prayer/fellowship) without proper or formalized administrative structures. There are also quite a number of Christians without any church or religious affiliation. They either choose to attend services with a denomination of their choice or any church within their locality or within easy reach of their homes. However, a large number of African Christians simply do not attend any church services or programmes due to the nature of their jobs, or because of social, cultural and other reasons. Tendencies towards globalization The characteristics of African initiated churches include their vitality, dynamism and great capacity for incorporating change, such as that witnessed in the contemporary era due to shifts in global migration patterns. One remarkable fall-out of the globalization process is the increasing dispersal of Africans beyond their continental context, thus moving them from a local to a global presence. Consequently, the bridging of the gap brought about several strategies through which religious interchanges were exerted on the worldwide religious landscape. Ter Haar notes that: Their spread overseas has involved these churches in international networks of relations to which they did not have access until the late twentieth century. There is now a two-way channel of communication between churches inside and outside Africa, whether they belong to the first or the second generation of African-initiated churches. …

THE SOUTHERN AEGEAN SYSTEM

Although world-systems theory was originally formulated with our modern economic system in mind (Wallerstein 1974), it was not long before archaeologists began to apply it to ancient societies. Archaeologists and world-system theorists alike both argued that Wallerstein had disregarded evidence of interconnected, hierarchical systems in prehistoric times (Schneider 1977; Chase-Dunn & Hall 1991, 1997; Kardulias 1999a). Pailes and Whitecotton (1979) were among the first to modify world-systems theory for use in pre-capitalist settings. Since then many archaeologists have looked at data and regions with a world-systems perspective in mind (e.g. Champion 1989; Bilde et al. 1993; Rowlands & Larsen 1987; Kardulias 1999a). Some have attempted to map Wallerstein's theory directly onto prehistory (Kohl 1979; Whitecotton & Pailes 1986; Ekholm & Friedman 1982). Others have found the world systems model heuristically useful but lacking the analytical power needed for their prehistoric cases (Blanton et al. 1981; Upham 1982; Plog 1983; Alcock 1993). Building on the assumption that ancient societies were not qualitatively, but only quantitatively, different from modern capitalist ones (Schneider 1977; Sherratt & Sherratt 1991), this study applies world systems theory to the Southern Aegean during the Middle and Late Bronze Age (ca. 2000-1550 BC).

The founding of Pakistan: an annotated bibliography

This bibliography contains resources related to the founding of Pakistan, collected from the vantage point of the fiftieth anniversary of partition, August, 1997. The call for the creation of Pakistan began in the 1940s-some Indian Muslims were nervous about living in a state in which the overwhelming political control would be in the hands of the Hindu majority. In 1947 India was partitioned and the state of Pakistan was created. What ensued was terrible ethnic violence and cultural strain as Hindus and Muslims clashed. Those conflicts still inform the relations between the two countries, as each eyes the other warily over important and sometimes deadly issues. This fact was dramatically highlighted by the tension over India's recent testing of fissible material and Pakistan's own ballistic missile tests. The histories of the formation of Pakistan that are collected in this book are numerous in their perspectives. They include the views of imperial historians, world systems theorists, world historians, Marxists, British historians, and subalternists. In addition there are constitutional historians, historians of the much maligned Cambridge school, historians of communalism, as well as biographers and novelists. The wide range of this important historical collection makes it essential to scholars and students of Asian history. It provides a wealth of detailed information about one of the most ambitious and successful colonial independence movements in the world, and broaches the difficult questions surrounding religion and ethnicity, and their intersection with the state.

Investment, population growth and GNP as determinants of US immigration.

The author evaluates whether emigration to the United States in the 1989-93 period can be accounted for by demographic and economic conditions in sending countries, as postulated by neoclassical theorists, or by levels of U.S. investment in sending countries, as claimed by world system theorists. Utilizing data on U.S. permanent migration, emigration rates for 150 sending countries are calculated and the correlates of emigration assessed. The analysis provides no support for claims that rapid population growth and U.S. investment fuel U.S. immigration. Rather emigration is significantly lower from countries experiencing rapid population growth and not significantly correlated with U.S. investment. Indeed, U.S. investment tends to be highest in more advanced countries that send relatively few migrants to the United States. Geographic proximity is the most important correlate of emigration, followed by population size of sending countries, which has a negative relationship to emigration. The analysis also provides some support for the neoclassical argument that emigration will decrease as countries develop. It is argued that policy factors remain the important factor shaping U.S. immigration. Who a country decides to admit and how many people are admitted depends largely on outcomes of public policy discussions and very little on the economic and demographic conditions of sending countries. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Rhetoric and Reality: Corporate America's Perceptions of Southeast Asia, 1950–1961

This article challenges both those historians—represented primarily by neo-colonialists and World Systems theorists— who stress economic factors as motivations of U.S. policy in Southeast Asia during the 1950s. Although such analyses provide valuable insights into American foreign policy, neither the desire to secure the markets and raw materials of Southeast Asia for American industry nor the perceived need to preserve a capitalist World System offers an adequate explanation for the American commitment to Southeast Asia. Using the business press and trade journals as primary sources, this article examines the public remarks and activities of the American business community throughout the decade; it concludes that, despite their frequently strong rhetoric, business leaders were generally ambivalent about the proper course of action in Southeast Asia and about the region's importance to American interests. The research presented here suggests that other, non-economic, factors may better explain U.S. policy in that region during the 1950s.

Modernization and the Family: A Theoretical Analysis

Modernization theory argues that familism entails a traditional or parochial orientation that inhibits economic progress. Informed by critiques of this approach by dependency and world-system theorists and drawing on a case study of Italian immigrants to Louisiana at the turn of the twentieth century, this study argues that familism can be a progressive force which facilitates economic accumulation and upward mobility under certain social conditions. This theoretical analysis also calls into question characterizations of the family as primarily a unit of consumption in modern society. Here the role of the family as a production unit is examined and three types of familial cooperation are identified. In addition, some conditions under which familism can promote economic accumulation are discussed. It is argued that traditional sociological theories of the family failed to take into account this progressive role of familism because these theories tended to ignore the experiences of minority groups in their conceptual schemes.

The Ivory Coast at the Semi-Periphery of the World-Economy

World-system theorists posit that semi-peripheral states, exhibiting a set of specific characteristics, occupy a critical position between the core and the periphery in the world-economy. The characteristics of the Ivory Coast and its role in the world-economy are evaluated to determine whether that country is a member of the semi-periphery. Under conditions of economic growth, sector but not trading-partner diversification occurred. The political leadership played a strong role in promoting state-supported capitalism, and politicization of societal cleavages was averted. France played a critical role in facilitating the movement of the Ivory Coast toward the semi-periphery. The interests of French business and political elites and the Ivorian political leadership coincided. Yet under conditions of economic decline, contrary to the expectations of world-system theorists, trade has not been reoriented, societal division has been exacerbated, and strong state policies have altered the trend. The Ivory Coast's economic dependence on the core has been accentuated (debt crisis) and its economic prowess and leadership position vis-à-vis its periphery weakened. Hence, generalizations regarding the permanence of the Ivory Coast's position in the semi-periphery may be problematic.