Date: 18 Feb 1993 19:14:47 -0500 (EST)
From: Tom Hall <THALL@WABASH.BITNET>
Subject: pews news cleaned
To: chriscd@jhuvm.BITNET
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The following appeared in PEWS News Winter 1993, pp. 2-3.  (The Newsletter of
the Political Economy of the World-System section of the American Sociological
Association).
 
                   Pre-1500ers:  Reweaving the World-System
        Why look all the way back to 10,000 years B.P.E. (Before
        Present Era), or even to 5,000 BPE to study world-systems?
        Contrary to Al Bergesen's comments (1992a), I argue that this
        is a reweaving world-system theory (WST).  It is an attempt to
        make it more general, not an unraveling spurred by some fin de
        siecle despondency.  I see three motivations behind this
        attempt.  The first is an attempt to gain perspective on
        current changes and stabilities in the modern world-system
        (MWS).  The second is an attempt to grapple with the
        persistent frustrations with WST of archaeologists, and to a
        lesser extent civilizationists and world historians.  Concern
        with long-term social change connects these two.  Namely, how
        did humans get from a situation of some 100,000 societies with
        around 100 members to 100 or so societies of 100 million
        members?
             Chris Chase-Dunn (1990) has argued that the study of past
        world-system transformations is one way to gain insights into
        future transformations.  Wagar's (1992) Short History of the
        Future weaves a world-system based scenario of the future.
        And even Al Bergesen (1992b), inter alii, has argued that if
        Japan becomes the next hegemon this will lead to an
        unprecedented shift away from Western to Asian cultural
        symbols whose origins far pre-date 1500.
             Students of the pre-1500 past have noted a need for
        something like WST.  In an autocritique of The Rise of the
        West William McNeill (1990) cited a need to pay more attention
        to the formation of world-system-like social structures.
        Archaeologists continue to be interested interregional
        interaction as a major source of social change (Schortman and
        Urban 1992).  For the most part they have complained about the
        inadequacies of WST for their problems (Hall and Chase-Dunn
        1993).  For WST to be useful it needs to be stretched,
        loosened, adapted, and otherwise modified so that many
        features which are more-or-less constant for the MWS can be
        reconceptualized as theoretical variables:  relative weights
        of economics and politics in political-economy; roles of
        kinship, tribute, trade, and industrialization in capital
        accumulation; transformations and articulations of modes of
        production; degree and direction of domination and
        exploitation; etc.  (See recent special issues of Humboldt
        Journal of Social Relations (1992, 18:1) and Review (1992,
        15:3), and Chase-Dunn and Hall (1991, 1993)).
             Process of long-term social change connect ancient and
        future world-systems.  Because the nonstate societies
        encountered by Europeans were most often greatly transformed
        by those contacts, much of our thinking on social evolution is
        based on faulty data.  Thus, an examination of the processes
        of precapitalist core/periphery structures (c/ps) will help
        "clean" this data.  This, in turn, should lead to new insights
        into at least four major processes occurring within the MWS.
             First is the process of state formation.  How did this
        now nearly ubiquitous form of social organization originate
        to Marx's, Wagar's, or some other scenario?  This concern is
        the primary source of the differences with Frank and Gills who
        begin their accounts after states already exist (see Chase-
        Dunn's introduction to Review special issue).
             The problem of patriarchy is tied to state formation.
        Following Silverblatt (1988) and Gailey (1987) the formation
        of states (and possibly chiefdoms) involved the demotion of
        kinship and the promotion of the politics (and economics) as
        the major "glue" holding societies together.  The demotion of
        kinship seems to entail a degradation of women, because of
        their unambiguous roles in kinship determination.  The
        elegance of this analysis is that it simultaneously explains
        male dominance in all state societies and the tremendous
        variations in the details of that dominance.  Gender relations
        in any one society or c/ps are a result of the transformation
        of the specific, pre-state form of kinship and the processes
        of state formation.
             Third, many, if not all, state-based core/periphery
        systems absorbed and transformed nonstate societies, sometimes
        generating oppositional states (Chase-Dunn 1988), sometimes
        creating enclave minorities, and always generating problems of
        acculturation or resocialization for those incorporated into
        the c/ps.  Occasionally, nonstate societies forced changes in
        states.  This was the case in Central Asia as nomad
        confederations rose and fell with Chinese dynasties (Barfield
        1989).  In particular the Mongol Empire played a key role in
        the fall of the East and the rise of the West (Fitzpatrick
        1992).  Finally, many of the "tribes" we know to day--in the
        Americas and elsewhere--were created in the process of state-
        nonstate conflict on the expanding frontiers of the MWS (Hall
        1989, for American Southwest).
             Fourth, the entire mix of status and nonstatus groups is
        shaped by processes within core/periphery structures.
        Obviously, expansion and absorption of new peoples within c/ps
        creates new status groups.  When acculturation is successful
        (from the dominant cultural point of view) these groups are
        "temporary" lasting only a few generations.  When groups come
        to occupy specific economic roles their differentness can be
        continually recreated.  Even a class segment that becomes too
        tightly associated with a narrow occupational specialty may be
        transformed into a status group.  This seems to be the case
        for ancient traders, what Philip Curtain has called trade
        diasporas (1984).  This may be what is happening to the urban
        underclass/lumpenproletariat in the U.S., even while middle
        classes of color are becoming fully acculturated/integrated.
             This list could be extended.  The examination of these
        processes in ancient world-systems should yield new insights
        into to all these processes.  Such studies will help delineate
        what is truly different about the (post) modern world-system.
        This, for me at least, is not an unraveling of theory, but an
        effort to reweave it into a more comprehensive tool for
        understanding and shaping our world.
 
                                  REFERENCES
 
        Barfield, Thomas J.  1989.  The Perilous Frontier.  London:
             Blackwell.
        Bergesen, Albert.  1992a.  "Pre- vs. Post-1500ers:  Who is
             Right?"  Pews News Summer:2-4.
        _____.  1992b.  Godzilla, Durkheim, and the World-System.
             Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 18:(1):195-216.
        Chase-Dunn, Christopher.  1988.  "Comparing World Systems:
             Toward a Theory of Semiperipheral Development."
             Comparative Civilizations Review  19(Fall):29-66.
        _____.  1990.  "World State Formation:  Historical Processes
             and Emergent Necessity."  Political Geography Quarterly
             9:2(April):108-130.
        Chase-Dunn, Christopher and Thomas D. Hall, eds.  1991.
             Core/Periphery Relations in Precapitalist Worlds.
             Boulder, CO:  Westview Press.
        _____.  1993.  "Comparing World-Systems:  Concepts and Working
             Hypotheses."  Social Forces, forthcoming
        Curtin, Philip D.  1984.  Cross-Cultural Trade in World
             History.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.
        Fitzpatrick, John.  1922.  "The Middle Kingdom, the Middle Sea
             and the Geographical Pivot of History."  Review
             15:3(Summer):477-521.
        Gailey, Christine Ward.  1987.  Kinship to Kingship.  Austin:
             University of Texas Press.
        Hall, Thomas D.  1989.  Social Change in the Southwest, 1350-
             1880.  Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
        Hall, Thomas D. and Christopher Chase-Dunn.  1993.  "The
             World-Systems Perspective and  Archaeology:  Forward into
             the Past."  Journal of Archaeological Research,
             forthcoming.
        McNeill, William H.  1990.  "The Rise of the West after
             Twenty-Five Years."Journal of World History
             1:1(Spring):1-21. (Reprinted as new preface to 1991
             printing of The Rise of the West, Chicago).
        Schortman, Edward M., and Patricia. A. Urban, eds.  1992.
             Resources, Power, and Interregional Interaction.  New York:
             Plenum Press.
        Silverblatt, Irene.  1988.  "Women in States."  Annual Review
             of Anthropology 17:427-460.
        Wagar, W. Warren.  1992.  A Short History of the Future, 2nd ed.
             Chicago: University of Chicago Press.