scholarly journals Nuclear War in the Rivalry Phase of the Modern World-System

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 348-371
Author(s):  
Robert A. Denemark
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
World System ◽  
Modern World ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
The Way

Large-scale war is a world-system phenomenon of the rivalry phase. Such conflicts have once again become a concern, and nuclear weapons make these prospects especially dangerous. This is particularly problematic since several world-systems perspectives suggest the chances for war will be greatest in the period from 2030 to 2050. I review the logic of rivalry, the reasons for the endurance of nuclear weapons, old and new nuclear strategies, and the processes that may pose the greatest existential dangers. Chase-Dunn and Podobnik (1995) identified processes that militate both in favor of and in opposition to nuclear war, and I pay particular attention to the way in which world-systems developments that increase the likelihood of major war have persisted, while those that retard the chances for major war have diminished. These dangers suggest that it may be time to turn some of our attention to the dynamics of systemic war and nuclear weapons.

James Baldwin’s Decolonial Love: Uncovering the Revelation of the Beat

2018 ◽  
pp. 100-116
Author(s):  
Joseph Drexler-Dreis
Keyword(s):  
Atlantic World ◽  
World System ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Theological Perspective ◽  
The Way

James Baldwin worked out what decolonial love might mean from the experience of living within the center of the modern world-system as a result of colonialism in the Atlantic world. Within an orientation of decolonial love, Baldwin connects the categories of salvation and revelation. The task of revealing the reality that exists underneath the way Western modernity configures reality is itself an actualization of salvation. While Baldwin doesn’t use terms such as revelation and salvation in ways that are tied to religious discourse in the sense of being controlled by doctrines, creedal statements, or dogmatic theology, they do have religious—and this chapter argues theological—significance. Connecting Baldwin’s terms to a theological perspective demonstrates a connection between decolonial love and theology, and opens up decolonial love as a theologically pedagogic site.

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.

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.

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.

Nuclear Hardware and Power: The War of Perceptions

1987 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 749-766
Author(s):  
Trudy Govier
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Extended Deterrence ◽  
Natural Connection ◽  
Ethical Point ◽  
Nuclear Attack ◽  
Nuclear Diplomacy

Nations possessing nuclear weapons have seen them as useful for many purposes. These include classic nuclear deterrence (preventing a nuclear attack), extended nuclear deterrence (preventing a conventional attack on the nuclear nation or allied countries), the fighting of a nuclear war ‘if deterrence fails,’ and a ‘diplomatic’ use in which the weapons are seen as implements of coercive political power. Concerning all these uses profound ethical questions arise. It is the last use which will be the focus of attention in this paper.I have chosen this subject partly because I believe that it has received insufficient attention from those reflecting on nuclear policies from an ethical point of view. Discussions tend to focus on the use, threat to use, or intention to use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack or threat of nuclear attack. The retention of nuclear weapons for such a purpose is far easier to rationalize than is the development of such weapons for extended deterrence, nuclear ‘diplomacy,’ or the actual waging of a nuclear war. Historically, nuclear weapons have been held by nuclear states for all these purposes. In fact, there are natural relations between the functions. When a power possesses nuclear weapons, the ultimate token of military power in the modern world, it is natural that it will seek to use them for purposes less restricted than the sole one of deterring nuclear war. Hence there is a natural development from classic deterrence to extended deterrence and the coercive use of nuclear weapons in the pursuit of national interest. There is also a natural connection between classic deterrence and the development and deployment of nuclear weapons for the purpose of fighting and ‘prevailing’ in a nuclear war. An opposing state is to be prevented from attacking by the belief that an attack would be followed by retaliation. That requires that a nuclear state indicate the will and capacity to retaliate-that is, to use these weapons in a real war if necessary.

Editorial Introduction to the Symposium on Giovanni Arrighi’s Adam Smith in Beijing

2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-38
Author(s):  
Liam Campling
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Systems Theory ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
World System ◽  
Editorial Introduction ◽  
Modern World ◽  
World Systems ◽  
World Systems Theory

AbstractGiovanni Arrighi (1937‐2009) was a leading figure in the development of world-systems theory and also contributed to a range of debates in Marxist thought. This symposium engages with Arrighi’s last book, Adam Smith in Beijing, which was the final instalment in his ‘trilogy’, following The Long Twentieth Century (1994) and Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System (with Beverly Silver, 1999). This Editorial Introduction traces the broad trajectory of Arrighi’s ‘trilogy’ and its concern with systemic cycles of accumulation, highlights additional major contributions by Arrighi, and sketches some of the central arguments of the five symposium articles.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="FN0">*</xref>

scholarly journals The ‘Otter-Man’ Empires: The Pacific Fur Trade, Incorporation and the Zone of Ignorance

2002 ◽  
pp. 390-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon D. Carlson
Keyword(s):  
World System ◽  
Fur Trade ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Sea Otter ◽  
World Systems ◽  
European Contact ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Region I ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines the concept of the ‘external arena’, the relationship it holds to the expansion of the modern world-system, and the process of systemic incorporation. In order to address the notion of systemic expansion, I examine how boundaries of the system are de?ned by networks of exchange and interaction and I echo criticisms that information and luxury goods networks exert important systemic impacts. Signi?cant change occurs well prior to the point at which traditional world-systems literature considers an arena ‘incorporated’. The case of the sea-otter fur trade and the relationship with the natives of the Northwest coast of America is used as an example of these processes of change in action. This case isselected because there is no question that the area is ‘pristine’; initially it is outside the realm of European contact. This region characterizes a ‘zone of ignorance’ beyond the traditional world-system that must undergo a signi?cant ‘grooming process’ before incorporation is more fully expanded, and this process is partially operationalized by the use of historically contemporary maps. Finally, the case o?ers a good example of the impact that external regions can exert on internal systemic behavior, as European powers were pushed to the brink of war in their e?orts to exploit the resources and peoples of the Nootka Sound region. I conclude by o?ering a more developed conceptualization of the process of incorporation and related concepts.

scholarly journals INVIGORATING WORLD SYSTEM THEORY as CRITICAL THEORY: Exploring Philosophical Foundations and Postpositivist Contributions

1995 ◽  
pp. 243-294
Author(s):  
Kurt Burch
Keyword(s):  
System Theory ◽  
Social Studies ◽  
World System ◽  
Modern World ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
World System Theory ◽  
Conceptual Distinction ◽  
Ideological Critique ◽  
Constitutive Principles

World system theory comprises two distinct lines of inquiry: macro-social studies of historical world-systems and ideological critique. World system theorists often shun ideological critique, but for two reasons I argue it must be foremost. First, without explicit attention to its philosophical foundations, world system theory rests upon several unexamined, uncomplementary, liberal premises. These premises pose conceptual puzzles. World system theorists frequently cast such puzzles as methodological, empirical, or theoretical problems, rather than as symptoms of ideological confusions requiring critique. Second, through explicit critique, theorists may transform implicit philosophical foundations into explicit ontological and epistemological groundings. Such groundings will enable world system theorists to better realize their critical, emancipatory goals and to resolve theoretical puzzles. One such puzzle -- the conceptual distinction between politics and economics -- recurs often, arising in the debates on the relation(s) between the state system and capitalism and thwarting efforts to demonstrate the unity of the world system. I suggest that world system theorists engage in explicit ideological critique to lay equally explicit ideologicalfoundations for their histories. I suggest a critical, conceptually historicist, "constructivist" approach that builds upon postpositivist critiques and introduces constitutive principles. I illustrate the virtue of this approach by demonstrating the unity of the modern world system.

The Modern World-System IV: Centrist Liberalism Triumphant, 1789–1914, Immanuel Wallerstein, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 273-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Khachaturian
Keyword(s):  
World System ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Modern World ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Alternative Mode ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Immanuel Wallerstein ◽  
World Systems Analysis ◽  
Systems Framework

AbstractThe book continues Immanuel Wallerstein’s historical narrative of the modern world-system. It focuses primarily on the social and political developments in the European core during the nineteenth century, tracing the rise of liberal hegemony, the growth of the administrative state, and the emergence of modern social science. It also examines the rise of anti-systemic socialist, feminist, and nationalist movements that challenged the liberal project. The book successfully illustrates how the world-systems framework can be used to analyse the intersection between the national and the international spheres. Through its historical critique of the human sciences, it also makes an effective case for the viability of world-systems analysis as an alternative mode of critical social-scientific inquiry.

scholarly journals Introduction to Premodern Historical Systems: The Rise and Fall of States and Empires

2004 ◽  
pp. 611
Author(s):  
Christopher Chase-Dunn
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
State Formation ◽  
World System ◽  
Modern World ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Empire Building ◽  
Analogous Process ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
The 19Th Century

Here are three studies of the phenomenon of rise and fall in premodern historical systems. In the modern world-system an analogous process takes the form of the rise and fall of hegemonic core powers, and the arena of contention became global in scope during the 19th century (c.e.). The studies here are of three di?erent and largely separate regional world-systems during di?erent time periods. All three focus on state formation, empire building and collapse.

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