scholarly journals Editorial Note

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Andrej Grubačić
Keyword(s):  
World Economy ◽  
Editorial Note ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Systems Research ◽  
Capitalist World Economy ◽  
Capitalist World

Editors introduction to Journal of World-Systems Research Vol. 27, No. 1 Special Issue on Capitalist World-Economy in Crisis: Policing, Pacification, and Legitimacy

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.

Capitalism, Structural Crisis and Contemporary Social Movements: An Interview with Immanuel Wallerstein

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaël Curty
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Systems Analysis ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Political Action ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Porto Alegre ◽  
Capitalist World Economy ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
Immanuel Wallerstein ◽  
World Systems Analysis

Immanuel Wallerstein is internationally recognized as the founder of world-systems analysis and is highly regarded for his groundbreaking analysis of the capitalist world-economy. In this excerpted interview, Immanuel Wallerstein analyzes the contemporary struggles between social movements representing the ‘spirit of Davos’ and the ‘spirit of Porto Alegre’ and explores the possibilities for social and political action for more equality and democracy in the 21st century.

scholarly journals Population Dynamics in the Capitalist World-Economy

2014 ◽  
pp. 207-228
Author(s):  
Daniela Danna
Keyword(s):  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Systems Analysis ◽  
World Economy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Reproduction ◽  
Natural Fertility ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Capitalist World Economy ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
World Systems Analysis

World-systems analysis has given scant attention to population dynamics. Overlooked are large-scale macrohistorical population trends and their microhistorical foundation on procreative decisions-decisions which are taken by a historically changing subject of procreation: local elders or other authorities, head(s) of the household, couples, and women. The discipline of demography is also not as helpful as it could be, given its basis in modernization theory, which fails to recognize intentionality in reproduction in pre-capitalist societies. It assumes a model of "demographic transition" from a state of "natural fertility" to a state of conscious family planning, while also treating mortality as independent of fertility Marxism recognized the importance of population as a source of labor for profit and capital accumulation. With its tools Sydney Coontz developed a demand for labor theory explaining in particular the decrease in the birth rate in England and the United States at the turn of the century This theory was f urther developed by anthropologists of the "mode of product ion and population pat terns " who, with other authors, offer useful theories and insights to advance world-historical research on population. This article explores connections between population dy namics and world-systems analysis. I explore six key questions at different levels of analysis, including: 1) Are there world-systems ' imperatives concerning human reproduction?; 2) Do human reproduction imperatives differ across world-systems.'?; 3) How do the (eventual) systems requirements get transmitted to households and individuals'?; 4) Why do people have children.'?; 5) Who is the subject of procreation decisions'?; and 6) How is the number of offspring chosen? Finally, I offer guidelines for applying the six questions to the capitalist world-economy.

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.

The Capitalist World-Economy.

1980 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet Friedmann ◽  
Immanuel Wallerstein
Keyword(s):  
World Economy ◽  
Capitalist World Economy ◽  
Capitalist World

scholarly journals The Second Slavery and World Capitalism: A Perspective for Historical Inquiry

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 477-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale Tomich
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Forced Labor ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
Us South ◽  
Capitalist World Economy ◽  
World Economic ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
Economic Zones

AbstractThe concept of the second slavery radically reinterprets the relation of slavery and capitalism by calling attention to the emergence of extensive new zones of slave commodity production in the US South, Cuba, and Brazil as part of nineteenth-century industrialization and world-economic expansion. This article examines the conceptual framework and methodological procedures that inform this interpretation. It reformulates the concept of the capitalist world-economy by emphasizing the mutual formation and historical interrelation of global–local relations. This open conception of world-economy permits the temporal-spatial specification of the zones of the second slavery. In this way, it is possible both to distinguish the new zones of the second slavery from previous world-economic zones of slave production and to establish the ways in which they are formative of the emerging industrial world division of labor. From this perspective, analysis of sugar production in Jamaica, Guyana, and Cuba discloses spatial-temporal differences between what would otherwise be taken as apparently similar historical-geographical complexes. This comparison demonstrates how world-economic processes produce particular local histories and how such histories structure the world-economy as a whole. This approach locates the crisis of slavery during the nineteenth century in the differentiated response to processes of world accumulation, rather than the incompatibility of slave production with industrialization and open, competitive markets. More generally, it calls attention to the continuity of forms of forced labor in the historical development of the capitalist world-economy and to the ways that processes of capitalist development produce social-economic differentiation and hierarchy on a world scale.

State maneuver in the capitalist world-economy: A political geography of contextualized agency

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (8) ◽  
pp. 1580-1601 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Flint ◽  
Raymond Dezzani
Keyword(s):  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Transition Probabilities ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Capitalist World Economy ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
Emergent Structure ◽  
Spatial Formations

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate a theoretical perspective and outline an analytical framework for state maneuver in the hierarchical world-economy that incorporates the idea of context with structural imperatives. Maneuver is the agency of states within conjunctures of structural imperatives and spatial settings of inter-state alliances and established cultural understandings and historic relations. The hierarchy of the capitalist world-economy is conceptualized as an emergent structure, one that emerges from competition for scarce resources. The resources are economic attributes defined by the process of capital accumulation, political attributes emanating from the imperative of state territorialization, and the agglomeration of these attributes in spatial formations. The structure is emergent from the actions of states that create these spatial formations, but transformation is limited given structural constraints. States maneuver can be modeled as Markov transition probabilities decomposable as logits for covariate analysis.

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