World-Systems Analysis PDF

World-Systems Analysis Week 12 World-Systems Analysis The work of Immanuel Wallerstein focused on the control by the West of the rest of the world, and the unequal distribution of resources and life chances that has resulted from it. Key questions: How can we understand global inequality? How is th...

World-Systems Analysis Week 12 World-Systems Analysis The work of Immanuel Wallerstein focused on the control by the West of the rest of the world, and the unequal distribution of resources and life chances that has resulted from it. Key questions: How can we understand global inequality? How is the present system of global inequality held together? Wallerstein, while doing work in Africa in the period of decolonization, realized that he misery and violence he witnessed were not determined by local actors or realities on the ground: the lines of causality stretched out of sight across the globe. Wallerstein sought to understand the inability of movements of national liberation to change the political and economic inequality between developed and underdeveloped countries.  World-Systems Analysis For Wallerstein, there was only one world divided into three main zones: core, periphery, and semi-periphery. We could understand the structural differences between the zones only if we looked at the logic that held the world together: the world-system. → to understand the inequalities that persisted by the conquest of political independence, in other worlds, we had to move to the to the largest scale. → the control of the West of the rest of the world worked by means of unequal exchange. World-Systems Analysis What is a system? “We take the defining characteristic of a social system to be the existence within it of a division of labor, such that the various sectors or areas are dependent upon economic exchange with others for the smooth and continuous provisioning of the needs of the area. Such economic exchange can clearly exist without a common political structure and even more obviously a common culture” (Wallerstein, 1974, p.74-75). → A common division of labor World-Systems Analysis To understand the root of the dependencies that exist between different areas of the world system, we need to look the European expansionism, and the acquisition of European political and economic superiority – this is when the division between core and periphery gained shape. → Wallerstein saw in that period an economic transfer of surplus from the periphery to the core without military conquest but merely by means of market exchange. World-Systems Theory Our conceptual starting point for thinking about the world-systems theory is modernization theory and its assumptions about development – a term European countries and the US used for the process of growing in political and economic sophistication, institutional stability, and high standards of living. →development occurred at the national level →development proceeds through unidirectional stages, phases that could not be reversed or skipped →development is homogenizing and Westernizing in the sense that developing nations adopt European and American values and traditions on their way to growth World-Systems Theory Wallerstein proposed changes to modernization theory. He thought its proponents had blundered by applying their idea too mechanistically to the colonial context – especially the colonial social structure in West Africa. →He sought to correct modernization theory’s expectation that developing nations leave behind old traditions. Progress did not require breaking apart old loyalties, apparently mirroring the societal structures of European states. → If the African continent with its emerging nations did not remain underdeveloped because of its “traditional attachments”, what kept them there? World-Systems Analysis For Wallerstein, there were at the time two explanations for the condition of Africa: (a) economic development is the consequence of effort, initiative, and intelligence, and the gap between “First World” and “Third World” is a result of disproportionate input of these factors. (b) the gap is the consequence of the fact that groups which achieved an initial economic advantage have the will and the power to perpetuate and expand this advantage. World-Systems Analysis Wallerstein thought that post-colonial states did not stand a chance against imperial (European powers’) meddling. Trade agreements were not based on ideas such as value or the relationship of imports to exports, but political power. →In short, Wallerstein broke from modernization’s theory assumption of developmental homogeneity. Yet, he did not provide a unified explanation of varying developmental outcomes in the world’s economic division of labor. - Was development not a national phenomenon? Were domestic leaders not responsible for making nations rich or poor? World-Systems Analysis Wallerstein needed to develop new categories to understand the colonial and postcolonial worlds. Two insights were important in pushing Wallerstein in a different direction from that of modernization theory: a) Modernization theory assumed that there was only one route to development. European developmental views were assumed universal but were in fact particular, pertaining to Europe rather than the world. b) Marxist class analysis suggested that class struggle was based on industry (industrial development), but in colonial and post-colonial contexts, class is not the only condition of exploitation. World-Systems Analysis The interactions between the colonized and the colonizer must be examined within a single framework: history did not begin with colonial struggle, nor would it end with independence. → Wallerstein situated postcolonial Africa within the context of global capitalism. World-systems analysis (WSA) rejected modernization theory’s assumptions of Europeanization and national development. Instead, it emphasized the relationship between colonizer and colonized as part of a single analytical lens.  World-Systems Analysis Let’s consider five key characteristics of World-Systems Analysis: 1. Instead of an ahistorical theory of development, which assumed all states evolved in the same way regardless of their context, Wallerstein advocated for the historical analysis of the modern world-system. 2. Capitalism is defined as the endless accumulation of capital, not as wage labor or the presence of competition among firms. Capitalism is a world- economy, one of many type of world-systems. 3. There is a division of labor in the world-economy that mirrors societal classes (to the idea of the powerful core and the exploited periphery, Wallerstein added the intermediate semiperiphery – exploiter and exploited, whose members enjoyed an advantage in comparative well-being over the periphery. World-Systems Analysis 4. The world-system occasionally has a dominant power that remakes global governance on its own terms. No state can control the capitalist world-economy outright, but three states have temporarily achieved dominance: the United Provinces (1618-1648), Great Britain (1793-1815) and the United States (1914-45). Brief periods of hegemony were comprised of a great power’s supremacy in agro-industry, commerce and finance. 5. Capitalism was created only once. It was not invented in multiple locations, nor did it exist in the pre-modern world. The capitalist-world economy emerged in Europe and the America’s over the long 16th century (1450-1640; the era of “discovery”). → Capitalism’s ability to survive was predicated on its ability to to expand geographically, and thus relieve internal pressures caused by resource exhaustion and laborers’ demands. World-Systems Analysis Wallerstein believed that it was only by historical accident that Western Europe became the core and Eastern Europe became the periphery, along with parts of the Americas. → Nothing was inevitable in the emergence of the modern world-system. Wallerstein considered infant world-systems to be fragile and unpredictable. There were no universal laws explaining development, but rather path-dependent processes that unfolded over the centuries. The formation of core and periphery showed that development only occurred Wallerstein viewed WSA as an anti- at the level of the world-system, as part of Eurocentric view of development: the relationship among societies in the instead of nations following the world-economy. There could be no developmental trajectories of others, it traditional nations, nor modern nations. was the system itself that followed a To the contrary, the emergence and developmental trajectory. reinforcement of seemingly advanced societies was predicated on the subordination of “primitive societies”. World-Systems Analysis Another important contribution of world-systems analysis was a critique of the discipline of sociology. Sociology: its object was the tissue of manners and customs that held a group of people together, and attention to this object was shaped by questions of power – how to reconcile, for instance, “society” with the interests of dominant groups and the state. The major focus of sociology was upon the problems of modernity. → YET, Wallerstein argues that major transformations within the world-system have unsettled the discipline and unraveled the structures of knowledge upon which sociology stands. World-Systems Analysis Two sets of systemic transformations are crucial for understanding why Wallerstein saw sociology as incapable of keeping up with processes of transformation: 1. 1945-1968: a period of American hegemony within the world-system. This hegemony was supported by the American university system where structural functionalism and modernization approaches to the non-European world played a leading role. Simultaneously, anti-systemic movements marked this cycle (national liberation, social democracy, and communism). Anti-systemic movements shaped major debates, with profound consequences for the structures of knowledge. For Wallerstein, “society” was no longer an appropriate unit of analysis for social scientists. Instead, a new unit of analysis (the world-system) should be our starting point. World-Systems Analysis 2. post-1968: American hegemony is undermined and goes into irreversible decline, and antisystemic movements lost the power they had achieved in previous generations. This is the period that signaled the beginning of “globalization” as a new historical epoch characterized by time-space compression that redefined everything from borders to trade, finance and technology, cultural ideas and national identities. For Wallerstein, however, “globalization” was simply the latest incarnation of the long-term development of the world-economy already set in motion in the 16th century. During this time, two crucial challenges posed to the discipline of sociology: a) the challenge to Eurocentrism – the b) The challenge to Eurocentrism led to the unsettling of a assumption that the European path deep-seated assumption underlying the structures of into modernity was applicable knowledge: the universalism implied in a singular everywhere and could be understood (European) path to modernity; the assumption about the as “progress”. possibility of a detached, objective scientific vantage point on the social world, and that such optic could assure social progress.