Coal's Persistence in the Capitalist World-Economy

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul K. Gellert ◽  
Paul S. Ciccantell
Keyword(s):  
World Economy ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Ecological Modernization ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Coal Consumption ◽  
The World ◽  
Capitalist World Economy ◽  
Capitalist World

Predominant analyses of energy offer insufficient theoretical and political-economic insight into the persistence of coal and other fossil fuels. The dominant narrative of coal powering the Industrial Revolution, and Great Britain's world dominance in the nineteenth century giving way to a U.S.- and oil-dominated twentieth century, is marred by teleological assumptions. The key assumption that a complete energy “transition” will occur leads some to conceive of a renewable-energy-dominated twenty-first century led by China. After critiquing the teleological assumptions of modernization, ecological modernization, energetics, and even world-systems analysis of energy “transition,” this paper offers a world-systems perspective on the “raw” materialism of coal. Examining the material characteristics of coal and the unequal structure of the world-economy, the paper uses long-term data from governmental and private sources to reveal the lack of transition as new sources of energy are added. The increases in coal consumption in China and India as they have ascended in the capitalist world-economy have more than offset the leveling-off and decline in some core nations. A true global peak and decline (let alone full substitution) in energy generally and coal specifically has never happened. The future need not repeat the past, but technical, policy, and movement approaches will not get far without addressing the structural imperatives of capitalist growth and the uneven power structures and processes of long-term change of the world-system.

scholarly journals International Inequality in the Age of Globalization: Japanese Economic Ascent and the Restructuring of the Capitalist World-Economy

2002 ◽  
pp. 62-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul S. Ciccantell ◽  
Stephen Bunker
Keyword(s):  
Joint Ventures ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
New Model ◽  
The World ◽  
Capitalist World Economy ◽  
Capitalist World

This paper shows how Japanese ?rms and the Japanese state constructed a development model based on the steel industry as a generative sector that drove Japan’s economic ascent in the world-historical context of U.S. hegemony. We make three arguments in this paper. First, there is a new model of capital accumulation that does create new forms of social inequality by redistributing costs and bene?ts in very di?erent ways than earlier models. Second, Japanese ?rms and the Japanese state created this new model of capital accumulation and social inequality via mechanisms including joint ventures, long term contracts, and other forms of international trade and investment, not U.S.-based transnational corporations, as is usually assumed. Third, world-systems theory reconstructed through the lens of the new historical materialism explains this restructuring of the capitalist world-economy as the outcome of Japan’s economic ascent over the last ?fty years. Further, we argue that this new model of capital accumulation has had similar impacts on redistributing the costs and bene?ts of development between core and peripheral regions of the capitalist world-economy in a wide range of global industries. These strategies created a tightly linked set of technological and organizational innovations to overcome the natural and social obstacles to Japanese development, dramatically increase Japan’s international economic competitiveness by lowering production costs in all sectors of the economy, turn Japan into the world’s largest exporter of manufactured products, restructure a range of global industries, and recreate the world-system hierarchy in support of Japanese development. In particular, organizational inno-vations in the use of long term contracts and joint ventures in raw materials industries to foster global excess capacity and lower rents to resource extracting ?rms and states reallocated the costs of providing the material building blocks of Japanese development to the states and ?rms of its new raw materials periphery. This competitive advantage drove Japanese capital accumulation and economic ascent, and simultaneously drove underdevelopment in Japan’s periphery. These Japanese innovations became key elements of globalization as U.S. and European transnational corporations and states sought to compete with Japan. Joint ventures, long-term contracts, and other forms of inter?rm cooperation have replaced vertically integrated foreign direct investment, the earlier U.S. model of capital accumulation and international economic linkage, as the model for global industries.

Slave Trade, Manumission, and Citizenship in Ancient Rome and Brazil: A Comparative Perspective

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fábio Duarte Joly ◽  
Rafael de Bivar Marquese
Keyword(s):  
World Economy ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Mediterranean Area ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Capitalist World Economy ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
The Mediterranean

The chapter analyses in a comparative way the interconnectedness between slave trade, manumission, and the granting of citizenship to former slaves in Roman and Brazilian slave societies. Due to the absence of a strict line of continuity between the Roman and modern worlds, the comparison is made mainly in formal terms. While Brazilian slavery was part of a capitalist world economy where slave trade and anti-slavery ideologies coexisted, Roman slavery developed in the Mediterranean area where slavery and other forms of compulsory labour were never subjected to anything but occasional criticism. Although placed in different material, political, and ideological contexts, both slave societies followed similar paths that show the necessity of an examination of the long-term interconnection of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic world systems and its multiple layers of time.

World-Systems Theorizing

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
Systems Analysis ◽  
World Economy ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Mass Education ◽  
World Culture ◽  
Culture Theory ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The World ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
World Systems Analysis

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Please check back later for the full article. World-systems theorizing has its roots in dependency theorizing and the critique of modernization theory, rejecting its claimed linear process of economic development for all nation-states. A founding premise of this work, established well before the advent of globalization studies, has been the need to take the world-system as the primary unit of analysis for understanding social reality and social change. As an approach for understanding systems of mass education, world-systems theorizing has taken on two broad trajectories. One of these, world-culture theory or neo-institutional analysis, has centered on identifying examples of global convergence at the level of education policy, explaining these in terms of a world culture of education that has spread across nation-states through their participation in international agencies and organizations. An alternative approach, world-systems analysis, takes the historical development and operation of the capitalist world-economy, across core, semi-peripheral, and peripheral zones of the world-economy, as the starting point for understanding the nature and function of mass education systems. This work includes the particular construction of knowledge structures and subject disciplines, and their function within the operation of the capitalist world-system. Where world-culture theory downplays the causal power of economic structures, world-systems analysis highlights the interaction between economics and an accompanying world cultural framework under historical capitalism, whose core features can account for the nature and purpose of education. Educational applications of contemporary world-systems analysis extend to work within the broader field of critical education to transform society. Specifically, these applications examine the potential for systems of mass education to equip students with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to understand existing social reality, to imagine more equal, just, democratic, and peaceful, alternative world-systems, and to take action toward their realization.

Destabilizing the Semiperiphery: The Counterturn of China’s Ascendance in the World-Economy

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 365-385
Author(s):  
Vincent H. Shie ◽  
Chih-Yuan Weng
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
World Economy ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Global Development ◽  
World Systems Theory ◽  
Intermediate Group ◽  
The World ◽  
Rise Of China ◽  
The Rise Of China

Abstract In an article in Perspectives on Global Development and Technology (PGDT), Kwangkun Lee revisits the debate on whether the semiperiphery is persistent or short-lived in the long-term historical structure. Lee concludes that semiperipheries only have a brief lifespan due to their (assumed) polarizing tendency. We provisionally agree with Lee’s conclusion, but we diverge in our reasoning for upholding this hypothesis. Proponents of the World-Systems Theory claim that an intermediate group of states stabilizes the world-economy. For instance, Giovanni Arrighi posits that the semiperiphery will be persistent in the longue durée. But in our view, the rise of China will ultimately destabilize the so-called constant stratum of the semiperiphery.

scholarly journals SOBRE A MOBILIDADE NO SISTEMA MUNDIAL: A RELEVÂNCIA DO CONCEITO DE SEMIPERIFERIA PARA OS PROJETOS DE DESENVOLVIMENTO NO SÉC. XXI

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (17) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandre Freitas
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
System Approach ◽  
World Economy ◽  
World System ◽  
Role Of Government ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Capitalist World Economy ◽  
Capitalist World

The objective of this article is to discuss the relevance of the concept of semiperiphery to analyze the world system in the 21st century. First, the main concepts of the world-system approach will be analyzed. In the second part, a more in-depth examination of the question of the semi-periphery will be made through its political and economic characteristics. Later, we will examine the empirical attempts to define the semiperiphery, its role in the reproduction of the capitalist world-economy and the question of mobility in the world-system hierarchy. In conclusion, the role of government apparatus in the issue of development and overcoming the status of semi-periphery in the capitalist world-system will be highlighted.

scholarly journals Investigating the Asymmetric Core/Periphery Structure of International Labor Time Flows

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 231-264
Author(s):  
Junfu Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Regression Analysis ◽  
World Economy ◽  
International Division ◽  
Labor Time ◽  
The Core ◽  
International Labor ◽  
Downward Pressure ◽  
The World ◽  
Capitalist World Economy ◽  
Capitalist World

This paper studies the core/periphery hierarchy of the capitalist world-economy in the current globalization era. The central and novel argument is that the network of international labor time flows reveals the core/periphery hierarchy of the world-economy with regard to the international division of labor. Based on the analysis of the labor time network of forty economies from the world input-output table, I find that the core/periphery structure of the world-economy has in large part remained unaltered for 1995-2009, though the asymmetry of international labor time flows decreased slightly between 2003-2009. Through regression analysis, I find that per capita income of a country is strongly associated with its command over global labor time. The regression analysis also lends evidence to the existence of oligarchic wealth. This wealth is not available to all countries, implying that the struggle of a country to improve its position in the capitalist world-economy tends to put downward pressure on the income of other countries.

Long-Term Booms and Busts in Capitalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 151-154
Author(s):  
Samuel Cohn
Keyword(s):  
New Product Development ◽  
Personal Computer ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Economic Stagnation ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Growth

This chapter addresses the long-term booms and busts in capitalism. The most famous theory of cycles comes from the Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratieff, who posited fifty-year cycles of twenty-five years of boom and twenty-five years of bust. Another theory comes from the work of Gerhard Mensch. The chapter then looks at the five big Kondratieff waves and considers the factors that caused them. The Industrial Revolution was really a case of new product development; machine spinning and weaving dropped the price of clothing dramatically. The clothes-buying binge began to fade in the 1820s, but the British and world economy were rescued by railways. When this boom too ran its course, but the world economy was rescued again — by structural steel. Unfortunately, much of the transformation of world structures from wood to steel had been accomplished by 1920. The 1920s saw depression throughout Europe, followed by the Great Depression of the 1930s. Then the world economy was rescued again by the automobile, which generated a huge number of by-product industries. The saturated market made the 1970s and 1980s years of economic stagnation and slow global growth. However, the world economy was saved again — this time by the personal computer and the internet.

scholarly journals Pirate Capitalism, or the Primitive Accumulation of Capital Itself

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Isaac Kamola
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Gulf Of Aden ◽  
Primitive Accumulation ◽  
The World ◽  
Capitalist World Economy ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
Historical Accounts

Pirates are often described as existing on the margins of the world economy, emerging from the outskirts to disrupt otherwise free capitalist markets. With this narrative in mind, it is not surprising that the pirate remains a marginal figure within both the fictional stories and historical accounts of the emergence of capitalism. This article, however, asks: What do we learn about the capitalist world economy if we understand the pirate not as an outlaw but as a fellow capitalist? Weaving together stories of the golden age of piracy in the Atlantic world with contemporary piracy in the Gulf of Aden, I argue that pirate capitalism helps us to understand the capitalist world economy, not only demonstrating the violence and dispossession at the centre of capitalist accumulation but also making visible the fluid relationship between capital, sovereignty, violence, and freedom.

scholarly journals THE FUTURE OF W. WARREN WAGAR

1996 ◽  
pp. 94-102
Author(s):  
Stephen K. Sanderson
Keyword(s):  
System Theory ◽  
World Economy ◽  
World System ◽  
Short History ◽  
World System Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Capitalist World Economy ◽  
Capitalist World

In his fascinat ing book "A Short History of the Future," published in 1992, W. Warren Wagar lays out a futuristic vision of the world over the next two hundred years that draws extensively on Inunanuel Wallerstein' s world-system theory. In the year 2001 began the last of the great Kondratieff upswings of the capitalist world-economy. That economy had come to be increasingly dominated by a few giant corporations, so that by 2015 12 "megacorps" had assumed control of the world-economy and thegovernments of the major capitalist powers. The Kondratieff upswing ran its course by the early 2030s and then a devastating worldwide depression set in, the lowest point of which was reached in 2043.

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