The Logic of Dispossession

One particular focus of world-systems analysis is to examine the historical trajectory of capitalist transformation in peripheral regions. This paper investigates the capitalist transformation in a specific peripheral area—the country of Bangladesh. In particular, it examines the role of dispossession in transforming an agricultural society into a neoliberal capitalist society by looking at the transformation of Panthapath Street in Dhaka, Bangladesh, since 1947. Building on the existing literature of dispossession, this article proposes an approach that explains the contribution of dispossession in capitalist accumulation. The proposed theory consists of four logics of dispossession: transformative, exploitative, redistributive, and hegemonic. These four logics of dispossession, both individually and dialectically reinforcing one another, work to privatize the commons, proletarianize subsistence laborers, create antagonistic class relations, redistribute wealth upward, and commodify sociopolitical and cultural aspects of urban life. This paper’s central argument is that dispossession not only converted an agricultural society into a capitalist society in Bangladesh, but that dispossession continues to reproduce the country’s existing capitalist system. This research draws on a wide range of empirical and historical evidence collected from Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2017 and 2018.

Editorial Note

Editors introduction to Journal of World-Systems Research Vol. 27, No. 2 Summer/Autumn 2021

The Evolving Arctic in the World-System

Global climate change’s continuing effect on the Arctic has brought about a fundamental shift in the region’s identity as it becomes an ever more active area in the world-system. Economic opportunities such as new shipping routes and a bounty of natural resources that were hitherto ice-locked are becoming accessible as the pace of climate change quickens, garnering increasing attention from actors around the world-system. This article explores the new geopolitical and economic realities of the Arctic through the lens of world-system analysis by examining the region’s budding role in the world-economy and emerging economic opportunities, its unique core-peripheral nature, and its potential to spark a regional hegemonic rivalry between NATO and a Sino-Russian partnership. This article aims introduce the evolving Arctic to world-systems studies and promote further research on the region using the theoretical framework.

Outlines of a Global Power-Field (GPF) Theory (Part 1)

This essay takes modern world-system theory and maps it into a political-economic field of power. This re-modeling of the theory better illustrates the diffuseness and the spatiality of the operations of global forces; thus, helping us have a greater appreciation of the durability and scope of Western economic and political hegemony across the world. Our exposition also tracks the structural transformation undergone by the Global Power-Field (GPF) throughout its history showing the evolving character of its dominance. Moreover, this field paradigm does not restrict its considerations to matters of political economy but also centralizes factors of politics and international relations that play a fundamental a role in driving historical dynamics. The workings of this emerging model are then illustrated by a historical case study from the Middle East: The nineteenth and early twentieth century Ottoman Empire.