PEWS News Newsletter of the Section on the Political Economy of the World-System, American Sociological Association Fall 1994 __________________________________________________________________ Section Officers Chair: Frederic Deyo (Ô95) SUNY-Brockport Chair-elect: Philip McMichael (Ô96) Cornell University Secretary-Treasurer: Dale W. Wimberley (Ô97) Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Council: Kathie Kasaba Friedman (Ô97) University of Washington Roberto Korzeniewicz (Ô97) University of Maryland Edna Bonacich (Ô96) UC-Riverside David Smith (Ô96) UC-Irvine Diane Davis (Ô95) New School for Social Research Shelley Feldman (Ô95) Cornell University __________________________________________________________________ Send PEWS News copy to Dale W. Wimberley, Department of Sociology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0137 USA. E-mail: Dale.Wimberley@vt.edu Fax: (703)231-3860 __________________________________________________________________ In this Issue: Time to Recruit Members for PEWS (and a Challenge) Wallerstein Is New ISA President 1994 Distinguished Scholarship Award: John Foran 1994 Dissertation Award: Wilma A. Dunaway Nominations Needed for 1995 Distinguished Scholarship Award Recap of 1994 Panels, Los Angeles PEWS Annual Business Meeting, 1994 PEWS Sessions for 1995 Annual Meeting, Washington Spivack Community Action Research Fellowships Call for Papers, PEWS XIX __________________________________________________________________ Time to Recruit Members for PEWS (and a Challenge) The time to renew or initiate ASA and section memberships is not far away, so NOW is a critical time to boost PEWS membership. A large body of members is obviously good for the general health and visibility of the section and our substantive concerns; more concretely, our numbers determine how many sessions we are allocated at the ASA annual meeting. In recent years we have hovered near the boundary separating three sessions from two. ASA rules decree that at least 400 members are required by the close of business on September 30 in return for three sessions. As this issue goes to press the latest membership total available, from September 15, was 371 (less than a figure reported elsewhere in this issue because of duplicate entries in an earlier version of ASAÕs data base). Recruiting efforts continued in late September. (See the report on the annual PEWS business meeting, later in this issue, for important additional discussion about membership.) PEWS membership is lower than that of most ASA sections, yet the issues we study are unsurpassed in their importance to the human condition, as well as to the discipline of sociology. Our research and theorizing come under such headings as global industrial restructuring, comparative historical analysis, Third World development, international political economy, long-term social change, and household survival strategies. True, we are not of one theoretical mind, and we do need to examine our direction as a section, as was well stated by Phil McMichael in the summer issue of PEWS NEWS. Uncertainties about PEWSÕ intellectual purposes may have contributed to the stagnant trend in our membership totals over the past few years. We need to explicitly discuss the future of PEWS, in these pages and elsewhere. Even so, our work to date is fundamental to an understanding of the persistent impoverishment of vast numbers in the South, of the deteriorating living conditions for most people north of the Rio Grande, of the affluence of a relative few, and of the connections among these phenomena. PEWS provides an inexpensive forum for us to get to know each other, share our ideas, and support each otherÕs work through annual meetings and sessions, the famous annual PEWS party, and other contacts throughout the year. What to do right now, this Autumn? I presume that if you are reading this you are already committed to PEWS and therefore will renew for 1995. But beyond retention of our current membership, we collectively need each otherÕs active RECRUITMENT efforts to boost the size of PEWS. First, encourage near and distant colleagues who share our interests to join PEWS when they send in their ASA renewals. Second, and more importantly, actively recruit students. They are the future of PEWS. Paying for their PEWS section memberships is a highly effective way to recruit and retain graduate (and undergraduate!) students who are interested in our concerns but are short on cash. In the past, I know that many of us who are faculty have paid PEWS dues for nonmember students as the September 30 deadline loomed near. Of much greater benefit to these new members and the PEWS section itself would be to have these subsidized memberships begin on January 1. Accordingly, LET ME CHALLENGE YOU WHO ARE FACULTY MEMBERS TO OFFER TO PAY PEWS DUES FOR FIVE OR TEN STUDENTS WHO ARE CURRENT OR PROSPECTIVE PEWS MEMBERS as they send in their ASA dues this fall. Student memberships cost only $5. Publicize your offer; talk to or send a memo to students who may be interested, or to all grad students in your department. My own initial efforts have yielded very positive responses. Be sure to include information on how to join ASA, a prerequisite to join PEWS; have some blank membership forms handy. If your recruiting experience is like mine, you will find several graduate students who have not yet joined ASA but have been intending to do so. Your offer may well be the shove that gets them off the fence and enhances their professional development through valuable organizational involvement. Undergraduates planning to do graduate work in sociology would also benefit greatly from ASA membership and are prospects for PEWS as well. For ASA membership applications, contact Sulu Ghoting, Membership Department, ASA, 1722 N Street NW, Washington, DC 20036-2981, e-mail ASA_Membership@MCIMAIL.COM, phone (202) 833-3410 ext. 326, fax (202) 785-3410. ASA student memberships were $32 for 1994. New applications will be available soon. Please let me hear about your recruiting efforts and ideas! I will share your successes and insights with the rest of PEWS in future issues. Dale W. Wimberley, editor ***** Wallerstein Is New ISA President Our congratulations to Immanuel Wallerstein, Distinguished Professor at Binghamton University, Director of the Fernand Braudel Center, and PEWSÕ founder, who was elected in July to a four-year term as president of the International Sociological Association (ISA). He succeeds Thomas K. Oommen, Jawaharlai Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Vice presidents elected were Jim Beckford, United Kingdom; JŸrgen Hartmann, Sweden; Alberto Martinelli, Italy; and Stella Quah, Singapore. Wallerstein stated that he will work on both intellectual issues and diplomatic concerns such as expanding the role of sociologists from the Third World and eastern Europe and making the ISA a truly multilingual organization. The next meeting of the ISA, the XIVth World Congress of Sociology, will be held in Montreal in 1998. ***** 1994 Distinguished Scholarship Award: John Foran The 1994 PEWS award for scholarship goes to John Foran for his book FRAGILE RESISTANCE: SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION IN IRAN FROM 1500 TO THE REVOLUTION. Foran is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. This award is not Foran's first. His 1988 dissertation at the University of California at Berkeley on which much of the book was based has already won the Malcolm Kerr prize awarded by the Middle East Studies Association for the best social science dissertation of 1988-89. According to its jacket, FRAGILE RESISTANCE traces the transformation of Iran's social structure from the rise of the Sfavid dynasty in 1501 to the dramatic social movements of the twentieth century. But it is a great, great deal more than that. First and foremost, of course, this is a book about large scale social change and social movements. Second, it locates those movements within social and cultural structures that are fundamentally defined by the interaction of gender, class and ethnicity. Finally, it integrates all this into the modern world-economy while at the same time paying close attention to the ongoing social structures that define Iranian society. Those then are the book's elements. Its Òplot,Ó if you will, is concocted out of the plethora of resistance movements on the part of multiple sectors of the society as these were both called forth and forestalled by events in the world- economy and as these events encountered the unique historical features of Iranian society. As one of the members of the PEWS award committee noted, Foran understands the importance of combining modes of production and world systems theories, and because of that understanding his work goes beyond mere description in showing how and why social movements in Iran evolved as they did. The entire PEWS awards committee agreed that among the book's many accomplishments the most important was its explicit interest in cultures of resistance and legitimation in social movements. This interest substantially redresses the absence of culture in many political economy accounts of large scale social change. It also allows, in fact requires, a major role to the interaction of ethnicity, class and gender. The committee believes Foran's book to be an example of social historical research at its finest. It takes seriously the world- economy as a historical force but a force that always and everywhere must encounter unique social formations that are themselves shaped by distinctive cultures of resistance. Finally, Foran's work challenges area specialists to take theoretical debates seriously while enjoining theoreticians to focus more closely on the extraordinary complexity of specific cases. The Committee wishes me to extend our most sincere congratulations to Professor Foran and to tell him how much we look forward to this future work. Joan Smith, Chair, Awards Committee ***** 1994 Dissertation Award: Wilma A. Dunaway The PEWS Section's 1994 Dissertation Award has been presented to Wilma A. Dunaway for "The Incorporation of Southern Appalachia into the Capitalist World-Economy, 1700-1860" (University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1994). The members of the PEWS dissertation award committee (Walter Goldfrank, William Martin and Beverly Silver) were unanimous in their praise for this outstanding contribution to both world-systems analysis and to the historical sociology of the Appalachian region. Based on extensive archival research, and drawing on many previously untapped primary sources, Dunaway's dissertation makes a sustained argument against the standard view of antebellum Appalachia as an isolated and relatively egalitarian pre-capitalist society. Instead, Dunaway shows how "America's first western frontier" was incorporated as a peripheral region into the capitalist world-economy beginning in the 1700s. In the process of documenting the social transformations wrought by southern Appalachia's incorporation, Dunaway provides new and fascinating accounts of the region's "people without history" including Cherokees, slaves, and poor landless whites. Publications resulting from the dissertation include: "The Southern Fur Trade and the Incorporation of Southern Appalachia into the World-Economy, 1690-1763" in Review, Spring 1994; and THE FIRST AMERICAN FRONTIER: TRANSITION TO CAPITALISM IN SOUTHERN APPALACHIA, 1700-1860, University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming, 1995. Dunaway is the first recipient of a PEWS dissertation award. This newly instituted honor will be given on a bi-annual basis, with the next dissertation award in 1996. Dissertations completed during the 1994-1995 and 1995-1996 academic years will be eligible for consideration. Beverly J. Silver, Dissertation Award Committee ***** Nominations Needed for 1995 Distinguished Scholarship Award Nominations are solicited for the annual PEWS Award for Distinguished Scholarship to be presented at the 1995 ASA meeting. In accordance with ASA guidelines, the official title of the award is The American Sociological Association Section on the Political Economy of the World System Award for Distinguished Scholarship. The award is for a book, article, or series of articles by an author published in the three calendar years preceding the year in which the award is made. Works published in calendar years 1992, 1993, 1994 are eligible for the 1995 award. Any work of comparative or international sociology concerned with the relationship between domestic and global social, economic and political processes is eligible. Any work may be nominated by anyone regardless of the disciplinary, section or ASA affiliation of either author or nominator. Self nominations are welcome. Nominations for the 1995 award must be received by the award committee by March 31, 1995. Letters of nomination should include complete publication information. Nominations should be submitted to Award Committee Chair Philip McMichael, Department of Rural Sociology, 133 Warren Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-7801. ***** Recap of 1994 Panels, Los Angeles At the August meeting of the ASA in Los Angeles PEWS held three sessions, which attracted on average more than 30 people each: Democracy and Labor under Global Restructuring, State Strategies and Global Restructuring on the Pacific Rim, and Insertion versus Integration of State Socialist States in the World Economy (shared with the Marxist Sociology section). There were also ten PEWS Roundtables, with topics ranging from commodity chains, to regional blocs, to methodological issues. ***** PEWS Annual Business Meeting, 1994 About 35 people attended the 1994 PEWS business meeting in Los Angeles to observe the passage of rational-legal authority from outgoing Chair, Gary Gereffi (Duke University), to incoming Chair for 1994-95, Fred Deyo (SUNY-Brockport). Other election results were: Chair-elect, Philip McMichael (Cornell University), and the installation, for three years, of Dale Wimberley (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) as Secretary-Treasurer, and Kathie Kasaba Friedman (University of Washington) and Roberto Korzeniewicz (University of Maryland) as the new PEWS Council members. Outgoing secretary-treasurer McMichael then presented a treasurer's report, claiming PEWS was in a sound financial condition, essentially debt-free, as we halved the expense of the annual party by holding it in a hotel suite and getting considerably more on the dollar. The consensus was that the PEWS party was the best of the section receptions, which were managed by the hotel itself. This indeed will be a new competitive advantage for PEWS in the annual search to replenish section membership. Gary Gereffi then raised the question of membership, and whether we ought to build a membership committee. Our numbers, in August, were around 380, and we need to add 20 and more to secure our three panels at the ASA meetings. A membership committee could pay attention to ways of expanding our appeal to ASA members Ñ a critical role being to staff a PEWS table (with appropriate literature and even a book award display) at the annual ASA welcome in the beginning of the annual conference. Next year PEWS will be early in the program, so it ought to be easy enough to find such staffers. In the meantime, the PEWS Newsletter could be used as a forum for a year-long dialogue about the composition and meaning of the PEWS section. A suggestion by Walter Goldfrank (UC-Santa Cruz) that we devote a portion of our funds to sponsoring new memberships (an ingenious way to accumulate human capital with fictitious money?) lapsed as we don't have enough start-up capital, and the dues don't automatically return to the Section. Gereffi called for nominations for the important Nominations committee, which manages the succession of authority in the section. Gary Gereffi (as outgoing Chair, according to the by-laws) will Chair the Nominations Committee. The following were elected unanimously to the Committee: Joszef Borocz (UC-Irvine), Eun Mee Kim (Harvard University), Doug Kincaid (Florida International University), and Susan Tiano (University of New Mexico). Their task is to present, to the ASA, two people for the offices of Chair-elect and two Council members, by April 15th. Gereffi then announced the PEWS Distinguished Scholarship Award committee for this year: Phil McMichael, Chair (as Chair-elect of Section), Fred Deyo (current Chair of Section), and the two outgoing members of the Council: Diane Davis (New School for Social Research) and Shelley Feldman (Cornell University). Nominations for the award were called for, due by March 31, 1995. Award announcements followed: John Foran (UC-Santa Barbara) won the PEWS Award for Distinguished Scholarship for his book, FRAGILE RESISTANCE: SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION IN IRAN FROM 1500 TO THE REVOLUTION; and Wilma Dunaway (University of Tennessee) won the PEWS Dissertation Award for her study, "The Incorporation of Southern Appalachia into the Capitalist World-Economy, 1700-1860." At this point the transition of power occurred, and our new Chair, Fred Deyo, called for suggestions for PEWS panels for the 1995 ASA meetings in Washington, DC. Suggestions included: an environmental focus, a world-system praxis panel, and a panel on the Òstate of world- system studies.Ó Also, we shall be sharing a panel with the Science, Knowledge and Technology Section; PEWS Council member David Smith (UC- Irvine) will be our liaison with that Section. We shall also obtain reciprocity on a panel shared this year with the Marxist Sociology Section; PEWS Council member Edna Bonacich (UC-Riverside) is our liaison with that Section. Finally, Laura Raynolds (Colorado State University) and Jayati Lal (Cornell University) were appointed as organizers of the Roundtables session. The final composition of the sessions will be published in the Newsletter. With that, Fred closed the meeting. Philip McMichael, Outgoing Secretary-Treasurer ***** PEWS Sessions for 1995 Annual Meeting, Washington SESSION 1: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, WORK ORGANIZATION, AND GLOBAL RESTRUCTURING. (Joint panel offered with the Science, Knowledge, and Technology Section under a reciprocal agreement between PEWS and SK & T; in 1994 we cosponsored the session on World Science and Technology Systems with SK & T). Organizers: David Smith (for PEWS) School of Social Sciences University of California - Irvine Irvine, CA 92717 E-mail: das@orion.oac.uci.edu Phone: (714) 856-7292 Peter Taylor (for SK & T) SESSION 2: GLOBAL PRAXIS AND THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD SYSTEM. Organizers: Christopher Chase-Dunn Department of Sociology Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD 21218 E-mail: chriscd@jhuvm.hcf.jhu.edu Phone: (410) 516-7626 Terry Boswell Department of Sociology Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322 E-mail: soctb@emuvm1 Phone: (404) 727-7533 SESSION 3 (IF PEWS MEMBERSHIP REACHES 400): ENVIRONMENT AND THE WORLD SYSTEM. Organizer: Albert Bergesen Department of Sociology University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721 E-mail: aberg@ccit.arizona.edu Phone: (602) 621-3303 ROUNDTABLE SESSION Organizers: Laura Raynolds Department of Sociology Binghamton University P.O. Box 6000 Binghamton, NY 13906 Phone: (607) 777-6750 Jayati Lal McGuinn Hall Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA 02167 E-mail: jayati@bcvms.bc.edu Phone: (617) 552-8524 ***** Spivack Community Action Research Fellowships Spivack Fellowship applications are due to ASA by February 15, 1995. The purpose of these fellowships is to encourage sociologists to use their knowledge to help address community issues and concerns, e.g., through needs assessments. Likely range: $1,000 to $2,500. For more information, contact: Spivack Community Action Research Fellowship, ASA, 1722 N Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036. ***** Call for Papers, PEWS XIX Political Economy of the World-System XIX Annual Conference: Latin America in the World-Economy Over the past decade, Latin America has undergone momentous changes. After oscillating between weak democratic regimes and dictatorships through most of the postwar period, nations in Latin America underwent a general shift toward the adoption of electoral democracy in the 1990s. These political changes were accompanied by the adoption of new development strategies that pursued growth through economic restructuring, an expansion of exports, and a shift away from import-substitution industrialization. Together, these new developments have reformulated the relationship between states, enterprises, and households, altering the social and institutional landscape of Latin America. We are, however, in the midst of these transformations: Their character, interrelationship, and future development are all subjects of intense controversy. To what extent has democratization brought greater effective freedom to citizens in Latin America? What are the limits and constraints of economic restructuring? What is the relationship between democratization and restructuring? What is the character of social transformations, and how will they impinge upon future institutional developments? Although our conference will focus on Latin America, these questions address broader fundamental changes currently affecting the world-econmy, challenging us to identify regional developments as tied to global cycles and trends. To address these issues, the conference organizers are particularly interested in scheduling sessions that address the following principal themes: a.THE PERSISTENCE OF AUTHORITARIANISM OR DEEPENING DEMOCRATIZATION? In order to understand current political transformations in Latin America, we seek to analyze these developments in a historical perspective. What are the institutional changes that have accompanied processes of democratization? Have democracies changed the culture of institutions such as the military over the past decade? What is the current regional status of human rights? What are the persistent differences and similarities across the region? b.THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF COMMODITY CHAINS: STATES, ENTERPRISES AND HOUSEHOLDS. Current efforts at economic restructuring in Latin Americaaan have entailed new relations between states, enterprises and households. What is the nature of these new relations? How have these new relations altered the character of these three arenas? Has the emergence of a new entrepreneurial ethos accompanied economic restructuring? What has been the regional evolution of social stratification over the past decade? What can we learn from micro and macro approaches to this theme? c.NEW REGIONAL AND CONCEPTUAL BOUNDARIES: ECONOMIC, POLITICAL AND CULTURAL FLOWS. The past decade challenged existing boundaries in Latin America. What has been the evolution of migration? Have capital flows acquired a new character? To what extent have trade agreements resulted in the creation of new institutional arrangements between and within states? What will be the appearance of these boundaries as we approach the year 2000? d.TERRAINS OF CONFRONTATION: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND CATEGORIES OF IDENTITY. The relationship between social movements and current transformations in Latin America is not clear. What has been the role of social movements over the past decade in Latin America? Has the development of new categories of identity strengthened or weakened social movements? e.REGIONAL DIFFERENCES AND COMMONALTIES. What is the role that Latin America has played and will play in the world-economy? Has it been, is it now, will be an important locus of the world accumulatiion of capital, or has it been, is it now, will it be relatively marginalized? How do the trends addessed in this conference relate to concurrent developments elsewhere in the world-economy (e.g., Eastern or Southern Europe)? What theoretical approaches and concepts have proven most useful in analyzing these transformations? The conference will be held on April 20-22 1995 at the North-South Center (University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida). We will consider papers focused on particular countries, but we strongly encourage submissions that examine Latin America as a whole or in its relation to other regions of the world-economy. Please send a detailed abstract by December 1, 1994, to both: Roberto P. Korzeniewicz Professor William C. Smith Department of Sociology Graduate School of International University of Maryland Studies College Park, MD 20742 University of Miami Fax: (301) 405-5743 Coral Gables, FL 33124 E-Mail: rk81@umail.umd.edu Fax: (305) 284-2863