scholarly journals Sugar, Slavery, and Creative Destruction: World-Magnates and “Coreification” in the Longue-Durée

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-419
Author(s):  
Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz ◽  
Corey R Payne

Recent literature in the world-systems perspective has refocused attention on questions of ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ in historical capitalism, yet rarely critically examines the underlying assumptions regarding these zones. Drawing on a developing dataset on the world’s wealthiest individuals (the World-Magnates Database), we trace the development and expansion of sugar circuits across the Atlantic world from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries to explain how the sugar commodity chain leads us to rethink some prevailing notions of core and periphery. Namely, we challenge the notion that these zones consist of geographical spaces that, since very early in the development of the world-economy, became permanently specialized in the production of raw materials (periphery) or more sophisticated manufactures (core); and that labor forces have been trans-historically relatively free/better-paid in core activities and coerced/poorly-paid in peripheral ones. We argue that, prior to the nineteenth century, the world-economy is not only characterized by the uneven and combined emergence of various forms of labor exploitation, as usually argued within a world-systems perspective, but also one in which core-like and peripheral activities (that is, those providing access to relatively greater or lesser wealth) were not yet as clearly bounded geographically as they would become in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We find that a longue-durée analysis of sugar production by enslaved labor illustrates not merely processes of peripheralization, but of what we call coreification.

Author(s):  
Georgi Derluguian

Georgi Derluguian helps explain why Ukraine wound up with this oligarch problem in the first place, identifying the cause as a Ukraine’s peripheral position in the world economy and the failure of its elites to cooperate for a larger good during the critical moment of the USSR’s collapse. Here a comparison with China proves useful. Derluguian argues that China succeeded because its relatively simple state allowed its leaders to work together to orient the country toward the needs of the global economy, while the complexity of Soviet institutions (including its division into multiple federal units) made such cooperation much more challenging. After the USSR collapsed, various “violent entrepreneurs” were able to take advantage of the resulting chaos to their own advantage, becoming oligarchs or state-based predators that have vested individual interests in subverting reforms.


1995 ◽  
pp. 210-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Bunker ◽  
Paul S. Ciccantell

Theorists of hegemony combine a concern with the causes of war and peace with questions of dominant trade regimes. While this combination addresses issues of central importance for studies of international relations, it may somewhat confound the role of hegemony studies within a world systems perspective. The power of the world systems perspective lies in the consideration of entire worlds, not simply as the appropriate unit of analysis, but as integrated units of production and exchange. Hierarchy within this system reflects not simply politically enforced relations of unequal exchange, but the subordination of production in different parts of the world to regimes constructed and manipulated by core powers to their own economic and political advantage. The processes that create the power of the core and the processes by which the core subordinates the periphery constitute the critical questions within this perspective. Part, but only part, of the answer lies in the superior productive capacity and efficiency of the core, and resulting ability to dominate trade. Another part, and we believe this is primary, lies in the ways that, in order to become so productive and so efficient, economies rising to core status must organize other economies and international transport systems to assure the increasing, secure, cheap supplies of the raw materials that support productive efficiency and economic growth.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul K. Gellert ◽  
Paul S. Ciccantell

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.


2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 727-754 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Chase-Dunn ◽  
E. Susan Manning ◽  
Thomas D. Hall

The world-systems perspective was invented for modeling and interpreting the expansion and deepening of the capitalist regional system as it emerged in Europe and incorporated the whole globe over the past 500 years (Wallerstein 1974; Chase-Dunn 1998; Arrighi 1994). The idea of a core/periphery hierarchy composed of “advanced” economically developed and powerful states dominating and exploiting “less developed” peripheral regions has been a central concept in the world-systems perspective. In the last decade the world-systems approach has been extended to the analysis of earlier and smaller intersocietal systems. Andre Gunder Frank and Barry Gills (1994) have argued that the contemporary global political economy is simply a continuation of a 5,000-year-old world system that emerged with the first states in Mesopotamia. Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas Hall (1997) have modified the basic world-systems concepts to make them useful for a comparative study of very different kinds of systems. They include very small intergroup networks composed of sedentary foragers, as well as larger systems containing chiefdoms, early states, agrarian empires, and the contemporary global system in their scope of comparison.


1984 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine LeGrand

Exporters of raw materials under Iberian rule, the nations of Latin America continued to perform a similar role in the world economy after Independence. In the nineteenth century, however, a significant shift occurred in the kind of materials exported. Whereas in colonial times the great wealth of Latin America lay in her mineral resources, particularly silver and gold, aster 1850 agricultural production for foreign markets took on larger importance. The export of foodstuffs was not a new phenomenon, but in the nineteenth century the growth in consumer demand in the industrializing nations and the developing revolution in. transport much enhanced the incentives for Latin Americans who would produce coffee, wheat, cattle, or bananas for overseas markets.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-113
Author(s):  
Iaroslav Petrunenko ◽  
Oleg Podtserkovnyi

Complex and contradictory processes of modern social transformations and the need to overcome the crisis in the economy require the appropriate influence of the state and a clear system of socio-economic management through the formation and implementation of effective state economic policy. The main elements of economic policy are financial and credit, budgetary, scientific and technical, structural, social, investment, agricultural, regional, foreign economic policy. The implementation of state economic policy is considered in terms of the relationship between social problems and the state. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to study the essence, tools and methods of state economic policy in modern conditions. It is also necessary to identify the main risks and features of further development of state economic policy of individual states in a global imbalance and crisis. The theoretical part is devoted to the study of the essence of state economic policy, theoretical and practical aspects of its organization in the state, as well as tools that can be used by the state. The resulting part is devoted to the consideration of the situation, in which the world economy has found itself in 2020 in the conditions of the economic COVID-19 crisis. General forecasts have not provided to individual states because it has been impossible to predict the end of the pandemic and the return of the world to normal life. However, it is clear that the world economy has undergone irreversible processes that will synergistically affect different states in different ways. The crisis has hit a significant number of industries, including tourism, logistics, hotel business, the crisis has been felt in world markets: oil prices have collapsed, as well as the stock markets. Undoubtedly, there are areas with a rapid growth, especially the pharmaceutical industry and retail, online delivery services, IT entertainment and communications industry, information marketing business and education and training services. It is likely that the indicators of economic development in the states by the end of the year will be better than the results of the first half of the year. The basic forecast of economic world development assumes a sharp growth of the economy after a short recession after quarantine. The financial capabilities of the EU states vary considerably, but each state must pursue counter-cyclical policies aimed at stabilizing its own economy. The answer to the question of what kind of crisis response policy they can afford depends on the fiscal policy of the states before the crisis. In economically developed states, where emergency measures have been introduced, governments and central banks issue trillions of dollars in government spending, social support of citizens, and interest-free business loans to limit the economic damage of quarantine. At the same time, in Latin America and Southeast Asia, total quarantine is impossible in multi-million cities. Such states have a triple effect of suffering from the virus, the environment and poverty. States dependent on the export of natural resources and raw materials, when faced with the crisis, are forced to sell them for nothing, so they will suffer great losses. More than 150 states have set up anti-crisis headquarters and are taking anti-crisis measures. The authors have also tried to predict how largescale the global economic crisis will be for Ukraine, what consequences await it, and what measures need to be taken to overcome it.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 2491-2498
Author(s):  
L.V. Abdrakhmanova ◽  
◽  
E.S. Shchigortsova ◽  

The article analyzes the consequences of the spread of coronavirus infection on the world economy. The high degree of infection and the rapid spread of COVID-19 caused the quarantine of certain cities and regions of the world, and since March 2020, the borders between the countries have been completely closed. This situation, naturally, could not but affect the global economic activity. The crisis caused by the pandemic has led to the fact that the leaders of the countries were forced to first of all pay attention to health problems and seriously reduce funding in other sectors of the economy. The forced self-isolation regime of the population affected all spheres of life, without exception, large and medium, and, especially, small business suffered. The sectors of the economy most affected by the coronavirus pandemic include: air and road transportation, the leisure and entertainment industry, fitness and sports, tourism, hospitality, catering, the education system, the organization of conferences and exhibitions, the provision of personal services to the population, dentistry, retail trade in non-food products, the media and the production of printed materials, etc. Statistical data on the number of cases of new coronavirus infection by country (as well as those who recovered and died from it) are today not so much of a medical nature as evidence of a deepening global economic crisis. The decline in production volumes on a global scale entails a reduction in the global consumption of most types of industrial raw materials and energy carriers. According to analysts’ forecasts, the possibility of a quick return to the previous economic activity is not foreseen, negative processes may continue for the next several years. The COVID-19 pandemic is a serious test of the readiness of the world economy to effectively resolve global problems, overcome the negative consequences of the spread of the virus and focus on those positive opportunities, the development of which can lead to economic growth in the long term. One of these promising areas of economic development is the further digitalization of society, the development of new digital technologies.


Author(s):  
Thomas Griffiths

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.


2015 ◽  
Vol 70 (02) ◽  
pp. 293-303
Author(s):  
David Armitage ◽  
Jo Guldi

Abstract This article responds to a variety of criticisms of our thesis that the longue durée is returning after a period of retreat, and that this return provides a necessary means to revive the discipline of history as a critical human science. We argue that the longue durée has different meanings in distinct historical traditions and that its importance for non-academic audiences will not be the same as for an academic readership. We also suggest that the longue durée should be combined with other historical time-scales (including those covered by microhistory), and that this combination can help us all to better understand the present in light of the past and then orient ourselves toward the future. In sum, we argue that the revenant longue durée can be one means, among others, to address the widespread “crisis of the humanities” that has been discerned by scholars around the world.


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