The following article will appear in _SOCIOLOGICAL INQUIRY_ [64:3(Summer) 1994]. The Historical Evolution of World-Systems1 Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas D. Hall Abstact This paper synthesizes a new account of world-system evolution from contending cultural materialist, Marxist, and Weberian theories of very long-run social change. We explain the increasing size of world-systems, the rise of more and more hierarchical and larger empires and the creation of single global capitalist political economy in terms of iterations of a basic model of population growth, intensification of production, transformation of modes of accumulation, and uneven development in which semiperipheral actors construct transformational innovations. Our theory spans the twelve thousand years since the mesolithic establishment of sedentary societies. We comparatively analyze chiefdom-formation, state-formation, empire-formation and the rise and fall of hegemonic core powers in the modern world-system. Introduction World-system theory, while remaining controversial in some aspects, successfully explains many regularities in the macrosociology of the modern world. Among its many contributions are the recognition of social structures larger than thestate which interact with, and shape, social changes within states. It also provides a theoretical account for why many social processes are systematically different in different countries. Until very recently, however, world-system theory has only been used to explain for social change in the modern era, since about 1500 C. E. (Wallerstein 1974, 1979, 1980, 1989; Chase-Dunn 1989).2 Recent dramatic changes in global political arrangements have caused a spate of speculations about the future (e.g., Wagar 1992) or have inspired cavalier dismissals of all social theories with Marxian roots. The juxtaposition of the theoretical and empirical successes of world-system theory with dramatic social changes suggests that questions about transformations of past world-systems, including the origin of the modern world-system, might shed some light on the possibilities and probabilities of future transformations. Key questions are: How did the modern world-system begin? How and why did older world-systems give rise to the modern world-system? Are there regularities or patterns to world-system transformations? Such questions have led a number of scholars to re-examine the origins of that system (Abu-Lughod 1989; Frank 1990; Gills and Frank 1991; and Wallerstein 1990). During the same period a number of archaeologists have been exploring the roles of intersocietal interaction in social change. While explicitly Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. Inq._ Summer 1994 (64:3) Page 2 eschewing simplistic diffusionist accounts, they often have used concepts and explanations that derive from, or bear a strong resemblance to world-system theory (Algaze 1993; Baugh 1984; Blanton and Feinman 1984; Hall and Chase-Dunn 1993; Kohl 1987a, 1987b; Pailes and Whitecotton 1979, 1986; Santley and Alexander 1992; Schortman and Urban 1992).3 All these writers share an emphasis on the interaction of societies as a major source of social change. That is, they see the interaction of societies asthe major locus of social change within societies. World-system theory in its basic form provides an account of the dynamics of social change both at the level of the whole system and within its component parts (Wallerstein 1974, 1979, 1980, 1989; Chase-Dunn 1989). Over the last five hundred years or so, states have been the typical constituent members of world-systems. However, this temporal focus makes the extension of world-system theory to precapitalist (before approximately 1500 C. E.) settings problematic since earlier world-systems were sometimes composed of states and various types of nonstate societies (see Santley and Alexander 1992; Kohl 1987a). There is more to the world-system approach than a change in the unit of analysis. The concept of "society" is too often taken to refer to a social structure that is clearly bounded in the social world. This is far from true. "By endowing nations, societies, or cultures with the qualities of internally homogeneous and externally distinctive and bounded objects, we create a model of the world as a global pool hall in which the entitities spin off each other like so many hard and round billiard balls" (Wolf 1982:6). Rather, societies are internally heterogeneous, boundaries are permeable, and memberships fluid. They are subject to constant change and redefinition (Wolf 1982:387). World-system processes are a major cause of those changes. Indeed, a major contribution of a world-system approach to historical evolution is that it accounts for the variations in those entities we typically lump under the label "society."4 In order to be useful in addressing the problems of social change in precapitalist setting, world-system theory needs several modifications, most of which amount to transforming assumptions into empirical, historical questions (Abu-Lughod 1989; Chase-Dunn and Hall 1991, 1993). For instance, Wallerstein(1974, 1979:Ch. 1) argues that the modern world-system is unique in that it is the only world-economy (competing polities within a single economic system) that did not become a world-empire via conquest by one of the core states. Empirically this is not quite true. The modern world-system apparently is the longest lived world-economy, but there have been others that have lasted for several centuries (Wilkinson 1987, 1991; Chase- Dunn and Hall 1991, 1993). Among other things, this suggests that the celebrated interstate system of the capitalist world-economy is not as novel as is sometimes claimed. The extension of the world-systems perspective to Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. Inq._ Summer 1994 (64:3) Page 3 precapitalist settings makes a comparative approach possible. A few such studies have been done of: premodern trading systems (e.g., Abu- Lughod 1989), nomad - sedentary relations (e.g., Hall 1991a, 1991b; Frank 1992), very small-scale stateless and classless world-systems (e.g., Chase-Dunn, Clewett and Sundahl 1992), and the Bronze Age (Frank 1993). Thus far, however, these efforts lack a systematic theory of evolution (Sanderson 1990: Ch. 10). The fundamental problem, in Sanderson's (1990) view, is the need for an explanation for those patterns of social, cultural, political, and economic change that stretch from the first sedentary living adaptations in the mesolithic, approximately twelve thousand years ago, through the first surplus-producing horticultural villages approximately ten thousand years ago, up to the present.5 We prefer to call these patterns of change "historical evolution" to avoid confusion with deterministic theories of social change and to highlight our emphasis on open- ended and path dependent processes. In this article we propose such a theory. We begin by reviewing contending theoretical perspectives, then combine elements of each in our own synthetic theory of the historical evolution of world-systems. Contending Perspectives on the Evolution of World-Systems The thorniest theoretical problem is the issue of systemic logic. Most theoretical approaches have either an explicit or an implicit model of the underlying logic which operates in world- systems. The terms for this vary. Typically, it is called the mode of production or mode of accumulation. Others reveal their assumptions about system dynamics in their descriptions of central processes such as state formation, cycles of political centralization/decentralization, or modes of social integration. Besides the descriptive content which is given to notions of systemic logic, there are different metatheoretical positions regarding the way in which systemic logic changes or remains the same. Some argue that world-systems all have pretty much the same systemic logic, while others contend that systemic logics undergo fundamental transformations. There are disagreements within the "fundamental transformation school" over the definitions of different systemic logics and the timing of transformations. The Continuationists We first examine the group of theorists who maintain that all world-systems have pretty much the same logic. This discussion is somewhat complicated by the different positions taken on whether or not stateless intersocietal networks ought to be analyzed as world-systems. It is obviously easier to maintain that system logic does not fundamentally change if you exclude the really different cases from consideration. There are five theoretical positions which contend that there are no great watersheds in system logic: the geopolitics approach, the accumulationist approach, the rational choice or "formalist" Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. Inq._ Summer 1994 (64:3) Page 4 approach, cultural ecology, and the population pressure approach. In other words, among those whosay that nothing changes there are five different descriptions of that which does not change. Geopolitics The geopolitics approach is taken by those who stress the universal importance of power politics and state formation. This is the state-as-war-machine, "neo-realist," approach that has dominated recent political science. This approach focuses on the rise and fall of states -- the oscillation between interstate systems and "universal states." Political scientist David Wilkinson (1987, 1991, forthcoming) sees these processes as operating in fundamentally similar ways in all historical epochs, ancient and modern. He quips, "diamonds may be forever, but clubs are trumps." Sociologist Randall Collins (1978, 1992) combines geopolitics and Weberian state legitimacy in his analysis of both state-based and kin-based world-systems. Collins uses ideas he developed in his analysis of agrarian states and empires to understand processes of alliance-formation in kin-based world-systems. The problem of state control over great expanses of territory is solved by "technologies of power," that is institutional inventions which allow states to exercise power more efficiently (Mann 1986). While technologies of power include all sorts of political and organizational innovations in principle, including ideology in the form of religion, Mann's primary fascination is with military technology and organization. Rational Choice The rational choice universalists are those who, in reaction to Karl Polanyi's "substantivist" approach, have argued that markets and individual rationality are useful for understanding all types of human social systems. This is called "formalism," and its popularity has grown in recent years as Polanyi's work has come under increasing attack. Philip Curtin (1984) defends the formalistposition in connection with his study of crosscultural trade in world history, though he adds important institutional substance to the logic of profit in his analysis of trade diasporas and trade ecumenes. Curtin shows that long distance trade has often been carried out by specialized trading ethnicities (trade diasporas), and that the formation of a cross- culturally shared set of assumptions about the basics of exchange -- the trade ecumene -- eliminates the need for specialized trading ethnicities. Most of the formalists have not explicitly utilized world-system concepts, although much of their work is useful for world-systems analysis. "Cultural materialism," which focuses on the material bases of all social life, also emphasizes economic rationality and efficiency (Harris 1979).6 "Optimal foraging" based on formal economics and studies of animal foraging patterns, explain intensification and diversification of foraging patterns in terms of individual and family "rational choices" in minimizing procurement costs for hunter-gatherer bands. According to this approach a mix of foraging activities, all exploited at the same procurement costs, Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. Inq._ Summer 1994 (64:3) Page 5 should remain stable except when upset by changes in population density, technology, or the environment (see Johnson and Earle 1987:12). In this approach intergroup interaction are strongly shaped by specific foraging strategies in particular environments. Accumulationism The "accumulationists" contend that capitalism, geopolitics, and especially capitalist accumulation have been an important process since the emergence of the first states in Mesopotamia. The strong version of accumulationism contends that there has been a single world- system for five thousand years which displays a logic which oscillates between periods in which states are the mainengines of accumulation followed by periods in which private families are the main accumulators (Gills and Frank 1991). The logic of this system is "capital imperialism" (Ekholm and Friedman 1982). Less strident versions of accumulationism recognize that the transformation prestige goods economies evolved into urbanized states in which "abstract wealth" (capital) became an important element of social reproduction (Ekholm and Friedman 1982; Friedman 1992). Despite recognition of the transformations that occurred with the development of states we associate this approach with accumulationism because of its stress on the continuity of systemic logic across all state-based systems, ancient and modern.7 The continuationists portray a world history in which a continuous systemic logic is reproduced across the sequence of rising and falling states and empires, and one in which core regions migrate across space. They see core/periphery exploitation as essential to the construction of new core regions. The modern world-system is understood as a continuation of these long term processes of centralization and decentralization. These authors deny that a major change in systemic logic occurred with the rise of Europe and, in Frank's (1989) version, no future changes in systemic logic are postulated. Cultural Ecology Two other theoretical traditions ought to be mentioned because they have either been used to understand world-systems, or they easily could be. Ecological evolutionism combines "cultural ecology" (Steward 1955) -- which emphasizes the interaction between society and environment -- with the analysis of changes in productive technology (Lenski et al. 1991).8 Cultural ecology has traditionally been applied locally and has tended to ignore intersocietal interactions, in part because it was a reaction to the earlier macro-diffusionismof Gordon Childe. There is no reason why intersocietal systems could not be theorized from this approach. Population Pressure Population growth and population pressure are often used as the master variables to explain culture change (Boserup 1965). Thus, Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. Inq._ Summer 1994 (64:3) Page 6 technological change is an adaptation which occurs when population density has reached or gone beyond the number of human beings that the current technology and production practices in that specific environment. This limit is known as the "carrying capacity" of the environment. Cultural ecology and population pressure have important implications for world-system development when they are combined with the idea of social and ecological circumscription (Carneiro 1970). Sometimes when a population living in a region that is relatively isolated (circumscribed) reaches its carrying capacity it resolves the production crisis by developing more complex social organization that can raise the carrying capacity of that region by new efficiencies in production. Some of the first states were developed under such conditions. These conditions can also account for other types of hierarchy formation and technological change.9 The elements of population pressure, technological change, economic pressures, and circumscription are combined in different ways, but this general approach comprises most of the recent explanations of long run cultural evolution by archaeologists. The scholars who construct these theories often see them as being as relevant to contemporary social change as they were for explaining the emergence of human culture and complex societies. The Transformationists Now we turn to those who see major transformations as occurring in systemic logics. These include those who emphasize the substantive, as opposed toformal, workings of economies, those who work with Marx's concept of modes of production, and those who synthesize Marxian and Weberian concepts of social structure. Substantivists Societies differ qualitatively with respect to the institutional mechanisms which produce social order, especially the mechanisms of exchange (Polanyi 1977). Reciprocal exchange systems based on culturally defined rights and obligations are the typical integrative mechanisms of small societies. The moral order, usually expressed in kinship terms, provided a basis for the production and exchange of goods in these societies. Socially constructed norms of sharing and reciprocity regulated production and exchange. The emergence of more hierarchical societies coincided with the rise of "redistributive" forms of exchange in which a central authority gathered necessary resources and redistributed them. Exchange in such systems was characterized as "state-administered" and those persons directly involved in carrying out such exchange were described as agents of the state rather than as merchants operating on their own account. In more complex and larger scale systems the key integrative mechanism is a "price-setting" markets in which the rates of exchange (prices) among goods are heavily influence by the competitive buying and selling of a large number of actors operating to maximize their individual returns. According to Polanyi (1977) the emergence of market relations Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. Inq._ Summer 1994 (64:3) Page 7 as a long-term development in which monetized exchange penetrated more and more deeply into society and price-setting mechanisms replaced customary or politically set rates of exchange. He emphasized the socially constructed historicity of markets and also their failure to, by themselves, provide for many of the necessities ofsocial order in complex societies. Polanyi's schema has been modified in some respects by those neo-Marxists who share a transformational approach with Polanyi (see below), but it has also been vigorously attacked by the "formalists" who emphasize the rational economic basis of decision-making in all human societies. Much of the attack on Polanyi has been based on research which has found that some of his empirical claims were untrue. There is convincing evidence that market-like mechanisms existed within early state-based systems which Polanyi claimed were marketless. For example, Polanyi pointed to the Kultepe tablets as evidence supporting his case that trade between Bronze Age Assur and Anatolia was state- administered. Subsequent discoveries of additional tablets have shown that Polanyi's interpretation was mistaken in some respects (Curtin 1984; Allen 1992). What still remains in dispute is the relative significance of these forms of market exchange for the systems in question. Even though market systems may have been important much earlier than Polanyi claimed, this does vitiate systemic qualitative differences between kin-based, state-based, and capitalist world-systems. Modes of Production Some writers have combined Polanyi's modes of integration approach with Marx's modes of production approach. Mode of production analysis concentrates on the nature of the institutional mechanisms of accumulation. In so-called kin-based societies accumulation and the mobilization of social labor was accomplished through the mechanism of the moral order -- socially agreed upon rights and obligations, usually embedded in kinship relations. All societies accumulate resources and these are called "capital" by some scholars. But capitalist accumulation in Marx's sense is a qualitatively different process from that whichis used by nomadic pastoralists to increase their herds or by sedentary foragers to store food. Hence, we draw a sharp distinction between capital accumulation and capitalist accumulation. The integration of kin-ordered world-systems maps closely with Polanyi's "reciprocity." As societies became more hierarchical, a class of non-producers used institutions based on coercive control of key resources (means of production) to extract surplus product from direct producers. Though this was organized as hierarchical kinship relations in complex chiefdoms, some class societies eventually developed states in which institutional bases of power and property were separated from kinship ties. State-based systems used politically structured coercion as the main basis for the extraction of surplus product from direct producers. The underlying logic behind appropriation in such Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. Inq._ Summer 1994 (64:3) Page 8 societies is called the "tributary modes of production" (Amin 1980, 1991; Wolf 1982). This type of integration differs from Polanyi's "redistribution" primarily in its emphasis on the element of coercion which stands behind state-based accumulation. As more and more goods are exchanged as commodities through price-setting markets, integrating mechanisms become subject to increasing pressure to change. The emergence of commodified land, wealth, goods and labor eventually create the basis for a capitalist logic of accumulation based on the production and sale of commodities using commodified labor. There are important distinctions between merchant capitalism and production capitalism but, as with Polanyi, the development of commodification is understood as a long-term process in which market-like relations penetrate more and more areas of societies and intersocietal relations. The Polanyian-Marxist approach to transformation argues that differentlogics may be present in the same system, but that most systems are dominated by one logic which tends to bend other institutional forms in to congruence with it. Most of the scholars who take this approach argue that world-systems were predominantly kin-based until the emergence of the first states. The tributary modes are thought to have been predominant in world-systems composed of states and empires, even though commodification developed slowly and partially throughout the history of the tributary world-systems. Indeed, the strong development of capitalist forces in China nearly led to the emergence of capitalism as a predominant mode in the Sung and early Ming dynasties according to some (see Fitzpatrick 1992). Capitalism was successful in becoming a fully predominant mode of accumulation for the first time in Europe. Immanuel Wallerstein uses modes of production to bound world- systems. Thus, according to Wallerstein, Europe and the Ottoman Empire were separate systems because capitalism was dominant in Europe but not in the Ottoman Empire (1983). His use of mode of production as a bounding criterion creates confusion. If we assume that each world-system has only one mode of production it becomes impossible to analyze those systems in which modes of production are contending with one another. This makes it difficult to study the transformation of production within world- systems. For instance, Katherine Moseley (1992) compares the interaction of West Africa with the European world-system on the one hand, and the North African Arabian world-system on the other. He analysis contrasts the effects of two different world- systems on West Africa. We suggest, however, that this triangle is better understooda as two different core regions, with different modes of production, contending for access to a distant peripheral region. This may seem only a terminological quibble, but such matters are likely to have important consequences for the wayin which we analyze systemic transformations. Marxian-Weberian Structuralism As noted earlier, accumulationists see a major transformation in Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. Inq._ Summer 1994 (64:3) Page 9 system logic occurring with the rise of states, but stress the continuities of "capital imperialism" thereafter. Friedman and Rowlands (1978) formulate an explicitly world-system and structuralist Marxist interpretation of the politics of kinship -- the construction and maintenance of alliances among groups. This is a critical extension of analyses of the oscillation between hierarchical and egalitarian kinship systems in Burma (Leach 1965). They also discuss the ways in which strategies of wife-giving and wife-taking among chiefly rivals interacts with changes in gender relations. They also explore the connection between state formation and gender relations, an important topic since Engels. Although they make important contributions to the understanding of transformations of gender relations in the midst of state formation, they emphasize continuity in the logic of accummulation thereafter. While the preceding theories make many important contributions to our understanding of the origin of the modern world-system, none address the systematic effects of world-system-like processes in social evolution. Our Theory Out of the existing theories about the historical development of world-systems we have synthesized our own. Our theory combines the idea of iterations of a basic model with transformations in modes of accumulation. We eschew the term, "mode of production" because it raises a number of controversies among neomarxian theorist that have little or no bearing on our concerns (e.g., Taylor 1979; Friedman 1992). We use mode of accumulation in the sense of the deepstructural logic of production, distribution, exchange, and accumulation in order to focus on the institutional mechanisms by which labor is mobilized and social reproduction is accomplished (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1992). This allows us to account for both the similarities and the systemic differences across world-system types. A full explication of these modifications would require a book, so here we outline our theory at a rather abstract level. The contextual substrata of human social change are those demographic and ecological facts which are built into the natural universe. Nature is not a uniform plain upon which humans erect their condos. The climatic, topographical, and geological features of the earth vary from place to place, as does the composition of the biosphere. Human beings are part of the biosphere and human culture is built upon this bumpy surface. Variations in the medium impose constraints on what can be written. The biological constraints on human behavior are less limiting than for all animals because of the unusually large proportion of the human brain which is composed of unpreprogrammed cortex. But there are still constraints embedded in our brains as well as in our bowels. We are smart, but we have needs which no amount of cultural redefinition can obliterate. The main constraints and moving forces behind human social Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. Inq._ Summer 1994 (64:3) Page 10 change have been demographic and economic. Demographically there is a tendency for the human population to expand, though all world-systems structure and regulate this tendency. The organizational costs of regulating population expansion are an important constraint in all systems, and population growth is an important basic stimulus of fundamental social change. Population growth, however, and the more complicated notion of "population pressure," are not sufficient as prime movers because these interact with ecological and economic constraints. Theories which posit population pressure as the main motor of human social change usually contend that when a population exceeds its environment's carrying capacity innovation and change in methods of production are stimulated. The critics of population pressure have pointed to many cases in which major technological or organizational change has occurred in the apparent absence of environmental saturation beyond carrying capacity. This can occur because incentives to innovation and adoption of new technologies, as well as outmigration, exist which do not depend on population saturation beyond carrying capacity. Once a population of a certain size has lived in a locale for a period of time the resources which are being exploited will tend to decline. This is the well-known explanation for nomadism and shifting agriculture. People eat up nature and then must move on. It is not necessary for nature to be completely destroyed however. Well before this has happened the amount of effort needed to obtain the same return will have increased substantially. This is a fine incentive to move or to do something differently. However, people usually prefer to continue in the way that they know as long as this does not require substantially greater effort--that is, they follow the principle of least effort (Zipf 1949). Even when it does require more effort, some, maybe many, will persist until they exhaust the environmental capacity to sustain them. At this point some sort of disaster will strike, either lowering or destroying the population. Others will move to a new area where they can pursue old patterns without undue hardship. Still others will modify their behavior in ways which allow them to remain in the same area and to retain some features of life that they value. It should be noted here that individual actors and collectivities may be entirely unaware of long-term consequences ofwhat seem like only slightly more strenuous adaptations. Still, it is precisely the possibility of alternatives in this situation that renders evolution historically contingent and path dependent. While it is probably not possible to develop an entirely determinative explanation, it is possible to analyze those factors and processes that structure the probabilities of each alternative. Ecology structures the economics of least effort because it provides the limits on available resources and potential alternative resources. As world-systems become more complex and hierarchical these limits and potentials are increasingly Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. Inq._ Summer 1994 (64:3) Page 11 structured by existing social organization and cultural legacies. The principle of least effort applies most purely and forcefully to the economic behavior of households. When these are autonomous and able to obtain access to necessary resources, the principle of least effort is the major determinant of subsistence behavior. This becomes greatly altered when households become culturally, politically, and economically controlled by hierarchical or stratified social orders. In such societal contexts the principle of least effort continues to operate, but it is masked by institutional mechanisms which extract much greater amounts of labor from households by means of coercion, exchange, or ideological mystification. Technological innovation and adoption of intensified production acts back on population growth by increasing the number of people who can be fed and sheltered within a given amount of land. This stimulates population to rise, or rather it reduces the incentives to maintain the (costly) cultural and social regulations on population expansion. So population density tends to increase to the point where resources are again pressed. Then the whole cycle goes around again. This simple model does not explain the kind of social change which takesplace. Nor does it explain where or when social change takes place. But it does provide a processual backdrop for explaining the most general features of human social change -- the increasing population density, scale, and hierarchy of social organization. To this basic model we need to add two more levels. The first designates some general problems which confront all world-systems in the context of the operation of the above processes. A second level is intermediate between general evolution and particularistic history. This is the level at which differences explain why some systems change in ways that differ from others. We begin with the general problems, then turn to the intermediate level. General Problems in Technological Change Technological development and the use of intensified methods of production encounter four basic problems in all world-systems. The relative importance of these problems varies depending upon demographic and ecological factors, and upon the institutional structures which already exist. Nevertheless these problem are generally recurrent, and they present possibilities for further institutional change and hierarchy-building. The four social problems which accompany or follow changes in production technology are: 1. increased competition and/or conflict; 2. new scarcities of necessary resources; 3. dependency on new types of production and resultant risk of failure; and 4. collective needs for savings and investment in relatively long term, large scale projects Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. Inq._ Summer 1994 (64:3) Page 12 Every change in the organization of production tends to disrupt existing mechanisms of social order leading to increasing competition and conflict. Marxformulated this as the revolutionary effects which technological change (change in forces of production) had on societal superstructures such as political and religious institutions. Older institutions which produce order, whatever they may be, are subjected to strains when new production schemes are introduced and this may produce new levels and kinds of destructive conflict. Of course, conflict and competition are normal processes within all world- systems, but here we are talking about large rises in the level of these, and their breaking out of "normal" modes. It is also important to recognize that different modes of accumulation have very different effects on the processes and rates of technological innovation and the restructuring of production processes. Different modes of production also have very different degrees of tolerance for technological change. In some modes very minor changes may provoke major disorganization, whereas in others technological change itself is somewhat "normalized" by the existence of institutional mechanisms which allow polities and cultures to adapt to technological changes without major disruptions or breakdown in social order. At one extreme is the nearly total collapse of an Australian Aboriginal band upon first being presented with steel axes (Sharp 1952). At the other extreme is the modern world-system which has absorbed tremendous technological changes with no change in system logic (Chase-Dunn 1989). In between are the effects of the fur trade (Kardulias 1990) or acquisition of horses and guns on American Indians (Secoy 1953; Hall 1989b). The second general problem is the emergence of new scarcities as a consequence of technological development. New methods of production may themselves demand inputs that are not available or are difficult to produce locally. This is a spur to trade with, or conquest of, other regions. Second, a rise in the availability of, say, food as a result of changes in farmingtechnology may enable local population to rise, and this may in turn deplete other local resources. This is also a spur to trade or conquest. Third, technological change which saves labor may allow specialization by releasing labor for other pursuits. Sometimes such pursuits create additional demand for goods not available locally. Additional potential surplus resulting from technological change may be appropriated by old or new elites, and may also result in demand for other goods not obtainable locally. Old elites with new resources or new elites may also undertake new political alliances, trade links, or military campaigns irrespective of any needs for imported material goods because these kinds of enterprises provide legitimacy and additional sources of support for maintaining or further expanding hierarchies. The third general problem which accompanies technological change is potential resource scarcities resulting from growing Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. Inq._ Summer 1994 (64:3) Page 13 dependence on any new surplus produced by the new technology. If more food is available and the population grows that new food source must be reliable or there will be grave consequences. All new strategies involve some risk. Strategies which reduce production diversity by specializing in one kind of production are particularly risky if that strategy fails. The shift from diversified foraging to mixed horticulture and then to agricultural monocropping involved a massive long-term specialization which increased productivity of land and labor, but which also exposed the population to extreme dependence on a very few cultigens. Institutional responses to such production risks include the maintenance of resource fall-backs, storage facilities, and the development of interregional political alliances and trade ties. This problem is another spur to interregional integration and a set of possible opportunities for hierarchy formation. The fourth general problem which arises with technological change is thedemand for new forms of collective savings and investment in new long-term projects. Of course all types of society need ways to store resources in order to provide for seasonal or other shortfalls. This kind of "accumulation" occurs in even egalitarian societies, even among paleolithic nomadic hunters. If technological change results in increased population density, this usually creates new intermittent scarcities, and thus new needs for collective savings. Technological change may also render some older forms of production insufficient for meeting the needs of either an expanded population or a new hierarchy. It may be desirable to engage in other new forms of production in order to meet such needs, and these often require the pooling of resources or the expenditure of labor on large projects which have long-term payoffs. Thus the construction of granaries, irrigation systems, fish-weirs, etc. require the investment of social resources. These kinds of collective investments can be organized and controlled by egalitarian alliances, but they also provide opportunities for more centralized and hierarchical control by emergent elites. Of course, once such elites have emerged they may undertake such projects, or other expenditures of social labor or wealth, for their own purposes. At every level of organizational complexity there are several possible structural solutions to each of these problems. The determination of which of these solutions is adopted in any particular instance is extremely complex, involving the interaction of broad constraints, the particularities of ecology and the prior institutional terrain in each world-system. Generally the dimensions of possible institutional mechanisms for resolving these problems take either an hierarchical or an egalitarian form, with many mixed forms in between. Hierarchical political forms usually win out over egalitarian forms because of their superiorities in competition and conflict with egalitarian forms, but this isnot always the case. The nature of competition Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. Inq._ Summer 1994 (64:3) Page 14 and cooperation itself alters as world-systems become larger and more complex, and these changes affect the nature of political and economic integration and the forms taken by societal and intersocietal hierarchies. Thus, the degree of hierarchy that develops in any particular situation is a consequence of the interaction of many factors. To sum up: economic processes operate in a context of demographic forces and ecological constraints to produce technological change. This feeds back on demographic processes and forward on social organizational potentials through four general problems: new forms and levels of competition, new scarcities, new risks, and new demands for savings and investment. These contextual and social features of human systems have produced the facts of social change which we observe -- a transformation over the last twelve thousand years from low density nomadic bands of big game hunters with few intergroup social ties to a single high density integrated global network of hierarchical industrial societies. But why do some systems change in one way, and others in different ways? Accounting for Similarities and Differences Among World-Systems In between this highly schematic model of general social evolution and the particularistic history of specific events and social changes is an intermediate level of theoretical specification. In addition to the preceding similarities, all world-systems exhibit cycles of political centralization and decentralization, even those extremely small and egalitarian systems composed of sedentary foragers. These cyclical processes of hierarchy formation are typically unstable over time, resulting in rise and fall patterns. The dynamics of these cycles contains the root of world-system differences. This is not to gainsay other systematic processes contributing to declines. Complex societies and empires are subject to decreasing marginal returns which often lead to overshoot andcollapse (Tainter 1988). This is analogous to the processes by which bands, tribes, and chiefdoms sometime disappear as noted earlier. A key difference is that "civilizations" leave relatively easily found "ruins," whereas less complex world- systems often do not. Hence, declines, which are frequently taken as a hallmark of "civilizations," are an artifact of preservation rather than an identifying characteristic of state systems. However, the eventual outcome of general social evolution has been toward greater hierarchy and spatially larger economic and political integration. The development of great leaps in hierarchy, complexity, and polity size has been uneven in space such that the leading edge moves. This unevenness is not random, but is systematically related to intersocietal hierarchy and differentiation. This why a world-system model is superior to other formulations. All systems experience the rise and fall of hierarchies, and some undergo increases in the level of technology and organization through processes which are Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. Inq._ Summer 1994 (64:3) Page 15 importantly structured by intersocietal relations. New organizational forms typically develop in regions which are "semiperipheral" and so the nature of core/periphery relations are important contextual features of those historical periods in which fundamental transformations occur (Chase-Dunn 1988, 1990). This said, we must now address the problem of how world-system types are systemically different. Our main theoretical apparatus for addressing this problem is the concept of mode of accumulation or systemic logic discussed above (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1992, 1993). We argue that the underlying logic of competition and cooperation has altered over time. We will present this as a series of iterations of the general model described above in which the mode of accumulation changes along with changes in spatial scale and degree of hierarchy. The features or patterned processes which all world-systems share -- technological change, demographic expansion, spatial integration and the rise and fall of polities -- are importantly modified by the nature of the logic of social production and accumulation which is predominant in each system. An example will illustrate the point. Chiefdom formation and the processes of the rise and fall of chiefdoms are similar in many ways to other types of hierarchy formation and cycles of political centralization/decentralization -- e.g., state formation, empire formation, the rise and fall of modern hegemonic core powers. All these involve strategies which play on the problems which accompany technological change outlined above. Households need, or can benefit from, or can be induced to support, or can be coerced to comply with solutions to these problems which allow hierarchies to increase their control of resources. Processes of competition among different groups within a societal hierarchy, or between societies, or resistance from non-elites, place constraints on hierarchy formation in all world-systems. These lead to the rise and fall phenomenon. But the game of chiefdom formation is still different from the game of state formation. Part of the difference is simply a matter of scale. States are usually much larger than chiefdoms and so the problems of politically subjugating a much large number of people spread over a greater territory are somewhat different. While states are typically larger than chiefdoms, there are exceptions. An especially efficiently organized chiefdom in a rich environment might exceed the size of an unusually inefficient state in a depleted, or resource scarce, environment. However, it would be extremely rare to find these two extremes as neighbors. The main differences stem from the nature of integration and resistance in chiefdoms and states. Chiefdoms usually rule class societies in which metaphorical kinship relations have become stratified to legitimate hierarchy.Chiefs, like all rulers, are under pressures from subalterns and from competing chiefs to expand the amount of resources under their control. As in other systems, those who are successful at this typically overextend Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. Inq._ Summer 1994 (64:3) Page 16 themselves and thus expose themselves to collapse. Chiefdoms expand by incorporating additional outlying regions into themselves. This is accomplished by forming alliances with local leaders or by conquest. In either case incorporation is institutionalized through intermarriage and the creation of fictive kin-relations. This involves the creation of kin-based obligations which the chief may use for mobilizing resources or labor power. But these kinds of alliances, which are structured as kinship relations, typically also involve reciprocal obligations by which the chief can be called upon to perform services for the allies. The problem of expansion is to create obligations which are a net gain for the chief, that is, to obtain access to resources which are relatively unconstrained and which can be used flexibly. This search for independent resources is another way in which state-formation and chiefdom- formation are similar, and this factor leads in both cases to investments in new forms of production, as well as to trade and conquest. The most important structural difference between states and chiefdoms is in the institutional nature of rights and obligations among elites. The necessity within chiefdoms to formulate all alliances and obligations in kinship terms constrains the leader in two main ways. The first is with regard to the plasticity of organizational forms. Blood relations are fictional in all societies, but they are also relatively difficult to redefine on a short-term basis. Relations based on religious ideas are rather more manipulable, and so states utilize ideologies of integration which are institutionally separated from kinship. Another liability of kinship ideology is the strong link of blood-reckoning withreciprocity. The kin- based obligations which the chief owes to subalterns are strong constraints on the chief's ability to accumulate independent resources. In the ideologies employed by states reciprocity continues as a principle but is most usually (but not always) eviscerated in practice. So the hierarchicalization of kin relations enables chiefdoms to centralize power to a certain extent, but it also places upper limits on the size which any chiefdom can attain. The development of ideologies which legitimate hierarchy in ways which are independent of the obligations for reciprocity typically embedded in kin relations makes larger polities (states) possible. This does not explain the historical emergence of states, but it does illustrate an important systemic difference between state formation and chiefdom formation which is due to a change in the institutional logic of accumulation. Another example of such a change is the comparison between the rise and fall of empires in which the tributary mode is predominant with the rise and fall of hegemonic core states within the capitalist world-economy. These two processes are similar in that they both involve oscillation between a relatively more centralized and a relatively less centralized Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. Inq._ Summer 1994 (64:3) Page 17 political/military structure. In the first case the oscillation is between an interstate system composed of several empires and states on the one hand and a system in which there is a single "universal state" on the other. We refer to this process as empire formation. In the modern world-system empire formation has not occurred, but there has been an oscillation within the interstate system between a situation in which the economic and political/military power of a number of core states is more or less equal on the one hand, and a situation is which one core state has an unusually large share of world economic and military power. This latter power is called the hegemon. The oscillation constituted by the rise and fall ofhegemons is called the hegemonic sequence. In the hegemonic sequence the hegemon never takes over the whole core to form a universal empire, and so we say that the modern interstate system is peculiarly immune to empire formation. The hegemon in the modern world-system typically acts as a "power-balancer," and this is the main explanation for the prevention of empire formation by conquest. Any "rogue power" that attempts to take over other core states is faced with a coalition led by the hegemon, and this coalition, at least so far, has succeeded in preventing empire formation. But why should the hegemon not itself attempt empire formation, especially when things are not going well for it? The most important factor which explains these differences in the processes of political centralization/decentralization is the mode of accumulation. When the tributary mode is predominant, the classes that control states accumulate resources primarily by means of politically articulated extraction. These take different forms -- slavery, serfdom, taxation, tribute -- but they all dependent directly on the use of political military power to extract resources. In the modern world-system a different institutional form for accumulation has become predominant, though this has not completely replaced coercion. Capitalism accumulates resources by means of commodity production and the sale of commodities. This form of accumulation is most concentrated in the core of the world-system, and within the core in the hegemonic core state. Political/military power remains an important form of support for capitalist accumulation because it is used to guarantee access to raw materials and markets, but it is no longer itself the main lever of accumulation. States which are under the control of capitalists act differently than states which accumulate resources directly. The hegemon acts to preserve the interstate system becausethis form of polity is more compatible with the interests of capitalists as a class than world empire would be. Thus the mode of accumulation accounts for differences in the process of political centralization/decentralization. Thus, as indicated in the introduction, Wallerstein's claim that the modern world-system is the only world-economy not to become a world-empire is not exactly wrong, but neither is it precisely correct. Rather, there is a basic difference, but it is more complex than he Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. Inq._ Summer 1994 (64:3) Page 18 portrays it. There are other important differences between different types of world-systems besides the mode of accumulation. Differences of scale are perhaps the most important. But there are also cultural and ecological characteristics which differentiate these systems. Technological development is not only important with regard to the processes of the direct production of food and raw materials. Besides the evolutionary trend toward greater intensification of production and the use of ever-greater amounts of human and non- human energy, there has been a general reduction of transportation and communications costs. Technological changes in transportation and communication have facilitated the incorporation of thousands of small scale world-systems into a single global system. Like many other secular trends (population, destructiveness of weaponry, etc.) transportation costs and communications costs have decreased over the centuries, but at a rather slow rate compared to the geometric declines that have occurred in the last two hundred years. The recent acceleration in transportation and communication is called "time- space compression" (Harvey 1989). Nevertheless, even when this process was relatively slow, it enabled trade networks, arenas of military competition, and intersocietal communications networks to grow in size. Changes in transportation andcommunications technologies also interacted with intensification of production, innovations in military organization and weapons and organizational techniques for extracting resources over long distances to produce an uneven rise in the size of polities and the unification of all regions of the globe into a single world- system. Conclusion In a speculative, theoretical article the term "conclusion" is premature. However, we argue that we have presented a theory of long-term, world-system evolution that maintains the partial successes of earlier theories while adding new dimensions. Chief among those is the change in unit of analysis from the "society" to the "world-system." By this we by no means imply that societies do not matter. They are crucial, but within a systemic context. The failure of society-based theories lies in their lack of systematic attention to intersocietal interrelations. In constructing this theory of world-system historical evolution we have extensively modified Wallerstein's (1974) original formulation. We retain the label, world-system, because we follow his key insight that there is an important level of social regularities and interactions above that of the state. A great deal of research is needed to test, or probe, this theory. No doubt it will need modification. But without an explicit theory of change, such research becomes a crap shoot rather than a systematic process. Finally, we hope by probing past patterns of change we can gain insight into possible futures Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. Inq._ Summer 1994 (64:3) Page 19 and hints how to maximize general social benefits from them. ENDNOTES 1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Miami, August, 1993. Thomas Hall thanks the students in Sociology of Social Change at DePauw University, Fall 1993 for many lively discussions, comments, and suggestions as they grappled with the issues discussed in this paper. They have made a significant contribution to revisions of this paper. He also acknowledges the support from the President's Discretionary Fund and the Faculty Development Committee at DePauw in support of continuing study of precapitalist world-systems. 2 We follow the current convention and label time either C.E. (Current Era) or B.C.E. (Before Current Era), dropping the old A.D. and B.C. convention. 3 For an extensive review of archaeological literature explicitly or implicitly using world-system theory see Hall and Chase-Dunn (1993). 4 Tilly (1984) makes much the same point. The theme of world- systemic forces shaping "societies," "tribes," and "ethnic groups" is elaborated in Hall (1987, 1989a, 1989b). 5 Sedentary living preceded the development of farming. Indeed, it appears that intensification of foraging by already sedentary people led to the domestication of plants and animals (Henry 1985, Lenski et al. 1991; Price and Brown 1985; Renfrew and Bahn 1991). 6 We do not wish to oversimplify Harris's many rich analyses of the material bases of culture, but rather only want to indicate the broad similarities to other formalist rational choice approaches. Much work on Ancient Mesoamerica has been done in a similar vein (Blanton et al. 1981; Blanton et al. 1993). 7 The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand? edited by Andre Gunder Frank and Barry K. Gills (1993) collects these and other essays, along with some new commentary in a convenient volume. It is the best compendium of accumulationist approaches. 8 The cultural ecology in anthropology was pioneered by Julian Steward (1955) and extended by many others. Johnson and Earle (1987) discuss evolution from a cultural ecologicial perspective. Chase-Dunn & Hall forthcoming _Soc. 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