From B.K.Gills@newcastle.ac.uk Tue Oct 1 07:50:22 1996 From: "Barry Gills" To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK , andrei@rsuh.ru Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 14:49:31 GMT0BST Subject: Re: 2/FOSS, GILLS AND THE 6TH CENTURY AD WORLD SYSTEM CRISIS Dear Andrei, I read with interest your recent posting on the North Arabian puzzle as part of our discussion on the 6th century crisis. It struck me that the Persians and Byzantines had each their own vassal state or dependency in the peninsula, both in the northwest. This in indicative, isn't it of rivalry between these two great empires in the Arabian region? Is this rivalry over "spheres" related to economic/trade control motives, as per the recent exhanges with Daniel Foss about Rome vs. Persia and the recurrent rivalry over Syria-Mesopotamia and Armenia, etc. ? I presume you are saying that the general world economic crisis "levelled" the states and chiefdoms of the Arabian peninsula in its wake- setting back state forms to less complex formations? (i.e. a kind of regional "dark Ages" type of effect on analogy to the conventional understanding of economic, social, political retrogression in Western Roman provinces? I await with great interest your promised hypotheses on the "fundamental causes of the 6th century AD world system crisis" and the place of Arabia within this context. Yours, Dr. Barry Gills Dept. of Politics University of Newcastle Newcastle upon Tyne UK From andrei@rsuh.ru Tue Oct 1 07:57:01 1996 From: "Korotaev A." Organization: rsuh To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 17:57:07 +0300 Subject: 3/FOSS, GILLS AND THE 6TH CENTURY AD WORLD SYSTEM CRISIS Reply-to: andrei@rsuh.ru 3/FOSS, GILLS AND THE 6TH CENTURY AD WORLD SYSTEM CRISIS Now I have to explain my understanding of one of the main deep causes of the 6th century AD World System crisis mentioned neither by Foss (incidentally, I am really sorry he is leaving us now) nor by Gills - I am afraid Barry Gills will be a bit disappointed as he seems to be looking not quite in the same direction (though the model he implies seems to be relevant with respect to some other crises and at least partly relevant for the 6th century crisis too). In any case there seems to be a sort of consensus on the point that the main causes of the Arabian 6th cent. crisis should be looked for outside Arabia - and I quite agree with this. PART 3. SOME NEGLECTED CAUSES OF THE CRISIS The answer to the Arabian puzzle which I would like to discuss now was offered to me by one of the leading Russian specialists in the environmental history, Dr. Dmitriy Prusakov (Oriental Institute, Moscow) who also supplied me with all the necassary literature. It appears that the 6th century AD evidenced the peak of the seismic activity in the Mediterranian region. Of course, on the spot of it it is not quite self-evident what it has to do with the 6th century AD Arabian crisis. Of course, the earthquackes affected in some way the evolution of the 6th - erly 7th cent. AD Arabian societies, leaving even some trace in al-Qura:n - cf. e.g. the beginning of the famous Earthquake su:rah (Idha: zulzilati l-ard*u zilza:la-ha: wa-rafa`ati l- ard*u athqa:la-ha wa-qa:la l-insa:nu ma: la-ha When the earth is shaken with an earthquake, and the earth lifts its loads, and the man asks: `What has happened to it? &c). Stookey and Gryaznevich have already proposed to connect the final decline of the pre-Islamic South Arabian civilization with the seismic activity - indeed it may well have produced the final deadly blow for the most ancient civilization centres of the edges of the internal Yemeni desert, which were already on the brink of final collapse by the 6th century AD and which depended heavily on relatively large-scale irrigation structures that could be significantly affected by the earthquakes. But this does not seem to be the case with the kingdoms and chiefdoms of the Arabian North which could not be apparently affected by the earthquakes to a critical extent. Thus, the most significant outcome of the seismic activity seems to be volcano eruptions rather than earthquakes. Again, it is not self-evident how, say, the volcano eruptions on the Lipar Islands near Italy could affect the evolution of the Arabian communities. Again, what is significant here is not the direct effect - though some of the South Arabian sites were destroyed just in this way (though not necessarily in the 6th century). What is really important is the ashes which are thrown to the atmosphere in great quantities during such eruptions. And this could affect significantly really hude areas. E.g. volcanic dust would halt some of the sun rays and accumulate the humidity, causing various disbalances in the ecological systems, which could result in the outbursts of the numbers of the epedemic disease bearing animals, and the causal link between the seismic activity and the epidimics was noticed long ago. However, the most significant factor seems to be the accumulation of the atmosphere humidity by the volcanic dust causing severe draughts in the parts of the world rather distant from the active volcanos themselves - and there are documented cases when, say, the volcano eruptions on the Lipar Islands near Italy caused severe draught in Mesopotamia (naturally, North Arabia could not have been affected in such cases either). Hence, the peak of the seismic activity in the Mediterranean region produced such an array of primary, secondary, and tertiary factors (earthquakes and volcano eruptions themselves, epidemics, draughts, barbarian invasions caused by the socio- ecological crises on the barbarian peripheries) which could pose a deadly threat for the survival of most of affected civilizations of the time. I myself have come to terms with the sudden death of the 1500 year old pre-Islamic South Arabian civilization when I realized that this happened simultaneously with the severe crisis in the Byzantian Empire which put it on the brink of an almost complete collapse (the early 7th - early 6th century comparison would produce for Byzantine results rather similar to the ones obtained above for the Arabian North and South in any case). And what was an almost deadly blow for strong Byzantine appeared to have been just a deadly blow for the weaker South Arabian civilization as well as to the most Arabian kingdoms. This is not a mere speculation, especially fot the Arabian North. Indeed, as was mentioned above the second half of the 6th century history of South Arabia is documented very badly (especially, in comparison with the earlier periods). But this is not true for the Arabian North. It is not that by the early 7th - early 6th century comparison we can deduce that most North and Central Arabian kingdoms has desintegrated without knowing what happened in between. No, it is possible not only to deduce this desintegration, but also to get to know in some detail how this desintegration proceeded. Indeed, we have at our disposal e.g. the wonderful pre-Islamic Arab historical tradition, the so called Ayya:m al-`Arab The Days of the Arabs. And one of the typical Days can be rendered as follows: there was some Arabian strongman (a head of a kingdom, or a chiefdom) who behaved sometimes in a bad and arrogant manner. Such a behavior could consist of, say, shooting an arrow (just for fun) at a she-camel of some poor women (incidentally, an action which once precipitated 40 year long violent hostilities), but, very noticeably, it could be manifested in attempts to collect taxes in a lean year (usually caused by a draught). A typical reaction to royal misbehavior would be that some tough bedouin guys would go to such a chief and just kill him, which would provoke the revenge attempts on the part of the murdered chiefs relatives, thus producing one more Arab Day which could last for years filled with series of violent actions on both sides. However, at the end we find original chiefdoms or kingdoms desintegrated with free true tribes on their places. A few words should be added with respect to the very interesting adaptation of the Arabs to the 6th century AD socio- ecological crisis which had very important consequences for the evolution of the World System as a whole. I hope to do this in my next posting. (Dr) Andrey Korotayev, Senior Research Fellow Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Sector of Theoretical Problems of Oriental History) 12 Rozhdesrvenka, Moscow 103753, RUSSIA Fax: (7) (095) 975 2396; E-MAIL: andrei@rsuh.ru From agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca Tue Oct 1 09:51:39 1996 Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 11:51:51 -0400 (EDT) From: "A. Gunder Frank" To: "Korotaev A." Subject: Re: 3/FOSS, GILLS AND THE 6TH CENTURY AD WORLD SYSTEM CRISIS I do not see WHY Barry gills should be disappointed by this envirnmental explanation, except that he sought to demurr on such like every time i bourhgt them up in our joint work. But in the face of more evidence, far from wasnting to reject the environmental factor, we should incorporatre it more and more. Moreover this does not mean that it acts entirel;y "independently", since the environmenbtal effects - if they are not tnemselves man made as some may not be - still are mediated through the social structure [as at least discussed in my Bronze Age world System cycles article in curent Anthropogy 1993. The more Anderi can tell us the better! regards gunder frank On Tue, 1 Oct 1996, Korotaev A. wrote: > Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 17:57:07 +0300 > From: Korotaev A. > To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK > Subject: 3/FOSS, GILLS AND THE 6TH CENTURY AD WORLD SYSTEM CRISIS > > 3/FOSS, GILLS AND THE 6TH CENTURY AD WORLD SYSTEM CRISIS > > Now I have to explain my understanding of one of the main deep > causes of the 6th century AD World System crisis mentioned > neither by Foss (incidentally, I am really sorry he is leaving > us now) nor by Gills - I am afraid Barry Gills will be a bit > disappointed as he seems to be looking not quite in the same > direction (though the model he implies seems to be relevant > with respect to some other crises and at least partly relevant > for the 6th century crisis too). > > In any case there seems to be a sort of consensus on the point > that the main causes of the Arabian 6th cent. crisis should be > looked for outside Arabia - and I quite agree with this. > > PART 3. SOME NEGLECTED CAUSES OF THE CRISIS > > The answer to the Arabian puzzle which I would like to discuss > now was offered to me by one of the leading Russian specialists > in the environmental history, Dr. Dmitriy Prusakov (Oriental > Institute, Moscow) who also supplied me with all the necassary > literature. It appears that the 6th century AD evidenced the > peak of the seismic activity in the Mediterranian region. Of > course, on the spot of it it is not quite self-evident what it > has to do with the 6th century AD Arabian crisis. Of course, > the earthquackes affected in some way the evolution of the 6th > - erly 7th cent. AD Arabian societies, leaving even some trace > in al-Qura:n - cf. e.g. the beginning of the famous Earthquake > su:rah (Idha: zulzilati l-ard*u zilza:la-ha: wa-rafa`ati l- > ard*u athqa:la-ha wa-qa:la l-insa:nu ma: la-ha When the earth > is shaken with an earthquake, and the earth lifts its loads, > and the man asks: `What has happened to it? &c). Stookey and > Gryaznevich have already proposed to connect the final decline > of the pre-Islamic South Arabian civilization with the seismic > activity - indeed it may well have produced the final deadly > blow for the most ancient civilization centres of the edges of > the internal Yemeni desert, which were already on the brink of > final collapse by the 6th century AD and which depended heavily > on relatively large-scale irrigation structures that could be > significantly affected by the earthquakes. But this does not > seem to be the case with the kingdoms and chiefdoms of the > Arabian North which could not be apparently affected by the > earthquakes to a critical extent. Thus, the most significant > outcome of the seismic activity seems to be volcano eruptions > rather than earthquakes. Again, it is not self-evident how, > say, the volcano eruptions on the Lipar Islands near Italy > could affect the evolution of the Arabian communities. Again, > what is significant here is not the direct effect - though some > of the South Arabian sites were destroyed just in this way > (though not necessarily in the 6th century). What is really > important is the ashes which are thrown to the atmosphere in > great quantities during such eruptions. And this could affect > significantly really hude areas. E.g. volcanic dust would halt > some of the sun rays and accumulate the humidity, causing > various disbalances in the ecological systems, which could > result in the outbursts of the numbers of the epedemic disease > bearing animals, and the causal link between the seismic > activity and the epidimics was noticed long ago. > > However, the most significant factor seems to be the > accumulation of the atmosphere humidity by the volcanic dust > causing severe draughts in the parts of the world rather > distant from the active volcanos themselves - and there are > documented cases when, say, the volcano eruptions on the Lipar > Islands near Italy caused severe draught in Mesopotamia > (naturally, North Arabia could not have been affected in such > cases either). > > Hence, the peak of the seismic activity in the Mediterranean > region produced such an array of primary, secondary, and > tertiary factors (earthquakes and volcano eruptions themselves, > epidemics, draughts, barbarian invasions caused by the socio- > ecological crises on the barbarian peripheries) which could > pose a deadly threat for the survival of most of affected > civilizations of the time. I myself have come to terms with the > sudden death of the 1500 year old pre-Islamic South Arabian > civilization when I realized that this happened simultaneously > with the severe crisis in the Byzantian Empire which put it on > the brink of an almost complete collapse (the early 7th - early > 6th century comparison would produce for Byzantine results > rather similar to the ones obtained above for the Arabian North > and South in any case). And what was an almost deadly blow for > strong Byzantine appeared to have been just a deadly blow for > the weaker South Arabian civilization as well as to the most > Arabian kingdoms. > > This is not a mere speculation, especially fot the Arabian > North. Indeed, as was mentioned above the second half of the > 6th century history of South Arabia is documented very badly > (especially, in comparison with the earlier periods). But this > is not true for the Arabian North. It is not that by the early > 7th - early 6th century comparison we can deduce that most > North and Central Arabian kingdoms has desintegrated without > knowing what happened in between. No, it is possible not only > to deduce this desintegration, but also to get to know in some > detail how this desintegration proceeded. Indeed, we have at > our disposal e.g. the wonderful pre-Islamic Arab historical > tradition, the so called Ayya:m al-`Arab The Days of the > Arabs. And one of the typical Days can be rendered as > follows: there was some Arabian strongman (a head of a kingdom, > or a chiefdom) who behaved sometimes in a bad and arrogant > manner. Such a behavior could consist of, say, shooting an > arrow (just for fun) at a she-camel of some poor women > (incidentally, an action which once precipitated 40 year long > violent hostilities), but, very noticeably, it could be > manifested in attempts to collect taxes in a lean year > (usually caused by a draught). A typical reaction to royal > misbehavior would be that some tough bedouin guys would go to > such a chief and just kill him, which would provoke the revenge > attempts on the part of the murdered chiefs relatives, thus > producing one more Arab Day which could last for years filled > with series of violent actions on both sides. However, at the > end we find original chiefdoms or kingdoms desintegrated with > free true tribes on their places. > > A few words should be added with respect to the very > interesting adaptation of the Arabs to the 6th century AD socio- > ecological crisis which had very important consequences for the > evolution of the World System as a whole. I hope to do this in > my next posting. > > (Dr) Andrey Korotayev, Senior Research Fellow > Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences > (Sector of Theoretical Problems of Oriental History) > 12 Rozhdesrvenka, Moscow 103753, RUSSIA > Fax: (7) (095) 975 2396; E-MAIL: andrei@rsuh.ru > From myhre@lclark.edu Tue Oct 1 15:27:12 1996 Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 14:25:51 -0700 To: TEACHSOC@maple.lemoyne.edu, wsn@csf.colorado.edu, psn@csf.colorado.edu From: David Myhre Subject: Econ Soc Syllabi queries: correct address CORRECTION TO 9/27/96 POSTING RE: Purchase of Economic Sociology Syllabi Set for shipping to non-U.S. addresses For pricing information about the Economic Sociology Syllabi set produced by the ASA's Teaching Resources Center, please inquire at the following address: apap@asanet.org On the Subject line, write: ATTN: Teaching Resources Center -- David Myhre ****************************************** David Myhre Department of Sociology and Anthropology Lewis and Clark College 0605 S.W. Palatine Hill Road Portland, OR 97219-7899 USA tel: 503-768-7607 (direct) 503-768-7660 (dept.) fax: 503-768-7620 email: myhre@lclark.edu ****************************************** From chriscd@jhu.edu Thu Oct 3 13:10:36 1996 03 Oct 1996 14:01:09 -0400 (EDT) 03 Oct 1996 14:01:07 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 03 Oct 1996 14:03:20 -0400 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: Int. Soc. Assoc. Young Sociologist's Paper Competition To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu Organization: Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.21218 USA Third Worldwide Competition for Young Sociologists (1). The International Sociological Association (ISA) announces the organization of the third worldwide competition for young scholars engaged in social research. The winners will be invited to participate in the XIV World Congress of Sociology which will take place in Montreal, Canada, July 1998. The winners' papers will be published in English, subject to editorial revision, in the ISA's journal International Sociology. (2). By Young Scholars we mean people under 35 years of age on May 1st, 1997. In case of joint or multiple authorship, this rule applies to all authors of the submitted paper. Participants should hold a Master's degree (or an equivalent graduate diploma) in sociology or in a related discipline. (3). Candidates must send an original paper that has not been previously published anywhere. It should be no more than 6,000 words typewritten double spaced on one side of the paper with margins of 3 cm, and the pages numbered. Notes and the bibliography should appear at the end of the text. Papers which do not conform to these rules run the risk of being turned down. We prefer papers focusing on socially relevant issues. The phenomena examined may be social, economic, political, cultural or of any other kind, but their interpretation or analysis must show a sociological orientation (for instance, through the identification of social processes underlying the phenomena under scrutiny, critique of commonsense interpretations or of well established theories, etc.). Empirical research papers must go beyond descriptive reporting of results to broader, analytical interpretations. Papers will be judged according to perceptiveness with which issues are treated, the quality of empirical materials presented, the consistency with which an analytic framework is used, the originality of ideas, and the clarity of style. Extensiveness of referencing or the use of advanced statistical methods will be considered of only secondary importance, so as to provide participants throughout the world with as equal an opportunity as possible. We are particularly interested in receiving papers from scholars in Third World countries. The five winners of the First (1990) and the Second (1994) Competition are not allowed to compete. (4). Papers may be written in one of the following languages: English, French, Spanish as well as Arabic, Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Russian. A jury will be set up for each of these languages. To give a fair chance for participants whose mother tongue is none of the above, there will be other juries established in English or French, respectively, for papers submitted by authors, who use any of these as a foreign language. All other scholars may also make use of this option if they prefer. (5). Two copies of equal typographical quality should be sent to the following address: 3rd ISA Worldwide Competition for Young Sociologists Attention: Professor Christine Inglis Multicultural Centre A35 University of Sydney Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia tel: 61-2-9351-3161 fax: 61-2-9351-4580 Email: inglisc@edfac.usyd.edu.au They should be postmarked April 1st, 1997 at the latest or reach the Sydney Secretariat before May 1st, 1997. In order to protect anonymity during the selection process, authors should not put their name on the paper itself but include a separate sheet of paper with their family name (capital letters), first name, sex, date of birth, mother tongue, degrees, address where they can be reached and (optionally) their present occupation. All this information should also be given in one of the official languages of the ISA (English, French, Spanish). (6). Initially, each jury will consider which papers reach a sufficiently high standard to be issued with a letter of official commendation and be listed in ISA Bulletin. Each jury will then preselect (by September 1997) a maximum of three papers. These finalists will receive Merit Award Certificates, a four-year membership in the ISA, and an invitation to participate in the XIV World Congress. The ISA, however, cannot guarantee to cover their travel costs. All authors thus preselected will also be invited to participate in a one-week seminar prior to the Congress. Out of the preselected finalists, a Grand Jury chaired by the ISA President Immanuel Wallerstein, will select up to five winning papers. Their authors will be immediately invited, all expenses paid, to participate in the World Congress. In case of multiple authorship, the subvention will have to be shared. Additional information may be obtained from the Competition Secretariat in Sydney (see address above), or from other members of the Competition Committee: in Spanish: from Prof. Roberto Briceño-Leon, LACSO, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Apartado Postal 47.795, Caracas 1041-A, Venezuela, tel: 58-2-6611094, fax: 58-2-6931765, Email: rbriceno@dino.conicit.ve in French: from Prof. Bernardette Bawin-Legros, Departément de Sciences Sociales, Université de Liège, Boulvard du Rectorat 7, B31 bte 45, 4000 Liège, Belgium, tel: 32-41-663172, fax: 32-41-663178, Email: bbawin@vm1.ulg.ac.be in Japanese: from Prof. Shujiro Yazawa, Faculty of Social Studies, Hitotsubashi University, 2-1, Naka, Kunitachi, Tokyo, Japan, tel: 81-425-721101, fax: 81-425-742630, Email: cs00180@srv.cc.hit-u.ac.jp From andrei@rsuh.ru Fri Oct 4 07:51:40 1996 From: "Korotaev A." Organization: rsuh To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 17:51:36 +0300 Subject: 4/FOSS, GILLS AND THE 6TH CENTURY AD WORLD SYSTEM CRISIS Reply-to: andrei@rsuh.ru 4/FOSS, GILLS AND THE 6TH CENTURY AD WORLD SYSTEM CRISIS Dear Colleagues, I finished my last posting with the following words: A few words should be added with respect to the very interesting adaptation of the Arabs to the 6th century AD socio- ecological crisis which had very important consequences for the evolution of the World System as a whole. I hope to do this in my next posting. So, I shall try do this now. PART 4. THE ARAB ADAPTATION TO THE 6TH CENTURY AD WORLD SYSTEM CRISIS Actually, what was described at the end of my previous message may well be described as an important component of this rather effective adaptation. This was simply that most socio-political systems of the Arabs (or, for the extreme methodological individualists, the Arabs themselves - anyhow, it could be well described in both ways) reacted rather adequately to the socio- ecological crisis by getting rid of the rigid supra-tribal political structures (i.e. all those kings, chiefs and their retainers) which started posing a real threat to their very survival. Indeed, it is rather difficult to imagine anything more nasty than the royal messangers coming to you in a lean year (which may well have been preceeded by one or two similar years) and demanding from you to pay royal taxes when you yourself have nothing to eat and to feed your children. However, the Arabs did not only destroyed most of those rigid political supra-communal structures allienating the tribal sovereignty, but also developed their alternatives - soft structures not posing any threat to the sovereignty of tribes. Most noticeable of them seems to be the development of the system of sacred enclaves, regular pilgrimages to them and accompaning this regular pilgrim fairs (mawa:sim). The result was the development of rather effective intersocietal networks, of which the best known is the Western Arabian religious-political area (the functioning and evolution of which, incidentally, left a noticeable trace on the history of the World System as a whole). It seems to have been formed as a result of the expansion of the zones of influence of the respective sanctuaries, their interweaving into one more or less integrated religious-political area. This of course was primarily a religious area, yet it had evident political dimensions too. It was in the pilgrimage-fairs (mawa:sim) at the above mentioned sanctuaries "that traditional tribal society established its manifold contacts, the exchange of the religious and cultural ideas, as well as the barter of products with only use-value. Furthermore, the various legal problems (armistice, debts, benefits, payment of blood-money, bailing out of prisoners, finding of clients, looking for disappeared persons, questions of heritage, etc.) of the participants were also settled there. This exchange of ideas and goods, as well as the spreading of legal customs and cults common to several tribes, that is, regular social contact in general, played no negligible role in the extension of particular tribal consciousness" (Simon 1989, 90; also see especially Wellhausen 1927, 88-91). As a result we can observe the formation of a certain political area more or less correlating with the religious one, an area where certain norms of not only religious, but also political culture were shared, where the people would avoid killing travellers in ashhur h*urum, the holy months (and would consider the same parts of the year as the holy months), where the representatives of various tribes would go to the same places to settle their conflicts, and would observe the same rules of political mediation &c. The most remarkable fact is the almost complete absence of significant intertribal warfare in "the area of the four sanctuaries" between the time of its final formation (i.e. h*arb al-Fija:r in the last decade of the6- th century AD) and the start of the clashes with the Muslims. Actually at this time we can observe in the "Area of Four Sanctuaries" (In the early 7th century AD it covered not only Western Arabia, but also considerable parts of the other Arabian regions)cultural-political entity, which in the absence of any significant political centralization secured the existence of a huge cultural network within which a very intensive (and very productive) exchange of information, energy and matter took place. (Being polycentric the Western Arabian area seems to have had a considerably heterogenous structure including a few interweaving subsystems centred on the respective sanctuaries. The best known is the hums amphyctiony centred on the Meccan sanctuary.) [Incidentally, this type of cultural-political entities seems to be ignored (without any reasonable justification) by practically all the "classical" theories of social evolution (e.g. Claessen, Skalnik 1978; Claessen et al. 1985; Fried 1967; Hallpike 1986; Lenski 1987; Parsons 1977; Sanderson 1990; Service 1971 [1962]) and does not seem to fit in all these essentially unilineal evolutionist schemes, especially in their most popular "band - tribe - chiefdom - state" version (with all its modifications). Indeed, all the Western Arabian polities of the early 7th century appear to have had a rather "primitive" socio-political structures (which seems to be valid even with respect to the Meccan community [see e.g. Dostal 1991]) and, according, to such schemes could be only classified as "autonomous communities", "tribes", at most as "chiefdoms" (though most Arabian "chiefdoms" seem to have disintegrated in the second half of the 6th century AD). However, they were parts of a much wider cultural-political entity whose overall level of social complexity may well be compared with the one of an average "early state"; though lacking the political centralization this entity fails to find its place in the above mentioned schemes (this appears to be true with respect to any processes of socio-cultural growth which are not accompanied by the growing political centralization, or especially going in hand with the political decentralization).]. In general, the Arabs appear to have developed a rather effective adaptation to the 6th century World System crisis. The soft intersocietal networks they created even permitted them to assume the role of the guardians of the important WS links in the WS Southern area, a role which the Great Powers of the late 6th - early 7th century were already unable to perform (the point which Foss and I discussed on the WSN this summer). In Re: 2/FOSS, GILLS AND THE 6TH CENTURY AD WORLD SYSTEM CR of Tue, 1 Oct 1996 14:49:31 Barry Gills asks me: >I presume you are saying that >the general world economic crisis "levelled" the states and >chiefdoms >of the Arabian peninsula in its wake- setting back state >forms to >less complex formations? There is something in this statement that I cannot say and accept. The states and chiefdoms of the Central Arabia were not levelled to less complex formations in the course of the 6th century crisis but rather developed into a more complex, subtle and effective stateless system. I would definitely avoid describing these processes as anything like decline, degeneration or regress. I have strated this message (and finished the previous one) with: A few words should be added with respect to the very interesting adaptation of the Arabs to the 6th century AD socio- ecological crisis which had very important consequences for the evolution of the World System as a whole. I hope to do this in my next posting. Actually, I have not discussed these consequences yet, so I shall try to do this in my next message. Yours, (Dr) Andrey Korotayev, Senior Research Fellow Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Sector of Theoretical Problems of Oriental History) 12 Rozhdesrvenka, Moscow 103753, RUSSIA Fax: (7) (095) 975 2396; E-MAIL: andrei@rsuh.ru From ROZOV@cnit.nsu.ru Mon Oct 7 06:37:17 1996 7 Oct 96 19:28:13 NSK-6 From: "Nikolai S. Rozov" Organization: Center of New Informational Tech. To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 19:27:49 -0600 (NSK) Subject: Re: 4/FOSS, GILLS AND THE 6TH CENTURY AD WORLD SYSTEM CRISI Thanks, Andrei, for your intriguing description of early Arabian history. I have one suggestion concerning its theoretical conceptualization. You wrote: > From: "Korotaev A." > > However, the Arabs did not only destroyed most of those rigid > political supra-communal structures allienating the tribal > sovereignty, but also developed their alternatives - soft > structures not posing any threat to the sovereignty of tribes. > Most noticeable of them seems to be the development of the > system of sacred enclaves, regular pilgrimages to them and > accompaning this regular pilgrim fairs (mawa:sim). >...> If I understood correctly a rather new social practice (with institutions, relations,structures,etc) evolved and replaced previous emperial structures of Arabian province. > [Incidentally, this type of cultural-political entities > seems to be ignored (without any reasonable justification) by > practically all the "classical" theories of social evolution > (e.g. Claessen, Skalnik 1978; Claessen et al. 1985; Fried 1967; > Hallpike 1986; Lenski 1987; Parsons 1977; Sanderson 1990; > Service 1971 [1962]) and does not seem to fit in all these > essentially unilineal evolutionist schemes, especially in their > most popular "band - tribe - chiefdom - state" version (with > all its modifications). OK, the majority of these paradigms imply 'structural' or 'substational' approach. Why not to remember functionalist tradition and to see in this case a rather rich complex of social functions (you gave in this msg the representative list of them) which were accomplished not by state but by this 'alternative soft inter-tribe network'. My more general suggestion is not to repeat multiple variations of 'structural' series but to take into account the dynamics of both poles: development (including degradation) of social functions and development of social modes (my generalization of Marx's 'mode of production'). F.e. states, empires, core-periphery structures can be conceptualized as social modes with multiple and changing in history social functions. Keeping in mind that each social function can be realized by VARIOUS modes (f.e. not only by state institutions) and that each mode 'is pregnant' by new limitations, problems, deficiences which require NEW social functions with their modes, etc. we get the promising way for rather strict and flexible conceptualization of social-historical dynamics. I'll be grateful for your and other members' feedback. Thanks, best from Siberia, Nikolai Rozov *********************************************************** Nikolai S. Rozov # Address:Dept. of Philosophy Prof.of Philosophy # Novosibirsk State University rozov@cnit.nsu.ru # 630090, Novosibirsk Fax: (3832) 355237 # Pirogova 2, RUSSIA Moderator of the mailing list PHILOFHI (PHILosophy OF HIstory and theoretical history) http://darwin.clas.virginia.edu/~dew7e/anthronet/subscribe /philofhi.html ************************************************************ From chriscd@jhu.edu Mon Oct 7 10:15:24 1996 07 Oct 1996 12:13:36 -0400 (EDT) 07 Oct 1996 12:12:36 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 1996 12:14:44 -0400 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: andre gunder frank's commentary on archaeology and world-systems To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu Organization: Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.21218 USA Dear WSNers, Andre Gunder Frank has written comments on the papers given at two meetings of the American Anthropology Association organized by Nick Kardulias. These papers have now been published as a special thematic section of the _Journal of World-Systems Research_ edited by Nick. Gunder's commentary is entitled "ABUSES AND SOME USES OF WORLD SYSTEM THEORY IN ARCHAEOLOGY." It is an essay of some 1000 lines reflecting on the uses of world systems concepts in archaeology and what archaeology can contribute to the developing world systems perspective. This essay may be retrieved from the World-Systems Archive. It's location is csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/papers/frank_ag/abuses You can access the World-Systems Archive with a Web browser at http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/wsarch.html Gunder's discussion and the essays in the special section are relevant for the thread about ancient systems that has been ongoing on wsn. Perhaps WSNers would like to read Gunder's comments (and the special thematic section) and discuss them on WSN. chris From OWENJACK@FS.isu.edu Mon Oct 7 11:10:16 1996 From: "J B Owens" Organization: Idaho State University To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 11:12:50 -0600, MDT Subject: American Historical Association, Seattle 1998 ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 09:16:46 -0700 Reply-to: H-NET List for World History From: Ken Pomeranz Subject: CFP -- American Historical Association, Seattle 1998 From: Ann B Waltner This is just a reminder that the first deadline for paper proposals for the 1998 meeting of the American Historical Association (which will meet in Seattle in early January) is Oct. 31. (There will be a second deadline of February 15.) The call for papers and information on sending in panel propsals is in the September issue of Perspectives. This year's committee is particularly interested in soliciting two sorts of panels--comparative panels and panels which make links between the historical profession and the wider community, looking at the possibilities and prospects for history as a public conversation. Of course, the AHA is also as always interested in new and exciting work on any topic of history. I would like to urge H-World subscribers to think seriously about submitting proposals, especially for comparative panels, to the AHA. If you have a good idea for a comparative panel, but need help putting it together, you may propose partial panels (for the Oct. 31 deadline *only*). The committee will do what it can in its collective wisdom (and short time) to help put you in touch with appropriate people. Ann Waltner AHA program committee co-chair Department of History University of Minnesota waltn001@maroon.tc.umn.edu (If you absolutely positively do not have access to Perspectives and want to propose a panel, you can e-mail me and I will send you (by snail mail-so include the appropriate address) the call for papers and forms.) From chriscd@jhu.edu Mon Oct 7 11:58:54 1996 07 Oct 1996 13:57:49 -0400 (EDT) 07 Oct 1996 13:57:29 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 1996 13:59:37 -0400 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: abstract of AG Frank's comment To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu Organization: Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.21218 USA Here is an abstract of the aforementioned commentary written by Andre Gunder Frank: THE ABUSES AND SOME USES OF WORLD SYSTEMS THEORY IN ARCHAEOLOGY* by ANDRE GUNDER FRANK University of Amsterdam 96 Asquith Ave. Toronto, Ont. Canada M4W 1J8 Tel:416-972 0616 Fax:416-972 0071 & 978 3963 e-mail: agfrank@epas.utoronto.ca ______________________ This is a 12,000 word = 24 single space page critical commentary on and "constructive critique" of each of the papers presented at the session on "Leadership, Production, and Exchange: Global Applications of World Systems Theory" organized by Nick Kardulias under the sponsorship of the Archaeology Division of the American Anthropological Association at its 94th Annual Meetings in Washington DC. November 15, 1995. These papers have been "published" in the electronic JOURNAL OF WORLD SYSTEM RESEARCH vol. 2, but without this comment, which is to be included only in the printed book version also edited by Nick Kardulias. Since publication of this book has not yet started, I offer earlier access by other means to this critique of the electronically collected papers to interested readers of the latter [or to those who wish only a critical summary of the same]. [excerpt from the introduction to my "constructive" critique]: The expert participants/contributors already spend enough time whittling down and shaking the World System Theory [WST] stick [and Stein breaks and discards it entirely]. I therefore see my task here to defend and extend/apply WST as far as possible within the confines of the archaeological problematiques posed by these various authors. That means the following: 1. First, identify and call straw men what they are: put up jobs that are easy targets for critiques which would bounce off the real thing. 2. Where possible, display, modify or even build a better world system mousetrap than those in the third, that is adaptor camp. They put it to sometimes good and sometimes to questionable use [Stein, of course, puts the WST mousetrap down altogether]. 3. Use that WST mousetrap if I can to catch more, bigger, and better archaeological mice with their own data than the authors themselves do. Where and when my own ignorance does not permit me to do all that, I intend to suggest instead how such a WST mousetrap could potentially be used on the archaeological record to extend it and to expand and/or improve its interpretation in the particular cases under review by the authors in their papers - and now here by myself in this commentary. From andrei@rsuh.ru Tue Oct 8 07:40:54 1996 From: "Korotaev A." Organization: rsuh To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1996 17:39:51 +0300 Subject: 5/FOSS, GILLS AND THE 6TH CENTURY AD WORLD SYSTEM CRISIS Reply-to: andrei@rsuh.ru PART 5. ORIGINS OF ISLAM: SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL AND SOCIO-POLITICAL CONTEXT Though some pre-Islamic Arabian tribes managed to find a rather effective adaptation to the crisis along the lines described in the previous message, this adaptation does not appear to have been quite perfect everywhere. After the destruction of the political structures of the Arabian kingdoms and chiefdoms not all the Arabian communities entirely succeded in working out effective substitutes for them. They seem to have succeded e.g. in the Meccan area (and that is why there was no sufficient space for Muh*ammads Prophetic activity there), but they do not seem to have been so successful in, say, Yathrib, where a few tribes could not sort out their relations in the absence of any effective super-tribal authority. Such a problem was not new in Arabia. And at the beginning of the 6th century the answer was quite clear - to send messengers to the Sassanids, or the Tubba` in Z*afa:r, and to ask them to appoint a king over those tribes. However, such a practice appear to have become unacceptable by the 7th century. The decades of fighting which led to the destruction of the most of the Arabian kingdoms and chiefdoms seem to have also led to the elaboration of some definite anti- royal freedom-loving tribal ethos codified in the tribal historical traditions and poetry - see e.g. al-mu`allaqah of `Amr b. Kulthu:m, or such lines as It is not forbidden to us to kill the kings! (Al-Mufad*d*aliyya:t. al-Qa:hirah, 1964, N 42, 20), How many of the most glorious kings we have killed! (al-Qa:li:. Kita:b al=ama:li:. Bu:la:q, 1324h, 42). The reflections of this ethos seem to be present even in al-Qura:n - see XXVII/34: Al-mulu:k idha: dakhalu: qaryatan afsadu:-ha wa- ja`alu: a`izzata ahli-ha adhillatan wa-ka-dha:lika yaf`alu:n (The kings, when they enter a town, they corrupt it; they make the most glorious of its folk the most base, they do it this way - an ad hoc translation of mine). The second Caliph, `Umar, would even say: It was disgusting for the Arabs that one of them reigned over others... There have never been royal power over any Arab! (T*abari:. Annales. I. Lugduni Batavorum, 1879, 2011-2012) - a striking contrast with the situation a century before when most Arabs were subject (in one, or another way) to the kings. Anyway, at the beginning of the 7th century a tribe which would recognize themselves as subjects of some terrestrial super- tribal political authority, a king, risked to lose its honour. However, this seems not to be applicable to the authority of another type, the celestial one. Note, e.g. the words of a famous Arab poet al-H*ut*ayah said during the revolts of the Arab tribes after the death of the Prophet during the reign of the first Caliph, Abu:-Bakr: We obeyed the Gods messenger, when he was among us. We are the servants of the God, not the servants of Abu: Bakr! I wonder if he will leave us to Bakr as inheritance. (Note: Abu: Bakr literally means the father of Bakr). Hence, the impression is that whereas for many Arab tribes becoming subjects of some terrestrial king was entirely unacceptable, was tentamount to an enormous loss of honour, the recognition of some celestial authority (naturally through its representative) was more or less acceptable. Another group of facts should be also taken into consideration here. The pre-Islamic Arabia knew rather well the figure of prophet (ka:hin). An average Arab seems to have known quite well how a prophet looked like, what the prophetic trans was &c. However, all the pre-7th century Arab prophets (kahanah) were the ones of the pagan deities. Hence, their authority was not the best possible ones, as the recognition of their authority would mean the recognition of the authority of the respecrive pagan deity, whereas all the cults of such deities would be normally connected with a specific tribe, whose protector this deity was - hence, such a recognition would imply the recognition of the authority of the respective tribe as well (as is amply evidenced e.g. by the South Arabian epigraphy). Hence, the best possible figure here would be rather some Monotheist prophet. However, the prophets of the established Monotheist Faiths would not be entirely suitable as well, as the recognition of their authority would imply the dependence on some extra-Arabian powers, or in the case of Judaism would put in an advantage position the Arab Jewish tribes. At the meantime there seems to have been a more or less independent Monotheist Arabian (Rahmanist) tradition (this hypothesis is still under attack [Rippin &c], however I do not think it has been either finally prooved, or rejected, and can be still regarded as a working hypothesis). However, its North Arabian adherents (h*unafa:) do not appear to have given any prophets before the 7th century. Yet, in the early 7th century both traditions (the Arabian tradition of prophecy and the Arabian Monotheist Rah*manist tradition) seem to have merged, producing what M.Piotrovskiy calls the Arabian prophetic movement. It should be taken into consideration that in addition to Muh*ammad there were at least 5 other Monotheist prophets (pseudo-prophets, of course, from the Moslem point of view) in Arabia at the time of Muh*ammad. Beside one Judaic prophet in Yathrib and the para-Christian prophetess, Saja:h*, 3 other (al-Musaylimah, al-Aswad and T*ulayh*a b. Khuwaylid) seem to have belonged to the Arabian Rah*manist tradition. Note that both al-Musaylimah and al-Aswad called the God al- Rah*ma:n, just as was done by Muh*ammad, but also e.g. by the authors of numerous pre-Islamic Monotheist inscriptions of South Arabia (incidentally, most of them could be identified for sure neither as Jewish, nor as Christian). The Monotheist Rahmanist prophets appear to have represented a super-tribal authority just of the type many Arab tribes were looking for at this very time. Note, that all the Rahmanist prophets achieved considerable political success in their areas (al-Musaylimah in Yama:mah, T*ulayh*a in Central Arabia, al- Aswad in Yemen, though the political success of Saja:h* in the Arabian extreme North-West also appears relevant in this respect) - their success could not be compared with the one of Muh*ammad, but their political success was considerable, and they seem to show, anyway, that in the early 7th century Arabia such a success could be achieved by a prophet rather than a king. In general, my impression is that the origins of Islam could be well considered as a rather logical outcome of the Arabian processes of adaptation to the 6th century crisis. I finished 2 previous postings of mine with: A few words should be added with respect to the very interesting adaptation of the Arabs to the 6th century AD socio- ecological crisis which had very important consequences for the evolution of the World System as a whole. I hope to do this in my next posting. I am afraid I have only just started spelling out these consequences. I shall try to finish this in my next (and, hopefully, final) posting. (Dr) Andrey Korotayev, Senior Research Fellow Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Sector of Theoretical Problems of Oriental History) 12 Rozhdesrvenka, Moscow 103753, RUSSIA Fax: (7) (095) 975 2396; E-MAIL: andrei@rsuh.ru From OWENJACK@FS.isu.edu Wed Oct 9 09:31:47 1996 From: "J B Owens" Organization: Idaho State University To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 09:34:10 -0600, MDT Subject: CFP: WHA in Pamplona ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1996 21:49:23 -0400 Reply-to: World-L - Forum on non-Eurocentric world history From: Haines Brown CALL FOR PAPERS SIXTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE WORLD HISTORY ASSOCIATION Pamplona, Spain 20-22 June 1997 Conference Secretaries: Local Arrangements: Enrique Banus, Director, European Documentation Center, University of Navarra. Program Committee Co-Chairs: (in Europe) Fred Spier, Amsterdam School for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam; (in U.S.) Hugh R. Clark, Ursinus College. Conference Headquarters in Spain: European Documentation Center, University of Navarra, Pamplona. (Participants will stay in hotels in Pamplona.) The Program Committee welcomes proposals on all topics but is particularly interested in proposals that address one of the following THEMES: WORLD HISTORY: THEORIES AND PRACTICE IN EUROPE, AFRICA, AND THE MIDDLE EAST What is the status of World History in Europe? Africa? the Middle East? at the university level? in secondary schools? What are the main research interests and theoretical models? How are these related to topics explored in North America and other parts of the world? CROSSROADS OF GLOBAL INTERACTIONS: THE MEDITERRANEAN BASIN What is the nature and significance of cross-cultural contact and interchange in the Mediterranean Basin from earliest times until the twentieth century? What are differences and similarities across time or with other sea and ocean basins? Are there models of analysis specific to this region? that could be applied to other sea and ocean basins? FAITH AS REALITY AND REPRESENTATION: PILGRIMAGES IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE What are the many varieties of "pilgrimage"? What have been their functions and significance in world history? What is ideological and spiritual in the phenomenon and in its representations? what is economic and political? Can these aspects be separated in our analyses of the phenomenon? How does "pilgrimage" compare with other realities and representations of the faiths of different regions or cultures? Fax or e-mail proposals for panels (or single submissions) and a short vita for each participant to: Europe: Professor Fred Spier University of Amsterdam Oude Hoogstraat 24 1012 CE Amsterdam The Netherlands E-mail: spier@pscw.uva.nl Fax: 31 20 525 2446 Tel: 31 20 525 2244 U.S.: Professor Hugh R. Clark Department of History Ursinus College Collegeville, PA 19426-1000 E-mail: hclark@acad.ursinus.edu Fax: 610-489-0627 Tel: 610-409-3595 The deadline for submission of proposals is 1 February 1997. From ROZOV@cnit.nsu.ru Thu Oct 10 19:52:12 1996 11 Oct 96 08:51:24 NSK-6 From: "Nikolai S. Rozov" Organization: Center of New Informational Tech. To: PHILOFHI@YORKU.CA Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 08:51:07 -0600 (NSK) Subject: I.Lakatos & social-historical sciences I need any information concerning cases of application of Imre Lakatos's Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes in social sciences and theoretical history. I mean not (only) using it in description of past history of these sciences, but mainly cases (if they exist at all!) of designing research programmes in sociology, political sciences, economics, anthropology, historical sciences,etc., according to Lakatos's scheme as a normative plan. Please forward this request to anybody who might help here. Thanks, Nikolai Rozov *********************************************************** Nikolai S. Rozov # Address:Dept. of Philosophy Prof.of Philosophy # Novosibirsk State University rozov@cnit.nsu.ru # 630090, Novosibirsk Fax: (3832) 355237 # Pirogova 2, RUSSIA Moderator of the mailing list PHILOFHI (PHILosophy OF HIstory and theoretical history) http://darwin.clas.virginia.edu/~dew7e/anthronet/subscribe /philofhi.html ************************************************************ From andrei@rsuh.ru Fri Oct 11 08:08:19 1996 From: "Andrey Korotayev" Organization: rsuh To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 18:08:25 +0300 Subject: 6/FOSS, GILLS AND THE 6TH CENTURY AD WORLD SYSTEM CRISIS Reply-to: andrei@rsuh.ru 6/FOSS, GILLS AND THE 6TH CENTURY AD WORLD SYSTEM CRISIS PART 6. SOME WORLD SYSTEM CONSEQUENCES: PILGRIMAGE STRUCTURES >From what has been mentioned in the previous message it must be rather clear that to my mind the Arab adaptation to the 6th century AD crisis influenced the World System development mainly through one of its more or less logical outcomes, the formation of Islam. Indeed, it seems possible to show that the Islamic civilization incorporated many of the important patterns, structures, values and attitudes eloborated by the Arabs during this adaptation. One of the most obvious points here is the pilgrimage system of a typically Arabian type. Of course, the Arabian pilgrimage practices did not arise in the 6th century AD. They are much older being attested already in the first Arabian written documents of the beginning of the 1st millennium BC (e.g. in the earliest Sabaean epigraphy). However, it was in the 6th century AD when the most effective intersocietal communication network based largely on the enhanced pilgrimage practices was elaborated in Western Arabia, the network which served as a rather potent substitute for the rigid super-tribal political structures principally destructed by the Arabs during their adaptation to the 6th century crisis. Islam was embraced and spread by the people who grew up within the setting of the Western Arabian intersocietal network were the pilgrimage practices played an essential structure- constituting role. Of course, the pilgrimage (al-h*ajj) was prescribed by al-Qura:n, but not all such prescriptions and prohibitions were applied by the Arabs to the same extent (note e.g. the prohibition of wine [a rather popular drink in pre- Islamic Arabia] which was not applied quite fully as evidenced by the huge corpus of the Arab wine poetry [khamriyya:t]). The pilgrimage prescription was applied quite consistently and effectively, to a considerable extent because the necessity of the pilgrimage was self-evident for the Arabs. For a specialist in pre-Islamic Arabia the proliferation of the Islamic civilization appears (to a considerable degree) as a spread (in a rather modified form) of many important ancient Arabian structures following some patterns which could be traced in Arabia for about 1500 years before Islam. Perhaps, a bit surprisingly some of these patterns look more like South (rather than North) Arabian. The South Arabian religious-political areas were created firstly by the political expansion of their South Arabian states, which was accompanied by the expansion of the conquerors' religion within the borders of the respective political entity, and the formation of the religious-political area, acquiring after that its own existence, relatively independent from the fate of its kingdom-creator (on evolution and functioning of an ancient South Arabian cultural-political area see e.g. two books of mine - ANCIENT YEMEN. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995 and PRE-ISLAMIC YEMEN. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 1996). The Western Arabian religious-political area appears to have been mainly created by the proliferation of the religious authority of the respective sanctuaries (which could of course have some connection with the political activities of their guardians, however this political activity was entirely different from the mainly violent expansion of the South Arabian states). The expansion of the religious authority of the sanctuaries led to the spread of the correlating political culture. Hence, in the process of the formation of the South Arabian religious political areas "the politics went in front of religion", whereas in Western Arabia the religion appears to have "gone in front of the politics". Surprisingly, we can observe the South Arabian pattern with respect to the evolution of the religious-political area with the centre in Western Arabia in the Islamic Age. This religious political area is just what is usually called the "Islamic Civilization". Indeed, its evolution presents just the familiar South Arabian scheme of the development of a religious political area: the political (mainly military) expansion creates an "empire" - the religion of conquerors spreads within this Empire - after the disintegration of the Empire religious political area remains and expands beyond its borders; the population of the area shares common religious norms and common norms of political culture; a very important role in the integration of the religious- political area is played by the pilgrimage to the central sanctuary. Anyhow, the establishement of the Islamic Pilgrimage system had imporatant consequences for the World System evolution. It should be taken into consideration that the pre-Islamic West Arabian pilgrimage system (on the basis of which the Islamic one was formed) was very well adapted to serve as an integrating mechanism for an intersocietal communication network lacking the political unity. It might not be a mere coincidence that the Islamic one turned out to have rather similar properties. Of course, for the first 150 years of Islam the Moslem pilgrimage area was more or less identical with the territory controlled by the united Islamic polity. However, after the disintegration of the latter, this system turned out to work precisely as its pre-Islamic Arabian counterparts, serving as an important integrating mechanism for an intersocietal communication network not united politically. Hence, one might suppose that one of the World System consequences of the Arab adaptation to the 6th century crisis was the formation of an important mechanism securing the integration of a huge intersocietal network covering some most important central areas of the WS (and many peripheral areas as well), a mechanism which secured the unity of some significant patterns, values and practices throughout all this territory, guaranteeing the annual meeting of the representatives of all the societies covered by the respective network in one place, the exchange of information between them, the constant re- integration of the network &c &c Again, I have not managed to finish the series of my messages today, having spelled out only one of the World System consequences I wanted to discuss. I have to speak about at least one other next time (and to finish my series with this). Yours, (Dr) Andrey Korotayev, Senior Research Fellow Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Sector of Theoretical Problems of Oriental History) 12 Rozhdesrvenka, Moscow 103753, RUSSIA Fax: (7) (095) 975 2396; E-MAIL: andrei@rsuh.ru From chriscd@jhu.edu Tue Oct 15 09:32:28 1996 15 Oct 1996 11:31:20 -0400 (EDT) 15 Oct 1996 11:30:30 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 11:32:30 -0400 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: [Fwd: Mexican National Indigenous Congress.] To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu Organization: Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.21218 USA Mon, 14 Oct 1996 10:47:31 -0400 (EDT) Mon, 14 Oct 1996 10:47:29 -0400 (EDT) 14 Oct 1996 09:43:58 -0500 (CDT) by mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3/mcfeeley.mc-1.17) 14 Oct 1996 09:32:05 -0500 (CDT) ; Mon, 14 Oct 1996 10:32:03 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 10:34:56 -0400 From: Stephen Homick Subject: C.N.I. Sender: owner-lasnet@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu To: lasnet@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu Reply-to: shomick@sover.net A quienes les interese: La home page del Congreso Nacional Ind=EDgena, que se celebr=F3 en la Ciudad de M=E9xico del 8 al 12 del presente, se encuentra en el URL: http://www.laneta.apc.org/cni Desde las Monta=F1as Verdes, saludos virtuales de ******************************** #Stephen Homick # #mailto:shomimid@pop.k12.vt.us # #mailto:shomick@sover.net # ******************************** REALITY.SYS FAILED Reboot Universe, Y/N? From rkmoore@iol.ie Tue Oct 15 11:53:05 1996 Tue, 15 Oct 1996 18:52:13 +0100 (BST) Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 18:52:13 +0100 (BST) To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: America and The New World Order (excerpts) America and The New World Order Copyright 1996 by Richard K. Moore 14 October 1996 (Part 1 - The birth of democratic republics -- the American Revolution) (Part 2 - Capitalism unleashed -- the American experience) ________________________________________________________________ Part 3 - Word War II -- America gains global control Background of the war ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ World War II, it turns out, was largely planned and arranged by elite elements, primarily in the U.S., Germany, and Britain. Hitler began his rise as an operative of German military intelligence, and received funding and support from elite Western industrialists. While in prison, he kept a portrait of Henry Ford on his desk. During the Spanish Civil War, the West kept the anti-fascist opposition disarmed, while it approvingly observed the efficiency of Hitler's growing war machine. American volunteers who fought against Franco found their patriotism questioned when they returned home. One must keep in mind that the rise of communist and socialist movements created intense fear in elite capitalist circles. The fascist movements were welcomed as desirable bulwarks against popular democracy, which would naturally have involved less elite-friendly economic policies, with socialist leanings. Mein Kampf made it quite unambiguous that the primary strategic objective in Hitler's mind was the subjugation and economic exploitation of Russia. By ignoring their own prohibition on German re-armament, and providing loans, the Western powers were in fact collaborating with Hitler in the development of an invasion force targeted on Russia -- socialism's bastion. Meanwhile, the West was watching with discomfort Japan's growing economic power and imperial scope. Japan was aiming to create a formidable Asian economic zone, backed up by a large, modern navy. This was a significant threat to Western, and especially American, interests and designs. Not only would markets and investment opportunities in populous Asia be highly curtailed, but Japan would be dislodging the West from its accustomed role as collective master of the seas and arbiter of global imperial arrangements. And who knew what would be the bounds of this Asian empire? The aggressive expansionism of Japan seemed destined to force a war with the West, sooner or later. America handled this complex situation with all the finesse and subtlety of a skilled marital-arts expert, guided by a strategic vision unsurpassed by the imperial masterminds of any previous age. America orchestrates global domination ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ In the prewar years, Japan and Germany enjoyed credit and trade with the West, while their aggressive designs and military machines were allowed to develop. They were being given enough rope to hang themselves with. Then, as was completely predictable, Hitler became embroiled in a war with Russia and Japan became similarly entangled in China and Southeast Asia. It was only after this anticipated scenario had unfolded that Uncle Sam unholstered his guns and prepared to take charge of the sequel. The traditional war-popularizing incident, in this case, was the inevitable Japanese strike on America's Pacific fleet. The incident- facilitating provocation, in this case, was the cutoff of Japanese oil supplies, which America convinced Holland to undertake. When the incident occurred, President Roosevelt feigned surprise and outrage, and the most formidable, popularly supported, military crusade of all time was launched. The well-funded and well-armed G.I. was loose on the world, and because of the eagerness with which Germany and Japan had hung themselves in world opinion, he was welcomed as a hero wherever he went. While Japan was contained by rear-guard actions, peripheral pressure was applied against the Nazis. The full-scale landing in Europe was carefully withheld, to enable Germany to keep most of its troops on the Russian front, so that Hitler and Stalin could decimate one another to the maximum extent possible. Only when Stalin turned the Nazis around, and began to advance toward Berlin, was the landing carried out. D-Day was obviously timed to minimize the Russian advance, not to hasten the demise of Nazism. At the end of the war, America had managed to put itself in a position which was very close to total global hegemony. It had the run of the seven seas, an intact military machine and national infrastructure, a monopoly on nuclear weapons, greatly expanded influence in the oil-rich Middle East, and the lion's share of the world's disposable wealth and industrial capacity. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the world was in shambles, in deep debt, and/or under occupation. America had the prestige, power, and resources to guide the construction of post-war arrangements largely according to its own designs. Hitler had threatened to conquer the world, and lost a generation of his men instead; Uncle Sam lost a comparatively minuscule number of troops, with no proclaimed territorial ambitions, and yet world domination seemed to fall into his lap. ________________________________________________________________ Part 4 - The New World Order -- the elite scheme for global fascism The "Free World" -- a global playground for capital ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Following the war, the Western elite, led by America, drew a line on the globe, separating the part they dominated from the part they didn't. The "free world" (doublespeak for "elite controlled zone") was organized into a new kind of global capital investment realm. Meanwhile the "communist block" (doublespeak for "beyond elite control") was contained: ostracized, pestered around its periphery by provocative military deployments, and subjected to chronic economic destabilization by means of the "arms race", expensive brushfire engagements, and trade restrictions. America could have used its position of strength to establish a traditional American-centered imperial system in the "free" world, relegating Europe to a secondary position, keeping Japan underdeveloped, etc. Instead America implemented a bold new world order. The elite had grander plans for capital growth than simply a larger American economy. The old European empires were disbanded, and a seemingly democratic United Nations was set up, promising to maintain orderly international relations. The "free" world seemed to be entering an era of national self- determination and democratic renaissance -- a bright new day following the fascist nightmare. But the reality -- as elite designs unfolded -- turned out to be quite different from that. Instead of an end to imperialism, as the propaganda myth would have it, what was introduced was a collective imperialism. Under a pax- americana military umbrella, an international economic infrastructure was established (IMF, World Bank, et al). Investment and trade were free to flow, for the most part, around the "free" world at will, without the territorial partitions traditionally imposed by a competitive European imperial system. The result for the smaller countries (soon to be dubbed the "Third World"), was that they found themselves dominated by the capital elite generally, rather than by the enterprises of a single national power. Megacorps -- the elite's Frankenstein monster ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This semi-homogenized, semi-pacified, investment environment enabled corporations (elite-owned money-multiplying machines) to develop orderly operations on a global scale. Thus arose the era of megacorps (aka: multinationals, transnationals) -- mammoth corporations with wealth and influence on a scale comparable to some nations. While Third-World countries became acutely aware that megacorps were becoming the autonomous overlords of the "free" world, the First World did everything it could to encourage their growth -- they were seen as the agents of First-World economic domination, and necessary to maintaining "home-country" prosperity. Megacorps are much more than simply large units of economic enterprise, capable of executing big-scale transactions over time. They are also significant social institutions -- semi-autonomous global-scale societies -- which provide to their employees sustenance, a sense of belonging, and a focus of identity. Megacorps are also significant political and economic powers in their own right on the world stage. They increasingly have outgrown any sense of home-nation loyalty, view regulations and trade barriers as provincial interference, and see themselves as autonomous masters of the globe. Their needs and demands are more often than not the hidden agenda behind the policies of the Western powers. The rise of megacorps must be viewed as an historically momentous development: the emergence of a new species of political entity, a species in direct competition with its ancestor species, the modern national state. Born out of limited-liability laws, nurtured in a capitalist culture, and lacking any natural bounds to growth or restraints on behavior, megacorps extend themselves as would cancer cells, poisoning and strangling their host planet in the process. Megacorps, in the end, are capitalist investments, and their motivation, pure and simple, is to increase their own market value, on behalf of their absentee owners. This means that the primary "drive" of the megacorp species is growth. Unlike natural species, where individuals grow only to a certain size, and mating habits limit population to what the environment will support, megacorps are driven to grow without limit, and have no natural concern with whatever stands in their way. Megacorps are cancer cells on steroids, expanding their dominance daily over commerce, communications, finances, public opinion, and governments. If allowed to continue on their current evolutionary path, megacorps threaten to become the dominant species on the globe, with humanity serving as ant-like cells of these larger organisms, and governments reduced to the role of subjugating the disenfranchised population, keeping them subservient to megacorp operations. It is well to consider what would be the nature of a megacorp- governed world. In short, its slogan would be "Feudalism locally, Gangsterism globally". Locally, the role of the employee to his megacorp would be much like that of a vassal to his lord in the middle ages: without rights, and serving at the will of his master. Globally, megacorps would interact with one another according to the dynamics of mafia bosses: usually cooperating, sometimes feuding, but always thinking about what collective scam they can engineer next. Another word for such a system is fascism. Mussolini's original fascista were corporate committees who were given responsibility for managing aspects of the Italian economy -- an early experiment with privatization. Hitler too emphasized corporate management, and made Herr Krupp Oberfuhrer of Industry in the Nazi realms. The Neoliberal Revolution -- the elite changes horses ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ For thirty-five years megacorps continued to spread their tentacles in the "free" world, pressure was kept up on the "communist" hold- outs, and the elite-controlled regions were increasingly consolidated into a tightening noose of international financial arrangements and dependence on megacorp operations. Then in 1980, a new phase of elite power-consolidation was launched simultaneously in America and Britain, under the stage-management of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, respectively. This new phase was the "neoliberal revolution", and its platform was lower corporate taxes, reduced regulation, privatization of public services, liberalization of international trade barriers, and the self- demonization of democratic political institutions -- "The only good government is less government" became the official kamikaze agenda in both countries. What the neoliberal agenda amounts to is a wholesale transference of power, assets, and sovereignty into megacorp hands. The thrust of government activity under neoliberalism is embezzlement on the grandest scale ever before attempted. Public lands, rights, responsibilities, and assets are being given into private hands at undervalued prices and without effective public oversight. Government itself is being dismantled, defunded, and prepared for the scrap heap. By rights, neoliberal government leaders should be indicted for conspiracy and high treason against the state. What the neoliberal revolution is really about, is a declaration by the elite that nations are no longer their chosen tools of power, and that megacorps are to become their primary vehicle not only of wealth accumulation, but also of organizing global society. The elite are now making it clear, under the rhetoric of neoliberalism, that First- World nations and their populations are no longer to be privileged partners in the elite game -- they are scheduled to come under the same kind of corporate domination that the Third-World has long been accustomed to. To this end, international arrangements such as WTO, IMF, World Bank, NAFTA, and GATT have been set up so that economic, and increasingly social and political, polices can be dictated on a global scale by corporate-dominated commissions. Global propaganda -- exporting the American model ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ In its fundamentals, the neoliberal revolution is a replay writ-large of the American revolutionary scenario. On the one hand there is a propaganda cover story -- modernization, competitiveness, greater efficiency, universal prosperity, reduced corruption -- while on the other there is the unspoken elite agenda -- firmer elite control, expanded exploitation opportunities, dismantlement of democratic institutions. Just as the early American elite had overthrown royalty, today's global elite aims to dethrone nation states -- the principal source of popular interference in elite hegemony. "Democracy", the scam which unleashed capitalism, has now become a hindrance. As happened in America, the myth-fantasy unfolds in the elite- controlled media, while the hidden agenda is being systematically implemented behind the scenes. The promise is to make the whole world a "land of opportunity", but that opportunity is to be for elite investments, not popular prosperity. The globalization of American-style propaganda was critical to the orchestration of this scenario, and thus Milton Friedman and his Chicago conjurers were dispatched to Downing Street to help sell the package. Neoliberal mythology became a global media phenomenon, with CNN, Hollywood, Murdoch, et al, deftly spreading the phony gospel of free-trade, government inadequacy, deregulation, and, as always, the American Dream. A significant difference between the neoliberal and American revolutions, is the lack of propaganda emphasis on democracy and freedom. The promises are related to "land of opportunity" much more than "land of freedom". The propaganda intent, here, is to portray neoliberalism as an economic movement, and to keep its political agenda hidden. Citizens are encouraged to assume that democracy is a fact of life, an unshakable institution, secure from any fatal dangers. They are also, with mind-boggling irony, encouraged to perceive capital exploitation itself as a sign of democracy, particularly in formerly socialist states. As we watch those populations suffering under intentionally destabilized economies, while megacorps organize their own exploitive infrastructures, we are told that the people are "slow to adopt to democracy". The police state -- public order under neoliberalism ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Traditionally in "democracies", police forces have been small, and order has arisen from the spirit of citizenship -- "This is our country", "We are benefiting from its existence", and order comes out of "following our own rules". Under neoliberalism, maintenance of public welfare is being abandoned -- undermining public satisfaction -- and nationalist ideology is being de-emphasized -- undermining civic identity and voluntary compliance. The elite is well aware that massive economic suffering and political discontent are an inevitable part of the megacorp future, with its obeisance to the religion of market forces, and its abandonment of citizen motivation via democratic processes. Not surprisingly then, what we see growing up, in tandem with the neoliberal revolution, are police-state systems and an intense propaganda-myth campaign regarding crime, its causes, and its cures. More police, longer sentences, and more prisons are the elite's answer to the question of public order. Third-World countries show where this leads: military dictatorships, systematic torture and killings, and suppression of unions, political parties, and non-compliant publications. In America, the First- World's most fully developed neoliberal state, we can see clearly how such regimes are to incrementally imposed on the First World. The media plays its part by ignoring the obvious fact that planned high unemployment and the abandonment of national hope are the primary causes of crime and the erosion of civic compliance. In place of this obvious truth, is offered a mythology which blames the victims: they lack "family values", they are lazy, they have a genetic predisposition to crime, they are habitual offenders -- the only solution is to lock them up. How one can follow "family values", when one has no family income, is strangely absent from "public debate". The nature of the penal system is rapidly changing in America, reflecting the anticipated further increase in social unrest, and justified by the propaganda mythology. A formidable prison capacity is being built -- prison construction is the largest growth industry at present in the U.S. -- and the concept of who the prisons are for is undergoing radical change. It used to be the case that punishment was a response to a crime, and when the "debt to society" was repaid, the offender was expected to join the ranks of the responsible citizenry. Increasingly, prisons are being seen as a place to house certain segments of the population: those who can't or won't fit into society. That's what "three strike" laws and mandatory sentencing (and soon, preventive detention) are all about. Under a neoliberal, megacorp-centered system, there are two kinds of people: megacorp members (employees, contractors, etc.) on the one hand, and the redundant, on the other. Without social services, the redundant become a starving, potentially dangerous under-class, and stiff laws and numerous prisons are being implemented as the final solution to this problem. In a very literal sense, prisons are to be the concentration camps of the neoliberal regime -- a place to isolate those redundant to corporate needs. Never wanting to waste an exploitable resource, the elite in America are now developing an extensive prison-labor system, renting out inmates to fill lower-rung corporate labor needs. Thus, in the "land of the free", we see the development of a network of slave-labor concentration camps, without the fact seeming to reach public awareness. Again, fascism seems to be the most descriptive word available to describe the situation. In terms of America's traditional "class ladder" system, what's happened is that the lower part of the ladder has been shoved down into the mud. As feudalistic social arrangements are being re- introduced by neoliberalism, there comes also a re-introduction of slavery, with, as it turns out, a familiar ethnic bias. It is disproportionately blacks who are confined to crime-likely life scenarios by corporatization, and it is largely blacks who seem destined to populate America's slave-labor prisons. The Gulf "War "-- America becomes the official elite enforcer ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ With megacorps evolving into the world's dominant political-economic- social institutions, and with their open grab for political power being reflected in the neoliberal revolution, the question remains as to how order in the world is to be maintained. If nations are to be weakened -- and especially if identification with nationalism is to be de-emphasized -- then where are the armies to come from to maintain the elite-architected system? Nationalist spirit -- with a feeling of everyone pulling together -- has been central to modern war efforts. How can a disenfranchised, betrayed populace be expected to rally "to the defense" when the elite need their support? And if strong nation-states are to be dismantled, whence will come the infrastructure to maintain systems of weapons and delivery? What will be the command structure, and on behalf of what political entity will military operations be carried out? And what about public opinion? Even though the police state will have the capability to suppress troublesome dissent, the myth of continued democracy requires that some degree of popular sentiment be roused for dramatic military interventions. The Gulf "War" and its aftermath demonstrate clearly how the elite has chosen to deal with these problems. This war was a major historic precedent on several levels. It established new paradigms for global propaganda, weapons technology, blitzkrieg tactics, and international law. It established in the global public mind the principle that America has a justifiable global policing role, and it exported to the global stage America's traditional war-incident scenario. Technologically, the war was in fact a field test of significant new blitzkrieg weapons systems. Precise night operations, stealth defenses, guided weapons, satellite navigation, cruise missiles, bulldozers as mass-murder devices, air-fuel explosives, uranium- weighted shells -- an entire new generation of weaponry -- were tested on a modern, supposedly well-armed, industrial nation. With almost no loss of life in the elite forces, it was demonstrated that Iraq's infrastructures could be systematically destroyed, and her population could be subjected to relentless terrorism from the skies. This suite of technology and operating procedures solves the problem posed by the demise of strong nationalism, which formerly provided massive, motivated armies willing to risk their lives for "freedom". By emphasizing hi-tech weapons, operated from safe havens -- and by using blitzkrieg tactics -- the duration of an intervention is minimized, the number of aggressor casualties is kept low, and the need for a large, non-professional army is eliminated. The elite no longer needs public support for its military ventures, it only needs acquiescence. A gulf-style approach minimizes negative public responses, making acquiescence easier to achieve. But acquiescence is too important to leave to chance, and so the Gulf War also served as field test for a new generation of propaganda techniques. Starting with the source of information itself, the propaganda was characterized by a complete lack of information regarding the objectives of the intervention, the targets of attack, the morale of the troops, the type of operations being carried out, and the behavior of the enemy. From this base vacuum of actual war information, an intensive PR campaign constituted the fare from which war entertainment could be constructed. The war-provoking incident was a direct exportation of the proven American scenario. The incident was arranged, by an economically provocative policy by Kuwait, followed by a "go signal" from the U.S. Secretary of State regarding the invasion by Iraq. Once the incident occurred, outrage and surprise were feigned, and a world-wide media/lobbying campaign was launched to achieve UN approval of U.S. military action. Once the approval was obtained, the U.S. then launched on a military campaign of its own design (the destruction of Iraq), and -- as with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution -- the UN approval turned out to amount to a blank check, to be interpreted however the U.S. administration wished. This Gulf-War precedent has established itself very firmly on the media-managed "world stage". When the Bosnia situation advanced to the point where the U.S. wanted to jump in and manage the sequel, it was able to get its way with very little fuss. The U.S. has all but been handed the official title of "Judge Dredd" -- judge, jury, and executioner of international law -- and U.S. intervention, certainly not a new phenomenon, seems no longer to be viewed as imperialism. The New World Order (NWO) -- global feudalism & corporate overlords ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ These then are the essential elements of what amounts to an historic New World Order. Overall policies are to be set by non-elected, corporate-dominated commissions; the world's economy, information, and working conditions are to be managed directly by megacorps; and governmental function is to shrink down to administrative matters and police-management of the populace. All this to be enforced globally by an elite-dominated strike force built around the U.S. military and NATO. America clearly has a unique role in this scenario. Partly this is because America has the dominant military power. But it also reflects the fact that America, compared to other First-World countries, is the most thoroughly captured by megacorp interests (recall Eisenhower's speech re/ military-industrial complex), and that the American people, in their habitual credulity, are the most effectively mesmerized by the media mythology they are fed via television. America is a kind of "safe house" for NWO operations. Humanity on the precipice -- is a second Dark Ages inevitable? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ There is now a brief window of opportunity in which First-World populations could get it together and reclaim their paper democracies through intensive political organizing and the creation of broad coalition movements. Soon their governments will be disempowered and that opportunity will be lost. Such an unprecedented peaceful revolution will only become possible if people generally wake up to the true nature of the threat facing them. Helping them wake up becomes a duty of citizenship for anyone who's managed to grasp the situation. ________________________________________________________________ ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~--~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~ Posted by Richard K. Moore - rkmoore@iol.ie - Wexford, Ireland Cyberlib: www | ftp --> ftp://ftp.iol.ie/users/rkmoore/cyberlib ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~--~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~ From wilkinso@polisci.sscnet.ucla.edu Tue Oct 15 12:50:11 1996 From: "Wilkinson, David POLI SCI" To: * World Systems Network Subject: Re:America and The New World Order Date: Tue, 15 Oct 96 11:50:00 PDT Encoding: 2 TEXT *marital-arts expert*? America?? From dlj@pobox.com Tue Oct 15 13:29:49 1996 Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 15:34:48 -0400 To: wilkinso@polisci.sscnet.ucla.edu From: David Lloyd-Jones Subject: Re:America and The New World Order At 11:50 AM 15/10/96 PDT, Wilkinson, David POLI SCI wrote: > *marital-arts expert*? America?? > Those who can do. Those who can't teach. -dlj. From dlj@pobox.com Tue Oct 15 13:30:04 1996 Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 15:34:41 -0400 To: rkmoore@iol.ie From: David Lloyd-Jones Subject: Re: America and The New World Order (excerpts) At 06:52 PM 15/10/96 +0100, somebody using Richard K. Moore's account wrote: > > America and The New World Order > Copyright 1996 by Richard K. Moore > 14 October 1996 > Richard, You should guard your password carefully, and never leave your terminal logged on when you step away for a few minutes. When you let your password out of control or leave your open account accessible to others, some dork is likely to come along and post really ridiculous stuff in your name. Best wishes, -dlj. From dow@pinc.com Wed Oct 16 09:42:07 1996 Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 08:42:03 -0700 (PDT) To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu From: David Wolsk Subject: America and the New World Order On 15 Oct 96, Richard K. Moore wrote excerpts from his book On 16 Oct 96, David Wolsk, after reading several replies to RK Moore's piece felt like writing his first comments for this network. Much of what you wrote fits in wqith my own take on the events that have led to the world today. I am not a historian. Although my PhD is in physiological psychology, much of the last 30 of my 66 years have been spent trying to reduce the negative effects of the narrow disciplinary indoctrinations one receives in today's universities. Some of the outcomes of this were represented by the supposedly cute responses to your piece. As an ex-American, with 10 years of Scandinavian living and work with Unesco and Education International in Africa mostly, I have been deeply troubled by the consistent pattern of USA policy/actions which you so well summarized. Some years ago, at an international education conference in Hawaii, Johan Galtung, the father of peace research, gave the keynote address. It was his quite detailed analysis and synthesis of USA and Japan over the last 150 years. His scenario was of approaching war between them but with a potential sub-scenario of what's needed to prevent that happening. Much of what he outlined was similar to your reading of events and their underlying dynamics. At any rate, my purpose was to offer compliments, let you hear from one admirer, and ask: what do we do about it? Personally, I sense there is a growing backlash from the pace and singleminded survival-of-the-fittest (meaning wealthy) mentality of the Megacorps Minions. Yesterday also brought an email announcement of TOES 97 (The Alternative Economic Summit). David Wolsk Victoria, BC Canada (too close for comfort) From rkmoore@iol.ie Wed Oct 16 09:51:50 1996 Wed, 16 Oct 1996 16:51:28 +0100 (BST) Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 16:51:28 +0100 (BST) To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: Re: ridiculous stuff 10/15/96, David Lloyd-Jones wrote (re: America & NWO): >When you let your password >out of control or leave your open account accessible to others, some dork is >likely to come along and post really ridiculous stuff in your name. I've been posting my various analyses to several lists for the past couple years, and the responses typically fall into certain categories: 1) Some people won't or can't follow the argument, and simply proclaim disbelief re/ the conclusions, since they seem so dissonant with media-defined consensus reality. 2) Some people find the pieces threatening or dangerous, and respond with counter-propaganda, ad-hominem attacks, sophistic rebuttals, etc. 3) Many people express gratitude for a well-stated version of what they themselves had grasped to some degree, or offer additional examples & themes. 4) Very few people have comprehended an analysis and offered an informed, logical rebuttal, that addresses core issues. Of the last, sparse, category, most have been academicians with their own unshakable interpretations, but none have been able to come up with rebuttals that I found convincing. And of course, I've incorporated (into later treatments) refinements based on all categories of responses. I've been hoping from this particular list to receive some responses in category 4 -- after all I'm talking about today's world systems and how they arose -- one would think that would be on topic. If the ideas are obviously wrong-headed, as Mr. Lloyd-Jones implies, perhaps he could deftly dispatch them with a tight, to-the-point, category 4 response. Sincerely, rkm From rkmoore@iol.ie Wed Oct 16 09:51:51 1996 Wed, 16 Oct 1996 16:51:20 +0100 (BST) Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 16:51:20 +0100 (BST) To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: re: marital-arts expert ? David Wilkinson asked: > *marital-arts expert*? America?? I gather from your question that you may have fallen prey to the "bungling government" thread of neoliberal propaganda. We have a situation where government policy is determined by a hidden corporatist agenda, and cover-stories need to be constantly concocted by politicians to justify those policies in popular terms. Of course the policies never achieve the goals espoused in the cover stories, since they weren't designed to that end, and thus in the public mind the government is always "bungling things up". This public perception is turned to good advantage in the overall neoliberal propaganda campaign. Since one of the objectives of that campaign is to demonize/discredit government, there is no attempt to paper-over the bungling in the mass media, as there would have been in pre-neoliberal days. Instead, the mass media itself joins in exposing the "bungling", as the alternative press has always done, though for different purposes. In order to judge the acumen of a policy, from a real-politik point of view, one must first identify the hidden agenda being pursued, and then see how well the policy serves that agenda. I think it is clear from the WW II experience that U.S. participation was deftly timed and deployed, if you accept that global hegemony was the goal being sought. If ending fascism had been the primary elite goal, then German re-armament would not have been so strongly encouraged, "appeasement" would not have been so long purused, American military mobilization not so long delayed, D-Day would have been carried out earlier, and fascist post-war regimes would not have been forced on Greece (and others). To take a more recent example of acumen co-existing with "bungling", consider the Bosnian affair. From a cover-story point of view, the goals would have been to end the fighting and re-establish democratic order, with people's rights respected to live peacefully in their traditional homelands. From such a perspective, obviously, Western policy has been highly unproductive, and America's long-held stand-off posture shameful. The whole thing was "bungled". But if one peeks just a bit beneath the cover, one observes a simple replay of the original imperialist Balkanization scenario, carried out this time in coordination with a broader balkanization of the entire former USSR. It was the goal of the elite to split Yugoslavia up into ethnically-based, mutually hostile, mini-countries -- and by this measure the policy was well planned and fully successful. Germany arm-twisted Europe into endorsing Croation independence, and this led inevitably to Bosnian independence, which could only lead to civil war. The Serbs were then given rope to hang themselves with, and the scenario was allowed to play out, with lots of press fanfare, mainly aimed at demonizing the Serbs. With the world eager for Uncle Sam to ride to the rescue, America then carried out its patient plans. The strategy-architect of Desert Storm was dispatched to Croatia to make sure that Croatia and Bosnia were prepared for joint military operations, and to verify that their illegally imported weapons had been effectively deployed. Finally Uncle Sam publicly accepted his "call to duty", and cruise missles were deployed to the region. Croatia then prepared for its offensive by expelling nearly a million Serbs, and the stage was set. The invasion was then launched against Serb-held territories, and Uncle Sam arranged the traditional "incident" to enable him to play his key role in the invasion. The incident was a mortar attack on a marketplace from a Muslim position (that was instantly blamed on the Serbs), and it was perfectly timed to enable decisive tactical support to be delivered. The outcome is a balkanized Yugoslavia, with the German-backed, neo-fascist Croats having a bigger share than they would have gotten without Western intervention -- and the Serbs remain media-demonized in case further intervention is needed. In all, an unfortunately well-executed operation. The martial arts virtues I see exhibited in this (and the WW II) scenario include: 1) Wait for precisely the right moment to move 2) Never telegraph your moves 3) Know your moves well; maintain concentration 4) Use your opponent's energy against him; get him off balance 5) When you act, act decisively, while conserving your energy and maintaining your balance Regards, rkm From U17043@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU Wed Oct 16 21:01:58 1996 Date: Wed, 16 Oct 96 18:04:37 CDT From: "Daniel A. Foss" Subject: end of the ancient world To: World Systems Network Peter Brown, in his debate with the dead Henri Pirenne ("Mohammed and Charlemagne" in Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity, University of California Press, 1982), suggests 543, in place of the Muslim conquests, as the critical year, should we need one of those, for the End of the Ancient World. That is the year the Bubonic Plague pandemic known as the Plague of Justinian reached Gaul, having broken out in Constantinople the previous year. Why Peter Brown might be right requires that I refine the concept of the "demographic sink," which is, after all, detectable only by demographic movements, suggesting that there is something subjective about it. Right here I should advise those of you kind enough to suggest that I read J.H. McNeill's Plagues and Peoples, 1976, that, thank you, I have, several times, already; and consequently assumed a priori that everyone on this list has, also. - dafÙ A "demographic sink" arises when, for whatever social sources, a *shortage of labour* is deemed to exist in some given locality *or* said locality is regarded as *for all practical purposes* unpopulated. The preceding sentence is going to look intolerably circular to some people, so perhaps I should clarify. We should, actually, replace the discourse of "migrations" and "invasions" with one couched in terms of *acquisition of captive labour*. That is, people and peoples tend to *penetrate into virgin territory* (phallicism deliberate), bring the Light of Civilization unto benighted Savages, or liberalize the immigration laws, not in order to do the work, but to watch other people do the work. It is notorious, for example, that opponents of the predatory expansionist imperialist wars fought by the USA in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, the failed attempt to grab Canada, 1812-1815, and the successful annexation of half of Mexico, 1846-1853 (includes the Mexican War and the Gadsden Purchase), were concentrated in the Northeast, where slavery was illegal; whereas "War Hawks" of 1812 and supporters of Polk over Mexico in 1846 (as opposed to Members of Congress who voted for the Wilmot Proviso, qv) were most prevalent in the slavery-legal West and South. Admittedly, those motivated by "pioneer spirit" who migrated West into slavery-unsuitable regions like the Western Reserve, which became the Midwest, fully intended to do the work themselves, including some of the work of committing genocide upon the Native Americans, should opportunity arise. But they themselves were *consciously* "blazing a path through the wilderness" in order to make the frontier safe for immigrants from Europe. Those who prospered on the Frontier were land speculators. To this very day, in the USA, to thrive, capitalistically speaking, is called, "doing a land-office business." As we recall, one of the unquestionably correct insights propounded by Karl Marx is that wage-labour resembles other labour systems in being *coerced*, but differs in that the coercion is *mediated by the market*. By extension, "labour-power" is not a genuine commidity, as defined in Chapter 1 of Book I of Capital; it is a pseudo-commodity, as it is quite impossible to buy and sell labour-power without the remainder of the organism being dragged along with it. Thus, Henry Ford may invest capital in Detroit, and thereby create a demographic sink whereinto hundreds of thousands of people from the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires would subjectively experience themselves as "economic migrants" in crossing the Atlantic Ocean in order to fall into it. Once at work for the Ford Motor Company, they would, as you may recall, be under the surveillance of the company's secret police, known, as I recall, as the Sociology Department, or something like that. The difference between chattel slavery and economic opportunity is that of a continuum, not a dichotomy. Did not, does not, the industrial working class, too, undergo what Orlando Patterson called "social death"? The forms of captive labour are as various as the forms of society itself. It may be, for instance, revocable or permanent. Servitude as labour-power since ancient times, e.g., Jacob's service, in the Book of Genesis, as bridewealth-payment to Laban, in return for the latter's daughters in marriage (he had to marry the elder one first in order to get the younger one, whom he wanted, as you recall), has been done on contract basis. So has military service, since classical antiquity. Greek mercenaries appeared as a major industry in the sixth century BC (or perhaps, in Egypt, even earlier). When properly led, in an army whose core was a national force of Balkan peasants, they became a social-revolutionary force in empowering the conquests of Alexander The Great. G.T. Griffith, The Mercenaries in the Hellenistic World, Oxford University Press, 1935, counts fifty thousand mercenaries reaching Alexander between 333 and 323 BC; to which are added those he recruited from defeated Persian armies. The commerce in women for purposes of submarital polygyny (concubines and handmaids) on term contracts for, say, one to five years goes back to the Song period (960-1279) according to Patricia Buckley Ebrey (The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Song Period, University of California Press, 1993). Now, the microsurgery performed upon Mr John Bobbitt has demonstrated that, theoretically, even eunuchry, the sale of a man's entitlement to seek reproductive success in return for econcomic opportunity contingent upon demonstrable perfection as pliant instrument of one's master's will, is in principle terminable by contract. (See Tsai, The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty, State University of New York, 1996, for the peak reached during the Ming dynasty, 1368-1644, in eunuchs' constituting perhaps the mainstay of the state apparatus at the expense of the civil service.) It should be remarked, given that World Systems Theory is Man's Work, a narrative told by men, which nearly all the readers of this, if any, are, about men, who Boldly Go Where No Girlz Allowed to buy, sell, and traffick in gold, slaves (some of whom, admittedly, are in principle allowed to be quite gorgeous), and molasses, whilst other men indulge in the manly arts of violence in order to guarantee their ability to so do upon a global scale, that sexual services, as captives, may be ancillary = that is from Latin *ancilla*, a female slave - to production as well as luxury consumption (those concubines and handmaids) when it is not routinely demanded in marriage (or even supplementing that, where sexual harrassment imperils you as to "giving at the office"). Catharine A. Mackinnon reminded us, in Feminism Unmodified, 1988, that the usual definition of consensual sex is figmentational insofar as, under conditions of patriarchy, it is the presupposition of hierarchy which "makes sex sexy." We have, in the Chinese classic, Book of Songs, a lament dating to 700 BC sung by a serf-girl bemoaning her duty to perform sexual services for her feudal lord that night in his mansion. Such literature does not, as a rule, "come down to us"; but it happened, curiously enough, that it was one of the *ritual duties* of the Zhou kings of Chinese Antiquity to collect regional folksongs from their several, later proliferating, far-flung fiefs. In this light, and as part and parcel of Dealing With My Sexism, I present the Captive Woman's Survival Guide, where it is presumed that your captor gets more prestige from capturing you as a "spear-won captive" than out-and-out *buying* you in the slavemart, but you are his, body and soul, believe it. Option 1. Fate worse than death, choose your local culture's normative mode of committing suicide. In Classical Antiquity, as shown in the Pergamene sculpture of the Gaulish warrior stabbing his wife, then himself, as in the Indian Rajput caste, who, facing defeat, massacred their women, then attacked the enemy in a suicidal charge, this may entail the performance of Man's Work to put you safely out of the way before The Enemy arrives. In case you are royalty, like the Carthaginian princess Sophronisba, bride, successively, of the aging Syphax and the dashing Massinissa (who switched sides, according to Livy, in the middle of the decisive campaign of Scipio Africanus, in 202 BC, over her wondrous beauty; but then realized, when captured by the Romans, that, in Great Power warfare, the fortunes of war for petty tribal kings can take one only so far and no more, so sent her a cup of poison in fulfillment of his promise not to let her fall alive into Roman hands), prepare a line for yourself. Elsewise, a male historian will do it for you. What has come down to us is, "If my husband has no better wedding gift than this." Japanese nobility were required to do it with discrete ladylike daggers of the world's sharpest and hardest polished steel, with a quick, deft, plunging motion into the throat; no ostentatious theatirics, please. The wives of Chinese scholar-officials, on the other hand, hanged themselves. In the event of joint husband-wife suicides, the man got the place of honour, on the left. Which, in one famous story, a wife pointed out to her husband as she respectfully hung herself to his right. There is the curious tale, from the fall of Nanjing to the Manchu Qing dynasty in 1645, of a scholar-official who rushed home to tell his spouse the good news of his having been given a choice job offer by the victors. When he got home, he found that his Virtuous Wife had hung herself, in keeping with due Proprieties. 2. Option 2. Give a bravura performance; your life depends on it. This is suggested by the role-modelling of Esther (="Ishtar") in Holy Scripture. It is implausibly suggested, in the Good Book, that the lady, by sexual charms, induced Artaxerxes II, fifth century BC, to repeal the - to be anachronistic - genocidally antisemitic policies of his grand vizir, Haman, whose historicity is unlikely; depose Haman himself; and in his place appoint her own uncle Mordecai who, as she assured the King of Kings, was almost as smart as herself. Or something like that. This Scripture is read aloud annually at a festival designed especially for children, Purim. But the kiddies don't know what it means, yet. 3. Give a bravura performance; then murder the sexist pig who is by this device lulled into a false sense of security; and likewise get immortalized in Holy Scripture. This is exactly the story of Judith and Holophernes. Holy Scripture, remember, is always sold as Non-Fiction. 4. OTHER (Specify). Use your own sick imagination. In the spirit of the foregoing, I herewith offer a Survival Guide For A Slavic Tribe Being Irked By Kutrigurs, Utigurs, Avars, Huns, Bulgars, Khazars, or other Turkic-speaking (occasionally Iranian-speaking) Peoples. It is not, by the way, generally realized that, had the small Iranian tribes of Serbs and Croats merged before they got about as far west as they could, a great deal of Trouble might have been spared us today. (See J.V.A. Fine, 19831991Ù, below.) It is suggested, by the probabilistic guesswork of historians, that you, qua Slavic tribe, are Dwelling, as they say, in the southern Ukraine. Option 1. Surrender gracefully. Whether The Enemy appreciates that you are Friends is unpredictable. Whether The Enemy accepts that you have no military potential, but will offer to teach you, in goodwill, in return for obedience, as opposed to massacring you as too-sturdily-dangerous young lads (whilst appropriating the women, for the time being, at least), is also unpredictable. 2. Fight to the last woman and child, then run for it; the Turco-Iranian cavalry will cut you down before you get very far. 3. Migrate in the direction of Moesia, Illyricum, or Pannonia, in anticipation of settling, still using the Latin, in *agres vacantes*. Five hundred years from now, which is the sixth century, the official language will be Greek, when the same regions are definitively conquered by Basil II (976-1025). The latter was one of those curiously monastic commanders, like Charles XII of Sweden, who felt that making love and war were mutually exclusive, howbeit they were hardly "hippies." That hundreds of thousands of Slavs chose Option 3 was the outcome of the Bubonic Plague, without which it is unlikely to have become common knowledge that there was plenty of uncultivated land in the East Roman Balkans. And what's more, that the noncultivation of suchlike lands was distressing to local communities who were unable to produce their staple crops, fish, or other food products at anything close to peak efficiency; possibly, in some cases, were even starving, given the fiscality of the East Roman state from the time of Justinian onwards. Those historians of the Balkans or of Byzantine civilization who, unlike Warren Treadgold (The Byzantine Rivival: 780-843), ignore the Bubonic Plague, will have, have had, all sorts of curious problems explaining whatever happened in the sixth and seventh centuries in the Balkans. Here is John V. A. Fine, The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century, Ann Arbor, 19831991Ù, p. 37: What was the fate of the indigenous population? Many were killed, while others were carried off beyond the Danube as captives (some of whom were reansomed and returned), or fled to walled cities or to the islands. Still others withdrew to the mountains or remote regions, and their descendants reappeared later as Vlachs or Albanian who begin to turn up in written sources in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Thracians simply disappeared from history. But many indigenous peoples surely simply remained; perhaps in their original homes or perhaps a short distance to establish new homes in the same general area.... Why not, instead, posit that a considerable percentage of the indigenous population was already dead, for which reason the availability of fertils albeit uncultivated lands (combined with tax collectors attempting to extract the full tax burden from the survivors, as well as landlords whose expectations of luxury at the very least were undiminished and possibly, with great riches concentrated into the hands of relatively fewer heirs, even enhanced) enticed the migrants as conquerors. The latter, unwitting protectors of the locals from the state, were dependent upon these same locals for *environment- appropriate technologies*. As a Slavic tribe, the incomers would have no expectation that the construction mud used in their original miserable hovels in the southern Ukraine would be available in the desired quantity and quality in the destination. Perhaps it was preferable, or at least conventional, to build in some other medium. This is, of course, a joke, but the point should be obvious: A labouring population, especially an agriculturally labouring population, does not simply "migrate" blindly. "Migration" is, rather, a stupid word. Fine continues: Archeology in western Yugoslavia shows considerable cultural continuity from the pre-Slavic to the Slavic population....The acquisition of such things as metalworking techniques and architectural and grave construction features suggests that close and friendly contacts existed in places between the two populations. (p. 38) Close, and friendly, whether the indigenous people liked it or not. They had better show good will in doing whatever it was they had to show the incomers how to do. Building being closed at this time. Continued tomorrow.Ù Daniel A. Foss From rkmoore@iol.ie Thu Oct 17 08:35:29 1996 Thu, 17 Oct 1996 15:35:06 +0100 (BST) Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 15:35:06 +0100 (BST) To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: Re: what do we do about it? Dear wsn, Someone pointed out that the comment re/ "marital arts" was related to the misspelling... sorry... hope the irrelevant response was not entirely useless. 10/16/96, David Wolsk wrote: >much of the last 30 of my 66 years have been spent >trying to reduce the negative effects of the narrow disciplinary >indoctrinations one receives in today's universities. Some of the outcomes >of this were represented by the supposedly cute responses to your piece. Indeed. Narrow disciplines seem to have two ill effects. One is that the followers develop a private vocabulary and end up speaking only to one another. Another is that the community has its arm tied behind its back, in the sense that it bring only a narrow part of each "self" to the table: that which is expert in the "subject". There's a steep cliff then -- on the plateu of the subject, discourse is at a high level; once discussion slips from that ground, there's a rapid descent into shallow personal opinions and lack of mutual understanding. Bucky Fuller talks about specialization in Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. He claims it was introduced and propagated by the Admiralty War College, as a way of preventing emerging technologists from becoming a new center of political power -- by relegating them to sterile, isolated, domains. Traditional power centers could then exploit the results without having to include the scientists in power sharing. A special case of the industrial revolution -- turning scientists into assembly-line workers who only get to work with one piece of the final product. >It was his >quite detailed analysis and synthesis of USA and Japan over the last 150 >years. His scenario was of approaching war between them but with a >potential sub-scenario of what's needed to prevent that happening. Much of >what he outlined was similar to your reading of events and their underlying >dynamics. Does he see such a war in the future? I see one with China, but I though Japan was fairly well-integrated into WTO/NWO schemes... >At any rate, my purpose was to ... ask: what do we do about it? Personally, >I sense there is a >growing backlash from the pace and singleminded survival-of-the-fittest >(meaning wealthy) mentality of the Megacorps Minions. Yesterday also >brought an email announcement of TOES 97 (The Alternative Economic Summit). Less than a backlash, unfortunately, what I think we can see are eddy currents -- minor reverse flows in a forward-raging river. For example, the opposition Yeltzin faced in his re-election represented dissatisfaction with neoliberalism, but it was easily contained by expensive western PR consultants. The labor revolts we see in France, Germany, and Australia are each being contained within their local contexts (no inter-solidarity is being built), and are being defused within the local political context. We need, I believe, a movement based on a comprehensive understanding of the global situtation, and with a concious sense of international solidarity. IMHO, rkm From U17043@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU Thu Oct 17 11:30:00 1996 Date: Thu, 17 Oct 96 11:51:18 CDT From: "Daniel A. Foss" Subject: thank you andrey korotayev To: World Systems Network I wish to thank Andrey Korotayev for, inter alia, pointing out to us a few days ago that South Arabia was not the only place in the peninsula where the Plague of Justinian pushed states (and chieftainships, defined by anthropologists as polities differentiated, like states, only somewhat less so, and mark you, I have read the list ANTHRO-L for years without ever seeing them get less nebulous than that) over the edge of nonviability by suddenly and drastically curtailing their resource base. Perhaps the majority of sites which were loci of settled agriculutre, howbeit marginal, were so affected and perhaps reverted, perhaps adopted de novo, the segmented- lineage/acephalous sort of association. That, as Andrey Korotayev also tells us, within two generations this adaptation had become Time-Immemorialized Tradition - the Arabs, since the Beginning of Time, had never known the yoke of kings, you see - is hardly surpirising. Traditions may a priori be presumed Recent, unless they prove fictitious, of course. (Cf Hobsbawm & Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, 1990.) The undermining of states occurred wherever the pandemic reached. Those which survived became flabby. The same was true in the smallpox-measles pandemics of the second-third centuries throughout the Eurasian landmass, and also in the Black Death of the fourteenth century et seq. All three of these world-historical disasters contributed to the revolutionizing of religious beliefs. Even to social revolutions, in Bohemia, for example, in 1415-1433; and on a much vaster scale in China (1351-1368). Ia the Rise of Islam *necessary* to socially construct the superpower Empires of the Near East as "conquest-bait"? I think one should ask the Avars, Kutrigurs, Utigurs, etc, that question; and the answer will be *no*. But did the rise of Islam facilitate this intuition, which was also present in the Byzantine government about the Persians, once the Persian government had empirically vaildated it about the Byzantines? This remains to be investigated. Secondly. Did the Rise of Islam, qua religiously-bonded Arab national cause unifying segmented-lineage/acephalous societies constitute a more effective conquest device than the pre-Plague monarchies and chiefdoms? Certainly, the irrigated-agriculture regions, trading-cities, and oases experienced higher mortality rates than the hot and dry regions. This is because the microorganisms thrive in warm and moist climates, most especially where dense concentrations of humans exist. Put enough people together, and the toll from septacaemic and pneumonic variants of the Plague increases relative to that from the Bubonic. For the former two, the first symptom is death. Before Andrey Korotayev brought these issues to our attention, the foregoing two had been unaskable questions. Congratulations, Andrey Korotayev; the more unaskable questions, the better. Daniel A. Foss From U17043@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU Thu Oct 17 18:32:12 1996 Date: Thu, 17 Oct 96 18:19:27 CDT From: U17043@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU Subject: go west young turkic tribe To: World Systems Network /* notice: this writer would appreciate hostile comments from readers in /* the eventuality that, as usually happens in any Normal university, I /* required to prove to the administration of Yale University that I am /* present for the purpose of annoying the World on a Global Scale, rather /* than, as is Normally suspected, those persons present in this room, who /* at this time number four. /* Thank you. I wish to credit Michael Mann, A History of Power, Vol I, 1986, for the usage "caging." The corresponding anthropological term is "circumscription," which is typically mealy-mouthed. (That is, your anthropologist says *complex society* when *class society* is meant, etc.) The context was, the human species is the only one wherein the vast of the specimens are kept as domestic animals by other members of the same species (class exploitation, racial hierarchies, the generalized dichotomizing of those small numbers who do the Civilization from the vast majorities who do the Work). Which condition, as is by now common knowledge, partly palliated or obfuscated by the wide distribution among the members of the male gender to keep the members of the other gender, likewise, as domestic animals (whereunder may be subsumed also the latter's dependent children, especially female, the latter being destined in principle for domestic animal status). The organization of subinfedated domestication is organized by means of gender roles, guaranteed by the means of violence applied on the spot: Spouse-beating. A surprisingly sophisticated theoretical analysis of Woman-battering, based on empirical research conducted right here, in New Haven, Connecticut, is: Evan Stark and Anne Flitcraft, Women At Risk, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks CA, 1996. It has been found, for example, that woman-battering is found most commonly in connection with slight perturbations, often generated by the battered woman herself, of the received, pre-existing, perfectly-ordinary-people sort of gender-role organization. So much for real life, back to the past. It was mentioned yesterday that the depopulated, for-all-practical-purposes uninhabited character of, say, Australia in 1799, was socially constructed whereby it had been presupposed that Britain had lost the War of the American Revolution by the Peace of Paris, 1783, and with it, the previous dumping ground for convicts sentenced to Transportation (captives, indeed), Georgia. The uninhabitedness of New Zealand, a figment heroically resisted by Maori for forty years (till their near-extermination by British arms and smallpox), was contingent upon the prior declining profitability of industrialized aquatic mammal slaughter in the Atlantic (Where the House of Melville, having been prominent in the Connecticut invasion of Dutch Long Island in the 1653 War and established aquatic mammal slaaughter headquarters at Southport, LI, NY, by this time shifted its capital into shoe factories, leaving their literary kinsman, Herman Melville, to write a mythic reminiscence of Olden Days. More recently, the House of Melville shifted its interests into real- estate speculation and Development of suburbs and shopping malls, notably on Long Island: In 1955, they donated a rectangular piece of their Vast Estates on Suffolk County to the State of New York for a university campus at Stony Brook, which immensely multiplied the property value of the remainder. Today, sociologists in the Ward Melville Social and Behavioural Sciences Building, gazing at the Frank Melville Memorial Library, realize that the dead white male status of Herman ensures the ever-more-unread character of the classic Moby Dick.). To a lesser degree, the emptiness of New Zealand presupposed advances in harpoon technology. The human captives interned upon New Zealand, however, turned out to be a predominance of sheep shearers and other attendants upon the numerically speaking dominant species of that nation; tending to be of the Presbyterian persuasion. The social construction of a society as *conquest-bait* or *invasion- victimizable* is, however, quite different. Here, it is presupposed, rather, that the place is pupulated with productive labourers, producing subsistence for themselves as well, conceivably, and why not, for the predators or, in J.H. McNeill's usage, *macroparasites*, desirous of being supported in the style wherein Civilized elites, perhaps, have long been, already. Where, as we recall, we define Civilized circularly as the minority doing the Civiliza- tion; the majority doing the Work. We recall that, given that the incoming Slavs had no prospect of not doing agricultural labour themselves, their requirements in watching the indigenous people doing the work were of a largely education character, ie, acquiring techniques they themselves had not previously possessed, and superior in adaptation to the current location to techniques practiced in the southern Ukraine or wherever they originated most recently. Avars, rather, would be drawn into the Balkans under the presupposition that the level of productive population was adequate for them to make a living off it. In odd corners of the Balkans, the Avars found themselves curiously alone, and may have had to work. Awwwwm, you say. Bulgars would not have, and made use of Avars as well. But what in blazes got all these people, Turkic and Iranian speakers, cramming into the Balkans, herding their Slavs before them, reducing their Slavs to Slavery, and other things which did not happen, but actually did in Merovingian Gaul, which seep into our heads from comic opera stereotypes plus other junk in our minds. All right, you say, name one of these people. The Avars, it is said, were originally a Turkic-speaking tribe called the Ruan-ruan, or variants, which was expelled from North China by military action. What was going on in North China was extremely confusing and will be considered when I get to tell the story about why the year 555 was the best possible year for Byzantine spies to smuggle silkworm eggs out of Sri Lanka or Central Asia, either way (in that this all bears upon the question of Persian silver exports from South Arabia). In 612, an entity known to us as Avars, with folk memories of having crossed Asia end to end, appeared around the environs of Constantinople, with major effort against Thessaloniki. I have read a sufficiency of boring history books to give St Demetrius the benefit of the doubt; and there was another occasion, I believe, when the Saint chastised the Avars with Bubonic Plague, as a result whereof the epidemic in question was found worthy of mention. (Disclaimer: This does not extend to any other imaginary beings. Jews of the time liked Demetrius, too.) Almost from the start, the Avars, cavalry warriors, were dependent upon the local Slav population for their weight of numbers in infantry. Which is curious. In any case, the possibility that the same gene pool arrived, intact, from North China to the Balkans was equal to or less than that of my books having all arrived from Chicago to New Haven, which is nil. The bounds of Peoples and societies are always at best porous to the extent of qualifying as "figmenta- tional." When these entities are on the move, it's even more a mixed up mess than that. Consider that, for the Ostrogoths prior to their invasion of Italy, according to Peter Heather, Goths and Romans: 332-489, 1991, fully one quarter of the purebloodGermanicAryans were recent runaway slaves. Ultimately, perhaps, there was nobody in the whole horde of Goths lacking an ancestor and more likely a plurality of ancestors who had not run away from someone/something/somewhere where the ascendant would rather strongly have desired not to have been. Compare, in the sedentary situation the Nuer, proud of their "pure" ethnicity when observed by E.R. Evans-Prichard (The Nuer, 1940). Fully one-half of the Nuer males, whose agnatic connections constituted the very structure of Nuer society, they told him, he found to have been captive Dinka themselves or sons of captive Dinka, all of whom had been ritually incorporated into fictive agnatic relation with existing Nuer agnatic lineages. (Did the Dinka capture Nuer? Certainly, but the latter never mentioned it; were they not invincible. Today, Nuer and Dinka are rather more coherently racist, practicing ethnic cleansing against one another with the AK-47, more suitable for the purpose than the spear of 1940. They are on the same side, however, in the Sudan civil war. That's another story.) Notionally and fictively, some entity with a social identity crossed Asia, not necessarily and single organism whereof. *Why did they go west*? The answer I propose is that the soggy, Plague-rotted state structures of Europe, to the West and to the South, impelled them, *faute de mieux*, via easywayout, westwards and southwards. West was trendy, that is. Anyone who was anyone, anyone Known to Know by anyone, ie, reputed wise, would say, West is waytogo. The Bulgars, in particular, brought with them technologically advanced siegecraft, presumably learned, acquired, or developed in Central Asia, not uncentral for this purpose; which the Byzantines could only construe, racist to a degree as they were, could only construe as the outcome of desertion from themselves and treason. The prior movement of the Slavs, however, precluded any further development of basic food production, for, as the Slavs entered the region adjoining the Mediterranean, they settled upon cultivable areas whereto the Mediterranean scratch plow was highly and longstandingly adapted, with the associated rectangular-plot cultivation which, as we know, would be ousted by manorial collective cultivation in Northern Europe by the high middle ages. The thinly populated area inhabited by the German tribes fought by the Romans (increasingly with Germans) as well as Northern Gaul itself and, of course, what was to become the Midlands of Britain, was to become the most fertile and productive soil in Western Europe. The problem was, the Romans had no way of knowing how to cultivate it, and their technical innovations were singularly bereft of innovations in basic food production and food processing. The exception which proves the rule was the elaborate contraption comprising dozens of waterwheels installed for the purpose of milling the grain eaten by the personnel at the great legionary base at Vienne. Water mills were used for milling the grain supply of the City of Rome, naturally enough, as it arrived, 135,000 tons of it a year (N. Lewis, Roman Egypt, 1986), at Ostia. For the City, the Romans invented, eg, the apartment house, ie, *insula*, elsewise, their contributions to Human Progress were in the realm of warfare, military transport, and infrastructure supportive of centres of elite consumption (aqueducts, arenas). Unlike the Chinese, at the other end of the landmass, they hadn't bothered even inventing the *wheelbarrow*. The Great Cathedrals of mediaeval times were built without it till the twelfth century. (Compare the third century invention date in China.) The necessity for the diffusion of a contraption like the wheelbarrow is a ridiculous proposition. It is a device which is inevitably invented given even the most minimal consideration for the economical expenditure of labour-power and, along with this, consideration for the horrors endured in the lives of the human organisms attached to that labour-power. In the sixth century, about 590, we find Gregory of Tours whining, in his preface to *Liber historiarum, commonly known as History of the Franks, that he is hastening the present work to completion in that there remain perhaps one hundred people in all Merovingian Gaul remaining who are capable of reading it (not bothering to add, grammatical errors and all; but Latinists are vastly more numerous now, it irks them, and that's what they say). As in South Arabia, a failure of documentation. Perhaps the elite's efforts were directed elsewhere. As it happens, yes they were. Gregory, obsessed with Arians the way oldtimers feared Communists, mentioned only the bizarre- seeming, to him, aspects of this. On the Isere river, there was the curious spectacle of manastic landowners squabbling with secular magnates over choice sites for watermills. As we would expect in a condition of generalized labour shortage, something which does not interest the Truly Religious Christian of this period, in Gaul or in Britain. (In the latter, the monk Gildas was obsessed with the sins, meaning sexual behaviour, of Maelgwynn of Powys, military hegemon of Briton resistance to Saxons. Telling Gildas to maintain a sense of proportion was of course fruitless. The deathnell of the Briton cause was, however, the death of Maelgwynn of Powys from Bubonic Plague in 549, soon whereafter the Severb Valley was conquered, the Celts were penned in Wales, "Enemy Country," and this is being written in English.) The six thousand water mills found in Domesday Book, 1086, were likewise installed during the Dark AGes. Thirty years after this, a Frankish "merchant" named Samo, who should I believe, be a household word for everybody, became King of Great Moravia. Which some people place in Bohemia (Czech Republic), others in Pannonia (Hungary). Samo's kingdom was, actually, more of a business enterprise dealing in captive human beings, the aggregate whereof, that is, dealings in captive human beings of the period, explains why you, if you were a non- francophone, were confused as a little kiddie by some album cover that said, Tschaikovsky, Marche Slave. if your were the least bit a knowledgeable kiddie, you flashed on the Volga Boatmen or something obvious like that. Howsomever, Slav, -e, and its derivatives ousted *servus* as the common name for chattel slave in a bunch of languages. As Lynne White once pointed out, the word for the contraption ancestral to the medieval heavy plow was of balto-slavic derivation. There is a "percentage," in basic production, in being a Barbarian. You get to keep, in the absence of an exploiting class, the increases in production or productivity acrruing to the technical innovations you've made. The generali- zability of this, to other agricultural societies and historical periods, is not systematically known. The ruling class of the Kingdom of the Franks, a messy coalescence of descendants of the roman senatorial class, the more numerous element who faked such descent or after a time came to believe their own fictitious origins; Germans of German or Romance speech of varied ethnicity, likewise landowners; some of each of the latter two secular or episcopal/monastic owners; and odds and ends whose wealth was acquired by trade or stolen, had, whatever the origins the expectation of watching someone else do the work. I do believe that, however, the imported Slavs became highly successful Austrasian Franks, as the productivity of the Austrasian region was rising in the seventh century. There was, according to the economic histories of the eighth century by Duby or Latouche (The Birth of Western Economy), no end to the labour shourtage in the Carolingian period to, say, 800-850. The fields remained full of *tempestarii* making it rain so they could get stoned out on ergot alkoloids in ruined barley fields (Cf. the story of Agobard of Lyons, in Daily Life in the Age of Charlemagne, from the year 819). Why did not some conqueror conquer Gaul, or Western Europe in general, the way the Turkish tribes conquered Balkan slavs to constitute what became Slavic states? Well, just look at the dump: *In order to generate cupidity in remote howbeit somehow *potential* conqueror-candidates, it is necessary to generate the apperances of supporting the existing and indigenous ruling class in something approximating to World Class International High Style, however this is defined. Tell you what: It's the year 800. Go up to some Intelligent-looking Byzantine. (As the rules for controlling the definition of the cognitive in any particular civilization are under very tight control of the ruling class as one of its politically most important strategic resources, "knowing how to look intelligent" is one of the social skills most highly-diffused among its members.) Say the two words "Western Civilization." What happened? Daniel A. Foss From wwagar@binghamton.edu Fri Oct 18 13:31:13 1996 From: wwagar@binghamton.edu Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 15:31:33 -0400 (EDT) To: "Richard K. Moore" Subject: Re: America and The New World Order (excerpts) In-Reply-To: Dear Richard, Once again, you have pretty much told it "like it was." Your analysis corrsponds closely to mine in A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FUTURE, and of course I've been calling the multinational giants "megacorps" since 1989. There are places where I would choose different words or emphases, and places where I might make a few probably lame excuses for the Powers-That-Be (they're just doing what comes naturally...). For example, I think the word "fascism" is out of place in your analysis, unless you mean it in Bert Gross's usage (see FRIENDLY FASCISM, South End Press, 1980). The co-option of nearly the whole intelligentsia by giving them academic tenure is a particularly fiendish but not particularly fascist way of de-fanging a potential foe. Let's save "fascism" for the conservative populist totalitarian nationalism of the period 1920-45 and think of a better word to describe the much smoother operators of our half-century (okay, they're "smoother" only to certain potential domestic foes; not to Vietnamese villagers, Bangladeshi sweatshop workers, and Iraqi soldiers buried alive in their trenches by the heroes of Desert Storm). But I do not wish to quibble. The next stage? Hey, I thought we settled that last summer. Organize the World Party! Warren Wagar Binghamton University, SUNY USA From DASSBACH@MTU.EDU Mon Oct 21 10:17:56 1996 From: "Carl H.A. Dassbach" To: Subject: PEWS (news) blues Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 00:17:24 -0400 PEWS i sn't a section and the newsletter doesn't hold any news - instead, what we have is a small group of people congratulating one another and presenting each other with awards. No wonder its dying - inbreeding eventually produces sterile mutations. --------------------------- Carl H.A. Dassbach DASSBACH@MTU.EDU Dept. of Social Sciences (906)487-2115 - Voice Michigan Technological University (906)487-2468 - Fax Houghton, MI 49931 USA (906)482-8405 - Private From chriscd@jhu.edu Mon Oct 21 13:16:32 1996 21 Oct 1996 15:15:57 -0400 (EDT) 21 Oct 1996 15:15:44 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 15:17:44 -0400 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: Lakatos and trps in social science To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu Organization: Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.21218 USA Nikolai Rozov asked on October 11 about applications of Imre Lakatos's idea of 'theoretical research programs' in social science. I had misplaced the following reference but now I have found it: Joseph P. Berger and Morris Zelditch, Jr. _Theoretical Research Programs: Studies in the Growth of Theory_ Stanford University Press, 1993. This book presents several trps in sociology and political science. Tom Hall and I have used Lakatos's basic strategy in our explication of the comparative world-systems approach, forthcoming in January or February from Westview Press -- _Rise and Demise: the Comparative Study of World-Systems_. chris chase-dunn From jwsmoore@cats.ucsc.edu Mon Oct 21 13:38:14 1996 Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 12:38:06 -0700 (PDT) From: Jason W Moore Subject: Re: PEWS (news) blues To: "Carl H.A. Dassbach" In-Reply-To: <199610211617.MAA01620@youth.yth.mtu.edu> Is there any way to move outward, with an institutional framework that reaches out to world-systems students and faculty throughout the humanities and social sciences? I write because I suspect that I'm not the only graduate student (History, UC Santa Cruz) whose work fits squarely within the world-systems perspective, but is relatively isolated in a discipline which gives world history second class status, and treats world-systems as not "real history." If you want to stop inbreeding, you need to attract grad students, and not just in sociology (for instance, I know a number of literature grad students here who use world-systems concepts in their work). Inbreeding is indeed quite bad -- but what is to be done? Best, Jason Moore, History, UC Santa Cruz. On Mon, 21 Oct 1996, Carl H.A. Dassbach wrote: > PEWS i sn't a section and the newsletter doesn't hold any news - instead, > what we have is a small group of people congratulating one another and > presenting each other with awards. No wonder its dying - inbreeding > eventually produces sterile mutations. > > > --------------------------- > Carl H.A. Dassbach DASSBACH@MTU.EDU > Dept. of Social Sciences (906)487-2115 - Voice > Michigan Technological University (906)487-2468 - Fax > Houghton, MI 49931 USA (906)482-8405 - Private > > From wwagar@binghamton.edu Mon Oct 21 14:55:27 1996 From: wwagar@binghamton.edu Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 16:56:04 -0400 (EDT) To: Jason W Moore Subject: Re: PEWS (news) blues In-Reply-To: On Mon, 21 Oct 1996, Jason W Moore wrote: > Is there any way to move outward, with an institutional framework that > reaches out to world-systems students and faculty throughout the > humanities and social sciences? I write because I suspect that I'm not > the only graduate student (History, UC Santa Cruz) whose work fits > squarely within the world-systems perspective, but is relatively > isolated in a discipline which gives world history second class status, > and treats world-systems as not "real history." If you want to stop inbreeding, > you need to attract grad students, and not just in sociology (for instance, I know a number of literature grad students here who use world-systems concepts in their work). > Inbreeding is indeed quite bad -- but what is to be done? > Best, > Jason Moore, History, UC Santa Cruz. > Dear Jason, I'm not sure anything can be "done," but things are beginning to happen, I think, in history and the humanities that can reverse the inbreeding trend just by their sheer momentum. The New Historicism in the humanities and the rising concern in the history profession for world history and interdisciplinary approaches will, I hope, open doors previously closed or only slightly ajar. At Binghamton University, for example, we have not only Immanuel Wallerstein and his colleagues in Sociology but also three or four people in the History Department and people like Ali Mazrui in Political Science and Tony King in Art History, faculty involved in world-systems analysis who came here not because of the Sociology Department's program in world-systems analysis but who just happened to be here when Wallerstein arrived (like me) or who came afterwards for their own good reasons. I would guess there are several other History departments around the country with faculty who are professionally involved in world-systems analysis, comparative civilization studies, globalization, world history, and the like; and I expect that number to grow substantially during the next ten years. The centripetal forces at work in the world are so vast, so visible that scholars in all disciplines are compelled to come to terms with them whether they like it or not. In the long run this may not work to the advantage of PEWS or world-systems research specifically. Other approaches, other organizations may take their place. But there is every reason for a graduate student in history or the humanities these days to "specialize" in what might be called World Studies. More power to you. Sincerely, W. Warren Wagar Department of History Binghamton University, SUNY USA From U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Mon Oct 21 16:24:15 1996 Date: Mon, 21 Oct 96 17:23:26 CDT From: U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Subject: third and sixth century crises east and west seriousÙ To: World System Network /* resend...listproc error ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A thousand pardons for the two posts last week. I was distracted by extraneous matters, told obscure jokes some of which I forgot to finish, etc. This time, I took the precaution of writing a first draft. I believe that China built up a substantial technical and commercial lead over Europe as a result, in large part, of having been spared by the first Bubonic Plague pandemic, that of the sixth century et seq. I also believe that this lead was lost after the second Bubonic Plague pandemic, in the fourteenth century, precipitated a Luddite-anticommercial social revolution whose rank-and-file soldiers were inspired by the White Lotus religion. Both of these propositions are guarenteed to be implausible or offensive to many people. Still, they may be useful in communicating the idea that the world-system is more than the movement of goods. It is highly complex human interaction. Smallpox and measles, whose ravages caused third-century crises in the Roman and Chinese empires, are viral diseases whose infections are transmitted directly. Bubonic Plague is caused thy the bacillus Y. pestis, transmitted from one infected person to another by the bites of fleas from infected rodents, unless potential victims are, as in large cities, close enough to each other to contract the pneumonic and septicaemic forms of the disease (which are always fatal for the former and nearly always for the latter). The greater the varieties in ecosystems through which the bacillus is transmitted, the greater the adaptations required of bacilli, fleas, and rodents. The comparatively rapid transmission through the Mongol Empire, between 1331 in Beijing to 1347 at Caffa, a Genoese port on the Black Sea (besieged by a Mongol army), was not possible in the sixth century. Yet the interval of seventeen years from the first outbreak in China in 1331 to its arrival in Genoa itself in 1348 was sufficient to witness a decline by half in the value of goods arriving at the port of Genoa in the 1330s (Harry Miskimin, Economic History of Early Renaissance Europe, 1973?), the difference representing the cutoff of raw silk imported via Caffa. When Giovanni Bocaccio told us, in the opening pages of the Decameron, where the Plague came from, he had the best possible source of information: his father was Naples branch manager of the Bardi Bank, largest in Europe, until its failure in 1334; what the Bardi did not know about international trade at that time was unknown. By contrast, it took 140 years, from 542 (in Constantinople and Antioch), to 682 in Changan (eastern terminus of the Silk Route, capital of China, population 2 million) and 683 in Loyang (secondary capital but in use as imperial residence at this time, population a half million), for the disease to travel the Silk Route across Asia to China, if these localized outbreaks were in fact Bubonic Plague. North China grows millet, which requires conditions not too dissimilar from the cultivation of wheat, rye, barley, etc. From the Huai river valley southward, the staple crop is wet rice, which requires a sea of mud. Even in the fourteenth century, when the wet rice region was very densely populated, it took from 1331 till 1344 for the disease to reach the Huai River, and a further two years, to 1346, then again in 1351, for the Plague to reach the Yangzi where, in the latter year, it destroyed a Mongol army suppressing a peasant war. Nothing of the sort happened in the sixth century. If the first Bubonic Plague pandemic reached China at all, therefore, it was confined to the two largest cities, both in North China. Peripheries and Cores The smallpox-measles pandemics of the second-third centuries (with later recurrences) debilitated both the Chinese and Roman empires. Therefore, Central Asians were drawn east *and* west. The Bubonic Plague which struck Europe and the Near East, beginning in 542-549, but *spared East Asia*, *therefore* drew Central Asians only westward, even if some of them had previously reached China. The pattern of the Chinese Dark Ages (220-589) differs from the European in that, in the Chinese version, the incoming Five Barbarians conquered the densely-populated politico-military and economic core regions of the North China plain, that is, the North China and Northwest China "Macroregions," to use the terminology of G.W. Skinner (because I took his courses in school). Coevally, the Germanic invaders of the Roman Empire conquered the economically and politico-militarily peripheralized West, leaving the more economically and politically viable East, largely unscathed and continuing the recovery from demographic catastrope which commenced in the late third century and continued until the Plague of Justinian in the 540s: Zeno even managed, in 489, to dump the Ostrogoths onto hapless Italy. Even earlier, Attila had led the Huns against the Western Empire, in Gaul (451) and Italy (453), possibly knowing what he was doing. These Huns may be one thing Europe and China had in common, possibly originating (*socially*, not genetically) as the Northern Xiongnu, driven off by the Southern Xiongnu, with the connivance of the Han dynasty court, in 169. In 312, the *shanyu* of the Southern Xiongnu demanded from the feeble Jin dynsasty see belowÙ emperor the right to settle within the empire under the latter's nominal suzerainty, and further, a Jin princess in marriage. With Chinese refusal, the Xiongnu overran North China. By 317, Sima Yu of the Jin imperial house had established an exile regime at Jiankang (now Nanjing) just below the Yangzi. In a scene reminiscent of Goths fleeing across the Danube in 376 and Slavs crossing the same river after 565, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of *Chinese* peasants, led or herded by aristocrats, moved to the Yangzi valley, ruled by the Five Barbarians (Turks, Mongols, proto-Tibetans). See next section.Ù In the sixth-seventh centuries, while China was prospering and about to enter a period of violent expansion (discussed in posts a couple of months ago), the Byzantine empire lost its agricultural core, Egypt (which had fed Constantinople), its industrial core (Syria with Antioch), and its Armenian recruiting grounds to Arabs. The recruiting grounds and taxes of the Balkans were lost to Slavs, Avars, and Bulgars. The Sassanid empire, of course, disappeared as a state altogether. What the Byzantines lost to the Arabs, of course, was not taken over in a flourishing condition, but as depopulated or wartorn wrecks (or both). With production at an ebb, and tending to appear static (as it is a commonplace of the precapitalist-preindustrial wisdom anent the wealth of states that the latter is fixed and may be only redistributed among them), unless it is palpably increasing, it is the usual thing for heads of state in such conditions to seek to steal wealth already produced by somebody else. Where, of course, one does not resemble the seventh-century West European prince who, in destroying a Roman building, explained that he could not gain renown from building such an edifice, so his best hope to become the stuff of legend was to destroy one instead. Unsurprisingly, the Arabs (and Avars and Bulgars) fit themselves into the Byzantine-Sassanid pattern, prior to 629, of superpower mutual predation. By the time the economies of both, especially the Arab empire, commenced to flourish again in the eighth century, and Arab bureaucracy (not to mention culture) had developed apace with the capture of Chinese papermakers at the Battle of the Talas River (751), mere decades separated this florescence from the Zanj rebellion (869-888). The Byzantines revived, too, with their Jewish- run silk industry in reHellenized Thebes, and so on. But that was a long way ahead. We mustn't forget the Long Beards. Yes, the Byzantines lost Italy, too, for much the same reasons, another demographic sink which could neither be defended nor defend itself with its own money. But why did they reacquire Italy, considering they were dead broke at the time. An interesting problem, to be broached elsewhere. Characteristics of the Chinese Dark Ages Note about Chinese dynasties: As in the Roman Empire, normally, changes in political regime occurred as a result of military coups, civil wars, and, in the Chinese case, the odd social revolution; eg, 549-552. Unlike the Roman- Byzantine Empire, however, this did not always, for long periods did not ever, entail a change in the ruling family: dictators preferred to rule through, make or break, puppet emperors, who were often infants. As the emperor was the Son of Heaven, *tian zi*, and Yellow Thearch, *huang di*, deposing a dynasty required approval of Heaven. This was operationalized as popular support combined with demonstrable absence of moral wickedness and or natural catastrophes wherewith imputable moral wickedness was chastised. Or, the dictator simply waited a long time. In the Eastern Jin dynasty, 317-420, mentioned below, military coups and civil wars - between regional armies - were at least as frequent as in the Roman-Byzantine state, but dictators, even those who were military heroes, were, as a pedigreed aristocrat called the great General Xie An, "a mere military man," unfit to marry his daughter. Only the very worst of these dictators, General Liu Yu, dared depose the emperor; even then he had to wait sixteen years. On seizing power in 404, he was greeted with a manifesto by a Buddhist monk asserting the immunity of the Buddhist Church from acts of state at hands as filthy as his; one supposes riots. That's what monks did in those days, East or West.Ù The Chinese Third Century Crisis was far worse than the one undergone by the Roman Empire, as it was complicated by peasant war, from 184 to 189. As in Rome after Marcus Aurelius, smallpox-measles pandemics weakened the state, contributing to unsettled political and economic conditions. All this together facilitated the proselytizing of new religious sects promising salvation (analogous to Christianity): popular Daoism; later, Mahayana Buddhism (see McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, 1976). The Daoists attempted overt social revolution. Consequently, the military-thug regime of Cao Cao was brutally repressive, and the rising officer class presumed upon the privileges of the just-previously-risen aristocracy, who then lived in selfish splendour on Great Estates surrounded by private armies, as in the West Roman Empire somewhat later. During Cao Cao's rule, from 189 to 220, civil wars were incessant, involving larger armies than in the Roman Empire, and mass beheadings of captured troops who waited too long to surrender were perpetrated by this dictator according to the rules of war drawn up by himself. Though Cao Cao was the greatest military genius in Chinese history and a commentator on Sun Tzu's Art of War, he failed to prevent consolidation of breakaway states. At his death there were three states: Wei, in North China, ruled by the Cao family; Shu, in Sichuan, ruled by the Liu's, distant relatives of the last Han emperor; and Wu, in South China, which pioneered in trade with the Roman empire by sea and was ruled by the Sun family. In 265, a coup by the Sima family, representing the aristocracy, overthrew the Cao-Wei dynasty, whcih had represented the officer class, founding the Jin dynasty. Opposition to reunification rapidly collapsed. (The relationship between these events, 265-280, which surely exists, is an unresearched and unasked question. But the new regime was a priosner of the aristocracy, as egregiously self-interested, as noted, as the one in the West Roman Empire. No Chinese Diocletian or Constantine was possible. An ambience of bohemian futility permeated high society. By 317, North China was lost to incomers and fragmented into ten states, commencing The Sixteen Kingdoms of the Five Barbarians. Recreation of a centralized state was surprisingly rapid, however. In 370, a proto-Tibetan, Fu Jian, came to power in a state called Former Qin. A politico-military genius, he rapidly subdued rival states, restored centralized bureaucracy, established Mahayana Buddhism as the sole legal religion (as Theodosius I did with Christianity at the same time, 379), assumed control of the Buddhist Church; and, in 382, ordered an army westward whcih captured Kucha in Central Asia, where caravans from Persia exchanged goods with those from China. In short, he controlled a more powerful and effective state than the vanished Chinese empire had been. War with the southern empire (Eastern Jin) broke out in 383, lasting until 391. The northern cavalry was neutralized by Yangzi valley mud at the Battle of the Fei River. The northern empire now quickly collapsed, at which time, also, Fu Jian died. The Eastern Jin counteroffensive captured and held the northern capital, Loyang, until 391; then retreated for lack of interest on the part of the government. The very next year, the Tabgatch Turks founded a new regime, the Toba-Wei, which revived, and improved on, the work of the Former Qin; it lasted, if at first coevally with other North China states, from 386 to 535. This was, on the whole, a powerful, rich, and efficient state. The contrast with the states ruled by Germanic peoples, in Western Europe and North Africa, at this time is amazing (with the possible exception of Ostrogothic Italy). Chinese, some of those who were literate, objected to this regime's regimentation, its economic interventionism (such as granting peasants land in exchange for military service and taxes at the expense of landed magnates), and the adoration of the ruler as "living Tathagatha." The objections were retrospective, however. Necessarily, as no freedom of expression existed. The regimentation and interventionism were redolent of Legalism, abhorrent to Confucians. As was Buddhism, later.Ù Before a stable ruling class could develop, the Turco-Mongol rulers had to undergo a crisis of cultural identity, the price of fusion with the Chinese Great Families who had always married their daughters. (Two months ago, I said that this became a problem in the social revolution which overthrew the aristocracy as a class, which may be associated with the year 907 that marks the fall of the Tang.) The same sort of thing is familiar from Gaul, Spain, and Italy. The crisis took political form. The Toba-Wei split into Sinophiles (Western Wei) and re-Turkifiers (Eastern Wei, replaced in the 550s by the Northern Zhou and Northern Qi. It was right here and now, in 551, that the Ruan Ruan were expelled from North China, ultimately becoming the Avars who beseiged Constantinople in 599. (Apologies, my mention of 614 as the year of the first assault was in error. On this occasion, in 599, it took a Miracle of the Blessed Virgin to induce John V.A. Fine to mention the Bubonic Plague, because it "destroyed the Avar army and killed several sons of the khagan." Historians tend to mention the Plague only when it causes politico-military Events.) The Sinophile Northern Zhou seized Sichuan from the Southern Empire in 555, when the latter was prostrate from social revolution. They destroyed the Northern Qi in 577, unifying North China again, and rendering a compositely descended but culturally more-Chinese-than-not (with a Turkish cultural tinge) henceforth possible. This was personified by the half-Mongol, with a Mongol wife, Yang Jian, who seized power in 581 and reuinified China in 589 (Sui dynasty, 581 or 589 to 618). As the Chinese empire expanded vigorously, Europe and the Near East were again depopulated by epidemic disease and invaded by Turks, Arabs, Lombards, and whatever. If only I had baseline measurements. Meaning, "As of the year one, Common Era, was the Roman Empire, taking into account the vast social and discontinuity with the Roman Empire and its egregious alienness from ourselves however masked by all those words of Latin origin in our vocabulary, Lux soap, etc, did the Roman or Chinese empire have more JNSQ? Since the usage, "advanced," is *really stupid*. Daniel A. Foss From OWENJACK@FS.isu.edu Mon Oct 21 16:33:44 1996 From: "J B Owens" Organization: Idaho State University To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 16:35:25 -0600, MDT Subject: Re: PEWS (news) blues On Mon, 21 Oct 1996 12:38:06 -0700 (PDT), Jason W. Moore wrote: Is there any way to move outward, with an institutional framework that reaches out to world-systems students and faculty throughout the humanities and social sciences? I write because I suspect that I'm not the only graduate student (History, UC Santa Cruz) whose work fits squarely within the world-systems perspective, but is relatively isolated in a discipline which gives world history second class status, and treats world-systems as not "real history." If you want to stop inbreeding, you need to attract grad students, and not just in sociology (for instance, I know a number of literature grad students here who use world-systems concepts in their work). Inbreeding is indeed quite bad -- but what is to be done? Best, Jason Moore, History, UC Santa Cruz. --------------------------------------------- Jason, I just want to second Warren Wagar's observations. At my university our entire undergraduate History program is organized around comparative and world history, and there is interest in world-systems approaches, although often without the name. Moreover, our proposed M.A. program has exactly the same focus. During the summer of 1995, I was in residence at Cal.-Santa Cruz for an NEH world history institute run by Terry Burke. It was an exciting experience. During the course of our sessions, I shared, with the permission of the authors, the draft conclusion of the soon-to-be-published book of Chris Chase-Dunn and Tom Hall, and there was a good bit of interest. At least one of the other participants was in literature. Moreover, a number of research programs in History are oriented towards approaches quite compatible with what world-systems folks in Sociology do. As an example, I offer the recent brilliant book by David Ringrose, *Spain, Europe, and the "Spanish Miracle," 1700-1900* (Cambridge U.P., 1996). While the book lacks any global focus, it is must reading for anyone with world-systems interests. For Historians, I suspect that the World History Association will be the organization around which we will organize our activities. The WHA appears to be expanding; we will have our organizing regional conference, the Rocky Mountain WHA, at the University of Utah, 31 Oct. - 2 Nov. I hope that this adds to the hope Warren sought to offer. Best wishes, Jack J. B. "Jack" Owens, Professor of History Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID 83209 USA e-mail: owenjack@fs.isu.edu www: http://www.isu.edu/~owenjack Note: new www URL, 12 July 1996. From U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Mon Oct 21 18:03:39 1996 Date: Mon, 21 Oct 96 18:34:57 CDT From: "Daniel A. Foss" Subject: is wst really a men's room of sociology To: World Systems Network The other day, I said or implied, in a post where it emphatically did not belong, that the world systems subcult, whateveritis, is a Men's Room of sociology. It isn't the only one, of course. There's a Men's Room on every floor of the social structure, from the basement garage to the observation deck. Now, consider that, in both Song dynasty China (960-1279) and Ancient Athens, women had to hide behind partitions while their men had sophisticated conversations with their male friends, in the Athenian case also having a drunken sex orgy with slave prostitutes male and female, the whole even being called a *symposion*. In both societies, mention of the wife's given name was taboo, but the Athenians were more lax about these things and allowed her name to be mentioned after her death. In medieval China, she remained Miss father's surnameÙ forever in public usage. In both societies, the wife was married at 14, and virginal, to a man ten years older, who in the upper class would be well on the way toward his PhD *jinshi*Ù, whence and hence, wealth and power, in China, and for the Athenian citizen, for militaristic, slavedriving, and suchlike-appropriate pursuits. Such that she would experience marital sex as pain and suffering, endured with her clothes on, in both cases. And such that death in childbirth was commonplace. For the husband, in both societies, it was meanwhile permissible, in fact normative, to have recreational sex, but taboo to have it with women who were his social equals. It was appropriate for the husband to have recreational sex with women who were social inferiors, if not slaves. Concubines were a special case, socially inferior, but more secure in the family. In Athens, a man found his own concubine, but in China, a dutiful wife was expected to shop for and purchase the concubine she figured would be just right for her cherished husband. In both societies, women were kept busy with mindrotting, boring, idiotically iterative women's work, namely, in both cases, making textiles. Which, true enough, is a commonplace torture of females; do we not ourselves speak of "spinsters" and "the distaff side." What can we say about the startling similarity of these two cases of extreme sexism? Precisely nothing, because historical sociology is developing its underdevelopment such that it cannot find similarities, differences, connections, or whatnot, whereto all these amazing parallels might be found meaningful. There were differences, of course. Wives in the Chinese case were prudish, as well as in the Athenian; but husbands were unfazed in Athens about being seen in public places stark naked, and consorted with women, or boys, inferior in social status or age, who would be equally or are so depicted on Greek pots. (See Anna C. Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Classical Athens, 1985. Also, Patricia Buckley Ebrey, The Inner Quarters: Marriage and Family Life in the Song Period, 1993.) Patricia Buckley Ebrey has suggested, with regard to explaining Chinese history, "Look at where the women are." Maybe we should. It might explain something. Don't ask me what. What, yourself. It's just that, sometimes, I feel, around here, I'm playing poker with the boys. You know what I mean. Anyone wanna discuss batting averages? Daniel A. Foss From agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca Mon Oct 21 18:27:13 1996 Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 20:27:38 -0400 (EDT) From: "A. Gunder Frank" To: J B Owens Subject: Re: PEWS (news) blues In-Reply-To: <2E17AD54430@FS.ISU.EDU> Northeastern University in Boston Mass now has a PhD program in world history. It was the initiative of Pat Manning and his colleagues in the History Dept. Pat is also the "owner" of the World History net H-World, with which some stuff is corss-posted with WSN. The History Dept at Ohio State also has a concentration on/in? world [system] history. cheers gunder frank On Mon, 21 Oct 1996, J B Owens wrote: > Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 16:35:25 -0600, MDT > From: J B Owens > To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK > Subject: Re: PEWS (news) blues > > On Mon, 21 Oct 1996 12:38:06 -0700 (PDT), Jason W. Moore wrote: > > Is there any way to move outward, with an institutional framework that > reaches out to world-systems students and faculty throughout the > humanities and social sciences? I write because I suspect that I'm not > the only graduate student (History, UC Santa Cruz) whose work fits > squarely within the world-systems perspective, but is relatively > isolated in a discipline which gives world history second class status, > and treats world-systems as not "real history." If you want to stop inbreeding, > you need to attract grad > students, and not just in sociology (for instance, I know a number of > literature grad students here who use world-systems concepts in their work). > Inbreeding is indeed quite bad -- but what is to be done? > Best, > Jason Moore, History, UC Santa Cruz. > --------------------------------------------- > > Jason, > > I just want to second Warren Wagar's observations. At my university > our entire undergraduate History program is organized around > comparative and world history, and there is interest in world-systems > approaches, although often without the name. Moreover, our proposed > M.A. program has exactly the same focus. > > During the summer of 1995, I was in residence at Cal.-Santa Cruz for > an NEH world history institute run by Terry Burke. It was an > exciting experience. During the course of our sessions, I shared, > with the permission of the authors, the draft conclusion of the > soon-to-be-published book of Chris Chase-Dunn and Tom Hall, and there > was a good bit of interest. At least one of the other participants > was in literature. > > Moreover, a number of research programs in History are oriented > towards approaches quite compatible with what world-systems folks in > Sociology do. As an example, I offer the recent brilliant book by > David Ringrose, *Spain, Europe, and the "Spanish Miracle," 1700-1900* > (Cambridge U.P., 1996). While the book lacks any global focus, it is > must reading for anyone with world-systems interests. > > For Historians, I suspect that the World History Association will be > the organization around which we will organize our activities. The > WHA appears to be expanding; we will have our organizing regional > conference, the Rocky Mountain WHA, at the University of Utah, 31 > Oct. - 2 Nov. > > I hope that this adds to the hope Warren sought to offer. > > Best wishes, > Jack > > J. B. "Jack" Owens, Professor of History > Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID 83209 USA > e-mail: owenjack@fs.isu.edu > www: http://www.isu.edu/~owenjack > Note: new www URL, 12 July 1996. > From chriscd@jhu.edu Tue Oct 22 07:34:02 1996 22 Oct 1996 09:33:46 -0400 (EDT) 22 Oct 1996 09:33:34 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 09:35:30 -0400 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: another fossism To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu Organization: Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.21218 USA Date: Mon, 21 Oct 96 14:34:16 CDT From: "Daniel A. Foss" Subject: third and sixth century crises east and west seriousÙ To: World Systems Network A thousand pardons for the two posts last week. I was distracted by extraneous matters, told obscure jokes some of which I forgot to finish, etc. This time, I took the precaution of writing a first draft. I believe that China built up a substantial technical and commercial lead over Europe as a result, in large part, of having been spared by the first Bubonic Plague pandemic, that of the sixth century et seq. I also believe that this lead was lost after the second Bubonic Plague pandemic, in the fourteenth century, precipitated a Luddite-anticommercial social revolution whose rank-and-file soldiers were inspired by the White Lotus religion. Both of these propositions are guarenteed to be implausible or offensive to many people. Still, they may be useful in communicating the idea that the world-system is more than the movement of goods. It is highly complex human interaction. Smallpox and measles, whose ravages caused third-century crises in the Roman and Chinese empires, are viral diseases whose infections are transmitted directly. Bubonic Plague is caused thy the bacillus Y. pestis, transmitted from one infected person to another by the bites of fleas from infected rodents, unless potential victims are, as in large cities, close enough to each other to contract the pneumonic and septicaemic forms of the disease (which are always fatal for the former and nearly always for the latter). The greater the varieties in ecosystems through which the bacillus is transmitted, the greater the adaptations required of bacilli, fleas, and rodents. The comparatively rapid transmission through the Mongol Empire, between 1331 in Beijing to 1347 at Caffa, a Genoese port on the Black Sea (besieged by a Mongol army), was not possible in the sixth century. Yet the interval of seventeen years from the first outbreak in China in 1331 to its arrival in Genoa itself in 1348 was sufficient to witness a decline by half in the value of goods arriving at the port of Genoa in the 1330s (Harry Miskimin, Economic History of Early Renaissance Europe, 1973?), the difference representing the cutoff of raw silk imported via Caffa. When Giovanni Bocaccio told us, in the opening pages of the Decameron, where the Plague came from, he had the best possible source of information: his father was Naples branch manager of the Bardi Bank, largest in Europe, until its failure in 1334; what the Bardi did not know about international trade at that time was unknown. By contrast, it took 140 years, from 542 (in Constantinople and Antioch), to 682 in Changan (eastern terminus of the Silk Route, capital of China, population 2 million) and 683 in Loyang (secondary capital but in use as imperial residence at this time, population a half million), for the disease to travel the Silk Route across Asia to China, if these localized outbreaks were in fact Bubonic Plague. North China grows millet, which requires conditions not too dissimilar from the cultivation of wheat, rye, barley, etc. From the Huai river valley southward, the staple crop is wet rice, which requires a sea of mud. Even in the fourteenth century, when the wet rice region was very densely populated, it took from 1331 till 1344 for the disease to reach the Huai River, and a further two years, to 1346, then again in 1351, for the Plague to reach the Yangzi where, in the latter year, it destroyed a Mongol army suppressing a peasant war. Nothing of the sort happened in the sixth century. If the first Bubonic Plague pandemic reached China at all, therefore, it was confined to the two largest cities, both in North China. Peripheries and Cores The smallpox-measles pandemics of the second-third centuries (with later recurrences) debilitated both the Chinese and Roman empires. Therefore, Central Asians were drawn east *and* west. The Bubonic Plague which struck Europe and the Near East, beginning in 542-549, but *spared East Asia*, *therefore* drew Central Asians only westward, even if some of them had previously reached China. The pattern of the Chinese Dark Ages (220-589) differs from the European in that, in the Chinese version, the incoming Five Barbarians conquered the densely-populated politico-military and economic core regions of the North China plain, that is, the North China and Northwest China "Macroregions," to use the terminology of G.W. Skinner (because I took his courses in school). Coevally, the Germanic invaders of the Roman Empire conquered the economically and politico-militarily peripheralized West, leaving the more economically and politically viable East, largely unscathed and continuing the recovery from demographic catastrope which commenced in the late third century and continued until the Plague of Justinian in the 540s: Zeno even managed, in 489, to dump the Ostrogoths onto hapless Italy. Even earlier, Attila had led the Huns against the Western Empire, in Gaul (451) and Italy (453), possibly knowing what he was doing. These Huns may be one thing Europe and China had in common, possibly originating (*socially*, not genetically) as the Northern Xiongnu, driven off by the Southern Xiongnu, with the connivance of the Han dynasty court, in 169. In 312, the *shanyu* of the Southern Xiongnu demanded from the feeble Jin dynsasty see belowÙ emperor the right to settle within the empire under the latter's nominal suzerainty, and further, a Jin princess in marriage. With Chinese refusal, the Xiongnu overran North China. By 317, Sima Yu of the Jin imperial house had established an exile regime at Jiankang (now Nanjing) just below the Yangzi. In a scene reminiscent of Goths fleeing across the Danube in 376 and Slavs crossing the same river after 565, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of *Chinese* peasants, led or herded by aristocrats, moved to the Yangzi valley, ruled by the Five Barbarians (Turks, Mongols, proto-Tibetans). See next section.Ù In the sixth-seventh centuries, while China was prospering and about to enter a period of violent expansion (discussed in posts a couple of months ago), the Byzantine empire lost its agricultural core, Egypt (which had fed Constantinople), its industrial core (Syria with Antioch), and its Armenian recruiting grounds to Arabs. The recruiting grounds and taxes of the Balkans were lost to Slavs, Avars, and Bulgars. The Sassanid empire, of course, disappeared as a state altogether. What the Byzantines lost to the Arabs, of course, was not taken over in a flourishing condition, but as depopulated or wartorn wrecks (or both). With production at an ebb, and tending to appear static (as it is a commonplace of the precapitalist-preindustrial wisdom anent the wealth of states that the latter is fixed and may be only redistributed among them), unless it is palpably increasing, it is the usual thing for heads of state in such conditions to seek to steal wealth already produced by somebody else. Where, of course, one does not resemble the seventh-century West European prince who, in destroying a Roman building, explained that he could not gain renown from building such an edifice, so his best hope to become the stuff of legend was to destroy one instead. Unsurprisingly, the Arabs (and Avars and Bulgars) fit themselves into the Byzantine-Sassanid pattern, prior to 629, of superpower mutual predation. By the time the economies of both, especially the Arab empire, commenced to flourish again in the eighth century, and Arab bureaucracy (not to mention culture) had developed apace with the capture of Chinese papermakers at the Battle of the Talas River (751), mere decades separated this florescence from the Zanj rebellion (869-888). The Byzantines revived, too, with their Jewish- run silk industry in reHellenized Thebes, and so on. But that was a long way ahead. We mustn't forget the Long Beards. Yes, the Byzantines lost Italy, too, for much the same reasons, another demographic sink which could neither be defended nor defend itself with its own money. But why did they reacquire Italy, considering they were dead broke at the time. An interesting problem, to be broached elsewhere. Characteristics of the Chinese Dark Ages Note about Chinese dynasties: As in the Roman Empire, normally, changes in political regime occurred as a result of military coups, civil wars, and, in the Chinese case, the odd social revolution; eg, 549-552. Unlike the Roman- Byzantine Empire, however, this did not always, for long periods did not ever, entail a change in the ruling family: dictators preferred to rule through, make or break, puppet emperors, who were often infants. As the emperor was the Son of Heaven, *tian zi*, and Yellow Thearch, *huang di*, deposing a dynasty required approval of Heaven. This was operationalized as popular support combined with demonstrable absence of moral wickedness and or natural catastrophes wherewith imputable moral wickedness was chastised. Or, the dictator simply waited a long time. In the Eastern Jin dynasty, 317-420, mentioned below, military coups and civil wars - between regional armies - were at least as frequent as in the Roman-Byzantine state, but dictators, even those who were military heroes, were, as a pedigreed aristocrat called the great General Xie An, "a mere military man," unfit to marry his daughter. Only the very worst of these dictators, General Liu Yu, dared depose the emperor; even then he had to wait sixteen years. On seizing power in 404, he was greeted with a manifesto by a Buddhist monk asserting the immunity of the Buddhist Church from acts of state at hands as filthy as his; one supposes riots. That's what monks did in those days, East or West.Ù The Chinese Third Century Crisis was far worse than the one undergone by the Roman Empire, as it was complicated by peasant war, from 184 to 189. As in Rome after Marcus Aurelius, smallpox-measles pandemics weakened the state, contributing to unsettled political and economic conditions. All this together facilitated the proselytizing of new religious sects promising salvation (analogous to Christianity): popular Daoism; later, Mahayana Buddhism (see McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, 1976). The Daoists attempted overt social revolution. Consequently, the military-thug regime of Cao Cao was brutally repressive, and the rising officer class presumed upon the privileges of the just-previously-risen aristocracy, who then lived in selfish splendour on Great Estates surrounded by private armies, as in the West Roman Empire somewhat later. During Cao Cao's rule, from 189 to 220, civil wars were incessant, involving larger armies than in the Roman Empire, and mass beheadings of captured troops who waited too long to surrender were perpetrated by this dictator according to the rules of war drawn up by himself. Though Cao Cao was the greatest military genius in Chinese history and a commentator on Sun Tzu's Art of War, he failed to prevent consolidation of breakaway states. At his death there were three states: Wei, in North China, ruled by the Cao family; Shu, in Sichuan, ruled by the Liu's, distant relatives of the last Han emperor; and Wu, in South China, which pioneered in trade with the Roman empire by sea and was ruled by the Sun family. In 265, a coup by the Sima family, representing the aristocracy, overthrew the Cao-Wei dynasty, whcih had represented the officer class, founding the Jin dynasty. Opposition to reunification rapidly collapsed. (The relationship between these events, 265-280, which surely exists, is an unresearched and unasked question. But the new regime was a priosner of the aristocracy, as egregiously self-interested, as noted, as the one in the West Roman Empire. No Chinese Diocletian or Constantine was possible. An ambience of bohemian futility permeated high society. By 317, North China was lost to incomers and fragmented into ten states, commencing The Sixteen Kingdoms of the Five Barbarians. Recreation of a centralized state was surprisingly rapid, however. In 370, a proto-Tibetan, Fu Jian, came to power in a state called Former Qin. A politico-military genius, he rapidly subdued rival states, restored centralized bureaucracy, established Mahayana Buddhism as the sole legal religion (as Theodosius I did with Christianity at the same time, 379), assumed control of the Buddhist Church; and, in 382, ordered an army westward whcih captured Kucha in Central Asia, where caravans from Persia exchanged goods with those from China. In short, he controlled a more powerful and effective state than the vanished Chinese empire had been. War with the southern empire (Eastern Jin) broke out in 383, lasting until 391. The northern cavalry was neutralized by Yangzi valley mud at the Battle of the Fei River. The northern empire now quickly collapsed, at which time, also, Fu Jian died. The Eastern Jin counteroffensive captured and held the northern capital, Loyang, until 391; then retreated for lack of interest on the part of the government. The very next year, the Tabgatch Turks founded a new regime, the Toba-Wei, which revived, and improved on, the work of the Former Qin; it lasted, if at first coevally with other North China states, from 386 to 535. This was, on the whole, a powerful, rich, and efficient state. The contrast with the states ruled by Germanic peoples, in Western Europe and North Africa, at this time is amazing (with the possible exception of Ostrogothic Italy). Chinese, some of those who were literate, objected to this regime's regimentation, its economic interventionism (such as granting peasants land in exchange for military service and taxes at the expense of landed magnates), and the adoration of the ruler as "living Tathagatha." The objections were retrospective, however. Necessarily, as no freedom of expression existed. The regimentation and interventionism were redolent of Legalism, abhorrent to Confucians. As was Buddhism, later.Ù Before a stable ruling class could develop, the Turco-Mongol rulers had to undergo a crisis of cultural identity, the price of fusion with the Chinese Great Families who had always married their daughters. (Two months ago, I said that this became a problem in the social revolution which overthrew the aristocracy as a class, which may be associated with the year 907 that marks the fall of the Tang.) The same sort of thing is familiar from Gaul, Spain, and Italy. The crisis took political form. The Toba-Wei split into Sinophiles (Western Wei) and re-Turkifiers (Eastern Wei, replaced in the 550s by the Northern Zhou and Northern Qi. It was right here and now, in 551, that the Ruan Ruan were expelled from North China, ultimately becoming the Avars who beseiged Constantinople in 599. (Apologies, my mention of 614 as the year of the first assault was in error. On this occasion, in 599, it took a Miracle of the Blessed Virgin to induce John V.A. Fine to mention the Bubonic Plague, because it "destroyed the Avar army and killed several sons of the khagan." Historians tend to mention the Plague only when it causes politico-military Events.) The Sinophile Northern Zhou seized Sichuan from the Southern Empire in 555, when the latter was prostrate from social revolution. They destroyed the Northern Qi in 577, unifying North China again, and rendering a compositely descended but culturally more-Chinese-than-not (with a Turkish cultural tinge) henceforth possible. This was personified by the half-Mongol, with a Mongol wife, Yang Jian, who seized power in 581 and reuinified China in 589 (Sui dynasty, 581 or 589 to 618). As the Chinese empire expanded vigorously, Europe and the Near East were again depopulated by epidemic disease and invaded by Turks, Arabs, Lombards, and whatever. If only I had baseline measurements. Meaning, "As of the year one, Common Era, was the Roman Empire, taking into account the vast social and discontinuity with the Roman Empire and its egregious alienness from ourselves however masked by all those words of Latin origin in our vocabulary, Lux soap, etc, did the Roman or Chinese empire have more JNSQ? Since the usage, "advanced," is *really stupid*. Daniel A. Foss From OWENJACK@FS.isu.edu Tue Oct 22 10:25:56 1996 From: "J B Owens" Organization: Idaho State University To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 10:28:27 -0600, MDT Subject: New England WHA Symposium ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 12:23:33 -0400 (EDT) From: Fred Bisson To: OWENJACK@FS.isu.edu Subject: New England Regional World History Association Symposium, September , 20, 1997 CALL FOR PAPERS NERWHA will hold its first Symposium September 20,1997 at Keene State College in Southwestern New Hampshire.We are soliciting papers and suggestions for panels for that event.If you have , or are writing a paper on a topic related to World History and would like to present it at our conference, please contact: Wilfred Bisson Department of History Keene State College Keene NH 03435-1301 tel: (603)358 2961 FAX:(603)358 2257 fbisson@keene.edu From chriscd@jhu.edu Tue Oct 22 14:38:19 1996 22 Oct 1996 16:37:35 -0400 (EDT) 22 Oct 1996 16:35:59 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 16:37:59 -0400 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: Warren Wagar on world socialism To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu Organization: Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.21218 USA The most recent issue of _Review_(xix,3 Summer 1996), the Fernand Braudel Center journal, has an article by Warren Wagar in which he presents the case for a new transnational socialist party to carry out the process of social globalization in the twenty-first century. Wagar's article reviews the history of socialist movements and discusses the issue of nationalism in world-systems perspective. This is an excellent contribution to the discussion we had on WSN during the summer about the future of the world-system and global praxis. I recommend it to you. REVIEW is in your library or you can contact the Fernand Braudel Center at http://sociology.adm.binghamton.edu/fbc/fbchmpg.htm chris chase-dunn From dlj@pobox.com Tue Oct 22 21:17:38 1996 Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 23:22:58 -0400 To: chriscd@jhu.edu From: David Lloyd-Jones Subject: Re: Warren Wagar on world socialism At 04:37 PM 22/10/96 -0400, chris chase-dunn wrote: >The most recent issue of _Review_(xix,3 Summer 1996), the Fernand >Braudel Center journal, has an article by Warren Wagar in which he >presents the case for a new transnational socialist party to carry out >the process of social globalization in the twenty-first century. Wagar's >article reviews the history of socialist movements and discusses the >issue of nationalism in world-systems perspective. >This is an excellent contribution to the discussion we had on WSN during >the summer about the future of the world-system and global praxis. >I recommend it to you. REVIEW is in your library or you can contact >the Fernand Braudel Center at >http://sociology.adm.binghamton.edu/fbc/fbchmpg.htm Does he offer any improvement over what the Second International provides at present -- which is not much, but then it's not clear that anything more is possible? -dlj. From TBOS@social-sci.ss.emory.edu Wed Oct 23 11:56:36 1996 From: "Terry Boswell" Organization: Social Sciences, Emory Univ. To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 13:54:34 EST5EDT Subject: chair's message typos fixed I recently wrote the essay below for PEWS News trying to generate some debate over the state of world-system theory. WSN might be a good place for some of that debate. I look forward to hearing what others think. World-System Theory or Analysis Terry Boswell PEWS Chair After a generation of self-conscious world-system analysis, can we now claim to have developed a coherent set of ideas and concepts that constitute a world-system theory? The answer is "no," says Immanuel Wallerstein in his recent address at the 1996 ASA Meetings. I want to use this opportunity of the "Chair's Message" to argue for the affirmative, and hopefully generate some debate over what is the state of world-system theory. I think we do have a well developed world-system theory whose postulates have been supported by a large body of empirical research. As I understand him, Wallerstein claims that what we share as a section, and with others in many disciplines, is a form of analysis. World-system analysis is a set of assumptions that begins with the claim that the capitalist world-economy is a single integrated system that originated in the 16th century. To understand capitalist development, including the underdevelopment of large zones of the world, one must therefore employ a global perspective. Global structures and processes are, by definition, the largest possible social units, which consequently are discernable only over the long duration of history where they set the parameters within which states, firms and other organizations operate. In addition, by recognizing a beginning to the system and identifying its structures and processes, world-system analysis implies that the system can be changed and even transformed. How the global structures and processes operate, how and when the system originated, which zones are underdeveloped, how does the system change, how can the system be changed -- answers to these and related questions are presumably what Wallerstein means by "theory." Theories are sets of concepts and relations between concepts from which one can logically infer explanations of events. Wallerstein is not claiming that world-system analysis is atheoretical (at least I hope not), as he and others routinely use theories to explain how the system works. Rather, the implication is that the set of theoretical explanations so far derived are "not yet" sufficiently coherent or adequately supported by research, and that we cannot yet organize them into a world-system theory. The "not yet" suggests that creating such a theory is possible and is a central purpose of analysis. What is called here "analysis," I would call a "perspective," but it is also commonly called "theory" at a high level of generality where one is concerned with philosophical presuppositions (Stinchcombe 1968, p.48). I do not want the issues to degenerate into a debate over terminology. Whatever one calls it, there are clear analytical differences between how to view the world and explanations about how the world works. Nor do I disagree that a world-system perspective or analysis is the main thing that we in PEWS have in common and is what distinguishes our work from comparative and international studies. However, I strongly disagree with the implication that we do not yet have a coherent set of interrelated explanations supported by empirical research that we can call world system theory (WST). Just as we should deny the false notion that everyone in PEWS should adopt the same theory, we should equally deny the implication that PEWS research has failed to produce consistent theory. For instance, over two decades of cross-national research have produced a rather consistent set of findings that supports dependency theories of development and inequality in the periphery. Different types of dependency apply at times and places-- commodity concentration, corporate penetration, debt dependence --but the types are related and are best explained within a world-system analysis. We also have a large body of research that supports theories of long term cycles (K-waves, hegemony) and trends (commodification, proletarianization, market integration, etc.) of the capitalist world-economy. These cycles and trends are causally related to political patterns of war, colonialism, and state formation. They are also inter-related with dependency, affecting the patterns and contexts in which dependency operates. Summaries of this research and of WST can be found in books such as Chase-Dunn's Global Formation, Modelski and Thompson's Leading Sectors and World Powers, the texts produced by McMichael, and by Bradshaw and Wallace for the Pine Forge Press series, and elsewhere. In fact, summary statements of world-system theory are now commonly found in introductory textbooks, ironically typically citing only Wallerstein as the theory's progenitor. If we are so widely recognized as having developed a world- system theory, why is there a debate within over its existence? Some of this disagreement may be due to concerns over empirical adequacy. Theories are based on the best evidence available and long term global data are among the most paltry (although the data have improved remarkably over the last decade). Also, theories are advanced through posing competing explanations, so that a vibrant field will be highly contested, perhaps appearing to some as if the theory had not yet found consistent empirical support. Finally, world-system analysis often divides along ideographic and nomothetic lines. The former focuses on the complicated contexts and contingencies of historical events, such that only a descriptive conceptual framework can apply, while the latter focuses on patterns that persist despite complicated contexts and contingencies, such that abstract casual logic is appropriate. Given the presuppositions of methods, either side may easily fall into prejudices that consider the other as woefully incomplete. Here is the case that it is the prejudices that are woeful. Rather than incomplete, I find some aspects of WST to be overdone. While modernization theory is a many-headed hydra that we cannot ignore, nor can we advance WST by only contesting the one alternative. To advance the theory, we should encourage people to disagree with it. We need to engage alternative perspectives, beyond just modernization, and forge into new fields of inquiry. For instance, I mentioned Modelksi and Thompson's work above even though they do not fully share a world-system perspective, because I have found their new evidence and alternative arguments to be some of the best for advancing WST of K-waves, hegemony, and global war. World polity theory of global institutionalism and world culture is an expanding area that we should also contest, learn from, and incorporate into our understanding of the world-system. Feminist theory is another and both will be represented on PEWS panels at the next ASA meetings, along with sessions on nationalist and labor movements, and on the environment. In all, the next year gives us a chance to expand world-system theory by contesting it with other theories and in new areas. References: Stinchcombe, Arthur L. 1968. Constructing Social Theories. NY: Harcourt. Terry Boswell Department of Sociology Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322 From TBOS@social-sci.ss.emory.edu Wed Oct 23 12:14:26 1996 From: "Terry Boswell" Organization: Social Sciences, Emory Univ. To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 14:12:20 EST5EDT Subject: 1997 ASA Sessions The following are the Political Economy of the World-System Sessions for the 1997 ASA Meetings in Toronto. There are also several regular sessions with global themes, which I will post later. TB Refereed Roundtables co-organizer: Roberto Korzeniewicz Dept. of Sociology Univ. of Maryland College Park, MD 20742-1315 ph. 301-405-6398 fax: 301-405-5743 email: rk81@umail.umd.edu co-organizer: Tom Hall Dept. of Sociology DePauw University Greencastle, IN 46135-0037 ph.:317-658-4519 fax:317-658-4177 email:thall@depauw.edu ---------------------------------------- World Polity and the World-System Organizer: Chris Chase-Dunn Department of Sociology Johns-Hopkins University Baltimore, MD ph. 410-516-7633 fax: 410-516-7590 email: chriscd@jhuvm.hcf.jhu.edu Speaker: John Meyer Department of Sociology Stanford --------------------------------- Global Feminist Movements (regular session) co-organizer: Joya Misra Dept. of Sociology Baldwin Hall University of Georgia Athens, GA 30602 ph.:706-542-3190 fax:706-542-4320 email:cmsjoya@uga.cc.uga.edu co-organizer: Valentine Moghadam 4601 Connecticut Ave. N.W. #409 Washington, DC 20008 ph.:202-244-5797 fax:N/A email:N/A ---------------------------------- Global Processes and Local Action: Nationalist and Labor Movements (regular session) co-organizer: Edna Bonacich Department of Sociology University of California, Riverside Riverside, CA 92521 ph.:909-787-4373 fax:310-391-0738 email:bonacich@ucrac1.ucr.edu co-organizer: Terry Boswell Department of Sociology Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322 ph.:404-727-7533 fax:404-727-7532 email:tbos@soc.emory.edu ------------------------------- The PEWS section will also co-sponsor the following session with the Environment and Technology section, which will be organized under their allotment this year. The Political Economy of the Environment (regular session, co-sponsored with Environment and Technology Section) organizer: Thomas Rudel Dept. of Sociology Rutgers University New Brunswick, NJ 08903-5072 rudel@rci.rutger.eduTerry Boswell Department of Sociology Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322 From chriscd@jhu.edu Thu Oct 24 07:49:32 1996 24 Oct 1996 09:48:53 -0400 (EDT) 24 Oct 1996 09:48:44 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 09:50:40 -0400 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: [Fwd: (Fwd) Re: Update: Anti-IMF strategic info... -Reply] To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu Organization: Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.21218 USA 24 Oct 1996 00:25:17 -0400 (EDT) 24 Oct 1996 00:25:05 -0400 (EDT) 24 Oct 1996 05:55:10 +0200 (GMT+0200) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 15:44:14 -0400 From: Patrick Bond Subject: (Fwd) Re: Update: Anti-IMF strategic info... -Reply Sender: pbond@wn.apc.org To: SA.gossip.fiends@wn.apc.org Reply-to: PBOND@wn.apc.org Ok, what the heck. So many of you allegedly wanted this (plus the bonus, at the end, of our reply to Alec Erwin, to appear in this week's Mail and Guardian), that it saves wear and tear to get it out to all. Feedback warmly welcomed. Next stage is a strategic paper on where we've come from in the last year's worth of civil society campaigns, including no lock-out clause in the constitution (+); anti-privatisation (+/-); removing corporations from the Bill of Rights (-); disciplining banks on interest rate increase (+); humanising UNCTAD (-); and now making Camdessus miserable (+). Coming soon: defending the RDP (-). *** STATEMENT BY THE Campaign Against Neoliberalism in South Africa On the South African visit by IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus 16 October 1996 As members of popular organisations and activists of the Democratic Movement, we have come together to launch a "Campaign Against Neoliberalism in South Africa" and, in particular, to express apprehension at the visit (17-19 October) by the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Michel Camdessus. Neoliberalism is the "free market" approach to economic and social policy that large banks, corporations and their allies in the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organisation and Northern governments are insisting all countries adopt. Camdessus' brief South African tour was recently announced by Finance Minister Trevor Manuel: "We have invited him to extend the good relations that we have with the IMF... He wants to have discussions with the trade union movement, student organisations as well as the normal constituency such as business people and government leaders." The background for the visit includes a history of IMF support for apartheid, including loans of more than US$1 billion to the South African regime during the late 1970s (in the wake of financial panic caused by the Soweto uprising) and early 1980s (when the gold price collapsed and the regime was most urgently in need of external monetary support). From exile, the ANC condemned the IMF for propping up apartheid. The IMF then assisted the regime with its increasingly neoliberal economic policies during the late 1980s, and designed South Africa's Value Added Tax during the early 1990s, leading to mass popular protest. In 1993 the IMF granted a large loan which included secret "conditionalities" that ensured that a democratic South Africa would not waver from inherited undemocratic economic policies, as well as informal conditions that the new government retain the National Party Finance Minister and Reserve Bank governor. Against this background of hostility to democratic aspirations and development, we must make the following points about the Camdessus visit: 1. The Finance Ministry's attempt to establish "good relations" with the IMF follows its promotion of a macroeconomic strategy in June 1996 which bears an uncanny similarity to the IMF's 11 new "principles for economic success," also termed the "11 Commandments." The Growth Employment and Redistribution strategy -- emphasising cuts in government expenditure (particularly "consumption" expenditure which will threaten social services), continuing high real interest rates, export-led growth and trade liberalisation, privatisation and permission for increased capital flight from South Africa -- mimics the free-market, monetarist policies that across the world favour the interests of powerful conglomerates and banks at the expense of workers, the poor, women, youth and other marginalised social forces. The warm reception received by the SA delegation to the IMF/World Bank Annual Meeting in Washington earlier this month follows months of close collaboration in designing SA economic and development policy, marking a fundamental departure from policies outlined in the Reconstruction and Development Programme. The fact that just four months into the new strategy, some of the economic model's most crucial variables -- job creation, the exchange rate, interest rates -- have dismally failed to meet government targets, is both a reflection of the more general bankruptcy of IMF-style orthodox policies and a reminder that the strategy must be completely renegotiated with government's major popular constituencies. 2. Many had feared a steady drift away from the social justice values and redistributive policies expressed in the RDP and their replacement with neoliberal principles and programmes. Reflecting this, some government officials -- particularly in the Finance Department and Reserve Bank -- appear to now entirely ignore the RDP warning that "the IMF, World Bank and GATT affect our neighbours and South Africa in different ways. In the case of our neighbours, they were pressured into implementing programmes with adverse effects on employment and standards of living... Relationships with international financial institutions such as the World Bank and IMF must be conducted in such a way as to protect the integrity of domestic policy formulation and promote the interests of the South African population and the economy. Above all, we must pursue policies that enhance national self-sufficiency and enable us to reduce dependence on international financial institutions" (1.4.17, 6.5.16). 3. In most developing countries, the IMF and World Bank have come to direct economic policies and have thus undermined national sovereignty largely through the leverage they enjoy as creditors. This has not been the only mechanism for exerting leverage in South Africa, and indeed the neoliberal influence over economic and social policy has often occurred in the absence of ongoing lending. Perhaps just as importantly, the IMF and World Bank have the ability to psychologically influence prospective foreign investors, in a context in which foreign investment is incorrectly seen by a small group of government policy-makers and advisors as the overarching factor for economic growth. Since the 1980s, South Africa has succeeded in attracting merely large amounts of "hot money" foreign investment into speculative stock and bond markets (leading to subsequent bouts of currency volatility), with virtually none of the direct foreign investment that might challenge existing monopolistic conditions, transfer technology, or create jobs and products for consumption in the local market. We believe, therefore, that the move towards close relations with the IMF, premised upon attracting what the Minister of Water Affairs correctly termed the "mythical foreign investor," should be viewed with alarm by all those in South Africa committed to sustainable, people-centred development. This is especially so when we consider the role the IMF and the World Bank have played elsewhere. 4. Across the Third World, Structural Adjustment Programmes imposed by the IMF and World Bank to obtain the repayment of foreign debt have led to famine, environmental destruction, and the dismantling of health, education, infrastructural and social welfare programmes. These programmes nearly always include the same set of measures: currency devaluation, decontrol of exchange rates, higher interest rates, financial deregulation, trade liberalisation, privatisation, wage cuts, reduction in the public service through budget cuts and massive retrenchments, labour market deregulation, and the like. The social costs -- typically including large increases in the prices of basic goods and food, intensified poverty, deterioration of public services, and rising unemployment -- are nearly always borne by those people, especially women and children, who never received any benefits from the borrowings. Structural Adjustment Programmes have also made small economies vulnerable to transnational corporations that exploit cheap labour (often imprisoned in union-free export processing zones devoid of health and safety regulations with wages that sink to US$1 per day) and that dump toxic wastes and poisons produced in the rich industrialised countries. 5. Debt repayment has become an important mechanism for transferring wealth from the people of the South to financiers of the North. According to the United Nations, developing countries paid US$1,662 trillion in debt servicing between 1980 and 1992. This amount is three times the original amount owed in 1980. Yet in spite of the above transfers the total Third World debt still stands at over US$1,3 trillion. It is not commonly known that the Third World has repaid almost a trillion dollars of principle over and above US$771 billion in interest. In Sub-Saharan Africa the ratios of foreign debt to Gross National Product rose from 51% in 1982 to 100% in 1992, and of foreign debt to total exports from 192% in 1982 to 290% in 1992, a period during which the Third World debt crisis was allegedly resolved. The external debt of the Third World has become an eternal debt and stands as the largest immediate obstacle to growth and sustainable development. It is therefore crucial that progressive forces in South Africa add their voice to the calls made internationally to cancel Third World debt as the first step towards building equitable and just relationships between and within different parts of the world. The meagre gold sales belatedly proposed by Camdessus to help finance extremely limited debt relief -- and only for those countries which religiously adopt the IMF's 11 Commandments -- are far too little, far too late, and it is a reflection of the exploitative character of Northern political leadership of the IMF that even these gold sales were not approved at the last meetings. 6. With equal dismay, we learn through the press that the World Bank is now on the verge of making its first loan to South Africa since 1967. The Bank has, since 1994, offered advice to several key ministries charged with implementing the Reconstruction and Development Programme, as well as contributing to the Finance Ministry's Growth, Employment and Redistribution plan. The Bank's own Commandments differ little from the IMF's, and it is no surprise that government's underperforming infrastructure, land reform, and housing policies all follow directly from Bank advice. The Bank has apparently now sold Minister Manuel a US$67 million loan to improve the competitiveness of South African firms, a dubious proposition in view of the Bank's notorious, self-confessed tendency towards overoptimism regarding Third World exports. Consistent with the RDP, the South African government should renew its previous self-reliant policy of avoiding World Bank loans. And given its record to date, the Bank should close its Johannesburg office and cease dispensing its unpopular neo-liberal economic and social policy advice. 7. In the light of the near-universal failure of IMF and the World Bank policies in the developing world, we wish to urge extreme caution upon Finance Minister Manuel. Rather than naively providing Camdessus legitimacy to sell IMF policies to critics in trade unions and social movements, Minister Manuel should take up the mantle of leadership by using IMF and World Bank platforms to call for the cancellation of Third World debt, including the inherited US$18 billion apartheid foreign debt. Indeed Manuel should be using these opportunities to call for the democratisation and transformation of the World Bank and IMF into agencies which serve the interests of poor people and workers, rather than continually undermining our constituencies for the benefit of international banks and corporations. 8. If Camdessus is really interested in meeting critics, he should make himself available for a publicly televised debate through which the concerns raised here can be made directly to the IMF Managing Director, as well as to Minister Manuel. Indeed, we are convinced that the only good that can come of Camdessus' visit is a transparent discussion of the enormous costs of IMF policies. Those policies are being adopted under the "home-grown" rubric in South Africa, and it is therefore crucial for our citizens to understand how many other countries have also surrendered their economic sovereignty to the IMF and World Bank, and the enormous financial and social costs they pay as a result. Finally, it is crucial for all progressive, democratic South Africans to record their determination that the IMF not recolonise our country, our continent and developing countries across the world. *** CANSA has been established to help identify, arrest and eradicate the cancer of neoliberalism that increasingly threatens to reverse South Africa's socio-economic transformation. Beginning with dozens of prominent members from progressive groups in civil society, the campaign intends to recruit support from trade unions, non- governmental organisations, students, community-based organisations, women's and youth groups, environmental organisations, churches and other democratic forces. It will encourage and provide resources to supporters for domestic and international efforts to challenge concentrations of economic power and to promote people- centred development. For more information, contact Stiaan van der Merwe at 011-339-7253 (fax 403-1485) or Zaida Harneker at 011-339-1811 or 837-6071 (fax 339-8084). *** Signatories to the Campaign Against Neoliberalism in South Africa Individual endorsements: (Individuals sign in their own capacity; organisations are listed for identification purposes only, not as endorsers; list updated to 17 October.)  Gillian Addison, Group for Environmental Monitoring  Asghar Adelzadeh, National Institute for Economic Policy  Chris Albertyn, Environmental Justice Networking Forum  Jenny Albrecht, Foundation for Contemporary Research  Stephanie Allais, South African Students' Congress  Mercia Andrews, Trust for Christian Outreach and Education  Brian Ashley, Alternative Information and Development Centre  Marjorie Billing, New Women's Movement  Patrick Bond, National Institute for Economic Policy  Debby Byrne, Transport and General Workers' Union  Phiroshaw Camay, Cooperative for Research and Education  Madode Cuphe, Masifundise Education Project  Lungi Daweti, Centre for Democratic Communications  Art de Langa, Society for New Economics  George Dor, National Institute for Economic Policy  Rita Edwards, Trust for Christian Outreach and Education  Greg Hussey, South African Health and Social Welfare Services  Godfrey Jack, South African National Civic Organisation  Martin Jenson, Trade Union Library and Education Centre  Dot Keet, University of the Western Cape Centre for Southern African Studies  Cecil Kganakga, National Community Radio Forum  Wolfgang Kistner, Ecumenical Advice Bureau  Oupa Lehulere, Khanya College  Charley Lewis, Cosatu Information Technology Unit  Hassen Lorgat, Public Services International  Bobby Maake, Cosatu Information Technology Unit  Ernest Maganya, Institute for African Alternatives  Jabu Mahlangu, Centre for Democratic Communication  Maxwell Malan, End Racism and Sexism through Education  Althea MacQuene, International Labour Resource and Information Group  Andre Marais, Alternative Information and Development Centre  Frank Meintjies, Initiative for Participatory Development  Ronnie Mokwatsane, Masifundise Education Project  Yves Monten, Rural Development Services Network  Dickson Motha, South African Plantation and Agricultural Workers Union  Lumke Mtimde, National Community Radio Forum  Victor Munnik, Environment and Development Agency Trust  Nirmala Nair, Trust for Christian Outreach and Education  Neil Nair, South African Municipal Workers Union  Beyers Naude, Ecumenical Advice Bureau  Neil Newman, Alternative Information and Development Centre  Hugh Noble, University of South Africa  Roseline Nyman, National Labour and Economic Development Institute  Roben Penney, Environmental Monitoring Group  Tebogo Phadu, RDP Council  Alex Pongolo, Masifundise Education Project  Mark Povey, Development Research Institute  Kgagelo Ramodite, National Health and Allied Workers Union  David Sanders, University of the Western Cape Public Health Programme  Vishwas Satgar, National Labour and Economic Development Institute  Ighsaan Schroeder, Khanya College  Selby Shezi, National Institute for Economic Policy  Fiona Tregenna, South African Students' Congress  Molefe Tselo, Ecumenical Service for Socio-Economic Transformation  Stiaan van der Merwe, Ecumenical Advice Bureau  Lou Wilkins, Cosatu Information Technology Unit *** CANSA Statement in The Mail and Guardian, 25/10 issue: According to Trade and Industry Minister Alec Erwin ("Erwin slams loan critics," M&G Business Mail, 18-24 October), "our policies are consciously designed to prevent the possible pitfalls of a World Bank loan and the effects they've sometimes had on other economies." Are they? The newly-launched Campaign Against Neoliberalism in South Africa -- which has already been endorsed by activists and leaders in nearly every major social movement (church, community, environment, NGO, student, trade union, etc) -- remains deeply concerned. After all, conditions on the last International Monetary Fund loan -- $850 million purportedly for drought relief (though the money became available in early 1994, 15 months after the drought ended!) -- included cuts in the budget deficit that are already digging deep and painfully into social programmes. As for the World Bank, says Erwin, "their influence is negligible; second, we've put in place policies designed to prevent the detrimental effects that some of their projects might actually have... We often use World Bank expertise and feel sufficiently experienced not to be threatened." What preventative policies are those? In reality, the Bank role has already been extremely detrimental, and even experienced government policy-makers often appear overwhelmed by bad advice, as just a few examples illustrate:  Two Bank economists and the Bank economic model were utilised in the June 1996 macroeconomic strategy -- which aside from its pro-corporate bias has already, after just four months, bombed with respect to 1996 predictions for job creation, interest rates and the strength of the rand (three of the strategy's most crucial targets).  In 1994-95, the Bank's deputy resident representative led an infrastructure planning team whose proposals will -- unless policy is changed dramatically -- soon reduce the lot of the urban poor and low-paid workers to pit latrines, water taps within 200 meters and no electricity, instead of the decent sanitation and household water and electricity "lifeline" supply promised in the RDP.  The Bank-designed land redistribution programme, dating to 1992-93 and endorsed by government in 1994, is yet to get off the ground largely because it relies nearly entirely on market forces.  And forceful Bank advice from 1991-94 to limit state housing subsidies and to trust commercial banks to make township home loans -- instead of the state and community agencies advocated in the RDP -- helps explain the present housing delivery fiasco. So South African sovereignty in social and economic policy is already under fierce attack. As a result, the RDP -- which retains the support of most citizens, who still want to believe government's oft-repeated commitment to eventual RDP delivery -- appears to have fallen victim to both the neoliberal macroeconomic plan and Bank sectoral policy advice. We think back to July 1993, when Trevor Manuel told the New Nation, "We will certainly need foreign aid, but not from the IMF or the World Bank." And we ask, how have conditions changed so dramatically that policy-makers go into reverse gear on such basic principles? In future, can the Bank perform any better to improve "export competitiveness," the purpose of the proposed $67 million loan? Erwin may have better luck than his colleagues in "preventing possible pitfalls," but as even Bank staff admit, their own track record is miserable, given their intrinsic tendency to generate overoptimistic market studies in order to promote exports at all costs. According to Carlos Lopez, a leading United Nations Development Programme official, "The World Bank figures are always exaggerated to give a rosy picture of whatever it is they are involved in." The Bank, after all, would hardly survive if it had to itself compete with the private sector. Looking north, 51% of the Bank's current African projects are failures according to the Bank's own internal evaluations. An awesome $20 billion in approved Bank loans to Africa still have not been disbursed because of the damage that the Bank and IMF have done to state administrative capacity, even former Bank Africa director Kim Jaycox has publicly conceded. Only the largesse of Northern taxpayers, whose leaders regularly recapitalise the Bank, and the foolishness of Third World borrowers, keep the game in play. South Africa could potentially have a different fate, if more effective macroeconomic management -- including relaxing the balance of payments constraint by taxing luxury goods imports, as the RDP suggested (the only comparable tax was actually dropped in the last budget) -- reduced both the need for foreign borrowing and if our vulnerability to "hot money" inflows was reduced (perhaps through lower interest rates and tightened, not liberalised, exchange controls, as the IMF had belatedly recommended after the 1994-95 Mexican currency meltdown). Moreover, there is plenty of credit creation and financial liquidity in the South African economy at present -- which should be utilised for all manner of development projects -- but the tragedy is that government has yet to implement the kinds of RDP financial sector reforms that would free up more resources for productive investment and enhanced competitiveness, as opposed to stock market and real estate speculation, conspicuous consumption and capital flight. In sum, the neoliberal policy turn is disastrous in economic and social terms. Politically, it is also profoundly undemocratic, as pressure from international and domestic financial institutions pulls the South African government far from its electoral mandate. Thus we hope the IMF will cease sending its managing director here on fruitless missions to sell neoliberal muti to critics. Broader boycotts, tougher demonstrations, even more hostile parliamentarians and louder demands for transparent public debates -- such a request was rejected by both Michel Camdessus and the Finance Ministry last week -- will result. The World Bank should close its Johannesburg office and release its economists -- with their R700 000 per annum packages -- to compete for jobs in the private sector. Government should remember its election mandate and open the RDP Base Document to page 146: "Above all, we must pursue policies that enhance national self-sufficiency and enable us to reduce dependence on international financial institutions." And ordinary citizens and organisations of civil society interested in challenging the drift away from the RDP and social justice towards neoliberalism should join the Campaign, by calling 011-339-1811 or 021-448-5197 (or emailing to aidc@iafrica.com) to endorse our statement and get involved in activities. *** Stephanie Allais, Brian Ashley, Patrick Bond, Oupa Lehulere and Hassen Lorgat are active with the Campaign Against Neoliberalism in South Africa. From dale.wimberley@vt.edu Thu Oct 24 14:06:56 1996 Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 16:06:24 -0500 To: World-System Network From: dale.wimberley@vt.edu (Dale W Wimberley) Subject: Special issue of Journal of Developing Societies Here is a publication opportunity of possible interest, but the deadline is tight -- November 11! >>From: ASA.Chair.Link@athena.csi1.com >>To: ASA@athena.csi1.com, Phoebe@athena.csi1.com, Stevenson@athena.csi1.com >>Subject: CHAIRLINK OCTOBER 23, 1996 >>Date: Wednesday, October 23, 1996 5:06PM >>Sender: owner-chair-link@athena.csi1.com >>Precedence: bulk >> >>CHAIRLINK October 23, 1996 >> >>CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS--JOURNAL OF DEVELOPING SOCIETIES >> >>Journal of Developing Societies invites contributions for its >>special issue: "The Emerging Global Societies: Development >>Dynamics and Dilemmas" for publication (as Issues I & II) in >>1997. The main objective of this special issue is to advance >>understanding of the nature of emerging forces relating to, e. >>g., market economy, democratization, human rights, scientific and >>technological advancements, migration, and the culture of >>modernity and post-modernity, and the impact of all of these >>forces on development in various regions of the world. What is >>the nature and intensity of contemporary global change? What new >>development issues and challenges are arising from the conditions >>of globality? How are various regions and societies of the world >>responding to emerging global changes? And, what is the future of >>development and peace within the emerging world, and at what >>cost? Some of these issues will be theoretically and empirically >>examined in this volume. Two copies of the article not exceeding >>25 double-spaced pages including tables, endnotes and references >>should be sent to: Proshanta Nandi (guest editor), >>Sociology/Anthropology Program, University of Illinois at >>Springfield, IL 62794-9243; Tel: (217)786-7584; FAX >>(217)786-7188. The deadline for submission is November 11, 1996. >> Dale W. Wimberley Department of Sociology Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University From teivaine@cc.helsinki.fi Fri Oct 25 08:12:09 1996 Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1996 17:11:57 +0300 (EET DST) From: Teivo Teivainen To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Mohammed Bamyeh? Dear WS-Netters, Apologies for bothering you with a "where is" question, but I am trying to locate Mohammed Bamyeh, who used to be at U Mass Lowell, and should be at NYU now. Any ideas? cheers, teivo Teivo Teivainen Ibero-American Center PO Box 59, 00014 University of Helsinki teivo.teivainen@helsinki.fi From rkmoore@iol.ie Sat Oct 26 07:30:33 1996 Sat, 26 Oct 1996 14:06:03 +0100 (BST) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1996 14:06:03 +0100 (BST) To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: What is fascism? 10/18/96, Warren Wagar wrote to WSN, re/ my posting "America & the NWO": > Once again, you have pretty much told it "like it was." Your >analysis corrsponds closely to mine in A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FUTURE, and >of course I've been calling the multinational giants "megacorps" since >1989. > ... >Let's save "fascism" for the >conservative populist totalitarian nationalism of the period 1920-45 and >think of a better word to describe the much smoother operators of our >half-century (okay, they're "smoother" only to certain potential domestic >foes; not to Vietnamese villagers, Bangladeshi sweatshop workers, and >Iraqi soldiers buried alive in their trenches by the heroes of Desert >Storm). I agree that "fascism" is a difficult term, and is often used carelessly as a generic, derogatory explitive. Nonetheless, my observation is that it is a phenomenon that did not die in 1945, and that it is undergoing a major worldwide resurgance only slightly below the surface, though not always immediately recognizable. I'll defer my own analysis on this topic, until after those interested have had a chance to review the following piece which, I hope you'll agree, does a reasonable job of establishing a definitional context, and provides a useful point of departure for discussion. The main point that I believe is missing below, and in many discussions of fascism and totalitarianism in general, is the central role they play in imperialism, and the extent to which they are tools of outside interests -- this is why the topic should be of interest from a world-systems perspective. I'll post a more precise statement soon. Regards, rkm ________________________________________________________________ Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1996 Sender: "Hank Roth's Progressive List [& PNEWS CONFERENCES]" Subject: ARTICLE: The Modern Totalitarian State [*********PNEWS CONFERENCES************] From: Cibrary@remember.org [Posted here in compliance with FAIR USE DOCTRINE for educational purposes.] NAZI FASCISM AND THE MODERN TOTALITARIAN STATE by Gary M. Grobman Synopsis The government of Nazi Germany was a fascist, totalitarian state. Totalitarian regimes, in contrast to a dictatorship, establish complete political, social, and cultural control over their subjects, and are usually headed by a charismatic leader. Fascism is a form of right-wing totalitarianism which emphasizes the subordination of the individual to advance the interests of the state. Nazi fascism's ideology included a racial theory which denigrated "non-Aryans," extreme nationalism which called for the unification of all German-speaking peoples, the use of private paramilitary organizations to stifle dissent and terrorize opposition, and the centralization of decision-making by, and loyalty to, a single leader. Totalitarianism Totalitarianism is a form of government in which all societal resources are monopolized by the state in an effort to penetrate and control all aspects of public and private life, through the state's use of propaganda, terror, and technology. Totalitarian ideologies reject the existing society as corrupt, immoral, and beyond reform, project an alternative society in which these wrongs are to be redressed, and provide plans and programs for realizing the alternative order. These ideologies, supported by propaganda campaigns, demand total conformity on the part of the people. Totalitarian forms of organization enforce this demand for conformity. Totalitarian societies are hierarchies dominated by one political party and usually by a single leader. The party penetrates the entire country through regional, provincial, local and "primary" (party-cell) organization. Youth, professional, cultural, and sports groups supplement the party's political control. A paramilitary secret police ensures compliance. Information and ideas are effectively organized through the control of television, radio, the press, and education at all levels. Totalitarian Regime vs. Dictatorship Totalitarian regimes differ from older concepts of dictatorship or tyranny. Totalitarian regimes seek to establish complete political, social and cultural control, whereas dictatorships seek limited, typically political, control. Two types of totalitarianism can sometimes be distinguished: Nazism and Fascism which evolved from "right-wing" extremism, and Communism, which evolved from "left-wing" extremism. Traditionally, each is supported by different social classes. Right-wing totalitarian movements have generally drawn their popular support primarily from middle classes seeking to maintain the economic and social status quo. Left-wing totalitarianism has often developed from working class movements seeking, in theory, to eliminate, not preserve, class distinctions. Right-wing totalitarianism has typically supported and enforced the private ownership of industrial wealth. A distinguishing feature of Communism, by contrast, is the collective ownership of such capital. Totalitarian regimes mobilize and make use of mass political participation, and often are led by charismatic cult figures. Examples of such cult figures in modern history are Mao Tse-tung (China) and Josef Stalin (Soviet Union), who led left-wing regimes, and Adolf Hitler (Germany) and Benito Mussolini (Italy), who led right-wing regimes. Right-wing totalitarian regimes (particularly the Nazis) have arisen in relatively advanced societies, relying on the support of traditional economic elites to attain power. In contrast, left-wing totalitarian regimes have arisen in relatively undeveloped countries through the unleashing of revolutionary violence and terror. Such violence and terror are also the primary tools of right-wing totalitarian regimes to maintain compliance with authority. Fascism Fascism was an authoritarian political movement that developed in Italy and several other European countries after 1919 as a reaction against the profound political and social changes brought about by World War I and the spread of socialism and Communism. Its name was derived from the fasces, an ancient Roman symbol of authority consisting of a bundle of rods and an ax. Italian fascism was founded in Milan on March 23, 1919, by Benito Mussolini, a former revolutionary socialist leader. His followers, mostly war veterans, were organized along paramilitary lines and wore black shirts as uniforms. The early Fascist program was a mixture of left- and right-wing ideas that emphasized intense Nationalism, productivism, anti-socialism, elitism, and the need for a strong leader. Mussolini's oratorical skills, the post-war economic crisis, a widespread lack of confidence in the traditional political system, and a growing fear of socialism, all helped the Fascist party to grow to 300,000 registered members by 1921. In that year it elected 35 members to parliament. The Philosophy of Fascism The intellectual roots of Fascism can be traced to the voluntaristic philosophers who argued that the will is prior to and superior to the intellect or reason. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a German philosopher who held that the will is the underlying and ultimate reality and that the whole phenomenal world is the only expression of will. Human beings have free will only in the sense that everyone is the free expression of a will and that we therefore are not the authors of our own destinies, characters, or behavior, he wrote. He theorized that space, time, and causality were not absolute principles but only a function of the brain, concepts parallel to the scientific discoveries of relativistic physics two generations later. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher and poet best known for "Thus Spoke Zarathustra." He theorized that there were two moral codes: that of the ruling class (master morality) and that of the oppressed class (slave morality). The ancient empires grew out of a master morality, and the religions of the day out of the slave morality (which denigrates the rich and powerful, rationalism, and sexuality). He developed the concept of the "overman" (superman) which symbolized man at his most creative and highest intellectual capacity. Henri Bergson (1859-1941) was a French philosopher of Jewish parents who was the leading rejectionist of the concept that scientific principles can explain all of existence. He asserted that metaphysical principles also apply. He found credence in applying the biological theories of Darwin (which pointed to the "survival of the fittest" in biological systems) to social theory. George Sorel (1847-1922) was a French social philosopher who had a major influence upon Mussolini. Sorel believed that societies naturally became decadent and disorganized, and this inevitable decay could only be delayed by the leadership of idealists who were willing to use violence to obtain power. His anti-democratic, anti-liberal views and pessimistic view about the natural life-cycle of a society were antithetical to most of his contemporaries. Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863-1938) was an Italian politician, poet, dramatist, novelist and war hero who was a supporter of Mussolini. Fascist Ideology Fascist ideology was largely the work of the neo-idealist philosopher, Giovanni Gentile. It emphasized the subordination of the individual to a "totalitarian" state that was to control all aspects of national life. Violence as a creative force was an important characteristic of the Fascist philosophy. A special feature of Italian Fascism was the attempt to eliminate the class struggle from history through nationalism and the corporate state. Mussolini organized the economy and all "producers" - from peasants and factory workers to intellectuals and industrialists - into 22 corporations as a means of improving productivity and avoiding industrial disputes. Contrary to the regime's propaganda claims, the system ran poorly. Mussolini was forced into compromises with big business and the Roman Catholic Church. The corporate state was never fully implemented. The inherently expansionist, militaristic nature of Fascism contributed to imperialistic adventures in Ethiopia and the Balkans and ultimately to World War II. Nazism Nazism refers to the totalitarian Fascist ideology and policies espoused and practiced by Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Worker's Party from 1920-1945. Nazism stressed the superiority of the Aryan, its destiny as the Master Race to rule the world over other races, and a violent hatred of Jews, which it blamed for all of the problems of Germany. Nazism also provided for extreme nationalism which called for the unification of all German-speaking peoples into a single empire. The economy envisioned for the state was a form of corporative state socialism, although members of the party who were leftists (and would generally support such an economic system over private enterprise) were purged from the party in 1934. Paramilitary Organizations Nazism made use of paramilitary organizations to maintain control within the party, and to squelch opposition to the party. Violence and terror fostered compliance. Among these organizations were the: S.A. (Sturmabteilung): Stormtroopers (also known as "brown-shirts") were the Nazi paramilitary arm under Ernst R=EEhm. It was active in the battle for the streets against other German political parties. S.D. (Sicherheitsdiest): the Security Service under Reinhard Heydrich. S.S. (Schutzstaffel): Defense Corps, was an elite guard unit formed out of the S.A. It was under the command of Heinrich Himmler. Gestapo (Geheime Staatpolizeil): the Secret State Police, which was formed in 1933. Nazism also placed an emphasis on sports and paramilitary activities for youth, the massive use of propaganda (controlled by Joseph Goebbels) to glorify the state, and the submission of all decisions to the supreme leader (Fuhrer) Adolf Hitler. VOCABULARY Communism - A social, political, and economic system characterized by the revolutionary struggle to create a society which has an absence of classes, and the common ownership of the means of production and subsistence and centralized governmental control over the economy. Dictator - A ruler having absolute authority and supreme jurisdiction over the government of a state; especially one who is considered tyrannical or oppressive. Elitism - Philosophy that a narrow clique of the "best" or "most skilled" members of a given social group should have the power. Fascism - A philosophy or system of government that advocates or exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with an ideology of belligerent nationalism. Hierarchy - A body of persons organized or classified according to rank, capacity, or authority. Ideology - The body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture. Left-wing - As used in this chapter, individuals and groups who desire to reform or overthrow the established order and advocate change in the name of greater freedom or well-being of the common man. Nazism - The ideology and policies of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Worker's Party from 1921 to 1945. Propaganda - The systematic spreading of a given doctrine or of allegations reflecting its views and interests. Right-wing - As used in this chapter, individuals or groups who profess opposition to change in the established order and who favor traditional attitudes and practices, and who sometimes advocate the forced establishment of an authoritarian political order. Totalitarianism - A form of government in which all societal resources are monopolized by the state in an effort to penetrate and control all aspects of public and private life, through the state's use of propaganda, terror, and technology. ________________________________________________________________ ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~--~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~ Posted by Richard K. Moore - rkmoore@iol.ie - Wexford, Ireland Cyberlib: www | ftp --> ftp://ftp.iol.ie/users/rkmoore/cyberlib ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~--~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~ From albert@U.Arizona.EDU Sat Oct 26 13:41:12 1996 Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1996 12:40:48 -0700 (MST) From: Albert J Bergesen To: CMSJOYA@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU Calvin K Morrill Subject: Re: Capitalism... In-Reply-To: <961025.182408.EDT.CMSJOYA@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU> WSNers and others: This began as a reply to Joya Misra who asked about the role/importance of "capitalism" in the operation of the world system. The more I wrote the more I expanded and the more I thought it would make a good post and hopefully start some discussion. There are alot of things going on at the same time and they are all true. States have more or less different structures. And, at some level, things change too, so the world economy has to be somewhat different now than then. Agreed. The question is of all this change, difference, etc. which parts to we pick out to hinge our causal logic on: what becomes the independent and what the dependent variable. The sociological impulse has always been to look for systemasticity the collective the corporate totality of parts, the house rather than the bricks, the forests rather than the trees. Further, we have always believed that the blueprint of the house dictated the shape, location, and function of the rooms; understand the collective blueprint and you understood a good part of the structural relationship of rooms to rooms, windows to rooms, doors to rooms, connecting hallways, and so forth. National societies were the first blueprint--that gave us sociology as we professionally know it. Classes, groups, statuses, organizations, communities, families, etc. were the rooms in the house of society. The most powerful blueprint was Marx and variations thereof, about classes, stratification, economic condition, how ideas and politics followed these class struggles, etc. Then dependency and then IW's world system theory pushed the house up a notch--at the time we thought it was the final home, but it turned out it wasn't, but we have only now begun to understand this. IW made two fundamental errors: (i) he stretched the logic of the societal blueprint to fit his now widened European based/originated world system, calling it, appropriately, the capitalist world system. The blueprint for a single house was now, in effect, thought to explain a whole city block of houses, and while the match wasn't exactly perfect (the core doesn't hire the periphery for a wage to extract surplus value) it served as a sort of moral indictment of the world system (the core exploits the periphery, like the capitalists in society exploit the workers), and the extraction mechanism was fiddled with to create the absolutely incomprehensible notion of the theory of unequal exchange and the transfer of surplus value through such trade. It is often repeated yet no one has to date been able to clearly explicate exactly what all that means or how it actually works, let alone gather any evidence as to its operation. Social science is a world of rather loose fitting models, so the idea of a capitalist world economy was conceptually satisfactory. (ii) The other problem was origins of the new larger house--the world system. IW made the error of having it arise from activities of what turned out to be a sub-part of a larger world system, the now oft mentioned Afroeurasian world system of many centuries existence. IW, in a still sociological mode of thinking, had class relations change in a lone peninsula of a huge land mass (the crisis of Fedualism) that in turn led to the expansion of that peninsula to form a European based international economy that then grew/expanded in concentric circles "incorporating" ever new areas into its sphere of influence and subjecting them to its operational logic--the now stretched idea of capitalism. At the time no one thought of this as Eurocentric, or racist. It all seemed so natural. Even its opposition in European thought, Max Weber, did not challenge the "peninsular thesis", he just emphasized a different aspect of peninsular life--religion. It was, he said, the Protestant Ethic that made the difference and gave birth to something endogenously exceptional from the rest of the world, which became the code word for peninsular exceptionalism--"Capitalism". The peninsula had it and no one else did. Of almost mythical proportions it was both good and bad; good, said Marx, because it swept away earlier formations and was so powerful that it would be the battering ram to knock down the walls of fedualism, tradition, and the general sluggishness of others off the peninsula, captured in the word the "Asiatic mode of production" It was bad because it was the highest form of inequality and had to be over come. But what the pensinula had wrought was unique inthe world; for Weber no one else in the world had the mental set, culture, habits of mind--well, rationality, to conduct business except the peninsula people; for Marx no one else in the world had the forms of sociial organization of production, from factory to manager/boss, called "capitalist", to class relations, and even political forms, the "bourgeoise state". Everyting on the peninsual was different from the rest of the world. If someone was a psychiatrist they might describe such patterns of thought as delusional, thinking they were apart from a larger world with which they clearly interacted, had trade relations, and wanted to be a part of. For how many centuries did the peninsula people try and make contact with the larger world of Asia and the East. From Marco Polo to Christopher Columbus they tried and tried to make contact and to get what they had. Finally, the logic of the larger world--or better just the world--of which they had always been a part (marginal but a part) shifted. The Afroeurasian blueprint shifted and the center declined and the peninsula people had an advantage, which they took. Labor saving devices were the economic thing to develop (where Asia had enough labor that saving labor was not the economical thing to do) and so they did. But the peninsula people saw this as their own doing, their own inventions (the Industrial Revolution), their own culture (Weber) their own struggles and class relationships (Marx), and they gave it their own designation "capitalism" which they had and no one else in the world did. They were the self made people, a sort of collective rational choice theory; the peninsula willed itself up, they called it the "Rise of the West" and began to generalize about it, and that became contemporary social science. First it started with them--belief changes (Weber) or social relation changes (Marx) or political changes (the Political/Democratic Revolution of the 18th century). Second, it was so unique, so infectous, so powerful, that it was unstoppable. It would--they all predicted--travel around the world, knocking down the walls of other arrangements and modes of thinking. As time went on it got even more like theology and was generalized even more, now called "modernity" and what they devised, created, invented, came upon, all by themselves, was the "modern world", "modern man", economic rationality and rationality in their culture and only they wanted to, or were forced to, accumulate capital. It all continues into the 20th century. Walt W. Rostow speaks of their "take off" to sustained growth, North and Thomas go on again about the "rise of the west" (North even wins a Nobel prize) It was a tremendous vanity: I mean think about it: here is a whole world economy, existing for eons, with a center and a lot of edges, and one of the edges, an outpost peninsula, comes to the conclusion that only they "want money for the sake of money". All others, they tell you in their social science theories, do business for other non-economic reasons. Somehow we have come to believe that only peninsula people calculate, save, rationalize, and want money for the sake of money, and exploit their workers through the difference between what they pay them and what they get for the products. From this point of view, why did the Chinese make all that porceilin and ceramics and silk? Why did the people of India make all those textiles, calicoes, cloth? Just for themselves? Just for their "use value" because they were "traditional" because they couldn't "accumulate" capital, because they they were embedded in these religion dominated sluggish family and traditional dominated "asiatic modes of production"? Most of this stuff they produced, better, manufactured, they sold, for a profit, they produced, for a profit, they got rich from, for a profit, they calculated--rationally, economically--for a profit. But to the peninsula people, when their time came to ascend in this Afroeruasian system, to be a temporary center--1750 to 2050--they wrote it up as something they did on their own, by themselves, independent of the larger world system--their protestant ethic, their relations of production (which they coined the term "capitalism"--as if only they were interested in accumulating capital), their capitalist state, their modern outlook, their individualism, their initiative, while the rest, they were "traditional" (Daniel Lerner), they had "huadralic/bureaucratic modes of production" (Wittfogel), they did business by "redistributing" (Polanyi) not trading/exchanging, they had "no rationality" (Weber), they had the sluggish, resistant to innovation, resistant to change, the same for centuries, totally controlling, stifflying, "Asiatic Mode of Production" (Marx), and then, most recently, from Braudel and Wallerstein comes the notion that the very Afroeurasian world economy of which they had been the center was itself a by-product, a consequence, an outcome of, changes in the social organization of an outer peninsula. Instead of seeing it correctly that the cyclic dynamics of the Afroeurasian world economy led to the rise of the European "world-system", they reversed it, and had one room of the larger Afroeurasian house, the European "world-system" give rise to the larger world-economy. Thats nerve. Well, we believed it. Its sociology, its Marxism, its development studies, its PEWS, its IW's world-system, its about everything. But its wrong. The peninsula is a consequence of the larger system; it is not its cause. The peninsula's theories of itself from Marx to Weber to Wallerstein mistakenly place the peninsula's changes as the cause of the larger system, when it is just the opposite. It is then no accident that at the window of faltering in Asia that allowed the Peninsula's rise (the rise of the west) was also a window in which the "theory of the peninsula's rise was written" and it constitutes the classics of social theory. >From Marx to Weber to things about Modernity it is one story of exceptionalism, and makes the error of taking a shift of centers and relative advantage and transforming it into a theory of origins. Europe is the dependent, not the independent variable. And so to with the European world system of IW, and so too with the mythical "capitalism" of Marx, and its mythical "spirit of capitalism with Weber, and so too with the mythical "modern world". Why do we realize this now? Good question. I don't fully know, to tell you the truth. I suspect that much of this has to do with the return to Asian presence in the world economy going into the 21st century. Most still see this as the "rise of asia" when in fact it is the end of the EuroAmerican interlude (1750-2050) and the return to where the center of world economic activity had been for eons. What this means in terms of social theory is that the theoretical edifices that arose during the EuroAmerican Interlude, are, in retrospect, wrong. And a deep wrongness at that. The issue no longer is Marx vs. Weber, for both were peninsular exceptionalists, such that, from a truely world point of view, both are the same, just touching on different parts of peninsular experience and claiming priority for the part they touched. The underlying assumption of such exceptionalism, though, is their common fatal flaw, making their differences in empahsis pale in comparison. What the sequal to the theory of EuroAmerican Exceptionalism will look like is at this point open. But what is clear is that to continue with the categorical ediface of the 1750-2050 Interlude is now a fetter to further theory and progressive thought in general. One place to start is to read A.G. Frank's manuscript "The Silver Age: World Development 1400-1800" that is under consideration at a number of presses, or the various article versions that work at this thesis. It is the best their is at moving us forward and an absolute must for anyone concerned with understanding our world, where it has been, and where it is going. Albert Bergesen Department of Sociology University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona 85721 Phone: 520-621-3303 Fax: 520-621-9875 email: albert@u.arizona.edu From agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca Sat Oct 26 15:35:47 1996 Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1996 17:35:38 -0400 (EDT) From: "A. Gunder Frank" To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: GUNDER FRANK answers TERRY BOSWELL's challenge (fwd) FAIR WARNING: I=AGF asked Terry and a couple other friends WHETHER I should pepare an answer to Terry to post to WSN. He and they said YES. So I did - below. In the meantime Terry and Al "jumped the gun" on me and started to discuss, not Terry's, but MY position, which I had not even set out and posted yet. So here it is, "in short", that is alas about TEN PAGES. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1996 16:26:53 -0400 (EDT) From: FRANK@husc3.harvard.edu To: agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca Subject: GUNDER FRANK answers TERRY BOSWELL's challenge INTRODUCTION TO NONE OF THE ABOVE and to A HOLISTIC THEORETICAL ALTERNATIVE WST I rise to pick up the gauntlet thrown down by PEWS President Terry Boswell has. At the 1996 ASAs, Immanuel Wallerstein said "we have NO World-Systems Theory." Now Terry answers that YES WE DO have such a theory, and it has been GLOBALLY empirically confirmed. Terry invites discussion, and I respond by saying NONE OF THE ABOVE. To Immanuel I say NO, we YES have a [your!] theoretical banana! To Terry I also say NO, this "World" systemic banana is neither over- nor under-ripe theoretically; and it is certainly NOT empirically "well confirmed" on a global level. Indeed, this "World" system theory has NOT been GLOBAL at all, neither in analytical theory, nor in empirical practice. For purposes of the analysis of the GLOBAL REAL WORLD SYSTEM, this "world-systems theory" [WST] is no more than than a pretty ROTTEN banana instead. Terry's alleged WST "confirmation" is derived from examining a EUROCENTRIC "world system" under the recent EUROPEAN historical streetlight. As soon as we use any REAL WORLD system illumination, that is really global and therefore primarily Asian, it becomes immediately clear that the Braudelian "European World-Economy" and the Wallersteinian "Modern World-System" are not only empirically blind to most real world GLOBAL reality, but theoretically blindED to the same by their own Eurocentrism. Indeed Braudel and Wallerstein both explicitly recognize, but Terry Boswell apparently does not, that their "world-economy/system" [with a hypen] is only "world-LIKE" and is NOT INTENDED to and does NOT refer to the real[ly] global WHOLE WORLD. Therefore, we are still in dire need of a really GLOBAL THEORY of the REAL WORLD ECONOMY and SYSTEM [without a hyphen]. Why? Because the whole [world] is more than the sum of its parts AND SHAPES its constituent parts. Therefore, no amount of study and/or assemblage of the PARTS [including the European PART world- economy/system] can ever lay bare the structure, functioning and transformation of the GLOBAL WHOLE world economy/system. So the real issue is not really whether Marx or Weber or anybody else, including Braudel and still Wallerstein today, are right or wrong about this or that part of the of the world system. The real theoretical issue is that none of them have so far even sought holistically to address the systemic global whole, and the real theoretical challenge is to do so -- as Al Bergesen already pointed out in his demand that we replace WST by GLOB-OLOGY. WST A LA WALLERSTEIN IS ONLY EUROPEAN BASED AND THEREFORE INSUFFICIENTLY GLOBAL AND NOT HOLISTIC [excerpted from the Introduction and Conclusion of GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT 1400-1800 by Andre Gunder Frank] It was Immanuel Wallerstein's (1974) The Modern World-System [and if I may say so also my own simultaneously written World Accumulation and the companion Dependent Accumulation (Frank 1978a,b)] that sought to systematize these consequences of European expansion and "capitalist" development for both Europe and the rest of the world. Both books emphasized the negative "underdeveloping" impact of European expansion in many other parts of the world and their contribution in turn to capital accumulation and development in Europe and then also in North America. Wallerstein focused more on the core-periphery structure of the system, which of course I also recognized under the terms center-satellite; and I focused more than he on the structurally related cyclical dynamic in the system. Both of us, Wallerstein (1974, 1980, 1989) and Frank (1978 a,b), however limited our modelling and theoretical analysis to the structure and process in the modern "world" economy/system. We saw and Wallerstein still sees this system as centered in Europe and expanding from there to incorporate more and more of the rest of the world in its own European based "world" economy. That is the limitation of this Wallersteinian/Frankian theory: It cannot adequately encompass the whole world economy/system, as long as it remains still Eurocentrically confined to only a part, and not even the major part, of the whole world economy. It may be of some empirical/historical use to show how "our" system incorporated the Americas and parts of Africa into itself "early" on in the sixteenth century already, and other parts of the world only after 1750. Eric Wolf (1982) is rightly critical of others' neglect of the impact of Europe [on] the People Without History. He shows that people outside Europe did have histories of their own and how the expansion of Europe impacted on them. However, he still underestimates their mutual impact on each other; and he does not ask how the one world in which all participate together impacts on each of them. Moreover he retains, indeed even resurrects, the primacy of "modes of production," from kinship, to tributary, to capitalist based ones. That, I contend, still diverts attention from where it is most needed on the whole world system as a whole, as analyzed in Chapters 3 and 6. Wallerstein (1974) did even more to incorporate the mutual relations of the European core and its periphery elsewhere in the world, in that he addresses the structure and transformation of a single political economic division of labor and its impact on core and periphery alike. However until 1750, most of the world still remains outside of his "modern world-system" and the Braudelian/ Wallersteinian "European world-economy" on which it rests. In his perspective, Europe's expansion did incorporate parts of Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas into the world-economy/ system. However as Wallerstein explicitly explains, this economy was only world-like, and not at all world-encompassing. For in his view, West-, South-, and East- Asia, and indeed Russia, were only incorporated into this European world-economy/ system after 1750. So Wallerstein's "world-system" perspective, theory and analysis not only does not encompass most of the world before that. He even claims explicitly that most of the world, including all of Eurasia east of the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe played no significant part in his "world-economic/system" history. Therefore of course, Wallerstein's very limited history and theory of the modern "world" economy and system also precludes itself from coming to grips with the real world economic system. Most of that remained outside his purview until 1750, even though what happened there was highly determinant of developments inside the Braudel/ Wallerstein "European world- economy/system," as this book seeks to demonstrate especially in Chapters 3,4, and 6. To have or get even the remotest chance of studying and understanding the genesis, structure and function, not to mention transformation and development, in this real world economy and system [including its European "world-economy" PART], we need an altogether more holistic theory and analysis, such as that presented in chapter 6. Wallerstein (1974,1980, 1989), Frank (1978), Braudel (1979, 1992), Wolf (1982), Blaut (1993)[The Colonizer's Model of the World], Arrighi (1994) [The Long Twentieth Century], Sanderson (1995) [Social Transformation], Modelski and Thompson (1996) [Leading Sectors and World Powers], and Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997) [Rise and Demise] have indeed offered a less Eurocentric and more helpful "perspective of the world," as we have observed above. But for all of the the early modern world remained Eurocentric. In this tradition, only Abu-Lughod (1989)[Before European Hegemony] saw a wider "thirteenth century world system," but she did not look beyond 1350 and also supposes that the "modern world-system began [again] in Europe. It did NOT. Therefore, this European based model of a "world" system is theoretically not only insufficient but downright contrary to the whole real world economic/ systemic theory that we really need. Alas, that does not yet exist, and one of the reasons it does not is precisely because we have all, Marx, Weber, Polanyi, and still Braudel, Wallerstein and Frank looked under the European streetlight. However worldly we sought to be, our own still latent if not manifest Eurocentrism made us think that that is where we ought to look for evidence and construct our theory. Many other students, pity for them, may not have thought about it at all and only look there because thanks to the former and others the [European and North American] theoretical and empirical light shines brighter there. Yet Wallerstein (1995) still writes "Hold the Tiller Firm!" against the "nomothetic," "idiographic," and "reifying" "temptations" to amend erase this "modern world-economy/system" theory and its sacrosanct premise of its birth in Europe and the resulting "break" in world history around 1500. Alas, according to Wolf (1982) that happened in 1800, according to Marx and so many others sometime between 1600 and 1800, and according to Braudel (1992) all the time between 1100 and 1600. Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997) also insist that the rise of Europe and the West must be understood as part and parcel of more than two thousand years of Eurasian development. Nonetheless, they too still regard the modern period as a new departure since 1500 into capitalism, which was initiated in and by Europe. All of their holding the WST tiller firm in THIS regard has has therefore itself turned into yet still another obstacle and resistance to be overcome! Witness that all of my above-named colleagues and friends in the social "sciences" shy away from looking at the whole, even when they avow holism, which some but by no means even all of them do. The most avowedly holistic [and friendly!] ones, like Amin, Arrighi, and Wallerstein [with whom I have co-authored two books], also start to assemble their own jig-saw puzzles at the center and work outwards. Only they still chose their "center" in Europe. At least these three colleagues themselves wish to reject Eurocentrism but they say we have to start in Europe because that is where "capitalism" started. However if we see that the world is round and start at any of its outer edges, Europe turns out to be the wrong place to place any, let alone the, center; and the significance of the beginnings of "capitalism" there or anywhere appear increasingly dubious, to say the least. Since these social scientists and some historians start in the wrong place and only look under the European streetlight and its ever dimmer illumination, they also only work from Europe outwards following its "expansion" as it "incorporates" the rest of the world. Alas the farther they depart from their European lamppost, the less they can see. According to Wallerstein and many others, Asia was only "incorporated" into the European "world-economy/ system" and illuminated [Wallerstein himself might say "jaded" or "distorted"] by it after 1750. The Asian and world economic evidence, when examined under a non - or at least less - Eurocentric light will reveal a wholly different picture: Chapter 4 will demonstrate that Asia already shone in the world economic whole long before 1750 and even then still continued to outshine Europe in the whole world economy. In fact within this whole world, Asia provided far more economic, not to mention cultural, illumination to Europe, than this then still marginal outpost [not world lamppost!] had brought to any part of Asia. SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR & EVIDENCE AGAINST RECEIVED WST 1. A European World-System or a Global Economy? One derivative conclusion is that early modern history was shaped by a long-since operational world economy and not just by the expansion of a European world-system, as Braudel and Wallerstein mistakenly allege. This conclusion is not only derivative both from conclusions 1 and 2 above and from the evidence in all of the previous chapters. By citing them chapter and verse, I already demonstrated elsewhere how the model and theory of Braudel and Wallerstein is already contradicted by the limited evidence and analysis supplied by these authors themselves (Frank 1994, 1995). Much more overwhelming still is the historical evidence reviewed above: Chapter 2 showed how the world-wide division of labor was operationalized through chain-linked trade relations and [im]balances. Chapter 3 showed how money was the life-blood that went through a circulatory system all the way around the world and made the world go round. Chapter 4 showed not only that Asia was preponderant in this global economy, but argued that its technology and economic institutions and processes were derivative from and adaptive to the world economy itself. Chapter 5 showed how common cyclical and other processes simultaneously shaped the fortunes and misfortunes of distant but interlinked economies, regions, and polities around the world. Chapter 6 sought to analyze how the structure and transformation of these links themselves generated the in turn related Decline of the East and the Rise of the West. Therefore its is only vain Eurocentrism to seek to account for or hope to explain any of these events, processes, and their relations within the framework of either "national" economies/societies or even by the expansion of only a "European world-system." For there is no way to see what happens at a distance anywhere else in -- let alone in all -- the world by using a European or Chinese or any other microscopic perspective. On the contrary, any of these views are only possible with a telescopic perspective capable of encompassing the whole world and all its parts, even if the details of the latter may remain unclear from afar. Not only are all perspectives in terms of European or any other "exceptionalism" doomed to blindness. So are those using the perspective of a European-based world-economy/system [or any Sino-, Islamic-, or Afro-centric analogues thereof]. The very attempt to find the "development of capitalism" or the "rise of the west" "or the Islamic golden age" under the light shed by a European [or Chinese or Muslim] light post is also doomed to blind failure. However, the real world economy/system also cannot quite be squeezed into the procrustean structure of Wallerstein's European centered "modern world-system." For the globe encompassing world economy/system did not have a single "center," but at most a hierarchy of "centers" probably with China at the top. Therefore, it would also be difficult to establish the existence of a single centered structure of center-periphery relations; although there is evidence of such relations on intra-regional, and perhaps on some inter-regional bases. It is doubtful that there were "semi- peripheries" in Wallerstein's sense; but it has never been very clear just what that they are supposed to be. Analogously as we will note below, there was no clear hegemony and not much leadership in the early modern world economy/system as a whole. Yet the possible counter-charge that therefore there really was no such [whole] world economy/system is not acceptable. On the contrary, there clearly was a, indeed only one, world economy/system. It had a global division of labor and commercial and financial linkages, and especially through the world-wide money market. Moreover, this world economy/system appears also to have had a global structure and dynamic of its own, which still bears much more study. 2. Hegemony and Incorporation? The notion of European and then Western "hegemony" over the rest of the world is implicit in most historical, social "scientific," and popular/izing writing and perception. Political hegemony is explicit in much recent international relations literature from Krasner (1983) and Keohene (1983) to Modelski and Thompson (1988, 1996). [Political] economic hegemony is explicit in Wallerstein and his followers. I have expressed doubts about the dubious theoretical status of such "hegemony" before (Frank and Gills 1992,1993; Frank 1994,1995). The evidence presented in chapters 2, 3, and 4 above is enough to lay to rest any claim to historical veracity of any such political, economic or political economic, or indeed cultural, "hegemony" of [whole] world scope by any part or even the whole of Europe before 1800. A no time during the four centuries in review was any "economy" or state able to exercise any significant degree of hegemony, or even leadership, over the economy, political relations, culture, or history of the world as whole. If the world economy had any regional productive and commercial basis at all, that was in Asia and it was "centered" if at all in China. Europe was to all intents and purposes entirely marginal. Still less was any part of Europe able to exercise any hegemonic power or even economic leadership in or over the world. This was certainly not possible for the Iberian Peninsula or little Portugal with one million inhabitants in the sixteenth century, or for the small Netherlands in the seventeenth century, nor even for "Great" Britain in the eighteenth century. The very notion of such economic leadership or political power or even balance of power [eg. after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648] is itself only the effect of an optical illusion from the myopic perspective of a "European world- economy/system." It is just plain Eurocentrism. Arguably, the above-mentioned economies and/or states may have been successively relatively big fish in the small European and/or the regional Atlantic economic pond, if we discount the Hapsburg, Russian and other empires. However on the evidence above, the European and even Atlantic economies, not to mention polities, themselves were no more than backwaters in the world economy. They did not even exercise significant technological leadership. The European states were altogether small time players on the political checkerboard of the empires of the Ming/Qing, Mughals, Ottomans, and even the Safavids. In the face of the evidence, should we not review and revise the entire concept of "hegemony"? Similarly alarming is the question that Pearson [and also Palat and Wallerstein (1990)] ask about when the "European world-economy" "incorporated" India/the Indian Ocean and its possible separate "world-economy." This whole question is analogous to the one about "have you stopped beating your wife?". The answer is "I am not married." The whole question is literally neither here nor there, since there was no "European world-economy" separate from an "Indian Ocean world-economy." If anything, the latter "incorporated" the former and not the other way around (Frank 1995). Pearson and others are looking under the European street light, when they should be inquiring under the Asian parts of the world economic illumination. The only "answer" is to understand that the European and Asian, as well as of course other parts of the world as well, were part and parcel of the single same world economy since ages ago, and that it was their common participation in the same that shaped their "separate" fortunes. 3. 1500: Continuity or Break? Another and derivative but inescapable conclusion is that the alleged break before and after 1500 never took place. Historians often mark a break in "world" history in 1500 (eg. Stavarianos 1966, Reilly 1989). Even Bentley's (1996) innovative proposals for The American Historical Review to derive "Periodization in World History" not only from European but from world-wide processes still marks the beginning of the last period in 1500. Historians and social theorists of Europe, both of earlier generations and still contemporary ones mark this same break all the moreso. So do world-system theorists like Wallerstein (1974), and still Sanderson (1994), and Chase-Dunn and Hall (1996). The allegation that there was a sharp break around 1500 was already reflected in the above- cited opinions of Smith and Marx that 1492 and 1498 were the most important years in the history of mankind. Perhaps they were directly so for the peoples of the "New World" and indirectly so for those of Europe. However, Braudel (1992:57) disputed Wallertstein's allegation of this break in Europe, where Braudel saw continuity since at least 1300 and even 1100. In doing so of course, Braudel also rattled at the theoretical cages of Marx and Weber, et al. Indeed, Wallerstein (1992) refers to the widespread agreement that an expansive "A" phase from 1050 to 1250 was followed by a contractive "B" phase from 1250 to 1450 and then after that still another expansive "A" phase in the "long sixteenth century" until 1640. The evidence above, however, suggests that this expansive phase already began in much of Asia in 1400 -- and that it lasted there until at least 1750. Wallerstein's "long sixteenth century" probably was a belated and more temporary expression of this world economic expansion itself. Indeed, the very voyages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama themselves should probably be regarded as expressions of this world economic expansion, to which Europeans wanted to attach themselves in Asia. Therefore, the continuity across 1500 was actually far more important and is theoretically far more significant than any alleged break or new departure. Thus I suggest that it is not appropriate or even necessary, as the so common argument has it, to regard early modern and still contemporary history as the result and/or as the harbinger of a significant historical break. The widespread dis-continuity theses are far less a contribution, let alone a necessity, and far more and impediment to understanding the real world historical process and contemporary reality. These mis-leading discontinuity theses have been presented in various forms, including the "birth of capitalism," the "rise of the West," "the incorporation of Asia into the European world-economy," not to mention the West's alleged "rationalism" and "civilizing mission." 4. The Rise of the West However, even the above more holistic than usual review of that 1400-1800 period serves to show that we can account for and understand the subsequent "Rise of the West" only within the world economic/ systemic scope within which it really took place. Moreover, this world systemic process included the "Fall of the East" as a conditioning factor, if not as the pre-condition, for the "Rise of the West," which displaced the East within the same one and only world economy/system. For the comparative and relational real world historical evidence examined above shows that, contrary to received historiography and social theory, it was not the alleged prior European "development" that poised it for "take off" after 1800. That is, the rise of the West after 1800 was not really the result of alleged European "continuous" preparation for and of the same since the Renaissance, let alone thanks to any Greek or Judaic roots thereof. Instead, the industrial revolution was an unforseen event, which took place in a part of Europe as a result of the continuing unequal structure and uneven process in and of the GLOBAL world economy as a whole. That process of world development, however, also includes new departures in some of its regions and sectors that may appear discontinuous. It may indeed be the case that the industrial "revolution," like the agricultural one before it, was an inflection in a continuous global development, which marks a "departure" in a vector and direction that is different from the previous one and perhaps irreversible -- short of total cataclysm, which may itself lie at the end of that vector. Thus, the systemic global structure and continuity that generated the "rise" of the West marked a departure around 1800 [and NOT in 1500!], which allowed the West to emerge from its earlier MARGINAL position. This GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION led to a discontinuous shift in the place of the West in the system as a whole and moved the global economy into a more industrial departure and direction. The "Rise of the West" in Europe, therefore was not a case of pulling itself up by its own bootstraps, not even by relying on its American and African peripheries. More properly, the "Rise of the West" must be seen as occurring at that time in the world economy/system by engaging in NIE import substitution and export promotion strategies to climb up on the shoulders of the Asian economies. The [cyclical?] decline of Asian economies and regional hegemonies, facilitated this European climb up. East Asia's rise to world economic prominence makes it all the more urgent to focus much more on the long historical continuity of which this process is a part. The now supposed dis-continuous but really renewed rise of the "East" must also bee seen as part and parcel of the fundamental structure and continuity in world development. Recognizing and analyzing this continuity will reveal much more than myopically focusing on the alleged "dis- continuities." Thus it seems to be this gospel about the European development of the modern world capitalist economy and system since 1500 or whenever that forms the Maginot line of defense behind which one and all put of their greatest resistance to seeing the real world. This book proposes an end run around that line of defense. The only solution is to cut the Eurocentric gordian knot and approach the whole question from a different paradigmatic perspective. 5. Capitalism? Of late, that is since Marx, the "fascination" [as Braudel (1982:54) called it] with 1500 as the date of a new departure that makes a supposed break with the past is mostly a function of the allegation that it ushered in a new, previously unknown or at least never before dominant, "capitalist mode of production." That was of course the position from Marx and Sombart to Weber and Tawney, and all their still contemporary followers. It is still the position of "world-system" theorists from Wallerstein (1974) and Frank (1978) to Sanderson (1995) and Chase-Dunn (1996). Even Amin's (1991,1993) and Blaut's (1993) vehement critiques of Eurocentrism stop short of abandoning 1500 as the dawn of a new age of European born and borne capitalism. All of the above, Marxists, Weberians, Polanyists, world-systematizers, not to mention most "economic" and other historians, balk at pursuing the evidence and the argument to examine the sacred cow of "capitalism" and its allegedly peculiarly exceptional or exceptionally peculiar "mode of production." Therefore, the mere suggestion that perhaps this conviction might or even should be open to question is already rejected as unacceptable heresy. Having already broached this heresy to little effect before (Frank 1991, Frank and Gills 1993), there is little point in trying to pursue the argument further here. Suffice it to point out that the same evidence and argument that support the first four conclusions also have implications for the idea of "capitalism." These conclusions deny the AMP and European exceptionalism, but affirm a world economy and its continuity across 1500. The first two above-cited conclusions about the AMP and European exceptionalism are acceptable even to world-system theorists and Blaut. The second set of two conclusions about a global economy and its continuity across 1500 was de facto if not de jure acceptable even to Braudel. Yet all four of the previous conclusions must inexorably also lead to questioning the very concept of a "capitalist" mode of production and the supposed significance of its alleged spread from Europe to the rest of the world. Indeed, we must question the very significance imputed to different "modes of production," including of course also "feudalism." At the very least, this conceptualization has diverted our attention from the much more significant world systemic structures and processes, which themselves engendered what these observers [belatedly] perceive as "feudalism" and "capitalism." As we have observed, not only was there no unilinear "progress/ion" from one "mode" of production to another; but all manner of relations of production were and remain widely intermingled. Many different relations of production have "delivered" products that have been competitive on the world market. However, it has not been so much one relation or another, and still less any "mode," of production that has determined the success and failure of particular producers. Instead, competitive pressures and exigencies on the world market have been and continue to be much more determinant of the choice and adaptation of relations of production themselves. The incessant discussions about non-, pre-, proto-, blooming-, full blown-, declining-, post-, or any other "stage" and quantity or quality of capitalism or the lack thereof have led us down the garden path and diverted us from analyzing the real world. Therefore, it is much better to cut [out] the Gordian knot of "capitalism" altogether. That was already my argument in Frank (1991), Frank and Gills (1992, 1993), and Frank (1994,1995); and it is well put by Chaudhuri (1990:84) writing under the title Asia Before Europe: "The ceaseless quest of modern historians looking for the 'origins' and roots of capitalism is not much better than the alchemist's search for the philosopher's stone that transforms base metal into gold." Indeed, that is the case not only for the origins and roots, but the very existence and meaning of "capitalism." So, best just forget about it, and get on with our inquiry into the reality of "universal history, wie es eigentlich gewesen ist." From thall@DEPAUW.EDU Sat Oct 26 21:06:41 1996 26 Oct 1996 22:06:37 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1996 22:06:37 -0500 (EST) From: "Thomas D. [Tom] Hall, THALL@DEPAUW.EDU" Subject: On world-systems a la Al & Gunder To: Network World-Systems TO: WSN FROM: Thomas D. Hall, THALL@DEPAUW.EDU RE: WST DATE: October 26, 1996 Here are my first reactions to the recent posts by Al [Bergesen] & Gunder [Frank]. As is typical for Al, he has pithly summarized a series of complex debates, and got the issues laid out pretty cleanly. His post is a good intro to the issues. Gunder, as is his wont, has many insights, and some important rethinking of the history of afroeurasia. However, he overstates his case. For those not in the debates Chris [Chase-Dunn] and I have been arguing with Gunder for some time now that there, indeed, have been significant transformations of in world-systems [for us, with the hyphen and with a plural s]. The two biggees are the appearance of tributary, state-based world-systems (which occurred several times in world history, independently) and one appearance of a capitalist-based world-system, which occurred only once, in the 17th century in western Europe. [This said with an appreciative nod to Sanderson's clever argument about capitalism in Japan]. Before going on about the disagreement regarding transitions, it is useful to sum up what we agree about. 1. That there has been an Afroeurasian world-system for at least 2000 years, possibly 3000 years. [In our view the evidence is shakey before about 2200 years ago[. 2. That the European 'peninsula of peninsulas' was a rump/tail/peripheral region in this larger system. 3. That the Afroeurasian world-system was multicentered, but with the heaviest center, or its center of gravity, in China for most of its history. [Again, the evidence gets shakey before about 2200 years ago]. 4. That Europeans/peninsulars expanded outward, beginning in the late 1400s, to transform, and "underdevelop" [precisely in Gunder's sense of the development of underdevelopment"] much of the rest of the world. 5. That this process became truly global only after 1800, or possibly not until the beginning of the 20th century. [Just when it became global hinges on a number of definitional and measurement problems.] That is, clearly well after the long 16th century [1450-1640]. 6. That beginning in late 18th or early 19th centuries, in England and spreading rapidly, new sorts of technology were developed and spread rapidly. There are probably a number of other agreements. Now to the differences, some of which are of the same order as that old song, about: "I say Toe-MAY-toe, I say Toh-maah-toh"... rather than say the differences between any world- system/dependency/marxian view and say that of Rostow: 1. There was a major reorganization of the world-system beginning the late 15th century as Europeans/peninsulars began to expand outward "discovering" the 'new world' and rounding the cape of Africa. [I must recall here a joke very popular in 'Indian Country': What did one Indian say to the other when Columbus landed? Well, there goes the neighborhood!] 2. This expansion unleashed vast and major transformations around the globe, especially in heretofore nonstate societies. An important point here, relative to Al's summary is that these transformations ramified far beyond the frontiers where Europeans encountered 'natives.' Thus, when many explorers first encountered other groups beyond the frontier they were NOT encountering ancestors, or ancestor-like peoples, but peoples vastly changed by the very processes that brought those observers to the place of observation WELL AFTER significant changes. This led to many distortions in our notions of social change. It has been a long term project of anthropologists and others to disentangle this observational morass [the best introductions to this are Eric Wolf's _Europe and the People without History_ and R. Brian Ferguson & Neil Whitehead's _War in the Tribal Zone_]. 3. I [or better we, since Chris & I have collaborated so long on this] argue this expansion is a major change in the Afroeurasian world-system. Though not a transformation of the mode of accumulation, it is a significant change. 4. Only in the 17th century when the Dutch townmen (merchants and others) gain control of the state, do we have a situation in which capitalists control the state, and give birth to a capitalist world-system. This is not to deny the point argued at length by Sanderson (Social Transformations 1995) and Gunder that pockets of capitalism, capitalist enclaves, existed earlier, and widely--as far back as 5000 years ago as Gunder has argued. RATHER, our point is that these were precisely what we said, enclaves within tributary systems, not entire systems. Thus, the first capitalist SYSTEM occurs only in the 17th century. 5. Again, this is not to deny, that Japan [as Sanderson argues] might not have undergone a similar transformation within a century or two had not Europeans undergone it first. Our argument, which overlaps somewhat with Sanderson's, is that it was PRECISELY the noncore position of Europe (and similarly of Japan) that allowed this transformation. 6. Though there is disagreement about transformation here, a--to my mind--larger AGREEMENT should be underscored. This transformation [or in Gunder's argument intensification & change of center] can ONLY BE EXPLAINED by recognizing Europe's position within a much larger system. Not that all the internal (Weber, Brenner etc) arguments are wrong, but incomplete. 7. Out of this transformation emerged the industrial revolution and the vastly accelerated rate of social change that has engulfed the planet in the last 200 years or so. Again, the transformation/change/intensification can only be explained by recourse to the systemic position of Europe in the large world- system, now a truly global system. >From this, it is entirely plausible to argue/suggest as Gunder does that the center of this system may return to China in the not too distant future. Finally, I agree with Al & Gunder that an overly tight focus on Europe has led to a radical misunderstanding of how Europe rose to [temporary?] dominance. This misunderstanding has infected virtually all social science thinking and much of its research. Much needs to be rethought, remeasured, and reanalyzed. However, I disagree with Gunder that the findings Terry [Boswell] alludes to are not valid. The findings of world-sytem theory give us useful insights and understandings into how, and often why, the capitalist world-system functions as it has over the last two centuries or so. What the larger context does, is cause us to rethink what these findings might imply about the future. Much of what I have said here draws from _Rise & Demise: Comparing World-Systems_ (Chase-Dunn & Hall 1997) which should be published early next year. In that book we lay out our arguments in considerable detail, and spend much more time specifying definitions and theories. I hope this clarifies some of the issues, or at least makes clear which ones are not clear. tom hall From justine@cia.com.au Sun Oct 27 01:55:52 1996 Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 18:56:39 +1000 To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu From: Justien Subject: Re: Capitalism Albert J Bergesen - thanks for your interesting post about the hegmeony of capitalistic autobiography. Here's one possible reaction: It does seem that positing an Afroeurasian system as the parent to the present capitalism of the 'outer peninsula' is replacing one hegemony with another, though. Part of the difficulties of a colonialist, and especially colonialist-capitalist, discourse is that analysis loses its effectivity by aspiring to ever greater meta levels. In this case, the 'parent' of capitalism. The very thing of which you accuse capitalism (losing sight of its roots, subsuming difference under a monolithic symbol, writing that symbol as the guiding totem of its history), is however perhpas equally effectively acheived in your rebuttal. By bringing all of antecedant economic systems under the one name, the analysis risks making just another grand theme of homogenised market activity. It will lead to the same conclusions as those which explicitly centre themselves within the capitalist framework. What do you all think? respect Justine Lera Philosophy University of New South Wales Australia justine@cia.com.au From cjreid@netcom.com Sun Oct 27 03:58:47 1996 Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 02:58:48 -0800 (PST) From: "Charles J. Reid" Subject: Re: WSN digest 175 To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Hi, Folks! Quick question: Where're the best 3 or 4 places to study World Systems Theory? Thanks. -- Charlie Reid cjreid@netcom.com "Salus populi suprema est lex" (Cicero) The welfare of the people is the highest law. --------------------------------------------- From dassbach@mtu.edu Sun Oct 27 08:17:11 1996 From: "Carl H.A. Dassbach" To: Subject: Re: Capitalism... Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 10:16:16 -0500 Professor Bergesen tells us that the mistake of social science has been, so to speak, to universalize what was and is, in a world historical terms, an exception -- European (peninsular) society. This may be true but his conclusion are problematic because he, in effect, throws out the "baby with the bath water." The "bath water" is a eurocentric view of the world. I don't think that it is a big revelation to say that Europe was not always the navel of the world. This is evident to anyone with common sense. (Unfortunately, the most uncommon thing among academic specialists is common sense because specialization has very high costs - blinders) Hence, I, for one, was quite surprised when, in the last few years, there was a rediscovery of the ancient and non-European worlds (which I attributed to the need of specialists to develop more specialties). The "baby" on the other hand, are the theoretical categories developed out of the European experience (a la Marx, Weber, Durkheim, etc) which enable us to make sense of the material historical world. To say that Europe was not always the center of the world does not invalidate these categories. If one understands the meaning of Weber's rationalization (which, I am afraid few do, even `experts' such as Ritzer), it is clear that the rationalization of all spheres of life is a master trend of in the Occident and the Orient. When rationalization is combined (albeit inadvertently) with the pursuit of profit (capitalism, for Weber, is not simply the pursuit of profit but the _rational_ pursuit of profit) both are reinforced to the Nth degree and both become extremely powerful forces. Similarly, the category of classes, as defined by ownership and non-ownership of the means of production, remains a valuable and extremely powerful analytical tool and the phenomena of class relations, as relations between groups of people by virtue of their relations to things, articulates all societies (unless we wish to slip into the fetishism of commodities). (Obviously , there is more to be said here). If I understand Professor Bergesen correctly, these concepts are as corrupted as a eurocentric vision of the world. If so, what concepts are we to use to understand the chaotic flux of the world - ying and yang, dharma chakra, the Eight Noble Truths and the Eight Fold Path, the Sri Yantra, the Shiva linga, the songs of Milarepa ..... Obviously, none of these would work - none would provide knowledge which would fulfill the criteria of knowledge, originally derived from the peninsular experience, but now generally accepted as universal. My point - while a eurocentric vision of the world may be wrong, this does not invalidate the analytical categories which have arisen from the peninsular experience. These categories remain valid. Why - because European society was the first society to develop towards what we now understand as `modernity' (whatever that may be) - it was prototypical - and other societies are now moving in the same `direction' (why is another question) albeit with their own cultural and social peculiarities and specificities. Hence, the categories which provide insight into European society can, if used with sensitivity towards specificities and peculiarities, provide insight into non-European societies _organized around capitalism_. Marx's captures this, albeit with a tone of 19th positivism, in the section on "The Method of the Political Economy" in the Intro to the _Grundrisse_ in the pages after the passage that begins with "The anatomoy of man provides the key to the anatomy of the ape..." Carl Dassbach ----------------------------------- Carl H.A. Dassbach DASSBACH@MTU.EDU Dept. of Social Sciences (906)487-2115 - Phone Michigan Technological University (906)487-2468 - Fax Houghton, MI 49931 USA (906)482-8405 - Home ... From agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca Sun Oct 27 08:22:52 1996 Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 10:23:15 -0500 (EST) From: "A. Gunder Frank" To: "Thomas D. [Tom] Hall, THALL@DEPAUW.EDU" Subject: Re: On world-systems a la Al & Gunder Gunder Franks insists: I RISE TO A POINT OF PERSONAL PRIVILEDGE:I had NOT made my=any posting yet. I was still composing it, while my friends posted "comments" on it. So now I HAVE POSTED IT TO WSN, but alas it contains NO comment on their postings, which came TOO early = too late! perhaps i can reply to them another time!! On Sat, 26 Oct 1996, Thomas D. [Tom] Hall, THALL@DEPAUW.EDU wrote: > Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1996 22:06:37 -0500 (EST) > From: "Thomas D. [Tom] Hall, THALL@DEPAUW.EDU" > To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK > Subject: On world-systems a la Al & Gunder > > TO: WSN > FROM: Thomas D. Hall, THALL@DEPAUW.EDU > RE: WST > DATE: October 26, 1996 > > Here are my first reactions to the recent posts by Al [Bergesen] > & Gunder [Frank]. > > As is typical for Al, he has pithly summarized a series of > complex debates, and got the issues laid out pretty cleanly. His > post is a good intro to the issues. Gunder, as is his wont, has > many insights, and some important rethinking of the history of > afroeurasia. However, he overstates his case. > > For those not in the debates Chris [Chase-Dunn] and I have been > arguing with Gunder for some time now that there, indeed, have > been significant transformations of in world-systems [for us, > with the hyphen and with a plural s]. The two biggees are the > appearance of tributary, state-based world-systems (which > occurred several times in world history, independently) and one > appearance of a capitalist-based world-system, which occurred > only once, in the 17th century in western Europe. [This said > with an appreciative nod to Sanderson's clever argument about > capitalism in Japan]. Before going on about the disagreement > regarding transitions, it is useful to sum up what we agree > about. > > 1. That there has been an Afroeurasian world-system for at least > 2000 years, possibly 3000 years. [In our view the evidence is > shakey before about 2200 years ago[. > > 2. That the European 'peninsula of peninsulas' was a > rump/tail/peripheral region in this larger system. > > 3. That the Afroeurasian world-system was multicentered, but > with the heaviest center, or its center of gravity, in China for > most of its history. [Again, the evidence gets shakey before > about 2200 years ago]. > > 4. That Europeans/peninsulars expanded outward, beginning in the > late 1400s, to transform, and "underdevelop" [precisely in > Gunder's sense of the development of underdevelopment"] much of > the rest of the world. > > 5. That this process became truly global only after 1800, or > possibly not until the beginning of the 20th century. [Just when > it became global hinges on a number of definitional and > measurement problems.] That is, clearly well after the long 16th > century [1450-1640]. > > 6. That beginning in late 18th or early 19th centuries, in > England and spreading rapidly, new sorts of technology were > developed and spread rapidly. > > There are probably a number of other agreements. > > Now to the differences, some of which are of the same order as > that old song, about: "I say Toe-MAY-toe, I say Toh-maah-toh"... > rather than say the differences between any world- > system/dependency/marxian view and say that of Rostow: > > 1. There was a major reorganization of the world-system > beginning the late 15th century as Europeans/peninsulars began to > expand outward "discovering" the 'new world' and rounding the > cape of Africa. [I must recall here a joke very popular in > 'Indian Country': What did one Indian say to the other when > Columbus landed? Well, there goes the neighborhood!] > > 2. This expansion unleashed vast and major transformations > around the globe, especially in heretofore nonstate societies. > An important point here, relative to Al's summary is that these > transformations ramified far beyond the frontiers where Europeans > encountered 'natives.' Thus, when many explorers first > encountered other groups beyond the frontier they were NOT > encountering ancestors, or ancestor-like peoples, but peoples > vastly changed by the very processes that brought those observers > to the place of observation WELL AFTER significant changes. This > led to many distortions in our notions of social change. It has > been a long term project of anthropologists and others to > disentangle this observational morass [the best introductions to > this are Eric Wolf's _Europe and the People without History_ and > R. Brian Ferguson & Neil Whitehead's _War in the Tribal Zone_]. > > 3. I [or better we, since Chris & I have collaborated so long on > this] argue this expansion is a major change in the Afroeurasian > world-system. Though not a transformation of the mode of > accumulation, it is a significant change. > > 4. Only in the 17th century when the Dutch townmen (merchants > and others) gain control of the state, do we have a situation in > which capitalists control the state, and give birth to a > capitalist world-system. This is not to deny the point argued at > length by Sanderson (Social Transformations 1995) and Gunder that > pockets of capitalism, capitalist enclaves, existed earlier, and > widely--as far back as 5000 years ago as Gunder has argued. > RATHER, our point is that these were precisely what we said, > enclaves within tributary systems, not entire systems. Thus, the > first capitalist SYSTEM occurs only in the 17th century. > > 5. Again, this is not to deny, that Japan [as Sanderson argues] > might not have undergone a similar transformation within a > century or two had not Europeans undergone it first. Our > argument, which overlaps somewhat with Sanderson's, is that it > was PRECISELY the noncore position of Europe (and similarly of > Japan) that allowed this transformation. > > 6. Though there is disagreement about transformation here, a--to > my mind--larger AGREEMENT should be underscored. This > transformation [or in Gunder's argument intensification & change > of center] can ONLY BE EXPLAINED by recognizing Europe's position > within a much larger system. Not that all the internal (Weber, > Brenner etc) arguments are wrong, but incomplete. > > 7. Out of this transformation emerged the industrial revolution > and the vastly accelerated rate of social change that has > engulfed the planet in the last 200 years or so. Again, the > transformation/change/intensification can only be explained by > recourse to the systemic position of Europe in the large world- > system, now a truly global system. > > >From this, it is entirely plausible to argue/suggest as Gunder > does that the center of this system may return to China in the > not too distant future. > > Finally, I agree with Al & Gunder that an overly tight focus on > Europe has led to a radical misunderstanding of how Europe rose > to [temporary?] dominance. This misunderstanding has infected > virtually all social science thinking and much of its research. > Much needs to be rethought, remeasured, and reanalyzed. However, > I disagree with Gunder that the findings Terry [Boswell] alludes > to are not valid. The findings of world-sytem theory give us > useful insights and understandings into how, and often why, the > capitalist world-system functions as it has over the last two > centuries or so. What the larger context does, is cause us to > rethink what these findings might imply about the future. > > Much of what I have said here draws from _Rise & Demise: > Comparing World-Systems_ (Chase-Dunn & Hall 1997) which should be > published early next year. In that book we lay out our arguments > in considerable detail, and spend much more time specifying > definitions and theories. > > I hope this clarifies some of the issues, or at least makes clear > which ones are not clear. > tom hall > From wthompso@indiana.edu Sun Oct 27 08:46:04 1996 Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 10:46:05 -0500 (EST) From: "william r. thompson" To: "A. Gunder Frank" Subject: Re: GUNDER FRANK answers TERRY BOSWELL's challenge (fwd) In-Reply-To: Unlike Gunder and Chris and Tom, I do not have a book under review or in press - so my response will be briefer (actually, my book on this question should be finished in a year). I agree with some of what has been said (not surprisingly, I find myself most closely aligned with Terry's initial comments) by everybody. We are all guilty of Eurocentrism and need a focus based on the emergence of the Afroeurasian world economy (which I think began to emerge some 6000 years ago). But I don't think a sinocentric bias is any more supportable than a eurocentric one unless one is careful to specify precisely when one is talking about. That is, at various points in time, different parts of the eurasian economy have been more central than other parts. More directly focused on the major issue under discussion, I think many of the participants are not giving sufficient credit to what I regard as the globalization of a Mediterranean institution, especially after 1500. I am referring to the oddity of the flourishing and survival of maritime cities oriented to state directed/protected seapower and commercial networks. These actors were odd because, for short periods of time, they beat the odds and avoided being swallowed by adjacent land empires. They were not exclusive to the Med. but they were more prominent there (lasted longer) and a very rough chain can be traced from Crete/Phoenicia/Carthage/Athens and then to Venice/Genoa/Portugal/Netherlands/Britain/the US. In the process of playing out this string, several things happened. One, is that the Portuguese extended this concept from Europe to Japan with just enough naval power to survive in a world characterized by strong land powers from Europe to China. No assertion of hegemony is made but this concept/technique (militarized seapower to advance commercial gains and relative avoidance of territorial conquest beyond bases needed for network maintenance) was the conduit for successive waves of European (first the Dutch and then the British) increased participation in the Afroeurasian economy with equally successively stronger technological edges. Combined with the decay of the Asian land powers (as Gunder emphasizes), by the 19th century, the European seapowers were able to penetrate farther and farther into the hinterland (if not always able to survive the climate and local diseases). I agree that to call this the incorporation of the periphery is wrong but something novel did get underway around 1500. Therefore, it is possible (as Tom suggests although perhaps for a more restricted period) to examine processes in periods or phases without assuming that these processes work/worked the same way in all other periods or phases. Needless to say, there is more to be said about this novelty but that is what books are for. I simply wanted to interject another point of view into this interesting discussion. Bill Thompson From dow@pinc.com Sun Oct 27 10:38:21 1996 Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 09:38:12 -0800 (PST) To: dassbach@mtu.edu, WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: David Wolsk Subject: Re: Capitalism, Rationalism & Civitas At 09:20 PDT 27/10/96 David Wolsk wrote: At 10:16 27/10/96 -0500, Carl H.A. Dassbach wrote: and I've snipped: > (Unfortunately, the >most uncommon thing among academic specialists is common sense because >specialization has very high costs - blinders) > >The "baby" on the other hand, are the theoretical categories developed out >of the European experience (a la Marx, Weber, Durkheim, etc) which enable >us to make sense of the material historical world. To say that Europe was >not always the center of the world does not invalidate these categories. If >one understands the meaning of Weber's rationalization (which, I am >afraid few do, even `experts' such as Ritzer), it is clear that the >rationalization of all spheres of life is a master trend of in >the Occident and the Orient. When rationalization is combined (albeit >inadvertently) with the pursuit of profit (capitalism, for Weber, is not >simply the pursuit of profit but the _rational_ pursuit of profit) both are >reinforced to the Nth degree and both become extremely powerful forces. I resonate to your wisdom. Much of today's problems, I attribute (in a gross oversimplification) to the fact that almost all of today's "successful people" have passed through our universities and been indoctrinated with the narrow blinders of specialization without ever realizing what's been done to their capacity to see the world on its own terms. The movement, largely happening in the USA, loosely labelled "Metropolitan Universities", and with a journal of the same name, may signal a change. These are places where a learning communities approach has its roots in the real-world issues surrounding the university and in the lives of its mostly-adult students. As to rationalism, for me the bible is John Ralston Saul's book "Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West". More recently, his Massey Lectures have been published as "Unconscious Civilization" .... not quite as powerful and pointing to the growing role of civil society "civitas" in our potential salvation. As a full-time civitas volunteer, I often get the feeling that everything is being dumped on us with little thought of our "carrying capacity". I'm about to go off to a neighborhood event that, to me, may signal where hope lies. A university trained couple from northern Japan recently bought 10 acres of farm land where they are applying an intensive Japanese planting method. The neighborhors have all been invited over for their version of an ntercultural Oktoberfest. David Wolsk, Metchosin (outside Victoria) Canada From harlowc@cats.ucsc.edu Sun Oct 27 10:53:58 1996 Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 09:56:47 -0800 From: Christian Harlow Reply-To: harlowc@cats.ucsc.edu Organization: Department of Sociology, UC Santa Cruz To: cjreid@netcom.com Subject: Re: WSN digest 175 References: Charles J. Reid wrote: > > Hi, Folks! > > Quick question: Where're the best 3 or 4 places to study World Systems > Theory? Thanks. > > -- Charlie Reid > cjreid@netcom.com > "Salus populi suprema est lex" (Cicero) > The welfare of the people is the highest law. > --------------------------------------------- This is not comprehensive, nor is it in any order. SUNY Binghampton John Hopkins UC Santa Cruz Arizona I hope this helps, of course I am biased but there are some really good people at these places, some would say "the heavies of the field" teach at these schools Binghampton(with its Fernand Braudel Center) would appear to be the best because Wallerstein, Arrighi, and Hopkins teach there, however Wallerstein is in Paris for half the year and Terrence Hopkins is now emeritus. Chase-Dunn and some others teach at John Hopkins. Wally Goldfrank is at UCSC. Al Bergesen is at Arizona. I looked into this last year before I applied for grad schools so actually there are other schools that I could recommend depending on you situation. (e.g. are you interested in only an M.A. or a particular sub field of WST)...My advice is to find the people whose work interests you and take a good look at those programs. Christian Harlow From thall@DEPAUW.EDU Sun Oct 27 11:48:21 1996 27 Oct 1996 13:48:18 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 13:48:18 -0500 (EST) From: "Thomas D. [Tom] Hall, THALL@DEPAUW.EDU" Subject: on Terry's comments To: Network World-Systems TO: WSN FROM: Thomas D. Hall, THALL@DEPAUW.EDU RE: Terry's Statement DATE: October 27, 1996 I must begin with two "oops's": 1) I had misfiled Terry's statement and had not read it at my last post 2) Though I recognized that Gunder had composed his comment before seeing Al's, I may not have made clear enough, that I wanted to bring various off-line debates on line. Anyway, some further thoughts on Terry's post. I think it is important not to use perspective/paradigm interchangeably with theory. Perspective or analysis or paradigm [in the Kuhnian sense] can refer to many competing theories which share some broad approaches differ on others. Some of the debate commented on by Al, Gunder, Bill [Thompson], Terry, and myself hinges on this. The conventional world-system theory of which Terry writes is one [or possibly more than one] theory that has been tested with international comparative data, and indeed, does explain much about the modern, global capitalist system, how it functions and sorts out several different types of routine changes IN the system. It, however, says little about change OF the system, other than the demurrers that socialism NEVER constituted an alternative system, but was a form of state- sponsored capitalism embedded in a capitalist world-economy. Frank, Chase-Dunn & Hall, Thompson & Modelski share different theories that see the modern, capitalist, Europe-centered world- system as far less unique than is claimed. Each, however, posit different theoretical approaches. Frank concentrates on the continuous evolution of one world system over 5,000 years. Thompson takes a somewhat shorter view and places more emphasis on technology and political relations [Bill, correct or elaborate as needed]. Sanderson (especially in Social Transformations, but elsewhere as well) sees considerable utility in world-system theory, or world-system-like propositions for understanding long- term social change. Chase-Dunn & Hall emphasize systemic transformations. We, too, are concerned with long-term social change, and go so far as to argue that one of the fundamental units of social change have been world-systems, or put differently that intersocietal interaction networks have for at least 12000 years played a crucial contextual role in all sorts of social [which includes economic, political, and cultural] change. Many of the failures of theories of long-term social change derive from inattention to intersocietal interactions. We take the latter approach because we find it more congruent with our reading of history; because we argue that if Frank is right, research using our approach should demonstrate this; and because we want to be able to use the study of past transformation to assess the possibilities and probabilities of future transformations, with an eye to developing some ideas of how to act in order to promote those futures that stress collective rationality within a framework of individual freedom [democratic socialism] on a global scale. These latter concerns spawned a panel at ASA on Warren Wagar's book, and the follow up discussions in Volume 2 of Journal of World-System Research. Back to Terry's initial discussion. PEWS and world-system "theory" is much larger than Wallerstein's approach to it. Many other social science disciplines have found at least some 'resonance' in WST. There is some discussion in Journal of World History [Benton's article in v7:2(Fall)], although it has minimal acquaintance with more recent precapitalist arguments. Archaeologists have found considerable utility, if with considerable criticism, of wst-like approaches to interregional interaction [a good review of these will be found Sociological Inquiry 66:4(November, 1996) in Peter Peregrine's article there, and also his introductory essay to his book with Gary Feinman, Pre-Columbian World-Systems 1996]. Also in the same issue of Sociological Inquiry is an article by Colin Flint & Fred Shelley reviewing geographical approaches to world-system theory [I'll post at Table of Contents when the issue appears]. One problem, which has been mentioned recently is that PEWS at ASA is seen as "men's room" for Wallerstein & Wallersteinians. Terry's point, which I heartily endorse, is that this is an overly narrow view of what PEWS and WST theory is about. I've made this point at length in both the JWSR issue cited above, and the forthcoming issue of Soc Inq. We need to do a better job of getting out the word that PEWS and WST theory is more than Wallerstein's 1974 publications. It is, and many scholars in many disciplines are already using it for, a vehicle to transcend disciplinary and regional specialties to talk across the various academic boundaries that have grown up with the modern world-system. Dassbach's comments notwithstanding, WST or better perspective, is a very useful way transcend those limits. The extension of WST into precapitalist settings grew out of several different dissatisfactions with its accounts of the origins of the MWS. That, for me, is why it remains useful and interesting, and I must say fun. tom hall From dassbach@mtu.edu Sun Oct 27 12:16:09 1996 From: "Carl H.A. Dassbach" To: Subject: Two cents more.. Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 14:16:55 -0500 I would like to make one other observation and it is not my intention to offend anyone. I see the recent interest with prehistory and the future as signs of retreat. Unable to deal with or make sense the present, there has been a retreat into the past and/orthe future. I am not a historian and history per se, as recording, recounting and reinterpreting past events is as interesting and relevant for me as scholastic philosophy and debates about the number of angels which could dance on the head of a pin. This is not to say that history is irrelevant, History is eminently relevant insofar as it enables us to understand the genesis of the trends which have shaped the present and are shaping the future. Hence, the criteria, at least for a social scientist, in evaluating/appraising all historical explanation should be: how does this help us understand the present and the future. Moreover, isn't the movement to the past to explain the present the hallmark of some of the most important and seminal work in WST such as A.G. Frank's early works, IW's MWS or Arrighi's Long 20th c.. History is sued to reveal the origin and genesis of the trends shaping the present. I am however, hard pressed to see how extending the time line back 3 or 4000 years and expanding the scope eastward and westward fulfills this function. Of course, one could and many have, argued that everything is connected but it is also necessary to draw some lines and realize when the fascination with the lineages of the connections overwhelms and detracts from the original reason for the interest in these connections: understanding the present. > > ----------------------------------- > Carl H.A. Dassbach DASSBACH@MTU.EDU > Dept. of Social Sciences (906)487-2115 - Phone > Michigan Technological University (906)487-2468 - Fax > Houghton, MI 49931 USA (906)482-8405 - Home > From wthompso@indiana.edu Sun Oct 27 14:32:19 1996 Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 16:32:20 -0500 (EST) From: "william r. thompson" To: "Thomas D. [Tom] Hall, THALL@DEPAUW.EDU" Subject: Re: on Terry's comments One brief correction, Tom. On the accusation of being "short," Modelski and Thompson took the long plunge at the last ISA (while you were enjoying yourself in SE Asia) and presented a paper on long-term diffusion processes which empirically was probably Sumercentric as much as anything else since we started in 3500 BCE. So now we are among the long category but still disagreeing with other long-term perspectives. WRT From wthompso@indiana.edu Sun Oct 27 14:46:53 1996 Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 16:46:49 -0500 (EST) From: "william r. thompson" To: "Carl H.A. Dassbach" Subject: Re: Two cents more.. Prof. Dassbach: While there is a fun element to the movement (not retreat) back in time, there are also sound theoretical and methodological reasons. The problem is that some of us are going back in time because we are trying to make sense of present structures and processes. How far back in time one feels the need to go depends on the substantive question and when the data give out. Take for instance your interest in long waves. Most long wavers think that they are fairly recent phenomena originating in the late 18th century at best. Modelski and Thompson argue that long waves can be extended continuously back to around the 10th century but not before. One outcome is that we have 18-19 k waves to work with whereas most others have only several. Moreover, we can perhaps better address under what conditions long waves appeared and when they might disappear. Finally, we think a 1000 year series of long wave fluctuations permits us to better address the evolutionary aspects of this process. But we did not assume that we had to go back to some Ur-phase. Instead, we kept pushing back in time until the chain stopped. For kwaves and us, it was Sung China. For our related interest in long-term diffusion processes, we had to begin with Sumer. There are of course people who argue that everything since the end of the Cold War, 1945, the Industrial Revolution (take your pick) is completely different from what preceded it. The people studying the really long-term are simply less impressed with these alleged breakpoints - even though there may well be important breakpoints along the way. In an earlier message, I thought 1500 was one but you have to start before 1500 to know why. WRT On Sun, 27 Oct 1996, Carl H.A. Dassbach wrote: > > > I would like to make one other observation and it is not my intention to > offend anyone. > > I see the recent interest with prehistory and the future as signs of > retreat. Unable to deal with or make sense the present, there has been a > retreat into the past and/orthe future. > > I am not a historian and history per se, as recording, recounting and > reinterpreting past events is as interesting and relevant for me as > scholastic philosophy and debates about the number of angels which could > dance on the head of a pin. > > This is not to say that history is irrelevant, History is eminently > relevant insofar as it enables us to understand the genesis of the trends > which have shaped the present and are shaping the future. Hence, the > criteria, at least for a social scientist, in evaluating/appraising all > historical explanation should be: how does this help us understand the > present and the future. > > Moreover, isn't the movement to the past to explain the present the > hallmark of some of the most important and seminal work in WST such as A.G. > Frank's early works, IW's MWS or Arrighi's Long 20th c.. History is sued to > reveal the origin and genesis of the trends shaping the present. I am > however, hard pressed to see how extending the time line back 3 or 4000 > years and expanding the scope eastward and westward fulfills this > function. > > Of course, one could and many have, argued that everything is connected > but > it is also necessary to draw some lines and realize when the fascination > with the lineages of the connections overwhelms and detracts from the > original reason for the interest in these connections: understanding the > present. > > > > ----------------------------------- > > Carl H.A. Dassbach DASSBACH@MTU.EDU > > Dept. of Social Sciences (906)487-2115 - Phone > > Michigan Technological University (906)487-2468 - Fax > > Houghton, MI 49931 USA (906)482-8405 - Home > > > From ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au Sun Oct 27 23:25:12 1996 28 Oct 1996 17:20:33 +1100 Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 17:20:33 +1100 From: "Bruce R. McFarling" Subject: Re: Capitalism... In-reply-to: To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK More baby & the bathwater arguments ... On Sat, 26 Oct 1996, Albert J Bergesen wrote: > ... > But to the peninsula people, when their time came to ascend in this > Afroeruasian system, to be a temporary center--1750 to 2050--they > wrote it up as something they did on their own, by themselves, > independent of the larger world system--their protestant ethic, > their relations of production (which they coined the term > "capitalism"--as if only they were interested in accumulating > capital), their capitalist state, their modern outlook, their > individualism, their initiative, while the rest, they were > "traditional" (Daniel Lerner), they had "huadralic/bureaucratic > modes of production" (Wittfogel), they did business by > "redistributing" (Polanyi) not trading/exchanging, they had > "no rationality" (Weber), they had the sluggish, resistant to > innovation, resistant to change, the same for centuries, totally > controlling, stifflying, "Asiatic Mode of Production" (Marx), ... What is Polanyi's forms of distribution doing in this list? The argument that the forms of distribution fall into three general patterns (i.e., reciprocity, redistribution, and exchange) is more against European exceptionalism than for it (unless the argument is that descriptions of reciprocal exchange and the Kola ring do not put small Pacific Island societies in their proper place as the center of the Afrasian World System?!?) And it would also seem to be against European exceptionalism to relegate the "pure market economy" of classical liberal imagination *to* the classical liberal imagination, in arguing that an economy regulated by that form of distribution alone is an unsustainable economy. In line with original institutionalist thought: many of the details of institutions of "capitalist" economies are unique to Europe in precisely the same way and for precisely the same reason that different polynesian clan institutions were unique to different island groups. Virtually, Bruce R. McFarling, Newcastle, NSW ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au From ROZOV@cnit.nsu.ru Mon Oct 28 05:33:14 1996 28 Oct 96 19:15:23 NSK-6 From: "Nikolai S. Rozov" Organization: Center of New Informational Tech. To: PHILOFHI@YORKU.CA Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 19:14:23 -0600 (NSK) Subject: Lakatos: Results hrfrankel@CCTR.UMKC.EDU, Stan Godlovitch , Bill Herfel , Merle Jacob , PAT.LAUDERDALE@ASU.Edu, Andrew Porter , nasser@MIT.EDU (nasser Rabbat), Jeremy Frank Shearmur , "Yigal Zan, Ros. Hunter-Anderson" Thanks to everybody for sending me information which now you can see below (only slightly classified). Best wishes, Nikolai Rozov The Destiny of Imre Lakatos's 'Scientific Research Program' concept in various disciplines (a biblioghraphy collected by Internet support). History of Earth H. Frankel, "The Career of Continental Drift Theory: an application of Imre Lakatos' analysis of scientific growth to the rise of drift theory," Studies in History and Philosophy of Sci., 10 (1979): 21-66. Prof.H.Frankel: I argued against Lakatos because one doesn't find an unchanging hard core in any of the competing research programs, but suggested, quite incorrectly I now believe, in favor of novel facts, albeit a different notion of novel facts than Lakatos had in mind. Homer LeGrand, Drifting Continents and Shifting Theories (l988) Cambridge Univ. Press. Le Grand compares Lakatos, Kuhn and Laudan in his book. He argues that Laudan's account offers a better analysis of the continental drift controversy than Kuhn or Lakatos. History of Life Charles Officer and Jake Page,"The Great Dinosaur Extinction Controversy" Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1996, ISBN0-201-48384-X. This book is aimed at a popular audience although it is serious science. Lakatos is cited favorably on pp. 178-187, where his criterion of predicting new facts is applied. Architecture Stanford Anderson "Architectural Design as a System of Research Programs,' Design Studies (July, 1984) Also studies by Stanford Anderson, Libero Andreotti, and Vasilia Metallinou in the same issue. Social Sciences in general, World System Analysis Joseph P. Berger and Morris Zelditch, Jr. _Theoretical Research Programs: Studies in the Growth of Theory_ Stanford University Press, 1993. This book presents several trps in sociology and political science. Kyriakos M. Kontopoulos.The logics of social structure. Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1993. Prof.Chris Chase-Dunn: Tom Hall and I have used Lakatos's basic strategy in our explication of the comparative world-systems approach, forthcoming in January or February from Westview Press -- _Rise and Demise: the Comparative Study of World-Systems_. Economics S. Latsis (ed.) Method and Appraisal in Economics, CUP 1976 De Marchi, Neil (1992) Post Popperian Methodology of Economics: Recovering Practice, Boston: Kluwer. De Marchi, N. and M. Blaug (eds) Appraising Economic Theories, Alders- hot: Elgar, 1991. For other stuff, a search on Econolit would surely dredge up most of it, along, say, with a consultation of History of Political Economy, Journal of Economic Literature, Economics and Phi- losophy, and Journal of Econonmic Methodology. Political Science Robert Keohane, "Theory of World Politics," in _NeoRealism and its Critics_, R. Keohane, ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), PP. 158-203. (3 references in my post) Keohane, Robert O.The Promise of Institutionalist Theory. International security.Sumr 1995 v 20 n 1 Ball, Terence, "Is there Progress in Political Science?" in _Idoms of Inquiry_, T. Ball, ed. (Albany, NY, 1987) pp. 13-37. Almond, G. A. and Genco, S. J., "Clouds, Clocks and the Study of Politics," in _World Politics_ 29 (1977) pp. 489-522. Anthropology of Knowledge Yehuda Elkana, "A Programatic Attempt at an Anthropology of Knowledge," in E. Mendelsohn adn Y. Elkana eds. Sciences and Cultures: ANthropological and Historical Studies of the Sciences (1981). Theology Nancey Murphy, _Theology in an age of scientific reasoning_, Cornell University Press, Ithaca New York, 1990. the book is an application of Lakatos to theological method. that's all for now [BTW, if you go for some purpose to make a copy of papers or book-pages devoted to Lakatos (especially in Social and Political Sciences), please consider possibility to make a spare copy for me. Nothing in our library here, alas! Nikolai] *********************************************************** Nikolai S. Rozov # Address:Dept. of Philosophy Prof.of Philosophy # Novosibirsk State University rozov@cnit.nsu.ru # 630090, Novosibirsk Fax: (3832) 355237 # Pirogova 2, RUSSIA Moderator of the mailing list PHILOFHI (PHILosophy OF HIstory and theoretical history) http://darwin.clas.virginia.edu/~dew7e/anthronet/subscribe /philofhi.html ************************************************************ From albert@U.Arizona.EDU Mon Oct 28 14:17:10 1996 Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 14:16:46 -0700 (MST) From: Albert J Bergesen To: wsn wsn Subject: to use or not to use "capitalism" in a theory of the world WSNers--I guess the bottom line for me now is that what is gained by the concept "capitalism" as a change that starts in Europe and spreads to the rest of the world, is now more than made up for by what is lost. Its probably just wrong, factually, plus the prejudice/eurocentricism of it all has become intollerable. I just can't think anymore that only one small peninsula did their economic things rationally, only for accumulation's sake, or exploited labor like no one else did, or had relations of production that no one else did, or used their state forms to help the accumulators like no one else did. It just too much to accept anymore. Particulay in the face of evidence that others engaged in the same sort of activity, and that the changes that did occur to Europe were because of Europe's place in the AFroeurasian world economy, not anything unique to the peninsula's class relations (Marx) or values (Weber). If the European peninsula was the center of the system, then, yes, maybe. But at the edge, comprised of people who had been trying for eons to get in on the productiive advangage of Asia, and in whose dealings with purportedly non-capitalist/non-industrial Asia did nothing but import Asian products from what was no doubt superior production arrangements and had to exchange for Asian production virtually nothing of produced value up to 1800 or so. No, that cannot be the basis of social theory. That there is no scheme to replace received theory, I agree. That it would be nice to go from paradigm to paradigm without have an inbetween time of critiques of the past schemes, I agree. But to stick to a world view that for which there is no evidence and which unfairly priveledges one peninsula's experiences over that of the larger world of which it is a part, I disagree. Albert Bergesen Department of Sociology University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona 85721 Phone: 520-621-3303 Fax: 520-621-9875 email: albert@u.arizona.edu From wally@cats.ucsc.edu Mon Oct 28 15:03:20 1996 From: wally@cats.ucsc.edu Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 14:03:16 -0800 To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: eurocentrism While we're at it, let's abolish anthropocentrism, primatocentrism mammalocentrism, biocentrism, and perhaps galaxocentrism. How about cosmocentrism? w From albert@U.Arizona.EDU Mon Oct 28 15:28:06 1996 Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 15:27:32 -0700 (MST) From: Albert J Bergesen To: wally@cats.ucsc.edu Subject: Re: eurocentrism In-Reply-To: <199610282203.OAA05293@buddy.ucsc.edu> On Mon, 28 Oct 1996 wally@cats.ucsc.edu wrote: > > While we're at it, let's abolish anthropocentrism, primatocentrism > mammalocentrism, biocentrism, and perhaps galaxocentrism. How about > cosmocentrism? > > w > That it sounds like getting rid of a word, or a vanity from one group or peninsula's point of view--their "centricism"--the issue isn't the vanity per se, but the real problem that the Marx Weber (all all derivations that follow the basic assumptions) are probably wrong. It is also a continium. From the philosopnical point of view of deep ecology, anthropocentricism is something that will probably be replaced too by a more eco-centric perspective. That is happening in moral thought already--the greening of everything from social theory to theology. The other levels of analysis Wally notes are, infact, more encompassing, and in theory one would want to understand the largest set of frames, the framing frame, cosmocentricism, maybe. Its just not as yet doable. But the issue isn't just getting rid of the "centricisms" per se, but of constantly looking to the wider frame whithin which we exist. Albert Bergesen Department of Sociology University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona 85721 Phone: 520-621-3303 Fax: 520-621-9875 email: albert@u.arizona.edu From wwagar@binghamton.edu Mon Oct 28 15:32:47 1996 From: wwagar@binghamton.edu Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 17:33:32 -0500 (EST) To: wally@cats.ucsc.edu Subject: Re: eurocentrism In-Reply-To: <199610282203.OAA05293@buddy.ucsc.edu> On Mon, 28 Oct 1996 wally@cats.ucsc.edu wrote: > > While we're at it, let's abolish anthropocentrism, primatocentrism > mammalocentrism, biocentrism, and perhaps galaxocentrism. How about > cosmocentrism? > > w > Hey, good point! And all us historians had better get busy and stop writing Eurocentric histories of the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the Great War of 1914. It's also Eurocentric to blame Hitler for World War II. If you think Europe is the source of most of the evil and misery in the modern world, I suppose that makes you Eurocentric, too. Sure. This is the kind of idiocy that white liberal guilt and mindless multiculturalism inflict on academe. The world capitalist SYSTEM originated in Europe. So did the secular rationalism of the Enlightenment. Denying this makes about as much sense as denying that in the 8th to 12th centuries CE T'ang and Sung China (perhaps together with Abbasid Islam in the first half of that period) was the greatest center of world civilization. W. Warren Wagar Binghamton University From CMSJOYA@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU Mon Oct 28 16:12:33 1996 Date: Mon, 28 Oct 96 17:39:36 EST From: CMSJOYA@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU Subject: capitalism... To: W-S Network Because I am teaching a grad course on research design right now, there is something embedded in this discussion of the "wrong-headedness" of a eurocentric world system approach that seems familiar to me. Actually, it reminds me a little of Geertz's discussion of what seems to be an inherent contradiction between doing interpretive research focused on a specific context, and addressing the "mega-concepts with which contemporary social science is afflicted" (Interpretation of Cultures, p. 23). He ends up saying "It is with the kind of material produced by long-term ... and almost obsessivly fine-comb field study in confined contexts that the mega-concepts ... can be given the sort of sensible actuality that makes it possible to think not only realistically and concretely *about* them, but what is more important, creatively and imaginatively *with* them." I'm trying to suggest that what we've learned about the "european world system" -- in terms of economic and political systems -- can continue to be useful in helping us develop the mega-concepts that afflict us. Our conceptualizations need to be refined, to think in this larger way, but I can't believe that they need to be discarded entirely because of the way they might continue to bias our approach (despite what I say to my students). We needn't throw out our data and understanding of the European world- system simply because we think that it is not the *only* w-s, or not the *only w-s to use wage labor* or even not the *only one which developed capitalism to such and such degree*. (Sorry for that double negative). Why can't we look at it as a case, look at the variations between another system's "capitalism" and the European system's "capitalism" etc? Perhaps then we can start judging the qualitative changes that might occur and might also be important to our understanding of *what* is going on. Joya Misra CMSJOYA@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU *********************************************************************** Assistant Professor Department of Sociology University of Georgia Baldwin Hall Athens, Georgia 30602 (706)542-3190 From dassbach@mtu.edu Mon Oct 28 20:01:54 1996 From: "Carl H.A. Dassbach" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: to use or not to use "capitalism" in a theory of the world Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 21:58:34 -0500 Albert J Bergesen wrote: > WSNers--I guess the bottom line for me now is that what is gained by the > concept "capitalism" as a change that starts in Europe and spreads to the > rest of the world, is now more than made up for by what is lost. Its > probably just wrong, factually, plus the prejudice/eurocentricism of > it all has become intollerable. If the term capitalism is so intolerable don't use it but also don't overlook the fact that something unique occurred in Europe the likes of which has never be seen before and _that_ occurrence dramatically changed the world for once and for ALL. No matter how much one tries to minimize the `peninsular' experience, e.g., pockets of capitalism occurred elsewhere and well before the emergence of capitalism in Europe (I doubt it - this is more a question of interpretation than historical fact), Europeans had being trying for eons to get the productive advantage over Asia , capital accumulation occurred in other parts of the world well in advance of the Europeans etc. etc. there are some aspects of the European phenomena (capitalism) that are irrefutably unique and reverberated around the world. For example, no other society, in no place and at no time, has been able to free the _majority_ of its population from subsistence production. No society has made the relentless expansion of productivity (or what Marx calls the general pursuit of wealth) the object of sustained pursuit and hence, constantly revolutionized the tools of production. No society has been in the position to fill the basic needs of all of its members. (Unless, of course, I missed some big developments 1000 years ago in the Yucatan or Tierra del Fuego) Clearly, I am not saying that the changes wrought by capitalism are all "positive" or that they were even intended (we know they weren't - they are the unintended consequences of private individuals attempting to maximize profit). But, the forces producing these changes emerged from the peninsular experience and these forces, for good or bad, have spread and reshaped (and will continue to reshape) all subsequent civilizations. The European experience (capitalism or whatever you want to call it) produced, in the most general terms, world historical changes in two fundamental sets of relations: relations between humans and relations between humans and nature. I don't see this as a problematic or eurocentered world view nor does it unfairly privilege one group at the expense of others. Giving something/anything its just due is not unfairly privileging the thing . It would seem to me that the problematic (and untenable) world view is the one that attempts to deny the significance of (which does not mean to lavish praise on) what emerged in Europe. Carl Dassbach ----------------------------------- Carl H.A. Dassbach DASSBACH@MTU.EDU Dept. of Social Sciences (906)487-2115 - Phone Michigan Technological University (906)487-2468 - Fax Houghton, MI 49931 USA (906)482-8405 - Home From p34d3611@jhu.edu Mon Oct 28 21:31:32 1996 28 Oct 1996 23:31:06 -0400 (EDT) 28 Oct 1996 23:30:50 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 23:30:40 -0500 From: Peter Grimes Subject: Capitalism & Categories To: WSN I believe that throughout this fun exchange there has been a persistent confusion between subject, object, and the taxonomies mediating the perception by the one of the other. History happened. That is the object. We are trying to apprehend and maybe comprehend it. We are the subjects. In between are mental constructs we use to simplify & organize information--mediating taxonomies. Basic epistemology that we're scrambling together here. My favored taxonomies tend to be drawn from evolutionary theory and neo-Marxist theory, but I try not to confuse the maps I make in my head with the "reality" (however mediated and distorted) I perceive and try to learn from. Others use different maps. That's ok with me if I can translate across them. Capitalism happened. We live within it, it is real, and it started earlier. When, where, and how its constituent elements synergetically combined to build an unstoppable momentum that ate the whole world is an interesting and important question. But the competing answers to that question reveal as much about our internalized maps as they do about historical reality, and the debate is really more about the former than the latter. We need to remember that. For what it's worth, I think it no more "centric" to perceive the "beginning" (whatever that "REALLY" means) of the MWS in Europe than it is to place human origins in Africa, or the origins of life in some puddles in the Pre-Cambrian seas. Everything starts somewhere in the flowing stream of time, and all dates and definitions must have an arbitrary component. --Peter Grimes  From dlj@pobox.com Tue Oct 29 01:47:24 1996 Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 03:47:42 -0500 To: dassbach@mtu.edu From: David Lloyd-Jones Subject: Re: to use or not to use "capitalism" in a theory of the world At 09:58 PM 28/10/96 -0500, Carl H.A. Dassbach wrote: >No matter how much one tries to minimize the `peninsular' experience, e.g., > pockets of capitalism occurred elsewhere and well before the emergence of >capitalism in Europe (I doubt it - this is more a question of >interpretation than historical fact), Europeans had being trying for eons >to get the productive advantage over Asia , capital accumulation occurred >in other parts of the world well in advance of the Europeans etc. etc. >there are some aspects of the European phenomena (capitalism) that are >irrefutably unique and reverberated around the world. > >For example, no other society, in no place and at no time, has been able to >free the _majority_ of its population from subsistence production. No >society has made the relentless expansion of productivity (or what Marx >calls the general pursuit of wealth) the object of sustained pursuit and >hence, constantly revolutionized the tools of production. No society has >been in the position to fill the basic needs of all of its members. >(Unless, of course, I missed some big developments 1000 years ago in the >Yucatan or Tierra del Fuego) Go with the Yucatan, plus Peru. Then, there's more. Every report on the Kalahari "Bushmen" reports the same thing, that until recently they have provided for their basic needs with a comparatively leisurely three or four hours work a day -- made productive because of their high level of manual and intellectual skills -- with the rest of their time being given over to cultural pursuits. With the crushing of their society by the outside world they are now reduced to poverty, and must work or beg full time. The "Dinka" (I put these titles in quotes because they are the constructions of white people too ignorant to actually figger out these peoples' own names, the latter being Monjiaang, "The People"; Ding or Deng is the name of every male firstborn of a couple, so the first white "explorers" mistook the finger for the Moon and thought it was the name for the whole people, hence "Dinka."), the Monjiaang look upon the outside world as an encroaching ring of savages -- a reasonable and judicious view, it seems to me -- and respond the same way the Japanese and Koreans did, by sending their best kids out to get PhD's. My point is not to mock the pretensions of industrial culture; that would be cheap and easy. Rather it seems to me that the meaning of the world systems exercise is this: it demonstrates that one can construct alternate historiographies -- and this leads naturally to the question of of how far this new found ability can and should be taken. So far the first model out of the gate, "World System(s)", has all the appearances of a vulgar Marxism writ large, as though we were simply seeing the level of detail that Marx used in writing about Europe applied to the wider world of Lenin's trade imperialism. This is perhaps natural. Other than Marx, who has had large visions? Well, there's Gibbon, there's a bunch of cycle crackpots, and that's about it, assuming we ignore the Aquinases and Swedenborgs. Are there any alternatives to the Vulgar Marxist (VM) version. Of course there are. Here's one that I think avoids the problems that Dassbach is having with capitalism and/or capital accumulation in the paragraphs above: What we have just passed through is the Warring States Period. The Chinese make the mistake of saying that this ended with the Ch'in Dynaty in 221 BCE: it was just getting warmed up then, and lasted another 2100 years. During the last segment of the Warring States, The Gunpowder Years, ~1400 to 1945, led to the hegemony of Europe, including the conquest of China by Marxism, a deviant form of Christianity. This last, I'm sad to say, is Reischauer's quip, not mine. With the appearance of Mutual Assured Destruction, 1945-55 onward, the world seems likely to return to the pre-war process interrupted 2500 years earlier, which we may call Cultural Competition and Integration. History starts up again, after an interlude of friction and madness. This version solves all the problems of this "capitalism" craziness by turning our attention to the central engine of the last 2500 years, which is not trade but war. The business side is obviously important, just as important as metallurgy, education, diet, or literacy, but there is nothing special about the economicses of Smith or Marx. Smith's demolition of mercantilism in a time and a place was a middling big deal, comparable to the reshaping of the corporation as reported by Gardiner and Means. Query: isn't the DLJ Warring States Period just the interlude between Toffler's (and later the Tofflers') Agricultural and Information Revolutions? And aren't we rather losing track of the Industrial Revolution here? Reply: on the first, no. The Toffler enterprise is their historiographic entry, and I think they simply have it wrong, much as I admire Al and Heidi's writing skill and witty and tasteful use of detail. The information revolution _is_ the agricultural revolution, _pace_ Jane Jacobs. You get domestic animals by identifying the tame ones among your prey; you get farming by taking thought (The cubit is not a measure of stature, but of land area!), thought about which seeds are worth keeping and which stuff isn't worth the trouble. As for the industrial "revolution," just replace it with the word steam. That lets you put chemistry, physics, and electronics into perspective, and you see that there wasn't any sudden revolution, just a steady cranking up of, or turning the potentiometer of, the intensity of information use. The above, then, supplies a framework for a period, 500 BCE to 2000 CE, and a tool of analysis -- Level of Violence -- for looking at subperiods, of which The Gunpowder Years (tm) & (c) is perhaps the most interesting. (You're welcome to refer to the gunpowder years, but as a book title, it's mine.) It also supplies the major subtext for the palimpsest of human unification: the struggle between the animal which fights over scraps, and the intellectual which creates, doesn't consume, resources. This is the multi-millenium struggle to actually carry through the information revolution. -dlj. From ROZOV@cnit.nsu.ru Tue Oct 29 05:32:20 1996 29 Oct 96 19:28:19 NSK-6 From: "Nikolai S. Rozov" Organization: Center of New Informational Tech. To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 19:27:55 -0600 (NSK) Subject: Capitalism & Historical Debts > From: Peter Grimes > For what it's worth, I think it no more "centric" to > perceive the "beginning" (whatever that "REALLY" means) of the > MWS in Europe than it is to place human origins in Africa, bravo, certainly so! the phobia of eurocentrism has ideological- psychological origins (a sense of historical fault), not rational-scientific reasons and it can lead us to the idiocy of unlimited 'political correctness'. At the same time the historical fault of Western Civilization and Western Capitalism (f.e. in grabbing and humiliation of Central Africa, India, South America) is real and serious, but it must be compensated (re-balanced) not with rewriting World history by scholars but with paying historical social/cultural/economic debts by Western governments and peoples (also by Russians in ex-colonized and also grabbed sevearely Middle Asia and Far North). Is it possible to decrease the gap between the Western core and postcolonial periphery by creation and promotion a new ideology of Paying Historical Debts? F.e. it can be realized by budjet support of social-cultural programs in peripheral countries (especially education), propitious regime of investments from a core country to its peripheral 'historical creditor', low customs for goods streams from periphery to core, etc. I realize that it is not more than utopian phantasy now, but if Western intelligentsia began to feel the historical fault for Capitalism, why not to try to utilize this ideological factor in humanistic global practice? Andrei Korotaev (whom you know well and who can correct me now in case of misunderstanding) once wrote that elimination of slavery in America and serfdom in Russia was NOT(!) economically based and profitable, just the ideology of human freedom played the main role in this radical and historically very fast transformation. Why not to imagine that new ideology of Paying Historical Debts (or smth like this) can become a significant and humanistically oriented 'anti-Systemic' force? I would be grateful for comments, best wishes, Nikolai *********************************************************** Nikolai S. Rozov # Address:Dept. of Philosophy Prof.of Philosophy # Novosibirsk State University rozov@cnit.nsu.ru # 630090, Novosibirsk Fax: (3832) 355237 # Pirogova 2, RUSSIA Moderator of the mailing list PHILOFHI (PHILosophy OF HIstory and theoretical history) http://darwin.clas.virginia.edu/~dew7e/anthronet/subscribe /philofhi.html ************************************************************ From bertil.haggman@helsingborg.se Tue Oct 29 05:47:52 1996 Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 13:47:37 +0100 (MET) To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu From: bertil.haggman@helsingborg.se (Bertil Haggman) Subject: Some info, please dlj, Just curious. Who are the "cycle crackpots": Ibn Khaldoun, Nicholo Machiavelli, Giambattista Vico, Oswald Spengler, Toynbee... Would be most interested in a little more details. Could you also please enlighten on your special dislike of Swedenborg. "Other than Marx, who has had large visions ?" Amusing comment considering the state of Marxism after the collapse of millenial communism in Russia. Deadly visions ? Bertil Haggman bertil.haggman@helsingborg.se >So far the first model out of the gate, "World System(s)", has all the >appearances of a vulgar Marxism writ large, as though we were simply seeing >the level of detail that Marx used in writing about Europe applied to the >wider world of Lenin's trade imperialism. This is perhaps natural. Other >than Marx, who has had large visions? Well, there's Gibbon, there's a bunch >of cycle crackpots, and that's about it, assuming we ignore the Aquinases >and Swedenborgs. From ba05105@binghamton.edu Tue Oct 29 07:38:20 1996 From: ba05105@binghamton.edu Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 09:39:07 -0500 (EST) To: wally@cats.ucsc.edu Subject: Re: eurocentrism In-Reply-To: <199610282203.OAA05293@buddy.ucsc.edu> On Mon, 28 Oct 1996 wally@cats.ucsc.edu wrote: > > While we're at it, let's abolish anthropocentrism, primatocentrism > mammalocentrism, biocentrism, and perhaps galaxocentrism. How about > cosmocentrism? > > w > On this point, there was an interesting article in the Science Times of the NYT about two weeks ago. Can't remember the scientists name, but he suggested that if all the animals in the world immediately went extinct, it would have virtually no impact on the microbial system, which was already around for about 2 billion years before animals, anyway. But if the microbes suddenly died out, we would all immediately die. Kind of puts the whole world system in perspective, no? Steven Sherman Binghamton From ba05105@binghamton.edu Tue Oct 29 07:44:04 1996 From: ba05105@binghamton.edu Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 09:44:49 -0500 (EST) To: wwagar@binghamton.edu Subject: Re: eurocentrism In-Reply-To: Apart from doubts many of us have about the 'secular rationalism' of the enlightenment (has Wagar ever heard of Gandhi, greens, cultural feminists, etc), does anyone here remember the old Engels line about how rationality began with the Greeks, Romans, and then (italics here) was developed by Islamic civilization, before returning to Europe to (my own thoughts here) fuel the most destructive military expansion in human history? On Mon, 28 Oct 1996 wwagar@binghamton.edu wrote: > > > On Mon, 28 Oct 1996 wally@cats.ucsc.edu wrote: > > > > > While we're at it, let's abolish anthropocentrism, primatocentrism > > mammalocentrism, biocentrism, and perhaps galaxocentrism. How about > > cosmocentrism? > > > > w > > > > Hey, good point! And all us historians had better get busy and > stop writing Eurocentric histories of the French Revolution, the > Industrial Revolution, and the Great War of 1914. It's also Eurocentric > to blame Hitler for World War II. If you think Europe is the source of > most of the evil and misery in the modern world, I suppose that makes you > Eurocentric, too. Sure. This is the kind of idiocy that white liberal > guilt and mindless multiculturalism inflict on academe. The world > capitalist SYSTEM originated in Europe. So did the secular rationalism of > the Enlightenment. Denying this makes about as much sense as denying that > in the 8th to 12th centuries CE T'ang and Sung China (perhaps together > with Abbasid Islam in the first half of that period) was the greatest > center of world civilization. > > W. Warren Wagar > Binghamton University > > From ba05105@binghamton.edu Tue Oct 29 07:51:40 1996 From: ba05105@binghamton.edu Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 09:52:25 -0500 (EST) To: "Carl H.A. Dassbach" Subject: Re: to use or not to use "capitalism" in a theory of the world In-Reply-To: <199610290301.WAA01003@youth.yth.mtu.edu> Am I missing something? Is this the world systems network? What ever the virtues of Gunder Frank's critique of IW (and there are some) it seems like this board could benefit from the limited anti-eurocentricism of Modern World System volume one. To wit, in what sense has 'european society' freed the majority of its inhabitants from subsistence? In this sense only--that around 1500 a new 'society' was produced which involved an expanded production of subsistence in Latin America, Eastern Europe, etc. That some city dwellers of Europe were able to escape subsistence (just how many, and when, are good questions) is not particularly unique in world history--virtually every empire had a class above the subsistence level. That European subsistence was increasingly produced well out of view and even across oceans may have been relatively unprecedented--but I don't really understand the significance of that. Steven Sherman Binghamton On Mon, 28 Oct 1996, Carl H.A. Dassbach wrote: > > > > Albert J Bergesen wrote: > > > WSNers--I guess the bottom line for me now is that what is gained by the > > concept "capitalism" as a change that starts in Europe and spreads to the > > rest of the world, is now more than made up for by what is lost. Its > > probably just wrong, factually, plus the prejudice/eurocentricism of > > it all has become intollerable. > > If the term capitalism is so intolerable don't use it but also don't > overlook the fact that something unique occurred in Europe the likes of > which has never be seen before and _that_ occurrence dramatically changed > the world for once and for ALL. > > No matter how much one tries to minimize the `peninsular' experience, e.g., > pockets of capitalism occurred elsewhere and well before the emergence of > capitalism in Europe (I doubt it - this is more a question of > interpretation than historical fact), Europeans had being trying for eons > to get the productive advantage over Asia , capital accumulation occurred > in other parts of the world well in advance of the Europeans etc. etc. > there are some aspects of the European phenomena (capitalism) that are > irrefutably unique and reverberated around the world. > > For example, no other society, in no place and at no time, has been able to > free the _majority_ of its population from subsistence production. No > society has made the relentless expansion of productivity (or what Marx > calls the general pursuit of wealth) the object of sustained pursuit and > hence, constantly revolutionized the tools of production. No society has > been in the position to fill the basic needs of all of its members. > (Unless, of course, I missed some big developments 1000 years ago in the > Yucatan or Tierra del Fuego) Clearly, I am not saying that the changes > wrought by capitalism are all "positive" or that they were even intended > (we know they weren't - they are the unintended consequences of private > individuals attempting to maximize profit). But, the forces producing > these changes emerged from the peninsular experience and these forces, for > good or bad, have spread and reshaped (and will continue to reshape) all > subsequent civilizations. > > The European experience (capitalism or whatever you want to call it) > produced, in the most general terms, world historical changes in two > fundamental sets of relations: relations between humans and relations > between humans and nature. I don't see this as a problematic or > eurocentered > world view nor does it unfairly privilege one group at the expense of > others. Giving something/anything its just due is not unfairly privileging > the thing . It would seem to me that the problematic (and untenable) world > view is the one that attempts to deny the significance of (which does not > mean to lavish praise on) what emerged in Europe. > > > Carl Dassbach > > > ----------------------------------- > Carl H.A. Dassbach DASSBACH@MTU.EDU > Dept. of Social Sciences (906)487-2115 - Phone > Michigan Technological University (906)487-2468 - Fax > Houghton, MI 49931 USA (906)482-8405 - Home > From SKSANDER@grove.iup.edu Tue Oct 29 08:50:06 1996 29 Oct 1996 10:50:03 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 10:50:03 -0400 (EDT) From: s_sanderson Subject: Eurocentrism To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Organization: Indiana University of Pennsylvania I really think that we've gotten carried away with all this stuff about Eurocentrism. Europe was distinctive in that it did experience a transition from a feudal to a capitalist mode of production around the 16th century, a transition that prepared the way for the industrial revolution of the 18th century. However, this is not a simple question of Europe vs. Asia, for Japan during the same time period also experienced a very similar capitalist transition. In an article I published in REVIEW in 1994, I tried to identify the common factors shared by Europe and Japan that set them apart. The argument is developed at somewhat greater length in my SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS (Blackwell, 1995). The features that Western Europe and Japan had in common involved climate, geography, size, demography, and political structure. These operated, I argue, within the context of a steadily expanding level of world commercialization to produce the first capitalist revolutions. In a recent book, THE DYNAMIC SOCIETY, Graeme Snooks has added a very important sixth factor: the fact that European states were on a fairly equal plane and competed severely with each other. Because of this, he says, they could not employ a conquest strategy -- no state was strong enough to conquer the others -- and thus adopted a combination of commercial and technological strategies for economic success. I don't buy the argument of Weber about the Protestant ethic or some sort of unique rationality that made Europe a privileged place, but Europe was privileged nonethless (as was Japan). Also, Marx was wrong to see history dominated by a system of simple commodity production based on use values. There was a lot of capitalism in history, as Weber clearly acknowledges (although I would call this "protocapitalism" to distinguish it from modern capitalism). But wholesale revisions of Marx and Weber for alleged Eurocentrism are, I think, completely unnecessary and theoretically misguided. Stephen Sanderson From rkmoore@iol.ie Tue Oct 29 13:30:46 1996 Tue, 29 Oct 1996 20:29:41 GMT Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 20:29:41 GMT To: PHILOFHI@YORKU.CA, WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: Re: Capitalism & Historical Debts 10/30/96, Nikolai S. Rozov wrote: > Is it possible to decrease the gap between the Western core and >postcolonial periphery by creation and promotion a new ideology of Paying >Historical Debts? > > I realize that it is not more than utopian phantasy now, but if Western >intelligentsia began to feel the historical fault for Capitalism, why not to >try to utilize this ideological factor in humanistic global practice? At a time when the rate of exploitation is on the increase, this notion does seem a bit in the fantasy realm. It has some of the out-of-touch character of "Let them eat cake", although I acknowledge with respect the motivating sentiment. One might take note of Michael Parenti's observation, in "The Sword and the Dollar", that much of the Third World is not poor, but rich -- the problem is that the resources are controlled externally or by local elites. I recall when visiting Kenya that acre after acre of fertile land was planted in export coffee beans, while the locals were growing forlorn corn on highway verges. Or one might recall the Irish famine, when British landlords were exporting tons of food daily from Irish ports. This same topic came up earlier (on another list, perhaps), and the point was made that redress of historical wrongs leads to an endless regression. We could give America back to the "Indians" (if enough had survived), for example, but then some tribes had conquered others... where does one stop? Justice cannot be restored to those who are no longer alive, and the Israelis have amply demonstrated that the attempt to restore historical arrangements can cause considerable injustice to those alive today. One might also observe that Western nations should first learn what social and economic justice are at home, before trying to export it. Keep in mind the IMF's style of "helping" the Third World. There is also the Midas factor: cash transfers to the Third World, one fears, might go mostly to importing unnecessary gadgets -- it might be harder to shed wealth than one might suppose, and one might further undermine self-reliance in the process. Furthermore, the pay-back notion seems to imply, to some extent, a continuation of excess Western wealth, relative to the Third World -- it's a symptomatic treatment rather than a curative one, and in fact presumes the continuation of the malady. A cessation of foreign capitalist participation and resource ownership -- whether exploitive or paternalistic -- might be what is most needed. My own view would be to be aware of the past, start dealing with the present justly, and allow the future to develop out of self-determination. -rkm From hoopes@ukans.edu Tue Oct 29 15:19:22 1996 Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 16:24:16 -0600 From: "John W. Hoopes" Reply-To: hoopes@ukans.edu Organization: Dept. of Anthropology, University of Kansas To: ba05105@binghamton.edu Subject: Re: eurocentrism References: ba05105@binghamton.edu wrote: > > On Mon, 28 Oct 1996 wally@cats.ucsc.edu wrote: > > > While we're at it, let's abolish anthropocentrism, primatocentrism > > mammalocentrism, biocentrism, and perhaps galaxocentrism. How about > > cosmocentrism? > > > On this point, there was an interesting article in the Science Times of > the NYT about two weeks ago. Can't remember the scientists name... It was undoubtedly Stephen Jay Gould, whose latest book "Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin" is an enthralling new attempt to suggest a scientific definition of "progress". Gould criticizes anthropocentric models for the evolution of life, pointing out that the most significant evolution has taken place among the largest category of organisms on this planet: bacteria. Humans are at the far tail of a right-skewed curve that represents an increase in the range of biotic complexity. They represent evolutionary "progress" only insofar as they have resulted from an increase in the overall variety of the "full house" of all biological organisms. John Hoopes Dept. of Anthropology University of Kansas From dasmith@orion.oac.uci.edu Tue Oct 29 15:35:15 1996 Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 14:35:45 -0800 (PST) From: David Smith Reply-To: David Smith To: world-system network Subject: "vulgar Marxism" versus "Al and Heidi Toffler" So Lloyd-Jones thinks that "World System(s)" is just "vulgar Marxism writ large," but has only admiration for the "Al and Heidi's writing skill and witty and tasteful use of detail"! Is this a JOKE?!! (Sadly, it doesn't seem to be.) While this debate has brought some interesting ideas to the fore, perhaps it's time for some folks to push back from the keyboard and read some books that are a bit less breezy and little more substantial than pop "futurists." Try some titles by Wallerstein, Arrighi, Abu-Lughod, Chase-Dunn, Frank, etc.... dave smith sociology, uc-irvine From TBOS@social-sci.ss.emory.edu Tue Oct 29 16:33:24 1996 From: "Terry Boswell" Organization: Social Sciences, Emory Univ. To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu, tbos@social-sci.ss.emory.edu Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 18:33:29 EST5EDT Subject: theory without a cause A cynic might interpret Al Bergesen's comments as saying that capitalism is an ideological hoax perpetuated on all of us by Karl Marx. Good thing I am not a cynic, because my own understanding of Frank, Gills, Abu-Lughod, Chase-Dunn, Hall, Modelski, Thompson and others is that they have made a tremendous contribution to world-system theory by demonstrating the utility of its concepts for understanding pre- 1500 world history. This is exactly the type of contribution that demonstrates a vibrant perspective that is exanding its focus. Any such expansion is going to generate debates over concepts and evidence, or else it is not really saying anything new. I was going to outline my own interpretation, but I found that I agreed with most all of what Tom Hall had to say in an earlier post. While I would quibble here and there, he did a better job of explaining what I believe than I could. Instead, I want here to challenge Gunder, Al, and others from within their own perspective. That is, let us assume that an Afroeurasian ("A") system existed 2-5000 years prior to 1500, and that it is a system in the full sense of the term. That is the A system has a division of labor and a set of trends and cycles that have strong effects on its constitutient parts. Does if follow from these assumptions that the A system CAUSED the rise of Europe to world dominance, as opposed to the rise being caused by factors within the European subsystem? Further, does it follow that the changes wrought by the rise of Europe were unexceptional, such that we should not consider the 1500-1650 changes a transformation of the system? While I have read much of Gills and Frank, and others, I have not yet read Frank's unpublished book. So in answering both questions I can only offer my own understanding of how world-systemic cycles work (drawing heavily on Modelski and Thompson's, _Leading Sectors and World Powers_ and my own work). The claim is that the rise of Europe is just one more unexceptional rise in a 2-5000 year economic cycle of rising and falling areas. In short, areas rise because states and firms develop innovations to get them out of a long economic stagnation. The innovations produce a leading economic sector of high value and capital accumulation. Areas fall because others copy them and because they become entrenched in their own innovations, giving an advatage of "backwardness" for the next innovation. In 1450+, the A system was in a long stagnation, especially the peripheral penninsula known as Europe. The "backward" Europeans had an advantage in that they were less entrenched in the much more developed Asian core of the system. They developed a series of innovations that produced a huge boom in the system around 1500-1650, and eventually lead to European dominace after 1800+. The innovations included maritime trades to replace the 5000 year old silk routes, slow cheap ships protected in convoys by state sponsered pirates, racist slave systems, corporate risk sharing, venture banking, and profit maximising firms (even the damn pirates started seeking investors by posting profit margins from their raids). Let's call this set of innovations "C." All of this fits the logic of an A system theory and none of it is eurocentric as it recognizes that Europe had long been a "periphery" to an Asian core. What it does not do, and cannot do, is say that the A system caused the "C" innovations in Europe. No theory of long economic cycles makes such a claim. There is no causal mechanism in the cycle itself. On the contrary, while cyclic dynamics dictate that development is uneven, they cannot dictate what the next set of innovations will be. Some areas are more or less advantaged, but sometimes leading sectors are even located in the same place as the last set, which is what drives the cycle of world leadership and hegemony. What cannot happen is for an area to rise if the leading economic sectors are concentrated outside that same area. It just cannot work. As such, the "C" innovations had to be developed within Europe if they were part of a long cycle in the A system. The 16th century Europeans were not alone in developing many of the innovations, some were Roman laws reused, others were reproduced in Japan and elsewhere. Nor does innovation imply superiority. Some of the innovations were accidents (i.e., Columbus). But that simply does not matter. What does matter is that in this area at this time, Europe in 1500-1650, states and firms put together the "C" set of innovations that allowed them to rise to world dominance. Turnign to the second question, did "C" result in a transformation of the system in 1500- 1650? As Thompson pointed out, the answer depends in part on one's threshold of how much change constituties a transformation. In some ways, every cycle of innovations must be fundamental enough to cause a long expansion, shift the location of leading economic sectors, pay for major wars, enable a state to become a world leader and hegemon, and so on. Economic cycles that are entailed with hegemonic cycles have bigger effects, and thus get names like the "industrial revolution" or the current "information revolution." To argue that we should use a different name for the whole system after some point, like say 1650, means that the change wrought at that time affected the logic of how the system operates and has lasted ever since. In some ways, assuming a pre-existing A system, makes the importance and extent of change in 1500-1650 all the more stunning. Afroeurasion tade, especially the silk routes, were the main link between Europe and Asia for 1000s of years, and the dynamics of that trade network is the heart of the argument that Europe and Asia were part of a single A system. Therefore, by the logic of an A system theory, it should follow that a fundamental change in the Afroeuroasian trade consitutes a fundamental change in the A system. I think, that the replacement of a 5000 year old silk road trading network, controled by a series of intermediary states, with a maritime network 10 times the size, controled by capitalist merchants and now including the Americas, is a fundamental change in the system. Moreover, and most importantly, the way those capitalist merchants organized their business in 1500-1650 becomes the basic structure of how most all business is organized ever since. If that is not considered a transformation of the system, then it seem to me that A system theorists are incapable of recognizing any transformation. I think we must conclude that even if one accepts that there was a 2- 5000 year old A system prior to 1500 in which Europe was a minor actor, the origins of capitalism in Europe and the importance of capitalism for world history are unaffected. If anything, the change is even more phenomenal if a prior system had lasted 5000 years. Perhaps Frank or Bergesen have a new theory of economic cycles that does not rely on innovations and leading sectors. And perhaps, they can explain how the change of most all economic activity to a capitalist form is unexceptional. But demonstrating that there was a prior A system alone will not do the trick. Thanks for reading this far, TB and that this rise Terry Boswell Department of Sociology Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322 From wwagar@binghamton.edu Tue Oct 29 17:14:35 1996 From: wwagar@binghamton.edu Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 19:15:46 -0500 (EST) To: ba05105@binghamton.edu Subject: Re: eurocentrism In-Reply-To: On Tue, 29 Oct 1996 ba05105@binghamton.edu wrote: > Apart from doubts many of us have about the 'secular rationalism' of the > enlightenment (has Wagar ever heard of Gandhi, greens, cultural feminists, > etc), does anyone here remember the old Engels line about how rationality > began with the Greeks, Romans, and then (italics here) was developed by > Islamic civilization, before returning to Europe to (my own thoughts here) > fuel the most destructive military expansion in human history? > Yes, I have heard of Gandhi, greens, cultural feminists, not to mention Greeks, Romans, and even Islamic philosophers (like those who flourished during the Abbasid caliphate). When I use the phrase "secular rationalism of the Enlightenment," I refer to a specific movement of thought that ran its course during the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe and parts of the Americas. Of course it had antecedents and precursors. Who and what does not? But Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Voltaire, Rousseau, d'Holbach, and Hume were not re-runs of Greek or Islamic philosophers; and Gandhi, greens, and cultural feminists were not re-runs of them! Then comes the point that the Enlightenment fueled "the most destructive military expansion in human history." Well, that's a pretty sweeping statement, but certainly parts of it helped provide some of the ideological ammunition for the most destructive military expansion in human history. It also helped fuel Marx and Engels. It provided some ideas that Gandhi, greens, and cultural feminists picked up, too. For example, I detected more than a whiff of the Enlightenment in the remarks of Ralph Nader Sunday evening at Binghamton University. But this is not to sing the praises of Euro-American civilization; only to suggest that it has made a big dent in world history and deserves a lot of the blame and the credit for getting us where we (i.e, we human beings) are today. It is not "Eurocentric" in the pejorative sense of the word to say so. W. Warren Wagar From albert@U.Arizona.EDU Tue Oct 29 19:22:35 1996 Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 19:21:54 -0700 (MST) From: Albert J Bergesen To: wsn wsn WSNers--Terry Boswell raises some good substantitive questions/issues about cycles and what affect the supra-Afroeurasian world economy might have had upon the growth/devleopment of the the European peninsula. While this is not entirely clear and may have to be revised as new information on the synchronization of world wide economic events becomes more and more the task of the world system perspective, the argument, in outline, is something like this: (i) The A and B phases of the Afroeurasian supra economy are system wide, such that the Euro-expansion of colonialism from 1400 was but the European element of an overall Afroeurasian expansion. It was not unique to only Europe, not a product of European events, social structure, crises of/in feudalism, inquiring minds, adventureness, and all the other exceptionalisms about the peninsula people that has formed the assumptional heart of modern social thought. (ii) The A phase starting in roughly 1400 saw a dramatic rise in production and population in Asia, that, through traditional mechanisms of A phases truning of necessity into B phases, led to the start of an Afroeurasian B phase in/around 1750. The Asian response of economizing--as everyone does here, not just the Weberian peninsula people--has different consequences because of different conditions in Europe and Asia. Higher labor costs in Europe make the invention/innovation/search for/put into us/etc. of labor saving machinery the economic response anyone would make. (again, economic rationality is universal--not a Weberian particularism of one religious system, Protestantism). This is the industrial revolution, and mistakenly conceptualized as "capitalism", that is as some unique set of class relations/unique mode of production/unique belief system of calculating, accumulating only for money's sake/etc. that no one else has. Terry Boswells question of whether Bergesen is suggesting "capitalism is anideological hoax perpetuated on all of us by Karl Marx" is, if misunderstanding replaces hoax, closer to the mark than he thinks. The Asian response to this B phase does not involve industrial innovation/revolution because of the cheapness of labor and the economic thing to do is not to work toward machine replacement. In these two responses--and in a lot more that is not fully understood at this time--lies the decline of the East and the rise of the West, and the Euro-ascendence since 1800, that we all agree upon. Europe did rise, but as a center shift from one part/zone of the Afroeurasian world economy (Asia--China/India) to another part/zone (Europe and then N. America). But not on its own; not because of its unique class or belief system. That was the Euro-gloss put on their ascendence in the 19th century by Marx and Weber, and its continuation in the 20th century with modernization theory and the out-of-Europe-modern-world-system-theory of Braudel/IW. (iii) We are commencing another shift of the A/B sort in the always-world economy, back to the zone that was down during the Euro/American Ascendence of 1750-2050, namely, Asia. (iv) This changes a lot of thinking: Asia is not getting its first chance at hegemony in the world economy. Hegemony is returning to Asia from whence it started. And, the "rise of the west" is now reduced to its appropriate size, the few hundred year period that it is, and understood as part of the larger global dynamics, rather than as something that endogenously rose up. That is where Marx and Weber are wrong, empirically, and we can add the judgement factor of Eurocentricism in that their models did not acknowledge the obvious location of the peninsula in the AFroeurasian dynamic but saw the peninsula as following its own internal logic. (v) Finally, this opens up the possibility to go beyond Marx and Weber in a profound materialist way. This is not po mo as the answer to vulgar economism. This is doing the materialist task correctly and updating our conceptual models. (vi) That this should generate resistance is understandable; no one likes to let go of the models that not only they believed in all these years but that their progressive sentiment had been wed to. (vii) But it will all be determined on the ground. The record and facts of actual Asian economic performance has been, by and large, outside the record that has been the basis for constructing social theory. If it turns out that no one but the Eurpeans did what Marx and Weber said only they did, then the old paradigm will continue. If though, as it increasingly appears, they downplayed if not dismissed the bureaucracies, cities, work ethic and spirit of acculumation, and industrial productive capacity of Asia as it appears they did , then these models cannot continue unchallenged. If the record on the ground, if the facts of Asian economic life does not turn out to be the record of the "asiatic mode of production" in all its sluggishness and tradition ridden lack of innovation and productive capacity, then there is no way that either the class relations/mode of production of the West, of "capitalism" can be considered unique. And if others calcualted, wanted money, and were rational than the other side is wrong too, the Weberians. If there is/was no difference, in the sense outlined here, then we have no choice but to work toward a new understanding, no matter how attached we all are to Euro-history and Euro-theory. Albert Bergesen Department of Sociology University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona 85721 Phone: 520-621-3303 Fax: 520-621-9875 email: albert@u.arizona.edu From ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au Tue Oct 29 19:59:32 1996 30 Oct 1996 13:59:38 +1100 Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 13:59:38 +1100 From: "Bruce R. McFarling" Subject: Re: Eurocentrism & Capitalism In-reply-to: To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK On Sat, 26 Oct 1996, A. Gunder Frank wrote: > ... > Therefore, it is much better to cut [out] the Gordian knot of > "capitalism" altogether. That was already my argument in Frank > (1991), Frank and Gills (1992, 1993), and Frank (1994,1995); and it > is well put by Chaudhuri (1990:84) writing under the title Asia > Before Europe: "The ceaseless quest of modern historians looking > for the 'origins' and roots of capitalism is not much better than > the alchemist's search for the philosopher's stone that transforms > base metal into gold." Indeed, that is the case not only for the > origins and roots, but the very existence and meaning of > "capitalism." So, best just forget about it, and get on with our > inquiry into the reality of "universal history, wie es eigentlich > gewesen ist." Which of the following is an aspect of that universal history? In the period before 1500: (1) there was a continuity of contact across Asia and Africa; (2) the regularities of this contact may be termed a system; (3) this contact extended to peninsular West Asia; (4) peninsular West Asia[*] was a peripheral area in the system; (5) this contact did not extend to North and South America; (6) this contact did not extend to Australia and Oceania. In the period following 1500: (7) Polities in PWA developed and maintained contact with North and South America; (8) PWA societies had significant technological and epidemiological advantages over North and South American civilizations; (9) PWA societies used their technological advantages to obtain commodities in demand in central areas of the Afrasian system; (10) PWA societies acquired enhanced technological capabilities in agriculture from their contact with the Americas. In the period following 1500: (11) Polities in PWA established footholds at a number of sites geographically closer to central areas of the system; (12) These sites were susceptible to assault by maritime military technologies; (13) These sites were used to gain improved terms of trade in imports from the rest of the system. In the period following 1700: (14) A technological system developed which relied extensively on supplementing human (and other animal) effort with mechanisms drawing power from other sources; (15) Successful development and adoption of this technology tends to be located in geographic areas which have experienced sustained increases in agricultural productivity; (16) Successful development and adoption of this technology tends to be located in geographic areas which possess a dense network of market towns catering to the surrounding rural areas. What does this mean to European exceptionalism? If the fundamental shock of the system that led to the transitory European hegemony was the transition from an axial Afrasian system to a global system, then the coincidence that peninsular West Asia was *both* on the side with the narrowest ocean, *and* at the furthest remove from the center made it one of the more likely geographical locations for the temporary beneficiary of closing the Afrasian axis into a global circle. And doesn't it's particular geography help explain the relative advantage in maritime technology of North Atlantic societies over societies of Western and Central Africa? So along this line of argument, the exceptionalism is geographic, but with geography relative to the Afrasian system more important than absolute geographic characteristics. Virtually, Bruce R. McFarling, Newcastle, NSW ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au [*] AKA "Europe". But why "Eurasia" rather than "Indasia"? Are the Urals really more persuasive as a subcontinental boundary line than the Himalayas? From wally@cats.ucsc.edu Wed Oct 30 00:40:17 1996 From: wally@cats.ucsc.edu Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 23:40:45 -0800 To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Yur O'Centrism (an Irish Turk of my acquaintance) So, now, we have multiple civilizational centers in the Afroindoeurasian ecumene, with some debatable synchronization until some time in the second millenium CE, debatable both in its extent and in the degree to which this whole enchilada can be called a "system." Then some things happen in the European peninsula, which, failing attempts at reconstituting itself as a self-respecting empire like the other biggies, turns out to become this unprecedentedly dynamic world-economy in large part thanks to its American connections and its African predations (still undertheorized). It seems to me that in most of this discussion to date, the unintended but Westphalia recognized organizational form of competing but diplomatically interacting strong states has been sorely overlooked, as has been the novel ways these states were linked to financiers, merchants, and organizers of large-scale production. Woe unto those who throw the baby (hyphen) out with the bathwater. w From macdonak@Meena.CC.URegina.CA Wed Oct 30 01:46:06 1996 30 Oct 1996 02:46:25 -0600 (CST) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 02:46:25 -0600 (CST) From: Kerry Subject: Re: your mail In-reply-to: To: Albert J Bergesen I wish to preface my remarks by saying that I'm not that conversent with World Systems Theory (WST), though I do appreciate the intent of it. I've also followed the latest discussion with some reservations as to what was actually being debated. My cmments are both a response to this particular post and I hope to also touch upon Mr Boswell's original response to Wallerstein's argument about the state of WST (not directly but by inference or that is the hope anyways). To begin with I think that the following post has certain elements which are both deterministic and not in keeping with the tenets of WST. For the former I will indicate both the points as well as why I believe that this is the case. As to the later I will be drawing exclusively from Immanuel Wallerstein's "World System Analysis" in Giddens & Turners' SOCIAL THEORY TODAY. On Tue, 29 Oct 1996, Albert J Bergesen wrote: > (i) The A and B phases of the Afroeurasian supra economy are system wide, > such that the Euro-expansion of colonialism from 1400 was but the European > element of an overall Afroeurasian expansion. It was not unique to only > Europe, not a product of European events, social structure, crises > of/in feudalism, inquiring minds, adventureness, and all the other > exceptionalisms about the peninsula people that has formed the > assumptional heart of modern social thought. To begin with, and this may have more to do with my limited reading of WST, I fail to see that a Afroeuraisn supra-economy existed, at least within what constitutes WST. Wallerstein argues that WST has 3 "arenas of collective human action - the economic, the political and the social or sociocultural - [which] are not autonomus areanas of social action. They do not have separate 'logics'" (pg313). He goes to argue that the choice of the term "system" arises from problem with the term "society", the later being basically collapesd into the concept of the state and thus fixing social analysis with the boundaries of the state. He also argues that by using the term "system" on can begin to see that there is a 'logic' which pervades all arenas of social action; it also provides a unity which spans both space and time and allows one to more effectively to understand the underlying processes that not only 'drive' the system but provides it with its particular analytical character. Therefore, I have some initial problems with the idea of a "Afroeurasian supra-economy". To begin with does the simple fact that trade existed between different regional areas constitute a system, as defined by Wallerstein? Obviously, it doesn't. To argue that the entire Eastern Hemisphere was one world system is reductionist. It also fails to meet the test of a system, as outlined by Wallerstein. It would be more appropriate to argue that there existed several systems which had contact with each other (and the extent of that contact would be miminal at least viz-a-viz the logic of each system). To argue that Europe and East Asia were part of the same system misuses the idea surrounding "system". They may have both been agriculturally based, however, there is very little else that evenly remotely be argued to say that they were politically or socially or even economically organized in a similar fashion which would enable the use of the term "system". > Afroeurasian B phase in/around 1750. The Asian response of > economizing--as everyone does here, not just the Weberian peninsula > people--has different consequences because of different conditions in > Europe and Asia. Higher labor costs in Europe make the > invention/innovation/search for/put into us/etc. of labor saving machinery > the economic response anyone would make. (again, economic rationality is > universal--not a Weberian particularism of one religious system, To begin with what do you mean by "economic rationality" let alone that it is universal. I presume that by "economic rationality" you are using the more current idea of maximization of utility. This is an idea which is relatively recent as a foundation for economic organization and one that is co-terminous with capitalistic thought. By before we address this issue a little bit about your causal explanation of "higher labout costs" as being the impetus for the development of "labor saving machinery" and thus presumably the foundation for which you later argue of industrial society. To begin with de-population was nothing particullarly new to world history regardless of time and space. Was the particular pressures that existed in Europe particullary unique, possibly, however, can that sole element explain the development of labour saving devices, the short answer is no. Lewis Mumford in his 1838 THE CULTURE OF CITIES illustrated that this wasn't the case but rather he argues that urbanization had a more profound effect on the transformation of European society -aka the European system. He illustrates that there was a profound social conflict between the "the old protective economy, based on status, mollified by religious precept, by a trading economy based on individual enterprise and the lust for gain: the economic history of the town is largely a story of the transformation of a group protected producers living in a state of relative equality, into a small group of priveldged merchants for whom the rest of the population ultimately toils" (pg 22, 1970 edition). The book is an excellent exposition of how urbanization was more fundemental to the development of the capitalist system as opposed to the "high labor" costs. The idea of a labour cost is predicated upon the idea that the economy is based upon "competition between free producersusing free labour with free commodities, 'free' meaning its availability for sale and purchase on a market" (Wallerstein, pg 318) This was not the situation that existed in Europe at the time of the Black Death, both the Church and secular law governed the setting of prices, wages, ect. One final remark is that though the Black Death may have taken as much as 1/2 the population of Europe one must keep in mind that between the 10th and 13th century Europe had experienced a population explosion, for example "the region between the Rhine and the Moselle increased its population tenfold" (Mumford, pg23) during this period. Returning to the idea that "economic rationality" is universal is both ethnocentric (as it takes a particular concept which has meaning under a set of given circumstances and projects it upon a case where those circumstances cannot be found; or in other words you're using a term whose meaning arose within a capitalist system and which doesn't have that same meaning, if at all, in another system.) The movie, Burn, provides a nice illustration of how "economic rationality" is neither universal nor constitutive of all systems. In that film Marlon Brando plays a British naval operative whose purpose is to destablize a Portugeuse colony; at one point in the film he provides an execllent soliloque about the difference between capitalist economy and a slave economy. He contrasts the systems by using the anlogy of the economic utility of a wife vs a prostitute and illustrates that it makes more economic sense to have a prostitute (ie. a worker) for that person is only paid for the time that the buyer wishes to pay for and that there is no other costs. If economic rationality was universal then anytype of bonded labour would have been only a blip upon world history. > Protestantism). This is the industrial revolution, and mistakenly > conceptualized as "capitalism", that is as some unique set of class > relations/unique mode of production/unique belief system of > calculating, accumulating only for money's sake/etc. that no one else has. > Terry Boswells question of whether Bergesen is suggesting "capitalism is > anideological hoax perpetuated on all of us by Karl Marx" is, if > misunderstanding replaces hoax, closer to the mark than he thinks. To argue that capitalism is a hoax or misunderstanding by arguing that everyone regardless of time or space is motivated by money is both reductionist as well as functionalist. The idea that money is the sole motivation or the dominant one for every historical system, especially as understood in our current system flies in the face of history. To begin with if every system is a coherent totality unified by a set of internal logic(s) then you have simply eliminated the idea of systems by asseting that the logic of every system is the same. Thus WST cannot exist. Secondly, the way that our social, economic and political are currently constituted do have a unique logic has been illustrated by not only WST theorist but others both those who have been informed by Marx as well as those who are on the other side of the theoritical side (though 2 sides do not truly reflect the theoritical options). The current system, which is world-wide, has its own unique logic and it is capitalistic because the system is predicated upon the way that the economy is organized (see above quote of Wallerstein.) > The Asian response to this B phase does not involve industrial > innovation/revolution because of the cheapness of labor and the economic > thing to do is not to work toward machine replacement. Granted, labour is cheap, however displacement of workers by machinery is occurring and is predicated by the system's economical rationality of utility (ironically, you argue that there is this ethic which exists in Asia, where earlier you argued that no such ethic existed, subsumed under you idea of "economic rationality" as well as that we are all motivated by money). Look at China and the increase of unemployment, or in Korea, Taiwan, etc., workers are being displaced by machines when it is economically viable. Also, one can look at the illegal garment trade in North America where it is cheaper to purchase garments by the piece from illegal immingrants than it is to have a factory. The rules of our economic system govern the choices that owners make. That is a fact. One could debate if that is a problem, but that is a separte issue both in regards to the logic of our system as well as WST (though Wallerstein argues that WST is politically and a moral protest, pg 309). > (iv) This changes a lot of thinking: Asia is not getting its first > chance at hegemony in the world economy. Hegemony is returning to Asia > from whence it started. And, the "rise of the west" is now reduced to > its appropriate size, the few hundred year period that it is, and > understood as part of the larger global dynamics, rather than as something > that endogenously rose up. That is where Marx and Weber are wrong, > empirically, and we can add the judgement factor of Eurocentricism in that > their models did not acknowledge the obvious location of the peninsula in > the AFroeurasian dynamic but saw the peninsula as following its own > internal logic. So the socio-cultural history of Europe was governed by Asia; that it was both culturally and politically, or just one of them, controlled by "Asia". And this is empirically true?? This is not only highly reductionist but smacks of the vulgar determinism which was in vogue in the 19th century and totally discredited. It isn't Eurocentric to argue that it arose and was the location of a system which eventually became world-wide. It is Eurocentric to evaluate, judge other people located in other systems as inferior because they are different. Or as you have done (though yours isn't eurocentric) that other peoples' social organization is the same as yours, as Radcliff-Brown did when he argue that all family structures, world-wide, were in reality nuclear families (e.g. that all people were organized the same way; he did this to legitmate the Colonial Office's practices in impossing British values upon conquered peoples.) It seems you have a "eastern hemispherian centrism at work here". > (v) Finally, this opens up the possibility to go beyond Marx and Weber in > a profound materialist way. This is not po mo as the answer to > vulgar economism. This is doing the materialist task correctly and > updating our conceptual models. Not! It is simplistic, reductionist and wants to be vulgar. How can you argue that your's isn't vulgar economism when the only thing that grounds your perspective is that members of a system are determined if trade existed between them and that the hegemony is determined by where the largest GNP exists. > (vi) That this should generate resistance is understandable; no one likes > to let go of the models that not only they believed in all these years but > that their progressive sentiment had been wed to. Thus anyone who disagrees with you is simply resisting the "truth", how convient. > (vii) But it will all be determined on the ground. The record and facts > of actual Asian economic performance has been, by and large, outside the > record that has been the basis for constructing social theory. If it Doesn't "economic performance" have a bit of a vulgar economism. Granted, we need to take into account what other systems and people, besides Europeans, have contibuted but lets not through out the baby with the bath water. > turns out that no one but the Eurpeans did what Marx and Weber said only > they did, then the old paradigm will continue. If though, as it > increasingly appears, they downplayed if not dismissed the bureaucracies, > cities, work ethic and spirit of acculumation, and industrial productive > capacity of Asia as it appears they did , then these models cannot > continue unchallenged. If the record on the ground, if the facts of Asian That's not the point. There is nothing Eurocentric nor invalid to say that colonialsim, explotation, etc. occurred and that it came out of Europe. That IS a fact. One can argue that that was wrong but to put forward the arguement that we should eliminate the old "paradigm" because one dosen't like what happened flies in the face of historical fact. Europeans went world-wide, conquered, stole, destroyed, whole other peoples/systems and imposed their world view upon them. > economic life does not turn out to be the record of the "asiatic mode of > production" in all its sluggishness and tradition ridden lack of > innovation and productive capacity, then there is no way that either the I would agree that characterization legitimated, in European eyes, their conquest (and that characterization is and was Eurocentric.) > class relations/mode of production of the West, of "capitalism" can be > considered unique. And if others calcualted, wanted money, and were > rational than the other side is wrong too, the Weberians. If there is/was This is not only reductionist but is also Eurocentic in that is imposes one set of values upon every human being, European ones at that. It also says that there is only one type of rationality, instrumantal at that, which underpins every system/society/everyone. > no difference, in the sense outlined here, then we have no choice but to > work toward a new understanding, no matter how attached we all are to > Euro-history and Euro-theory. The point is that there was and still continues to be differences, however, the system that orginated in Europe is now one that is accepted worldwide. It may no longer be the sole "property" of Europeans but that doesn't mean that our theories are necessarily Eurocentric. The TV show Millenium (not the new one) though one which tries to find a spritualism "lost" in our modern age, provides some insight into how other systems operated. I would agree that when it comes to evaluation of one system or another we should not use the current capitalist-world-system as the benchmark, but that each system needs to be evaluated on its own terms. However, your argument fails in that you do use the European-based values as the foundation for your argument by attempting to say that human history has been governed by the same values/logics. it may be this unrelexive theorizing that Wallerstein saw and was commenting upon. From p34d3611@jhu.edu Wed Oct 30 03:21:45 1996 30 Oct 1996 05:21:42 -0400 (EDT) 30 Oct 1996 05:21:35 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 05:21:28 -0500 From: Peter Grimes Subject: Slavery To: WSN This is side-note on a remark in Nikolai's note. I wanted to bring to general attention that while the movement against slavery in the 19th Century was spearheaded by opponents impassioned by humanitarian concerns, its ultimate elimination was not without economic benefits for the owners. While slavery was more coercive and appeared cheaper (which was why it was the most favored form of labor control initially used by the cutting edge of capitalism during its initial expansion), over the long run it was more expensive than wage labor. It compelled the owner to eventually assume the costs of reproduction, and it imposed a low ceiling on productivity. The wage relation solved both of these problems at once. By shifting the reproduction cost to the laborers, it provided them an incentive to work harder while at the same time liberating the owner from the necessity of paying a "living" wage. --Peter Grimes From thall@DEPAUW.EDU Wed Oct 30 08:57:50 1996 30 Oct 1996 10:58:18 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 10:58:18 -0500 (EST) From: "Thomas D. [Tom] Hall, THALL@DEPAUW.EDU" Subject: More on Geography To: Network World-Systems WSNers, fellowtravelers & lurkers, A quick comment on the overall discussion. I think this has been one of the better ones we have had. Bruce McFarling raises and interesting point about geography, far end of landmass, shorter ocean etc. Many geographers had noted these points, but not often in the systemic context. Sanderson's discussion of Japan raises the same locational advantages, although I would have stressed them more [a quibble]. However, there is/was a serious European/PWA advantage found in few other places: A highly variegated geography, dissected by mountains, and navigable rivers. This underpins the political diversity of PWA, which fosters the competition there. What I think the larger systemic context does, among other things, and the despite the differences about many of us have, is help us better understand what is DIFFERENT [exceptional (!?!)] about PWA, and what is similar. One of the similarities is the peripheral/semiperipheral position in a larger system. This is a frequent hotbed of innovation [Chris has a few papers on this, and large chapter in Rise & Demise]. Someone raised the question did not many things originate in Europe. Clearly the answer is yes. The point as I see it, though, is that the larger system is not a full account/explantion of those changes emanating from PWA, but rather an explanation why that was a particularly apt location. What we need here is multiple levels of theories: one that explains why periphery, or better semiperiphery is a likely source of innovation; then a more localized theory that explains why innovations occur in some SPs and not others. The answer will found, I argue, in the INTERACTION of local factors (geog, maybe even local ideologies) with EXTERNAL context. 'nuff for now tom hall From agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca Wed Oct 30 09:24:32 1996 Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 11:25:31 -0500 (EST) From: "A. Gunder Frank" To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Gunder Frank's response No. 2 WARNING: My univ computer is snafuing and may introduce glitches that i cant take out. EXPLANATION: I subscribe to and second what AL Bergesen says, and will try NOT to repeat that. I alos accept most of Bruce McFarlands 20 +\- item world history in a nutshell. very nice. PROCEDURE: I will refer to people by NAME and briefly recall [some of] their points, and add my comments on the same. INTRODUCTION: I am gratified to find sooo much interest and also interest in the PRE 1500 period, to which I have devoted quite a lot of work, if only because I think THAT has IMPLICATIONS also for the post 1500 period. However, in my posting/s, i took care NOT to delve into the pre-1500, and to stick to the POINT of/about WST analysis of the POST - 1500 period. So, if there is a reference to pre-1500, i repeat, HERE the question is what that says for POST 1500. ALAS, one, perhaps the main thing, that it says is that 1500 was NOT a break/inflection time [except of course for the Americas and Europe's ability to become any kind of player], and/but that it defintiely was NOT the inflection that WSNers, following Marx Weber and Wallerstein [i think wrongly] ATTRIBUTE to it. That leads me to my irst comment on the "first" respondent - which i take in NO order of appearance and/or in one that is a function of in part how i have them stored in my system and/or avoiding jumping around topoics much more than necessary. KERRY: says that this or that observation does not correspond to what Wallerstein says/models. THAT is the point! Wallersteins "MW-S" is a procrustean bed onto which we canNOT fit the evidence. Therefore, we should abanbdon the evidence? Or we should modify the theory/model/analysis IF it is sufficiently strechable - which Al B recommends not trying to do - or REPLACE it by anOTHER one! So never mind what Wallerstein - or anybody else inclding myself - said or now say, unless it is USEFUL. GRIMES: head and shoulers! Peter says we can use some other head and eyes, but in what Peter says HERE, he continues to see the SAME EVIDENCE in the SAME "W-S" shoulder with whatever head. The POINT is that there is OTHER evidence out there, which is NOT being looked at, which does NOT fit into the small "W"-S procrustean bed. AND WICH MAKES THE EUROPEAN EVIDENCE LOOK DIFFERENT! MISRA: No, we need/should NOT throw out the "evidence" we got, but we MUST place [view with another Peter Grimes head] it INTO THE CONTEXT that gave rise to it really = in the REAL WORLD Economy/System. It is NOT a question of a EUROPEAN system and "ANOTHER" system next door, as Misra says. There has been only ONE system since 1492 [it was already Afro-eurasian for eons before and then incorporated the Americas -as per Brucxe McFarlane] and that ONE = WORLD system DETERMINED what happend in its European peninsular PART. TERRY BOSWELL: good try, but... you contradict yourself. If as Al & me - and YOU thank you in your later paragraph/s [sorry i cant for tech reasaons write here and look at yours at the same time, so i have to refer to yours from memory and notes] say there is a WORLD wide econ/system that has its own A/B rise/fall cycle/phases, and that what Europe did was to change its POSITION WITHIN that WORLD system, then that is [we tihinl] right, but it pul;ls the rug out from under your previous assertion [assumption?] that what happend in Europe did so incdependently and/or on trhe basisis of European developments, rather than as a European CONSEQUENCE of WORLD wide changes- which is waht WE say happened. So first of all we - and the evidence! that you do NOT look at - DISPUTE your repeated assetion that 1500-1650 brought major EUROPEAN changes in/to the world. Not so. they were not major changes, and the changes that happened were world derived, AND POPULATION AND PRODUCTION GROWTH was far greater in Asia than in Europe [in Europe it is treue that pop in the 15-16 cent diud recover from the greater than elsewhere pop drop of the 14th century, but thats about it]. NO it is also NOT true that "merchant" capitalist organizational changes in 1500-1650 in Europe changed the world, and also NOT that they were the basis of what happend around 1800. Here is the problem of Misra's evidence: If we have it, lets keep it.and use it, but lets put it in context. and the context is that OTHER evidence YOU do NOT look at, shows that the "mercantile" and other "changes" wewre NOT UNIQUE to Europe, were NOT especially EUROPEAN derived even within Europe - where they were responses to changes IN ASIA! - and that Asian institutions changed as much, and ALL of them in response to WORLD - NOT european - economic circumstances. AND trhey all changed in RELATIOIN TO EACH OTHER. Terry, i repeat, your trade comparisons veween intra European and Europe-Asian trade are neither here nor there, since you toitally omit mentiuoin and counting of the intra-Asian trde which was many orders of magninture larger than them other two comined. So CARL DASSACH: tht "Europe is/was unique is irrefutable" is simply NOT TRUE. not only is it "refutable" - it is DISconfirmed by ALL evidence. Of course you have to LOOK at the evidence - which you CD and TB do NOT - and both COMPARE evidence from here and there and RELATE evidence here WITH/to evidence there! ALL OF THE ABOVE - and especially STEVE SANDERSON: If we havew learned anything from WST it should be that we cannot just look at the here and now, but must look/see how this , that, and the other here and now are influenced by/derived from/determined by the SYSTEM in which they participate, and which GENERATES the [differential] changes in its PARTS. Yet Terry and Steve seem NOT to have learned this BASIC lesson, not to mention Carl who does not even wanna look at THE SYSTEM. Terry says, ok theremay have been suych a system, but Europe could/did its own thing anyway. No, thats your - Terry's- inconsitency. Steve says here is england and there is Japan. In between NOTHING, except the EurASIA, that figured in your thousands of years of SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION. you - Steve- DO look efore 1500. but suddenly in 1500 that Eurasian TRANSFORMATION become irrelevant? Only the two pen/insular marginal Europe, indeed really Britian, and Japan DO anything important any more? And they DO it for INTERNAL reasons only? - which if that were the case would contradict your saying that they wewre MARGINAL, since marginal means that it is their RELATION to what they are marginal TO, that is [at least also] important. But for Steve almost the entire rest of the world SYSTEM suddenly falls through the cracks. NO it did NOT! and Stgev e also, NO it was NOT the "transition from feudalism to capitalism" in Europe and Japan that paved the way for the changes in 1800. what paved the way for 1800 was the GLOBAL "development" before that. THAT IS WHY THERE IS SOME SENSE IN STUDYING WORLD SYSTEM, but of course we gotta study THE system, or at least economy , that REALLY mattered, THAT IS what Immanuel Wallerstein [and if i may say so, gunder frank, and marx and weber and whoever] SUPPOSEDLY taught us. but apparently quite a few "WSN"ers did not even pick up THIS central idea! Alas, Marx Weber, Gunder Wallerstein got WRONG what they the relevant economy/system was - AND STILL IS!!! - that is why looking BEFORE 1500 changes what you see [and dont see and how you evaluate,contextualize] after 1500 or indeed after ANY time, eg after 1800, or after 1996! one thing that a longer and broasder perspective can do is to answer WALlY GOLDFRANK. Westphalia was a SIDEshow, and the competition among European states was kid stuff compared to both the STATES and their competition elseewhere, INCLUDING with and among the Europoean ones. DAVID LLOYD-JONES: War YES, but why/what for were /are all these wars fought? "power" for its own sake? That is Michael Mann/ish [and a lot of political/politicians] blindness! If the W [pol econ] system doesNOT matter, why study it? NICOLAI ROZOF and WARREN WAGAR If you dont understand me, i dont understand you. The issue is, but is NOT ONLY, Eurocentric prejudice, it is what that [Peter Grimes head?] lets and makes you SEE and AVOID seeing/doing. Alas what Warren claims he sees in Europe was soooo small a part of the whole picture, that what he sees was really NOT so. Its hard to believe that after writing a short history of the future, your nose is so close to the windowpane that you canbt see the world AROUND, of which the windowpane and the little room on the other side of it, are only a small-and derivative- part! Somebody else already answered Nicolai's pie in the sky, actually Warren has some too!, but what Nicolai writes is LIVING PROOF - or at least evidence! - that the Eurocentric prejudice to which Warren refers is blinding Nikolai from seeing the REAL world, earlier or now. Alas the USA is full of many more of the same, and if Russia and Siberia are also, or even more so, full of the same, the WHOLE WORLD SYSTEM is in trouble indeed! respectfully submitted with cheers- as long as they last! gunder frank From cr4@axe.humboldt.edu Wed Oct 30 11:28:37 1996 Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 10:28 -0800 (PST) From: Christopher Robinson Subject: Re: "vulgar Marxism" versus "Al and Heidi Toffler" In-reply-to: To: David Smith > > While this debate has brought some interesting ideas to the fore, perhaps > it's time for some folks to push back from the keyboard and read some > books that are a bit less breezy and little more substantial than pop > "futurists." Try some titles by Wallerstein, Arrighi, Abu-Lughod, > Chase-Dunn, Frank, etc.... > Now that the self appointed authority on literary validity from the hallowed halls of UC Irvine has seen fit to clue us uncouth types in, we can move on and continue to place value in the utility of the message rather than the elitist credentials of the messenger. Wisdom is matter of opinion, thankfully. Cheers From albert@U.Arizona.EDU Wed Oct 30 11:39:14 1996 Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 11:39:23 -0700 (MST) From: Albert J Bergesen To: wsn wsn Subject: Re: your mail Kerry--Thanks for the reply. The new post-Wallersteinian argument is that his world system was but a section of a larger world system, as Europe is but a peninsula on the larger eurasian land mass. Accepting this new perspective is as difficult as was accepting Wallerstein's WS years ago, which many still resist. As to the vulgar economism, the answer is yes, that is exactly what it is. Material life is still foundational; the only issue is what constitutes the relevant system in which such materiality is structured. The growing suspicion is that it is larger than the capitalist world economy as present WST has it. Whether WST stays at its present level or jumps to the next level is an open question. My guess is that the growing evidence of Asian economic activity and the lack of European exceptionalism in mode of production and religion make the received theory from Marx to Weber to today that something special happened in Europe that then, like a social virus, swirled out to engulf the world, seem increasingly outmoded. This is the deep suspicion that has led to this questioning of WST. Albert Bergesen Department of Sociology University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona 85721 Phone: 520-621-3303 Fax: 520-621-9875 email: albert@u.arizona.edu From rene.barendse@tip.nl Wed Oct 30 13:28:06 1996 (Smail3.1.29.1 #16) id m0vIhJV-000Do3C; Wed, 30 Oct 96 21:32 MET id <01BBC6A7.5AF0F700@amsterdam46.pop.tip.nl>; Wed, 30 Oct 1996 21:14:37 +-100 From: barendse To: "'WSN@csf.colorado.edu'" Subject: AW: Eurocentrism & Capitalism Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 21:11:40 +-100 Hithertoo I have been loitering a bit on the margin of this august list - which I am loath to say is the only one of various academic mailing lists I am recieving I always read and enjoy reading. I wish there were more men's room like that. I particulary like mr. Fosse's musing although I have to admit I have often difficulties following his American colloquialisms - I would like to urge everybody on this list to please, please remember that not everybody who is reading this stuff is a native speaker of = English. Anyway - as some of you know - I have been working mainly on Indian = Ocean history in the early modern period for a dozen years now; a = major work ofm ine on this topic should appear with CNWS publications = Leiden around march nextt year, so I have been following the discussion = on Eurocentrism and capitalism with great interest; while there are = many aspects of this argument which would merit long discussions, e.g. = the long wave issue or the rationality issue in this posting I would = only=20 like to concentrate on one aspect: the issue of European exceptionalism. As Sherlock Holmes would have put it, dear Watson, if you have exhausted = the obvious solutions look at the not-so-obvious-solutions; which = translates to the following: if it is so difficult to find any precise = moment or reason for European exceptionalism conpared to Asia in the = nineteenth century then maybe our view of the nineteenth century is = wrong. I know I am overstating but it sometimes appears to me with the = argument about European exceptionalism is like trying to use the entire = human history to explain a brief period wEurope d ominated world = trade and industry. A brief period, furthermore, which is over by = now,yet we are still shackeled to an ancient argument about European = exceptionalism occuring somewhere around 1500 which is then necessary to = explain the supposed European dominance of Asia and Africa in the = nineteenth century.=20 Wouldn't it be more logical to say that the supposed European = superiority over Asia in the nineteenth century is a mirage - largely = derived from the e writings of the colonial adminstration anyway ? And = how long did this whole period last ? Far from ruling India for two = centuries - and the raj always appears to me the main argument for = the supposed European dominance over Asia in the nineteenth century = -dIndia wass slowly conquered by the British a conquest which from = Plassey to the annexation of Awadh lasted a century and was then almost = destroyed in1857. Again, it took the Dutch in Indonesia three centuries = -from Ambon in 1632 to Bali in 1906 ((!) to conquer the entire = archipelagoe and one could well argue the Dutch never dominated the = state of Atjeh - of course in Indo China the French period lasted = barely fifty years and the French never dominated the mountains. It = would thus be possible to see European empires in Asia as an ephemeral = empire of conquest - like that of the Napoleontic empiree which also = lasted barely twentyfive years and was merely based upon some temporary = military advantages rather than upon deep structural differences = between say Loraine and the Rhineland. More to the point, Russia dominated Poland for more than hunderd years and the Ukraine for = threehunderd years but nobody would argue that this was because Russia = was more highly advanced than Poland or the Ukraine.=20 A consideration of the period 1757-1854 will show that India was simply = slowly conquered by a huge British army of around 1800 upto 250.000 man, = that is as large as Napoleon's grand armee. Moreover - and this is a = point which is of course downplayed in British accounts for very human reasons - in only two of the many battles which it took to conquer India = -Plassey and Buksar - were the British much inferior in numbers - and in = the first case the Mughal force lost by treason, the other by = incompetence- in all other battles the British were equally numerous or = more numerous; the normal military tendency to vastly overrate the = opponent's strength has led to a myth of British military invisibility = in India which is almost certainly the main cause for the view that = Europeans=20 were militarily superior in the early nineteenth century. They were not, = and actually the equally persistent view that the Indians were badly = equipped is a myth too - Indian armies were as well equipped as European = armies - actually the army of the Marathas appears to have had more = -anbd often better artillery than most European armies in 1800. . This a was = largely cast in Indian workshops- it is also a myth that Indian armies = aways bought equipment. So what we have here is simply a military = conquest - no technological superiority and even less organisational = superiority. How did the British achieve this ? The answer is obviously that they = were using a mercenary army which was recruited in India - it is odd to = remember that the use of mercenary armies is normally seen as a sign of = of backwardness in India - while even the grande armee was in its heyday = also mainly a mercenary army as was of course the British peninsular = army, or for that matter Cornwallis' army at Yorktown. Simply put- the = British were able to raise and - a terrific logistic feat of the banjara = oxen-drivers accompanying the British army - not the least to feed a = huge mercenary army not becausee Iit was backward but because India = was forward - without an intricate network of bankers throughout the = subcontinent the British would never have been able to pay their army. = Or, indeed, how could the British have stationed garrisons throughout = the Indian Ocean without a network of shroffs and munshis ? Indian = merchants or as C.Bayly would call them `portfolio capitalists' who had = an intricate network of connections throughout the Indian Ocean. Thus, it = was not India's backwardness which made it a tempting bait for the = British conquerors, just like in Europe it was not Lumbardy's = `backwardness' which enticed conqueror upon conqueror. With some = modifications the same applies to Java. Were there any `structural advantages' of the British ? Yes - but - and = therefore this is an argument with which many of the readers are sure to = have difficulties - this necessitates that we shed two ingrained habits = of thinking about India. First, we need to shed the notion that a = `colonial state' is substantially different from another state. Just = remember the British collector would be as alien to the inhabitants as = would the officials of other large military/bureaucratic states such as = the Romanov or the Habsburg empire. Two, we need to remember that India = was a class society and consider Indian history in terms of class rather = than function or caste as is normal. It is this obsession with caste and = with function which in my view has obscured the nature of what = historians call the crisis of the eighteeenth century. I would argue = that in the eighteenth century Indian states were struggling with = similar problems as European states. A deep fission in the countryside = between the peasants and rural `gentry' and the nobility, a rise of a = hungry and disenfranchised urban population and the rise of large = `multinational' banking and trade concerns which increasingly escaped = the control of the state call them as you like - but in Indian studies = it is nowadays normal to call them capitalist, furthermore like in = Europe banking and merchant capital was increasingly penetrating rural = production which was increasingly causing noble resentment. Now, like in = Europe this caused what IW would call `struggle in the centre' with = states trying to use the resources of the multinational concerns to = contain both the unruly nobility and the rising class of the rural = gentry. The central mechanism thereto was, like in Europe, the tax-farm. = Basically, these are the same occurences like in Europe - obviously, = because they both participate in the same world-wide system; meanwhile = these states are also involved in an internecine struggle among = themselves, three contenders among them have links to Europe: the = Compagnie des Indes, Portuguese Estado da India and the East India = Company. Now, in this long struggle the East India Company finally = emerged as `top dog' for many reasons but the main reason was probably = that tthe East India Company had a source of collateral in American gold = and silver -and a direct link to the British state- of which the other = competitors did not dispose. The EIC was therefore a highly attractive = investment to Indian bankers active on the political market this credit = allowed the EIC to raise a more powerful army than its competitors. = Furthermore, just like the Habsburg or th Romanov state the raj had a = definite class-base in the Indian countryside with the raj increasingly = alining itself with the nobility. In fact, whereas the raj had started = as a close ally to the Indian capitalists it increasingly turned to an = ally of the landed nobility - like the Habsburg or the Romanov state. = Somewhat the same development seem to have occured in Indonesia although = in the literatrure on Indonesia it is even rarer to find analysis in = class or economic rather than in broad cultural terms. For in spite of its -frankly very efficient - propaganda in which it = propagated that it was there for the good of the inhabitants -which alas = was swallowed by most European intellectuals including Marx or Multatuli = - both the raj and the Dutch gouvernement were simply military = dictatorships behind a civilian facade which were only interested in = paying themselves by levying taxes. This stiffled, partly, the = development of a bourgeoisie in India or Indonesia.. India and = Indonesia were thus to some extent thrown back after the Dutch and = British conquest. from a position where they were about equal to Europe = to a position where they were backward compared to Europe. . Obviously = the British were simply collecting their loot as most conquering armies = do - as the yurt-o-centrics on the list would put it - sometimes this = list gets too highbrow for me. Greetings Dr.R.J.Barendse Instituut Kern Rijksuniversiteit Leiden The Netherlands Rene.barendse@tip.nl From kjkhoo@pop.jaring.my Wed Oct 30 20:23:41 1996 Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 11:24:03 +0800 To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu From: kjkhoo@pop.jaring.my (KHOO Khay Jin) Subject: Re: eurocentrism I have followed this discussion with some interest - and increasing distress and unease when I understand it, having not kept up with much of the literature on wst or whatever over the past decade or so. But it does appear to me, in some ways, that the discussion reflects once again how social existence and location influences thought and consciousness. In this instance, perhaps two conjoined facts: the recent growth of East Asia/SE Asia (both as economic fact and as political hype) and the sense of western decay, and perhaps, for a lot of wst'ers, the collapse of the socialist project in thought and reality. Call it what you will, but certain facts - from the perspective of someone living outside Europe and N America - appear undeniable, and attempts to deny them strike me as attempts to squirm out of European and N American responsibility for the shape of the world today and for a while to come - for better and worse. It appears to me undeniable that something came together in Europe and its subsequent extension in N America between 1500 and 1800 which gave Europe and N America domination of the world, and indeed *continues* to give it domination, East Asian growth notwithstanding. I won't try to rehearse the facts of world history - the participants in the discussion are much more expert than I. But allow me to take this list as an example: - it is located in physical (and cyber) space in N America - it's active participants are almost wholly N American and European (or non-Europeans resident in N America and Europe) - it's language is English, the native language of some 250-300 million, not, say, Chinese, the language of over 1 billion, or Malay/Indonesian, the language of some 150-200 million, or Hindi, or Urdu, or Tamil - it's bibliographic reference base is also largely based on European languages, predominantly English - it's theoretical reference base is a system of concepts that largely emerged in post-1500 Europe Why is this so? Or take a closer look at East Asian growth today, and let's look at some of the more "superficial": - the male attire of the Asian Renaissance is the coat and tie, the female attire is increasingly the dress (one might note that when a Hong Kong magnate established a fashion brand, he chose an Italian name) - the architectural symbols are the high-rises - the musical idiom is the "pop" song built, backing supplied by bands playing guitars, drums, saxophones... - the "more cultured" turn to European "classical" music and sponsor symphony orchestras - the motor symbol of wealth and power are Mercedes and BMWs and contrast that to the symbols, dress, architecture, and music of, say, the Abbasid caliphate, or of Ming China, or of Malacca, or Moghul India. One could also note that for all the importations of material and other culture into Europe, those civilizations have not had the same impact as has had modern Europe on the rest of us. Sure, there are cute stories about tea and the English, coffee and the Austrians, the guitar's origins in Muslim Spain, and so on, but what does it really amount to? Why is this so? Call it what you will, drop the term "capitalism" if one feels it necessary to do so, but eurocentrism was real and survives - if not in the minds of wst'ers, at least in the real world. I would contend that eurocentrism is even more real today than in the days of conquest and when we were colonies. On a minor point, I am not altogether certain what exactly was the point of showing that it took the Netherlands three centuries to subjugate all that was to become Indonesia. Rome never quite subjugated England, but for all that the dominance of Rome was not in doubt, and its stamp over Europe was not in doubt, nor that something came together in Rome that gave it that dominance. At the end of the 19th century and early 20th centuries, there was little doubt in the minds of many Asian and Arab thinkers and administrators that something had indeed come together in Europe that gave it its dominance. They agonized over this, and over its implications for their own cultures and societies, and whether they could take over whatever it was that gave Europe its power and yet retain their own cultures and civilizations. Some tried, others threw in the towel and earned the appellation WOGs. Some are still trying - but the emerging patterns indicate that it may well be a lost cause. It would appear that the best course is still to acknowledge *not* European "exceptionalism" (that gives too much and too little credit to Europe all at once) but that something did come together in Europe at a certain historical period and that we are still living with its consequences, dare I say especially those of us who are non-Europeans. There was likely no inevitability about this - it may well have happened elsewhere, but counter-factual history is, in the event, hardly useful. It happened in Europe and that gave it its particular stamp. Incidentally, a so-called "ecocentric" view is still an "anthropocentric" one by virtue of the fact that humans think it up and in doing so assume certain things about their place in the world. Nothing validates those assumptions except those who think it up in the first place. Could I be so mischievous as to suggest that a "non-eurocentric" view thought up by Europeans would nevertheless remain a "eurocentric" view? Khay Jin From ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au Thu Oct 31 01:43:23 1996 31 Oct 1996 19:42:49 +1100 Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 19:42:49 +1100 From: "Bruce R. McFarling" Subject: Re: Yur O'Centrism (an Irish Turk ... To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK On Tue, 29 Oct 1996 wally@cats.ucsc.edu wrote: > So, now, we have multiple civilizational centers in the > Afroindoeurasian ecumene, with some debatable synchronization > until some time in the second millenium CE, debatable both in > its extent and in the degree to which this whole enchilada can > be called a "system." I don't see how it is debatable whether the whole Afrasian (though Afroindoeurasian has a nice ring) system may be called a system. A system is a collection whose members interact, and the fact of the interaction is established. The question, as always in systems theory, is *what kind* of system? To engage in biological analogy (*you've been warned*), my hunch is that the Afrasian system was more akin to an ecosystem than to an organism. Or in Miller's terms, while a society is certainly a Living System, the Afrasian system may have been a more loosely organized system. Be that as it may ... > Then some things happen in the European peninsula, which, failing > attempts at reconstituting itself as a self-respecting empire > like the other biggies, turns out to become this unprecedentedly > dynamic world-economy in large part thanks to its American > connections and its African predations (still undertheorized). What is undertheorized about the African predations of the 1500 - 1800 period? "New World" colonies that discovered agricultural products that could directly buy into trade with the center, or indirectly buy in by persuading other peninsular West Asians to hand over some gold, then found that the conquered people were not always suited to the task -- for instance, continued to die from the imported Afrasian diseases (handy when conquering, not so handy among an enslaved workforce). Western coastal Africa was the boondocks, and the inhabitants were already in the Afrasian disease pool, so enslaving them was a profitable as opposed to unprofitable slaughter. And Africa is even closer to the "New World" than West Asia. (Or is it undertheorized because there are too many facts on hand to permit free play to theorizing? 8-) > It seems to me that in most of this discussion to date, the > unintended but Westphalia recognized organizational form > of competing but diplomatically interacting strong states > has been sorely overlooked, as has been the novel ways these > states were linked to financiers, merchants, and organizers > of large-scale production. What is the connection between Westphalia and the opening of the New World? Beyond the obvious -- the maintenance of the Portuguese monarchy in Brasil, the logistical complexity of conquering polities with "New Word" resources to draw upon, the temptation after defeating an enemy to to trade away the gains in West Asian in order to acquire "New World" possessions of the conquered state [more interesting than West Asian conquests because more useful to the victor as a way of buying into trade with the Afrasian center, perhaps?] In other words, is Westphalia an ignored aspect *in addition to* closing the global circle, or can it be entered under the heading of the activity in West Asia by which some West Asian polities leveraged their role in the Westward expansion of the Afrasian system into a transitory dominance in the system? > Woe unto those who throw the baby (hyphen) out with the > bathwater. Virtually, Bruce R. McFarling, Newcastle, NSW ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au From ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au Thu Oct 31 02:03:10 1996 31 Oct 1996 20:02:27 +1100 Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 20:02:27 +1100 From: "Bruce R. McFarling" Subject: Re: Gunder Frank's response No. 2 In-reply-to: To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK An aside about inflection points: On Wed, 30 Oct 1996, A. Gunder Frank wrote: > ALAS, one, perhaps the main thing, that it says is that 1500 was NOT > a break/inflection time [except of course for the Americas and Europe's > ability to become any kind of player], and/but that it defintiely was NOT > the inflection that WSNers, following Marx Weber and Wallerstein > [i think wrongly] ATTRIBUTE to it. > ... This aside is directed at the issue of breaks/inflections that Gunder Frank raises here, and *not* necessarily at his treatment of it. One thing I noticed when looking at the literature in sociology and other areas about technological diffusion was a basic confusion about the stereotypical growth logistic. This was often presented as if it had three "phases" of growth: a slow growth phase, accelerating into a rapid growth or "take-off" phase tapering off into a slow growth, tapering off to saturation. But, of course, there are only two phases: an initial phase of nearly exponential growth, when the critical limiting factor in reproduction is the reproducing population (people who have already had experience in using an agricultural technique, etc.), and a decelerating phase when the limits of expansion begin to be the factor limiting growth. In a pure logistic, the "take-off" has lower growth *rates* than the initial period. So we should be careful of classifying the significance of a change strictly by the magnitude of the immediate impact: that works well enough for mechanical models, but can be deceptive in dealing with cumulative and circular causation. Virtually, Bruce R. McFarling, Newcastle, NSW ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au From p34d3611@jhu.edu Thu Oct 31 02:20:48 1996 31 Oct 1996 04:20:52 -0400 (EDT) 31 Oct 1996 04:20:49 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 04:20:26 -0500 From: Peter Grimes Subject: Capitalism,categories,and Kuhn To: WSN WSNers; Remember Kuhn's description of how Einstein not only re-cast Newton but also SUBSUMED him? Further, Einstein's "special" theory he later subsumed himself by his own "general" theory. Likewise, before him Newton had integrated, subsumed, and thereby surpassed Tycho, Keplar, and Copernicus. Science proceeds not, as the anti-intellectuals would portray it, by one paradigm supplanting another like an annual change in fashion, but instead by successive subsumation, where each shift INCORPORATES (does NOT "discard") its predecessor's achievements while yet EXTENDING them to new territory on a more general and abstract level. There is an obvious application of this process to the discussion on WSN. The question is over whether the GENERALIZATION of WST to the rest of the world (in space) and the period pre-1500 (in time) constitutes or requires a fundamental adjustment of (WS) theory, and whether that adjustment is broad enough to constitute an entirely new conceptualization of history. For me (& Terry--who stated my views on the substantive issues involved better than I could have) it does not, but for others it seems to. However, there is a theological aspect to the discussion, insofar as key issues cannot be resolved by appeal to facts, but must rely exclusively on rhetorical appeal to ideology, thereby rendering them immune to empirical resolution. --Peter Grimes