scholarly journals Nomadism, Evolution and World-Systems: Pastoral Societies in Theories of Historical Development

2002 ◽  
pp. 368-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolay N. Kradin
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
General Scheme ◽  
World System ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Pastoral Nomads

This article discusses the problem of categorizing the polities and social formations of steppe pastoral nomads in Central Asia in comparative and civilizational perspective and placing complex pastoral society within a general scheme of cultural evolution. It also discusses the role that these societies played in the emergence of a larger Eurasian world-system.

scholarly journals World-System and Evolution: An Appraisal

1996 ◽  
pp. 201-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas D. Hall
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
World System ◽  
Modern World ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Exchange Networks ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Intersocietal Interaction

This paper makes six arguments. First, socio-cultural evolution must be studied from a "world-system" or intersocietal interaction perspective. A focus on change in individual "societies" or "groups" fails to attend adequately to the effects of intersocietal interaction on social and cultural change. Second, in order to be useful, theories of the modern world-system must be modified extensively to deal with non-capitalist settings. In particular, changes in system boundaries marked by exchange networks (for information, luxury or prestige goods, political/military interactions, and bulk goods) seldom coincide,and follow different patterns of change. Third, all such systems tend to pulsate, that is, expand and contract, or at least expand rapidly and less rapidly. Fourth, once hierarchical forms of social organization develop such systems typically have cycles of rise and fall in the relative positions of constituent politics. Fifth, expansion of world-systems forms and transforms social relations in newly incorporated areas. While complex in the modern world-system, these changes are even more complex in precapitalist settings. Sixth, thesetwo cycles combine with demographic and epidemiological processes to shape long -term socio-cultural evolution.

METAPHOR OF «DESTROYED WORLD» IN THE POLITICAL PROJECTION OF WORLD-SYSTEM ANALYSIS

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-86
Author(s):  
V.E. BAGDASARYAN ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
System Analysis ◽  
Political Process ◽  
World System ◽  
World Order ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Catastrophe ◽  
Systemic Nature ◽  
World Center

The purpose of the article is to present an analysis of modern global political processes characterized by the unipolarity of the destruction of the former world system. The current situation of political transit is assessed as a failure of technologies of controlled chaos and transition to a state of turbulence. The basic approach of the research was the methodology of world-systems analysis. The article provides arguments that substantiate the systemic nature of the crisis of the World Center, the problematic nature of the restoration of the unipolar system of the world order. Four scenario perspectives of further development of the world political process are considered: 1. restoration of the leadership legitimacy of the World Center; 2. change of the core of the world system; 3. transition of a state of chaos to a global catastrophe; 4. the establishment of a system of a multilateral world of civilizations. It is indicated that the West-centered world-system has paradoxically diverged at some stage from the values of the Western civilization itself. And it is obvious that the transition to a multilateral world should be linked to the basic civilizational values of the world-systems, their differences from the values of other communities. As a result, practical recommendations are presented for the activity steps of building a system of multilateral world order as a desirable prospect for overcoming the state of turbulence and preventing a new geopolitical hegemony.

Devolution processes and the theory of historical development by S. Sanderson

2021 ◽  
pp. 72-77
Author(s):  
A.V. Verkhoturov ◽  
◽  
A.A. Obukhov
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
World System ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Evolutionary Trend ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
American Historian ◽  
Immanuel Wallerstein ◽  
Main Ideas

Analyzed is one of the most comprehensive modern approaches to the problem of the existence of evolution of human society as such and of specific human communities, i.e. “General Theory of Historical Development” by American historian and sociologist Stephen Sanderson. While agreeing, in general, with its main ideas, we believe that it is important to note that the issue of existence of individual communities demonstrating devolution (regression to an earlier historical state), stagnation or degeneration at certain historical stages is practically ignored in the framework of the theory under consideration. This creates its vulnerability in the face of specific empirical data, indicating a deviation from the evolutionary trend. We believe that overcoming this theoretical difficulty is possible in the process of comprehending the theory of S. Sanderson in the context of ideas of the world-system approach of Immanuel Wallerstein. We want to show that examples of devolution, stagnation and degeneration of societies do not deny general progressive evolutionary tendencies, characteristic for the world-system as a whole, but only indicate the transition of a particular society to a lower level within the world-system (from the core to the semi-periphery, or from the semi-periphery to the periphery).

The Effects of International Trade on Democracy: A Panel Study of the Post-Soviet World-System

2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikhail Balaev
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Trade Openness ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
World System ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
World Systems ◽  
World Systems Theory ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
World Systems Analysis

The author examines the relationship between democracy and international trade using post-Soviet countries as a historical example of a world-system. World-systems theory and alternative theories are employed to create theoretical models of democracy, and pooled timeseries regression is applied, using an index of democracy as the dependent variable and two sets of theoretically distinct control variables. The author finds a negative relationship between core periphery trade and democracy and a positive relationship between trade openness and democracy in the periphery. The author draws three conclusions. First, international trade deserves more attention as a link between economic and political processes in world-systems analysis. Second, contrary to conventional analysis, the structure of core-periphery trade shows that the core uses its economic ties to politically exploit the periphery. Last, it is necessary to distinguish between core and noncore international trade in world-systems and political analysis.

Notes from the Editors, November 2019

2019 ◽  
pp. c2-64
Author(s):  
The Editors
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
World Economy ◽  
World System ◽  
Modern World ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Monthly Review ◽  
The World ◽  
Immanuel Wallerstein

buy this issue Immanuel Wallerstein, the celebrated world-systems theorist and longtime contributor to Monthly Review and Monthly Review Press, died on August 31, 2019. Wallerstein first achieved international fame with the publication in 1974 of his The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (the first in a four-volume masterwork on the Modern World-System. We pay tribute to Wallerstein in this new issue of Monthly Review.

On Maoist Conceptualizations of the Capitalist World System

1979 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 806-837 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Systems Approach ◽  
World System ◽  
State Power ◽  
World Market ◽  
Market Force ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The World ◽  
Capitalist World

One of the less emphasized strengths of a world systems approach to national societies is its critical comprehension of the limited possibilities of ruling groups transforming their societies into ones of socialist relations. One limit placed on the part by the whole, on nation states by a capitalist world market, is the impossibility of building “true” socialism. The imperatives of the world market force state power-holders to act in a capitalist manner, that is, to organize their society for competition in world exchange.

Chichen Itza and Its Hinterland

1994 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Kepecs ◽  
Gary Feinman ◽  
Sylviane Boucher
Keyword(s):  
World System ◽  
Settlement Pattern ◽  
Single Site ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Systems Perspective ◽  
The World ◽  
Systems Framework ◽  
Chichen Itza

AbstractFor too long, Mayanists working in northern Yucatan have retained a focus on the single site. Although a few recent papers have begun to examine this area in regional terms, the world-systems perspective has yet to be applied. In this paper the world-systems framework is used to examine the post-Teotihuacan core center of Chichen Itza and its hinterland. Various lines of information are combined to achieve the fullest possible picture, including new settlement-pattern data, related ethnohistoric material, and a brief consideration of existing iconographie studies. Comparative examples from contemporary sites in other parts of Mesoamerica are provided to illustrate the systemic interconnections that characterize a “world system.”

scholarly journals Rise, Fall, and Semiperipheral Development in the Andean World-System

2000 ◽  
pp. 67-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darrell LaLone
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Management ◽  
World System ◽  
Management Systems ◽  
Environmental Management Systems ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Coercive Power ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Power Strategies ◽  
Specialized Institutions ◽  
Protection Rackets

This paper examines how different power strategies have been playedover the course of the three-thousand year Andean civilization. In broad terms, the power strategies center on ideological, economic, and military power (Mann 1986; Earle 1997). The case materials show that what we call “states” are formations that succeed, albeit temporarily, in combining strat-egies of ideological, economic, and military power. Nonetheless, following Randall Collins (1981:71), I would argue that coercive power is the sine qua non for state development. If we start from the power to coerce as a foun-dation, varying strategies of manipulating economic, ideological, and military power will produce a number of different pathways to varying forms of organization. Some may be more centralized than others, some may be less steeply strati?ed than others, some may have more specialized institutions than others, some may look more like environmental management systems, and others may look more like well-organized predatory protection rackets. Those which were less successful in manipulating these strategies were more vulnerable to collapse, opening the way for new formations to emerge. As world-systems approaches would predict, this has often happened on the peripheries of former core formations.

scholarly journals Piracy in a Contested Periphery: Incorporation and the Emergence of the Modern World-System in the Colonial Atlantic Frontier

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 542-564
Author(s):  
P. Nick Kardulias ◽  
Emily Butcher
Keyword(s):  
Systems Analysis ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
World System ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
World Systems ◽  
World Systems Analysis ◽  
Distinct Line ◽  
Freedom Of Action

This article uses world-systems analysis to examine the role that pirates and privateers played in the competition between European core states in the Atlantic and Caribbean frontier during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Piracy was an integral part of core-periphery interaction, as a force that nations could use against one another in the form of privateers, and as a reaction against increasing constraints on freedom of action by those same states, thus forming a semiperiphery. Although modern portrayals of pirates and privateers paint a distinct line between the two groups, historical records indicate that their actual status was rather fluid, with particular people moving back and forth between the two. As a result, the individuals were on a margin between legality and treason, often crossing from one to the other. In this study we discuss how pirates and privateers fit into the margins of society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, also known as the Golden Age of Piracy, specifically using the example of Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard. The present analysis can contribute to our understanding not only of piracy, but also of the structure of peripheries and semiperipheries that in some ways reflect resistance to incorporation.

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