From rross@clarku.edu Tue Dec 3 10:16:57 1996 Date: Tue, 03 Dec 1996 12:15:41 -0500 From: "Robert J.S. Bob Ross" Subject: [Fwd: good deeds] To: Progressive Sociology Network , World Systems Network Organization: Prof. and Chair of Sociology, Clark University This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------676C61C73760 -- Robert J. S. Ross 508 793 7243 Professor and Chair of Sociology fax: 508 793 8816 Clark University Rross@vax.clarku.edu 950 Main Street Worcester, Massachusetts 01610 --------------676C61C73760 Return-path: 02 Dec 1996 18:13:12 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 02 Dec 1996 18:16:04 -0400 From: jcohen@MIT.EDU (Joshua Cohen) Subject: good deeds To: geilfuss@media.mit.edu, pspritzer@igc.apc.org, cfs11@columbia.edu, jrogers@ssc.wisc.edu, dcantor@igc.apc.org, przewrsk@is2.nyu.edu, abrozan@igc.apc.org, AHRYCYNA@beacon.org, arenson@nytimes.com, REBrown@Pupress.Princeton.Edu, bunzl@rci.rutgers.edu, SAMUELS@MITVMA.MIT.EDU, eaf4@columbia.edu, wright@ssc.wisc.edu, David_Estlund@postoffice.brown.edu, tlon@ix.netcom.com, flint@nws.globe.com, PantheonRE@aol.com, alker@almaak.usc.edu, Catherine.Kulkin@wellsfargo.com, lukes@datacomm.iue.it, mb216@columbia.edu, ejhall@MIT.EDU, neilg@interport.net, kpeterson@press.uchicago.edu, KHOURY@mitvma.mit.edu, rteixeira@ers.bitnet, shaslang@uncecs.edu, Sandy_Elgar@e-elgar.co.uk, ajs7m@uva.pcmail.virginia.edu, scanlon@husc.harvard.edu, td28@columbia.edu, mehta@cicero.spc.uchicago.edu, yablo@umich.edu, zairo@omega.lncc.br, BOHMANJF@SLUVCA.SLU.EDU, KLAYH@sirs.com, webmaster@abuildnet.com, pemstein@bp.beacon.org, Awaskow@aol.com, berwick@ai.mit.edu, ddennett@diamond.tufts.edu, paulged@panix.com, rothstei@oxy.edu, iik1@columbia.edu, lking@MIT.EDU, nchoucri@MIT.EDU, Danny_Schechter@nyo.com, John.Walsh@ummed.edu, jbrecher@igc.apc.org, tcostello@igc.apc.org, rross@clarku.edu, mccarthy@infor.com, haorr@darwin.biology.rochester.edu, robert@utdt.edu.ar, dsatz@Csli.Stanford.EDU, mcohen@Law.usc.edu, T4monk@aol.com, aaboron@MIT.EDU, herr@cicero.spc.uchicago.edu, GBERK@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU, rkarapin@shiva.hunter.cuny.edu, gamcderm@intermedia.com.ar, 102567.3276@CompuServe.COM, dlaws@MIT.EDU, amsden@MIT.EDU, jimdief@prgone.com, akst@worldnet.att.net, smk@isr.harvard.edu, 100545.1357@compuserve.com, LIAMRECTOR@aol.com, fzblock@chip.ucdavis.edu, BRose_+a_MacArthu_+lBob_Rose+r%MACFDN@mcimail.com, fzjoffe@dale.ucdavis.edu, hemmerle@nbn.com, badsubjects-request@uclink.berkeley.edu, johnj@sojourn.com, polrev@heritage.org, conover@MIT.EDU, akst@worldnet.att.net, ahoberek@midway.uchicago.edu, jahn@tiac.net, edaquili@ACS1.BU.EDU, Volkmeier@aol.com, perloff@leland.Stanford.EDU, mf103@columbia.edu, Scb49@aol.com, steve@sunyit.edu, ipapadop@ulys.unil.ch, WOLFFE@fasecon.econ.nyu.edu, bfried@leland.stanford.edu, MG.PC.WDTP@eworld.com, jghynes@usa.pipeline.com, byrda@fleishman.com, bl@media.MIT.EDU, Cass_Sunstein@law.uchicago.edu, mark.philp@Oriel.oxford.ac.uk, fleish@MIT.EDU, hal@MIT.EDU, meyer@MIT.EDU, chisolm@MIT.EDU, wjm@MIT.EDU, dkfitz@MIT.EDU, prinn@MIT.EDU, jbeinart@MIT.EDU, blanchar@MIT.EDU, keyser@MIT.EDU, strehle@MIT.EDU, furb@MIT.EDU, lcohen@MIT.EDU, ehling@MIT.EDU, estanton@MIT.EDU, prior@MIT.EDU, csilton@MIT.EDU, hstanton@MIT.EDU, tdv@MIT.EDU, sunley@MIT.EDU, apierce@MIT.EDU, dsery@MIT.EDU, sanyal@MIT.EDU, RESCLOVE@amherst.edu, d-brudney@uchicago.edu, ginsborg@garnet.berkeley.edu, homiak@cheshire.cc.oxy.edu, NEIMAN@HUM.HUJI.AC.IL, oso1000@cus.cam.ac.uk, tp6@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu, SHERMANN@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu, slloyd@hermes.usc.edu, reath@mail.ucr.edu, bowles@econs.umass.edu, bardhan@econ.berkeley.edu, brenner@history.sscnet.ucla.edu, gerald.cohen@all-souls.ox.ac.uk, jeroemer@ucdavis.edu, hillel.steiner@man.ac.uk, a71503rv@horus.sara.nl, vanparijs@espo.ucl.ac.be, piketty@cepremap.msh-paris.fr It only takes 2 seconds to help send 2 young'ens to college... >Hi, There are 3 ninth grade African-American Washington D.C. boys who >entered a contest on the internet. If they get the most people to >visit their homepage they will all win college scholarship. Please forward >this message to everyone that you know. And don't forget to visit their >homepage at http://tqd.advanced.org/2667. ___________________________________________________________________ Joshua Cohen, Professor of Philosophy and Political Science MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, 20D-203 MIT Department of Political Science, E53-401 Voice Mail: (617) 253-5237, or call Helen Ray at (617) 258-5882 Email: jcohen@mit.edu URL for Boston Review: http://www-polisci.mit.edu/BostonReview/ --------------676C61C73760-- From iwaller@binghamton.edu Tue Dec 3 13:57:25 1996 Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 15:57:18 -0500 (EST) To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu From: immanuel wallerstein Subject: eurocentrism dec. 3, 1996 dear all, in the light of the recent discussion here on eurocentrism, i though you might be interested in this paper i did on the subject at a meeting in seoul ten days ago. ---------------- "Eurocentrism and its Avatars: The Dilemmas of Social Science" by Immanuel Wallerstein [Keynote Address at ISA East Asian Regional Colloquium, "The Future of Sociology in East Asia," Nov. 22-23, 1996, Seoul, Korea, co-sponsored by Korean Sociological Association and International Sociological Association] Social science has been Eurocentric throughout its institutional= history, which means since there have been departments teaching social science within university systems. This is not in the least surprising. Social= science is a product of the modern world-system, and Eurocentrism is constitutive of the geoculture of the modern world. Furthermore, as an institutional structure, social science originated largely in Europe. We shall be using Europe here more as a cultural than as a cartographical expression; in this sense, in the discussion about the last two centuries, we are referring primarily and jointly to western Europe and North America. The social science disciplines were in fact overwhelmingly located, at least up to 1945, in just five= countries France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and the United States. Even today, despite the global spread of social science as an activity, the large majority of social scientists worldwide remain Europeans. Social science emerged in response to European problems, at a point in history when Europe dominated the whole world-system. It was virtually inevitable that its= choice of subject matter, its theorizing, its methodology, and its epistemology all reflected the constraints of the crucible within which it was born. However, in the period since 1945, the decolonization of Asia and= Africa, plus the sharply accentuated political consciousness of the non-European world everywhere, has affected the world of knowledge just as much as it has affected the politics of the world-system. One major such difference, today and indeed for some thirty years now at least, is that the "Eurocentrism" of social science has been under attack, severe attack. The attack is of course fun-amentally justified, and there is no question that, if social science is= to make any progress in the twenty-first century, it must overcome the= Eurocentric heritage which has distorted its analyses and its capacity to deal with the problems of the contemporary world. If, however, we are to do this, we must take a careful look at what constitutes Eurocentrism, for, as we shall see, it is a hydra-headed monster and has many avatars. It will not be easy to slaughter the dragon swiftly. Indeed, if we are not careful, in the guise of trying to fight it, we may in fact criticize Eurocentrism using Eurocentric premises and thereby reinforce its hold on the community of scholars. I There are at least five different ways in which social science has been said to be Eurocentric. These do not constitute a logically tight set of= categories, since they overlap in unclear ways. Still, it might be useful to review the allegations under each heading. It has been argued that social science expresses its Euro-centrism in (1) its historiography, (2) the parochiality of its universalism, (3) its assumptions about (Western) civilization, (4) its Orientalism, and (5) its attempts to impose the theory of progress. (1) Historiography. This is the explanation of European dominance of= the modern world by virtue of specific European historical achievements. The historiography is probably fundamental to the other explanations, but it= also the most obviously naive variant and the one whose validity is most easily put in question. Europeans in the last two centuries have unquestionably sat on top of the world. Collectively, they have controlled the wealthiest and= militarily most powerful countries. They have enjoyed the most advanced technology and were the primary creators of this advanced technology. These facts seem largely uncontested, and are indeed hard to contest plausibly. The issue is what explains this differential in power and standard of living with the rest of the world. One kind of answer is that Europeans have done something meritorious and different from peoples in other parts of the world. This is what is meant by scholars who speak of the "European miracle" (e.g. Jones, 1987). Europeans have launched the industrial revolution or sustained growth, or= they have launched modernity, or capitalism, or bureaucratization, or individual liberty. Of course, we shall need then to define these terms rather carefully and discover whether if was really Europeans who launched whatever each of these= novelties are supposed to be, and if so exactly when. But even if we agree on the definition and the timing, and therefore so to speak on the reality of the phenomenon, we have actually explained very little.= For we must then explain why it is that Europeans, and not others, launched the specified phenomenon, and why they did so at a certain moment of history. In seeking= such explanations, the instinct of most scholars has been to push us back in history to presumed antecedents. If Europeans in the eigh teenth or sixteenth century did x, it is said to be probably because their ancestors (or attributed ancestors, for the ancestry may be less biological than cultural, or assertedly cultural) did, or were, y in the eleventh century, or in the fifth century B.C. or even further back. We can all think of the multiple explanations that, once having established or at least asserted some phenomenon that has occurred in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, proceed to push us back to various earlier points in European ancestry for the truly determinant variable. There is a premise here that is not really hidden, but was for a long time undebated. The premise is that whatever is the novelty for which Europe is held responsible in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, this novelty is a good thing, one of which Europe should be proud, one of which the rest of the world should be envious, or at least appreciative. This novelty is perceived as an achievement, and numerous book titles bear testimony to this kind of evaluation. There seems to me little question that the actual historiography of world social science has expressed such a perception of reality to a very large degree. This perception of course can be challenged on various grounds, and this has been increasingly the case in recent decades. One can challenge the accuracy of the picture of what happened, within Europe and in the world as a whole in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. One can certainly challengethe plausibility of the presumed cultural antecedents of what happened in this period. One can implant the story of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries in a longer duration, from several centuries longer to tens of thousands of years. If one does that, one is usually arguing that the European "achievements" of the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries thereby seem less remarkable, or more like a cyclical variant, or less like achievements that can be creditedprimarily to Europe. Finally one can accept that the novelties were real, but argue that they were less a positive than a negative accomplishment. This kind of revisionist historiography is often persuasive in detail, and certainly tends to be cumulative. At a certain point, the debunking, or deconstructing, may become pervasive, and perhaps a counter-theory take hold. This is, for example, what seems to= be happening (or has already happened) with the historiography of the French Revolution, where the so-called social interpretation that had dominated the literature for at least a century and a half was challenged and then to some degree toppled in the last thirty years. We are probably entering into such a so-called paradigmatic shift right now in the basic historiography of modernity. Whenever such a shift happens, however, we ought to take a deep breath, step back, and evaluate whether the alternative hypotheses are indeed more plausible, and most of all whether they really break with the crucial underlying premises of the formerly dominant hypotheses. This is the question I wish to raise in relation to the historiography of European presumed achievements in themodern world. It is under assault. What= is being proposed as a replacement? And how different is this replacement? Before, however, we can tackle this large question, we must review some of the other critiques of Eurocentrism. (2) Universalism. Universalism is the view that there exist scientific truths that are valid across all of time and space. European thought of the last few centuries has been strongly universalist for the most part. This was the era of the cultural triumph of science as a knowledge activity. Science displaced philosophy as the prestige mode of knowledge and the arbiter of social discourse. The science of which we are talking is Newtonian- Cartesian science. Its premises were that the world was governed by determinist laws taking the form of linear equilibria processes, and that, by stating such laws as universal reversible equations, we only neededknowledge in addition of some set of initial conditions to permit us to predict its state at any future or past time. What this meant for social knowledge seemed clear. Social scientists might discover the universal processes that explain humanbehavior, and whatever hypotheses they could verify were thought tohold across time and space, or should be stated in ways such that they hold true across time and space. The persona of the scholarwas irrelevant, since scholars were operating as value-neutral analysts. And the locus of the empirical evidence could be essentiallyignored, provided the data were handled correctly, since the processes were thought to be constant. The consequences were not toodifferent, however, in the case of those scholars whose approachwas more historical and idiographic, as long as one assumed the existence of an underlying model of historical development. All stage theories (whether of Comte or Spencer or Marx, to choose only a few names= from a long list) were primarily theorizations of whathas been called the Whig interpretation of history, the presumption that the present is the best time ever and that the past led inevitably to the present. And even very empiricist historical writing,however much it proclaimed abhorrence of theorizing, tended nonetheless to reflect subconsciously an underlying stage theory. Whether in the ahistorical time-reversible form of the nomothetic social scientists or the diachronic stage theory form of thehistorians, European social science was resolutely universalist in asserting that whatever it was that happened in Europe in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries represented a pattern that was applicable everywhere, either because it was a progressive achievement of mankind which was irreversible or because it represented the fulfillment of humanity's basic needs via the removal of artificial obstacles to this realization. What you saw now in Europe was not only good but the face of the future everywhere. Universalizing theories have always come under attack on the grounds that the particular situation in a particular time and place did not seem to fit the model. There have also always been scholars who argued that universal generalizations were intrinsically impossible. But in the last thirty years a third kind of attack has been made against the universalizing theories of modern social science. It has been argued that these allegedly universal theories are not in fact universal, but rather a presentation of the Western historical pattern as though it were universal. Joseph Needham quite some time ago designated as the "fundamental error of Eurocentrism ...the tacit postulate that modern science and technology, which in fact took root in Renaissance Europe, is universal and that it follows that all that is European is" (cited in Abdel-Malek, 1981: 89). Social science thus has been accused of being Eurocentric insofar as it was particularistic. More than Eurocentric, it was said to be highly parochial. This hurt to the quick, since modern social science prided itself specifically on having risen above the parochial. To the degree that this charge seemed reasonable, it was far more telling than merely asserting that the universal propositions had not yet been formulated in a way that could account for every case. (3) Civilization. Civilization refers to a set of social characteristics that are contrasted with primitiveness or barbarism. Modern Europe considered itself to be more than merely one "civilization" among several; it considered itself (uniquely or at least especially) "civilized." What characterized this state of being civilized is not something on which there has been an obvious consensus, even among Europeans. For some, civilization was encompassed in "modernity," that is, in the advance of technology and the rise of productivity as well as the cultural belief in the existence of historic development and progress. For others, civilization meant the increased autonomy of the "individual" vis-=E0-vis = all other social actors: the family, the community, the state, the religious institutions. For others, civilization meant non-brutal behavior in everyday life, social manners in the broadest sense. And for still others, civilization meant the decline or narrowing of the scope of legitimate violence and the broadening of the definition of cruelty. And of course, for many, civilization involved several or all of these traits in combination. When French colonizers in the nineteenth century spoke of , they meant that, by means of colonial conquest, France (or more generally Europe) would impose upon non-European peoples the values and norms that were encompassed by these definitions of civilization. When, in the 1990's, various groups in Western countries spoke of the "right to interfere" in political situations in various parts of the world, but almost always in non-Western parts of the world, it is in the name of such values of civilization that they are asserting such a right. This set of values, however we prefer to designate them - civilized= values, secular-humanist values, modern values - permeate social science, as one might expect, since social science is a product of the same historical system that has elevated these values to the pinnacle of a hierarchy. Social scientists have= incorporated such values in their definitions of the problems (the social problems, the intellectual problems) they consider worth pursuing. They have incorporated these values into the concepts they have invented with which to analyze the problems, and into the indicators they utilize to measure the concepts. Social scientists no doubt= have insisted, for the most part, that they were seeking to be value-free, insofar as they claimed they were not intentionally misreading or distorting the data= because of their socio-political preferences. But to be value-free in this sense does not at all mean that values, in the sense of decisions about the historical= significance of observed phenomena, are absent. This is of course the central argument of Heinrich Rickert (1913) about the logical specificity of what he calls the "cultural sciences." They are unable to ignore "values" in the sense of assessing social significance. To be sure, the Western and social scientific presumptionsabout "civilization" were not entirely impervious to the concept of the multiplicity of "civilizations." Whenever one posed the question of the origin of civilized values, how it was that they have appeared originally (or so it was argued) in the modern Western world, the answer= almost inevitably was that they were the products of long-standing and unique trends in the past of the Western world - alternatively described as the heritage of Antiquity and/or of the Christian Middle Ages, the heritage of the Hebrew world, or the combined heritage of the two, the latter sometimes renamed and respecified as the Judeo-Christian heritage. Many objections can and have been made to the set of successive presumptions. Whether the modern world, or the modern European world, is civilized in the very way the word is used in European discourse has been challenged. There is the notable quip of Mahatma Gandhi who, when asked, "Mr. Gandhi, what do you think of Western civilization?", responded, "It would be a good idea." In addition, the assertion that the values of ancient Greece and Rome or of ancient Israel were more conducive to laying the base for these so-called modern values than were the values of other ancient civilizations has also been contested. And finally whether modern Europe can plausibly claim either Greece and Rome on the one hand or ancient Israel on the other as its civilizational foreground is not self-evident. Indeed, there has long been a debate between those who have seen Greece or Israel as alternative cultural origins. Each side of this debate has denied the plausibility of the alternative. This debate itself casts doubt on the plausibility of the derivation. In any case, who would argue that Japan can claim ancient Indic civilizations as its foreground on the grounds that they were the place of origin of Buddhism, which has become a central part of Japan's cultural history? Is the contemporary United States closer culturally to ancient Greece, Rome, or Israel than Japan is to Indic civilization? One could after all make the case that Christianity, far from representing continuity, marked a decisive break with Greece, Rome, and Israel. Indeed Christians, up to the Renaissance, made precisely this argument. And is not the break with Antiquity still today part of the doctrine of Christian churches? However, today, the sphere in which the argument about values has come to the fore is the political sphere. Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia has been very specific in arguing that Asian countries can and should "modernize" without accepting some or all of the values of European civilization. And his views have been widely echoed by other Asian political leaders. The "values" debate has also become central within European countries themselves, especially (but not only) within the United States, as a debate about "multiculturalism." This version of the current debate has indeed had a major impact on institutionalized social science, with the blossoming of structures within the university grouping scholars denying the premise of the singularity of something called "civilization." (4) Orientalism. Orientalism refers to a stylized and abstracted statement of the characteristics of non-Western civilizations. It is the obverse of the concept, "civilization," and has become a major theme in public discussion since the writings of= Anouar Abdel-Malek (1972 [1963]) and Edward Said (1978). Orientalism was not too long ago a badge of honor (see Smith, 1956). Orientalism is a mode of knowledge that claims roots in the European Middle Ages, when some intellectual Christian monks= set themselves the task of understanding better non-Christian religions, by learning their languages and reading carefully their religious texts. Of course, they based themselves on the premise of the truth of Christian faith and the desirability of converting the pagans, but nonetheless they took these texts seriously as expressions, however perverted, of human culture. When Orientalism was secularized in the nineteenth century,the form of the activity was not very different. Orientalists continued to learn the languages and decipher the texts. In the process, they continued to depend upon a binary view of the social= world. In partial place of the Christian/pagan distinction, they placed the Western/Oriental, or modern/non-modern distinction. In the social sciences, there emerged a long= line of famous polarities: military and industrial societies, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, mechanical and organic solidarity, traditional and rational-legal legitimation, statics and dynamics. Though these polarities were not usually direcly related to the literature on Orientalism, we should not forget that one of the earliest of these polarities was Maine's status and contract, and it was explicitly based on a comparison of Hindu and English legal systems. Orientalists saw themselves as persons who diligently expressed their sympathetic appreciation of a non-Western civilization by devoting their lives to erudite study of texts in order to understand (verstehen) the culture. The culture that they understood in this fashion was of course a construct, a social construct by someone coming from= a different culture. It is the validity of these constructs that has come under attack, at three different levels: it is said that the concepts do not fit the empirical reality; that they abstract too much and thus erase empirical variety; and that they are extrapolations of European prejudices. The attack against Orientalism was however more than an attack on poor scholarship. It was also a critique of the political consequences of such social science concepts. Orientalism was said to legitimate the dominant power position of Europe, indeed to play a primary role in the ideological carapace of Europe's imperial role within the framework of the modern world-system. The attack on Orientalism has become tied to the general attack on reification, and allied to the multiple efforts to deconstruct social science narratives. Indeed, it has been argued that some non-Western attempts to create a counterdiscourse of "Occidentalism" and that, for example, "all elite discourses of antitraditionalism in modern China, from the May Fourth movement to the 1989 Tienanmen student demonstration, have been extensively orientalized," (Chen 1992, 687), therein sustaining rather than undermining Orientalism . 5) Progress. Progress, its reality, its inevitability, was a basic theme of the European Enlightenment. Some would trace it back through all of Western philosophy (Bury 1920, Nisbet 1980). In any case, it became the consensus viewpoint of nineteenth-century Europe (and indeed remained so for most of the twentieth century as well). Social science, as it was constructed, was deeply imprinted with the theory of progress. Progress became the underlying explanation of the history of the world, and the rationale of almost all stage theories. Even more, it became the motor of all of applied social science. We were said to study social science in order better to understand the social world, because then we could more wisely and more surely accelerate progress everywhere (or at least help remove impediments in its path). The metaphors of evolution or of development were not merely attempts to describe; they were also incentives to prescribe. Social science became the advisor to (handmaiden of?) policy-makers from Bentham's panopticon to the Verein f=FCr Sozialpolitik, to the Beveridge Report and endless other governmental commissions, to Unesco's postwar series on racism, to the successive researches of James Coleman on the U.S. educational system. After the Second World War, the "development of underdeveloped countries" was a rubric which justified the involvement of social scientists of all political persuasions in the social and political reorganization of the non-Western world. Progress was not merely assumed or analyzed; it was imposed as well. This is perhaps not so different from the attitudes we discussed under the heading of "civilization." What needs to be underlined here is that, at the time when "civilization" began to be a category that had lost its innocence and attracted suspicions (primarily after 1945), "progress" as a category survived and was more than adequate to replace "civilization," smelling somewhat prettier. The idea of progress seemed to serve as the last redoubt of Eurocentrism, the fallback position. The idea of progress of course has always had conservative critics, although the vigor of their resistance could be said to have declined dramatically in the 1850-1950 period. But since at least 1968 the critics of the idea of progress have burst forth anew, with renewed vigor among the conservatives, and with newly-discovered faith on the left. There are however many different ways one can attack the idea of progress. One can suggest that what has been called progress is a false progress, but that a true progress exists, arguing that Europe's version was a delusion or an attempt to delude. Or one can suggest that there can be no such thing as progress, because of "original sin" or the eternal cycle of humanity. Or one can suggest that Europe has indeed known progress but that it is now trying to keep the fruits of progress from the rest of the world, as some non-Western critics of the ecology movement have argued. What is clear, however, is that for many the idea of progress has become labeled as a European idea, and hence has come under the attack on Eurocentrism. This attack is often however rendered quite contradictory by the efforts of other non-Westerners to appropriate progress for part or all of the non-Western world, pushing Europe out of the picture, but not progress. II The multiple forms of Eurocentrism and the multiple forms of the critique of Eurocentrism do not necessarily add up to a coherent picture. What we might do is try to assess the central debate. Institutionalized social science started as an activity in Europe, as we have noted. It has been charged with painting a false picture of social reality by misreading, grossly exaggerating, and/or distorting the historical role of Europe, particularly its historical role in the modern world. The critics fundamentally make, however, three different (and somewhat contradictory) kinds of claims. The first is that whatever it is that Europe did, other civilizations were also in the process of doing it, up to the moment that Europe used its geopolitical power to interrupt the process in other parts of the world. The second is that whatever Europe did is nothing more than a continuation of what others had already been doing for a long time, with the Europeans temporarily coming to the foreground. The third is that whatever Europe did has been analyzed incorrectly and subjected to inappropriate extrapolations, which have had dangerous consequences for both science and the political world. The first two arguments, widely offered, seem to me to suffer from what I would term "anti-Eurocentric Eurocentrism." The third argument seems to me to be undoubtedly correct, and deserves our full attention. What kind of curious animal could "anti-Eurocentric Eurocentrism" be? Let us take each of these arguments in turn. There have been throughout the twentieth century persons who have argued that, within the framework of say Chinese, or Indian, or Arab-Muslim "civilization," there existed both the cultural foundations and the socio-historical pattern of development that would have led to the emergence of full-fledged modern capitalism, or indeed was in the process of leading in that direction. In the case of Japan, the argument is often even stronger, asserting that modern capitalism did develop there, separately but temporally coincident with its development in Europe. The heart of most of these arguments is a stage theory of development (frequently its Marxist variant), from which it logically followed that different parts of the world were all on parallel roads to modernity or capitalism. This form of argument presumed both the distinctiveness and social autonomy of the various civilizational regions of the world on the one hand and their common subordination to an overarching pattern on the other. Since almost all the various arguments of this kind are specific to a given cultural zone and its historical development, it would be a massive exercise to discuss the historical plausibility of the case of each civilizational zone under discussion. I do not propose to do so here. What I would point out is one logical limitation to this line of argument whatever the region under discussion, and one general intellectual consequence. The logical limitation is very obvious. Even if it is true that various other parts of the world were going down the road to modernity/capitalism, perhaps were even far along this road, this still leaves us with the problem of accounting for the fact that it was the West, or Europe, that reached there first, and was consequently able to "conquer the world." At this point, we are back to the question as originally posed, why modernity/capitalism in the West? Of course, today there are some who are denying that Europe in a deep sense did conquer the world on the grounds that there has always been resistance, but this seems to me to be stretching our reading of reality. There was after all real colonial conquest that covered a large portion of the globe. There are after all real military indicators of European strength. No doubt there were always multiple forms of resistance, both active and passive, but if the resistance were truly so formidable, there would be nothing for us to discuss today. If we insist too much on non-European agency as a theme, we end up whitewashing all of Europe's sins, or at least most of them. This seems to= me not what the critics were intending. In any case, however temporary we deem Europe's domination to be, we still need to explain it. Most of the critics pursuing this line of argument are more interested in explaining how Europe interrupted an indigenous process in their part of the world than in explaining how it was that Europe was able to do this. Even more to the point, by attempting to diminish Europe's credit for this deed, this presumed "achievement," they reinforce the theme that it was an achievement. The theory makes Europe into= an "evil hero," no doubt evil, but also no doubt a hero in the dramatic sense of the term, for it was Europe that made the final spurt in the race and crossed the finish line first. And worse still, there is the implication, not too far beneath the surface, that, given half a chance, Chinese, or Indians, or Arabs not only could have, but would have, done the same, that is, launch modernity/capitalism, conquer the world,= exploit resources and people, and play themselves the role of evil hero. This view of modern history seems to be very Eurocentric in its anti-Eurocentrism, because it accepts the significance (that is, the value) of the European "achievement" in precisely the terms that Europe has defined it, and merely asserts that others could have done it too, or were doing it too. For some possibly accidental reason, Europe got a temporary edge on the others and interfered with their development forcibly.= The assertion that we others could have been Europeans too seems to me a very feeble way of opposing Eurocentrism, and actually reinforces the worst consequences of Eurocentric thought for social knowledge. The second line of opposition to Eurocentric analyses is that which denies that there is anything really new in what Europe did. This line of argument starts by pointing out that, as of the late Middle Ages, and indeed for a long time before that, western Europe was a manrginal (peripheral) area of the Eurasian continent, whose historical role and cultural achievements were below the level of various other parts of the= world (such as the Arab world or China).This is undoubtedly true, at least as a first-level generalization. A quick jump is then made to situating modern Europe within the construction of an ecumene or world structure that has been in creation for several thousand years (see various authors in Sanderson, 1995). This is not implausible, but the systemic meaningfulness o tthis ecumene has yet to be established, in my view. We then come to the third element in the sequence. It is said to follow from the prior marginality of western Europe and the millennial construction of a Eurasian world ecumene that whatever happened in western Europe was nothing special and= simply one more variant in the historical construction of a singular system. This latter argument seems to me conceptually and historically very wrong. I do not intend however to reargue this case (see Wallerstein, 1992a). I wish merely to underline the ways in which this is anti-Eurocentric Eurocentrism. Logically, it requires arguing that capitalism is nothing new, and indeed some of those who argue the continuity of the development of the Eurasian ecumene have explicitly taken this position.= Unlike the position of those who are arguing that a given other civilization was also en route to capitalism when Europe interfered with this process, the argument here is that we were all of us doing this together, and that there was no real development towards capitalism because the whole world (or at least the whole Eurasian ecumene) was always capitalist in some sense. Let me point out first of all that this is the classic position of the liberal economists. This is not really different from Adam Smith arguing that there exists a "propensity [in human nature] to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another" (1936, 13). It eliminates essential differences between different historical systems. If the Chinese, the Egyptians, and the Western Europeans have all been doing the same thing historically, in what sense are they different civilizations, or different historical systems? (per contra, see Amin 1991). In eliminating credit to Europe, is there any credit left to anyone except to pan-humanity? But again worst of all, by appropriating what modern Europe did for the balance-sheet of the Eurasian ecumene, we are accepting the essential ideological argument= of Eurocentrism, that modernity (or capitalism) is miraculous, and wonderful, and merely adding that everyone has always been doing it in one way or another. By= denying European credit, we deny European blame. What is so terrible about Europe's "conquest of the world" if it is nothing but the latest part of the ongoing march of the ecumene? Far from being a form of argument that is critical of Europe, it implies applause that Europe, having been a "marginal" part of the ecumene, at last learned the wisdom of the others (and elders) and applied it successfully.. And the unspoken clincher follows inevitably. If the Eurasian ecumene has been following a single thread for thousands of years, and the capitalist world-system is nothing new, then what possible argument is there that would indicate that this thread will not continue forever, or at least for an indefinitely long time? If capitalism did not begin in the sixteenth (or the eighteenth) century, it is surely not about to end in the twenty-first. Personally, I simply do not believe this, and I have made the case in several recent writings (Wallerstein, 1995; Hopkins & Wallerstein, 1996). My main point, however, here, is that this line of argument is in no way anti-Eurocentric, since it accepts the basic set of values that have been put forward by Europe in its period of world dominance, and thereby in fact denies and/or undermines competing value systems that were, or are, in honor in other parts of the world. I think we have to find sounder bases for being against Eurocentrism in social science, and sounder ways of pursuing this ob jective. For the third form of criticism that whatever Europe did has been analyzed incorrectly and subjected to inappropriate extra- polations, which have had dangerous consequences for both science and the political world is indeed true. I think we have to start with questioning the assumption that what Europe did was a positive achievement. I think we have to engage ourselves in making a care- ful balance-sheet of what has been accomplished by capitalist civ- ilization during its historical life, and assess whether the pluses are indeed greater than the minuses. This is something I tried once, and I encourage others to do the same (see Wallerstein, 1992b). My own balance-sheet is negative overall, and therefore I do not consider the capitalist system to have been evidence of hu- man progress. Rather, I consider it to have been the consequence of a breakdown in the historic barriers against this particular ver- sion of an exploitative system. I consider that the fact that Chi- na, India, the Arab world and other regions did not go forward to capitalism evidence that they were better immunized against the toxin, and to their historic credit. To turn their credit into something which they must explain away is to me the quintessential form of Eurocentrism. I would prefer to reconsider what is not universalist in the universalist doctrines that have emerged from the historical system that is capitalist, our modern world-system. The modern world-sys- tem has developed structures of knowledge that are significantly different from previous structures of knowledge. It is often said that what is different is the development of scientific thought. But it seems clear that this is not true, however splendid modern scientific advances are. Scientific thought long antedates the modern world, and is present in all major civilizational zones. This has been magistrally demonstrated for China in the corpus of work that Joseph Needham launched (Needham, 1954- ). What is specific to the structures of knowledge in the modern world-system is the concept of the "two cultures." No other historical system has instituted a fundamental divorce between science and philosophy/humanities, or what I think would be better characterized as the separation of the quest for the true and the quest for the good and the beautiful. Indeed, it was not all that easy to enshrine this divorce within the geoculture of the modern world-system. It took three centuries before the split was institutionalized. Today, however, it is fundamental to the geoculture, and forms the basis of our university systems. This conceptual split has enabled the modern world to put forward the bizarre concept of the value-neutral specialist, whose objective assessments of reality could form the basis not merely of engineering decisions (in the broadest sense of the term) but of socio-political choices as well. Shielding the scientists from collective assessment, and in effect merging them into the technocrats, did liberate scientists from the dead hand of intellectually irrelevant authority. But simultaneously, it removed the major underlying social decisions we have been taking for the last 500 years from substantive (as opposed to technical) scientific debate.The idea that science is over here and socio-political decisions are over there is the core concept that sustains Eurocentrism, since the only universalist propositions that have been acceptable are those which are Eurocentric. Any argument that reinforces this separation of the two cultures thus= sustains Eurocentrism. If one denies the specificity of the modern world, one has no plausible way of arguing for the reconstruction of knowledge structures, and therefore no plausible way of arriving at intelligent and substantively= rational alternatives to the existing world-system. In the last twenty years or so, the legitimacy of this divorce has been challenged for the first time in a significant way. This is the meaning of the ecology movement, for example. And this is the underlying central issue in the public attack on Eurocentrism. The challenges have resulted in so-called "science wars" and "culture wars," which have themselves often been obscurantist and obfuscating. If we are to emerge with a= reunited, and thereby non-Eurocentric, structure of knowledge, it is absolutely= essential that we not be diverted into sidepaths that avoid this central issue. If we= are to construct an alternative world-system to the one that is today in grievous crisis, we must treat simultaneously and inextricably the issues of the true and the good. And if we are to do that we have to recognize that something special= was indeed done by Europe in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries that did indeed transform the world, but in a direction whose negative consequences are upon us today. We must cease trying to deprive Europe of its specificity= on the deluded premise that we are thereby depriving it of an illegitimate credit. Quite the contrary. We must fully acknowledge the particularity of Europe's reconstruction of the world because only then will it be possible to transcend it, and to arrive hopefully at a more inclusively universalist vision of human possibility, one that avoids none of the difficult and imbricated problems of pursuing the true and the good in tandem. BIBLIOGRAPHY Abdel-Malek, Anouar (1972). La dialectique sociale. Paris: Seuil. [English: Civilisations and Social Theory, Volume I of Socia Dialectics. London: Macmillan,= 1981.] Amin, Samir (1991). "The Ancient World-Systems versus the Modern Capitalist World-System," Review, XIV, 3, Summer, 349-385. Bury, J. B. (1920). The Idea of Progress. London: Macmillan. Chen, Xiaomei (1992). "Occidentalism as Counterdiscourse: 'He Shang' in= Post-Mao China," Critical Inquiry, XVIII, 4, Summer, 686-712. Hopkins, Terence K. & Wallerstein, Immanuel, coord. (1996). The Age of Transition: Trajectory of the World-system, 1945-2025 London & New Jersey: Zed= Press. Jones, E. L. (1981), The European Miracle: Environment, Economics, and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Needham, Joseph (1954- ). Science and Civilisation in China. Multiple volumes in progress. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Nisbet, Robert A. (1980). History of the Idea of Progress. New York: Basic Books. Rickert, Heinrich (1913). Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung, 2. neu beart. aufl. Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr. [English: The Limits of Concept Formation in the Physical Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986.] Said, Edward (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. Sanderson, Stephen K., ed. (1995). Civilizations and World System: Studying World-Historical Change. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira. Smith, Adam (1939 [1776]). The Wealth of Nations. New York: Modern Library. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell (1956). "The Place of Oriental Studies in a University, " Diogenes, No. 16, 106-111. Wallerstein, Immanuel (1992a). "The West, Capitalism, and the Modern World-System," Review, XV, 4, Fall, 561-619. Wallerstein, Immanuel (1992b). "Capitalist Civilization," Wei Lun Lecture Series II, Chinese University Bulletin, No. 23 [reproduced in Historical Capitalism, with Capitalist Civilization (London: Verso, 1995)]. Wallerstein, Immanuel (1995). After Liberalism. New York: New Press. Immanuel Wallerstein iwaller@binghamton.edu Fernand Braudel Center Binghamton University Binghamton, NY 13902-6000 USA Tel: (1) (607) 777-4924 FAX: (i) (607) 777-4315 From chriscd@jhu.edu Wed Dec 4 07:51:54 1996 04 Dec 1996 09:51:35 -0500 (EST) 04 Dec 1996 09:51:15 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 04 Dec 1996 09:52:44 -0500 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: david wilkinson's article in JWSR To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu Organization: Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.21218 USA This to announce that the Journal of World-Systems Research has just published a valuable article by David Wilkinson, "World-economic theories and problems: Quigley vs. Wallerstein vs. Central Civilization." This essay, written originally in 1988, compares and critiques the Wallersteinian world-systems perspective and Carroll Quigley's theory of the evolution of civilizations from the point of view of Wilkinson's own "Central Civilization" approach. It is relevant to the many important issues surrounding the comparative study of world-systems and new theories of social evolution. Wilkinson's piece is in Volume 2, # 17 of the Journal of World-Systems Research. The address is http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/jwsr.html From wwagar@binghamton.edu Wed Dec 4 09:06:29 1996 From: wwagar@binghamton.edu Date: Wed, 4 Dec 1996 11:07:14 -0500 (EST) To: immanuel wallerstein Subject: Re: eurocentrism In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19961203160950.2057c702@mail.binghamton.edu> Dear Immanuel, Bravo! And amen. Warren From albert@U.Arizona.EDU Wed Dec 4 10:39:33 1996 Date: Wed, 4 Dec 1996 10:39:18 -0700 (MST) From: Albert J Bergesen To: immanuel wallerstein Subject: Re: eurocentrism In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19961203160950.2057c702@mail.binghamton.edu> I think we now have our own "two cultures", and Immanuel's post on eurocentricism reaffirms one side: Arab, Chinese, Indian civilizations, he argues, were immune to the "toxin" that is/was capitalism and the European west was not. This position, not all that different from its earlier formulation in Marx and Weber in the sense of preserving the great divide between East and West, is now opposed by the other view: there is/was no eurodifference in the realm of economic practice from the rest of the world. An euroadvantage emerged, yes, but that is a shift of centers within a preexisting and long in place world economy rather than the emergence of capitalism. Immanuel is "holding the tiller firm", the conceptual tiller of Marx and Weber, that of the greate divide, of Europe--vs.--the--rest. The moral evaluation of the euro difference also remains as it was with Marx--negative, capitalism having done less rather than more good. Where we go from here remains to be seen. We seem to have hit something of wall. Either one belives in the difference the west supposedly made, or one doesn't. My sense is that the facts of the case will continue to accumulte, with Gunder's manuscript on the unity of it all being the most complete statement of the no-difference position to date. We will argue back and forth, debate this and that. But if the Kuhn idea has any validity then paradigmatic shift will not be the result of accumulating facts about Chinese production of porcelin for export, but of some sort of theoretic reformulation or breakthrough. That has yet to happen. For the social science part of all this--the Marx and Weber that is theory/concept/analyitical structure/derivations/etc.--change will come with another such model, framework, conceptualization, theory, etc. that replaces/absorbs Marx Weber appears. Questioning eurocentricism is part of the replacement process; moving on to more deeply question Marx Weber and the euro-difference is another part. The capstone probably remains a formulation that obviates the east/west dichotomy which still remains at the conceptual heart of Marx (asiatic mode vs. capitalism) Weber (western rationality/capitalist spirit vs. eastern traditionalism). That is somewhere off in the future. 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 kjkhoo@pop.jaring.my Wed Dec 4 19:18:07 1996 Date: Thu, 5 Dec 1996 10:17:54 +0800 In-Reply-To: References: <2.2.16.19961203160950.2057c702@mail.binghamton.edu> To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: KHOO Khay Jin Subject: Re: eurocentrism While Albert Bergesen has a point re I Wallerstein's post wrt Arab, Chinese, Indian civilizations being immune to the toxin of capitalism, it seems to me that he misses the main thrust of the post -- Eurocentric anti-Eurocentrism -- as well as the question-begging, if not worse, that such anti-Eurocentrism entails. True, I Wallerstein's suggestion of some kind of immunity puts us (non-Europeans) in a position of absolute difference (and hence might be considered "orientalist" in some sense), the other view would deny any difference (hence, equally "orientalist"). Wallerstein's suggestion of an immunity would, in the light of Europe's onslaught, only serve to show up the tremendous weakness of that immunity, if it existed -- the ease and speed with which the core values of capitalism (in literary form, Shakespeare's portrayal of money in the Merchant of Venice, I believe) undermines other value systems and social relations is nothing short of shocking. Marx's great insight was to acknowledge the difference of the non-European orders (if sometimes in highly distasteful fashion), yet recognize: (i) the greatly different order that Europe had arrived at in the course of the 16-18 C, (ii) its great power to re-shape all others, and (iii) its positive and negative features, which could not be teased apart, but were fatally imbricated (much like Goethe's recognition of modernity as a pact with the devil). In this, pace I Wallerstein's reference to Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia, Marx at least recognized that it is not so easy, if not impossible, to disentangle the technological and other achievements of modernization from the value system in which it is embedded. Marx's belief in the possibility of a revolution as a means by which such a re-embedding could be forged is, in the light of the experience of the last 70 years, somewhat in doubt. Re Wallerstein's proposal that the starting point is a negative valuation of capitalism/modernity -- if that serves to put a stop to work of the "we could have done it too, if only you hadn't come and buggered us up", then it would have served a useful function. We (speaking, presumptiously, for the non-European) had much to be proud, and equally, to be ashamed of and we have to come to terms with our own history not in terms of whether we can achieve what Europe has (as symbolized by Prime Minister Mahathir's pride in the Malaysian attempt to scale Mt Everest - the symbol of man's conquest and triumph over nature, or demonstrations by some Muslim intellectuals that European medicine and science drew much, if not all, from the medical and scientific knowledge of Muslim societies) -- that still situates Europe as the yardstick. But I'm not sure we know any more what other terms of assessment there could be, having been imbued by the notions of modernity from which, I think, there can be no turning back. Pace A Bergessen, and at the risk of being pedantic, it is surely inaccurate to suggest that "the moral evaluation of the euro difference also remains as it was with Marx -- negative, capitalism having done less rather than more good". I think any balanced reading of Marx would come to something like the opposite conclusion, i.e. that in the beginning capitalism did bring more rather than less good, but that subsequently it becomes an obstacle to the attainment of even greater good, then becoming a negative force. Pace the discussion, Bergessen is, I think, partially mistaken in believing that what is needed is "some sort of theoretic reformulation or breakthrough." The problem, it seems to me, is insufficient attention to detail. The fact of porcelain production for export, of land for sale and rent, of accumulation of wealth, without equal attention to the value systems and orders in which such activities were embedded, can and will always lead to overly facile conclusions deriving from some paradigmatic assumptions about the nature of the world, European and non-European. Work on grand histories, admirable and awe-some as such work often is, does not allow the attention to detail of close-up micro-studies. And such micro-studies are often lacking for whole segments of the non-European world, partly because of the manner in which non-European source materials are often treated, e.g. when such source materials tell of wondrous tales and the existence of creatures and events that the modern European cannot believe in, the European looks to interpret those texts in some other way when perhaps those tales and creatures and events are real to the non-European orders from which they derive and tell us plenty about the situating of other, dare one say, more purely economic activities. Finally, with no desire/felt need to defend Marx or Weber, surely their views, on matters empirical, were somewhat more complex than the dichotomous schemes that Bergessen suggests. Specifically, Weber's dichotomies were surely conceptual constructs which never applied in toto in specific empirical contexts except in some kind of more or less, rather than absolute, fashion. Thus, all social orders surely had to have some degree of instrumental logic -- the necessity to survive would see to it -- but not all would carry that to its ultimate (as European societies would pride themselves on doing, although even they don't quite achieve that in absolute fashion -- friendship being an instance, unless one is cynical enough to deny the existence of genuine friendship). So also, it is somewhat misleading to pose the asiatic mode vs capitalism as proof of Marx's dichotomous thinking rather than to see in it an attempt to deal with what must have been for him somewhat puzzling differences between European feudalism or slavery and the social orders existing in India or China. He may have been wrong -- should that be surprising -- but the recognition is/was of value. Latter day marxists were indeed guilty of a eurocentrism in attempting to assimilate all social orders to that described for Europe. Khay Jin From agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca Thu Dec 5 08:33:02 1996 Date: Thu, 5 Dec 1996 10:33:45 -0500 (EST) From: "A. Gunder Frank" To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: eurocentric postings 1. Wallerstein wants all to hold the tiller firm. that means continuing in the same direction, which he seems to find aceptable, except when he criticizes where we are going, eg at the 1996 ASA and in the G. Commission Report. I find that direzction [and where we have been] unacceptable, and as evidence submit 2. Khoo Kay Jin whose p;osting is even more classical and eurocentric than Wallerstein's in MIS-reading the events of the 16-19th centuries and rejecting the need for a realy holistic world history, so that I propose 3. shifting direction of the tiller as by, for instance, books forthcoming by Ken Pomeranz and Bin Wong at UC IRvine, not to mention A.G Frank, which RE-read/write this history from a wider systemic and comparative pespective on the past, and thereby for the future, which does indeed take exception to some "exceptionalisms" claimed by Wallerstein and Khoo, folloowing Marx and Weber, et al, while waiting for 4. an altogether NEW boat to be built that Al Bergesen calls for but does not [yet?] offer any new shipyard/s or construction/ive? methods for and 5. to make NO mention of the unmentionable posting by Warran Wagar by which "have you stopped beating your wife? Answer: I am not married" pales in comparison, but yes to take exception to Wallerstein's claim that claiming to refute some exceptionalities alledgedly turns evil into good. Nonsense! and Non-sequitur!! respectfully submitted [with delay due to absence and now in rush] by gunder frank From albert@U.Arizona.EDU Thu Dec 5 09:53:06 1996 Date: Thu, 5 Dec 1996 09:52:48 -0700 (MST) From: Albert J Bergesen To: KHOO Khay Jin Subject: Re: eurocentrism In-Reply-To: In reply to Khoo Khay Jin: We are getting a little rarified here, if not in some do loop. To argue that anti-eurocentricism is but eurocentricism is putting way to fine a point on this, as it is to argue that anti-orientalism is but another form of orientalism. It isn't all that complex. To repeat: the heart of social science theory has been about the unique difference of the west that led to its rise--whether class relations or cultural relations, that is, whether Marx or Weber. This now seems increasingly doubtful given a fuller understanding of Asian economic activity. The differences are disappearing. Thats all. The implication, though, is profound: Marx and Weber may have gotten it wrong, since their schemes are built on such differences. Therefore, either one drops back down to the difference position or think of a new position that has both east and west as components in a larger world economy. Theorizing that larger socio-economic frame, is, if we want to get beyond the east/west dichotomy, what we need to do. And that, would be a paradigm shift. As to your specific proposals, while we need facts, getting the record right, etc. I cannot see at this moment how a call for more "micro" analysis will get us to transcend the east/west divide. Nor do I feel that the "values", ideology, culture, etc. is as much of a key as the actual material workings of the historical world economy. Finally, looking for a larger frame is not meant to reduce anyone to an europerspective. It is to find a frame that will include both east and west. If such a theoretic frame involves a loss of Orientalist difference that you prefer, then, well, we are at something of a standstill. My feeling is that we cannot have it both ways: we cannot want a good orientalism that recognizes Difference, the Other, and so on, and yet also want a theory of the world economy that makes both east and west but component parts. At least not in the extreme. Differences will and do exist. There is no argument here. The real issue has always been are they determinate of the differences between east and west. The growing sentiment is that they are not. If not, then what is, for there are differences. The feeling is that difference-production lies with the logic/workings of the larger AFroeurasian world historical economic system, which included both east and west. Again: the rise of the west is increasingly seen as an hegemonic shift within the Afroeurasian world economy, not the rise of an European based modern world-system. Similarly, the "rise" of asian economies at the end of the 20th century is not new, but a shift of centerness back to where it had been for centuries prior to the Euro-North American interlude from roughly 1750-2050. 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 DASSBACH@MTU.EDU Thu Dec 5 12:30:50 1996 From: "Carl H.A. Dassbach" To: "wsn" Subject: Call for papers Date: Thu, 5 Dec 1996 14:28:49 -0500 I am looking for papers on non-North American views of the Internet - how do people outside North America perceive the Internet etc, etc. These could either be regional, European, Asia, South American, African, etc. or national, French, Chinese, Japanese etc. These paper are for the first volume "The Internet Revolution" of an annual printed volume of original essay on the Internet entitled DYNAMICS OF THE INTERNET. I admit there is some irony in the printing of such a volume (as opposed to its electronic publication) but many of us in academia find that standards and criteria of a different era dictate what we should do in order to receive institutional recognition or rewards. Please e-mail me at the address below. Thank you, Carl Dassbach --------------------------- 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 ba05105@binghamton.edu Thu Dec 5 14:28:08 1996 From: ba05105@binghamton.edu Date: Thu, 5 Dec 1996 16:28:53 -0500 (EST) To: immanuel wallerstein Subject: Re: eurocentrism In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19961203160950.2057c702@mail.binghamton.edu> Just a note on the debate in the wake of IW's posted lecture on Eurocentrism. Was anyone else struck by the way the debate dwelt entirely on his critique of this bulletin board's favorite theory (the AfroEurasian world economy) which constituted a fairly small portion of the article, and, by the same token, the way the debate has entirely ignored his main point, about the significance of the split between two cultures (that's humanities and science, not, as some here appear to believe, East and West)? I personally find this line of thinking, which he has been developing in a number of places, to be potentially a good deal more fruitful in terms of expanding and deepening world systems perspective than either the extremely economistic view of history which generally dominates debates here (including this one) or the loopy political fantasies which occasionally interrupt it. It would be more fruitful to critique and/or strengthen this central element of his argument than to further remain lodged in critiquing one quarter of it. Steven Sherman Binghamton University By the way, do any other Western Hemisphere inhabitants feel a bit slighted by the pretense that there was nothing much changing in the 'Afro-Eurasian' system in the last five hundred years? From TBOS@social-sci.ss.emory.edu Fri Dec 6 16:46:55 1996 From: "Terry Boswell" Organization: Social Sciences, Emory Univ. To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 18:44:05 EST5EDT Subject: Delivery failure In the recent debates, two definitions "system" are floating around that I think are leading people to talk past one another. One is a "strong" definition of system, in which actors form a system if they have an interdependent division of labor that includes the basic necessities for life among the majority of the system's population. A "weak" definition is a system is simply any group of actors that regularly interact in meaningful ways. Both definitions are appropriate, and some of the disagreement (perhaps unknowingly) is over which definition people are using and at what time. Both can be "world" rather than societal in scope, in the sense that the system comprises a 'world' if the actors are multiple cultures, states, and societies. One, admittedly awkard way to distinguish the defintions is a world-system (with hyphen) meaning the strong sense of the term and a world system (without hyphen) meaning the weak definition. By a "weak" definition, I do not mean inconsequential. Sometimes weak ties are more important than strong ones (as in predicting employment patterns). The international state system is a set of "weak" ties (i.e., it is not a state-system or an empire). But, the interaction of states has led to devastaing wars. Perhaps he will again disagree, but my impression is that what Gunder is describing prior to 1500 is a world system, not a world-system. The way I see it is that prior to 1500 we had a variety of world-systems, some of which were connected by a Afroeurasian world system (and others in the Americas and parts of Oceania and central Africa that were left out). By 1650, the European centered capitalist world-system had incorporated most of the Afroeurasian world system, along with several of the world-systems in the Americas, the west coast of Africa, and the East Indies. In some ways, the incorporation was not fully complete until the conquest of central Africa in the 1880s, but most of it was done by 1820. There is an old debate on whether to use 1820 or 1650 as the point of qualitative change in the system, that seems to be mixed in with the current discussion as well. For Europe, the Americas, the west coast of Africa, and the East Indies, the qualitative difference between 1500 and 1650 is, I think, obvious. Another question is Al Bergesen's search for a new paradigm. I will respond to that in a different post. Thanks for reading, TB Terry Boswell Department of Sociology Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322 From agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca Fri Dec 6 19:18:47 1996 Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 21:19:34 -0500 (EST) From: "A. Gunder Frank" To: Terry Boswell Subject: Re: Delivery failure Yes indeed, that IS a DELIVERY FAILURE - at least from me Gunder to Terry B, who does NOT get NONE of the points i am making, apparently. Question is is the faoilure in the sender, the recipient, or in the transmission, none of the above, or all of the above, cheerfully transmitted gunder frank On Fri, 6 Dec 1996, Terry Boswell wrote: > Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 18:44:05 EST5EDT > From: Terry Boswell > To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK > Subject: Delivery failure > > In the recent debates, two definitions "system" are floating around > that I think are leading people to talk past one another. One is a > "strong" definition of system, in which actors form a system if they > have an interdependent division of labor that includes the basic > necessities for life among the majority of the system's population. > A "weak" definition is a system is simply any group of actors that > regularly interact in meaningful ways. > > Both definitions are appropriate, and some of the disagreement > (perhaps unknowingly) is over which definition people are using and > at what time. Both can be "world" rather than societal in scope, in > the sense that the system comprises a 'world' if the actors are > multiple cultures, states, and societies. One, admittedly awkard way > to distinguish the defintions is a world-system (with hyphen) meaning > the strong sense of the term and a world system (without hyphen) > meaning the weak definition. By a "weak" definition, I do not mean > inconsequential. Sometimes weak ties are more important than strong > ones (as in predicting employment patterns). The international state > system is a set of "weak" ties (i.e., it is not a state-system or an > empire). But, the interaction of states has led to devastaing wars. > > Perhaps he will again disagree, but my impression is that what > Gunder is describing prior to 1500 is a world system, not a > world-system. The way I see it is that prior to 1500 we had a > variety of world-systems, some of which were connected by a > Afroeurasian world system (and others in the Americas and parts of > Oceania and central Africa that were left out). By 1650, the > European centered capitalist world-system had incorporated most of > the Afroeurasian world system, along with several of the world-systems > in the Americas, the west coast of Africa, and the East Indies. In > some ways, the incorporation was not fully complete until the > conquest of central Africa in the 1880s, but most of it was done by > 1820. There is an old debate on whether to use 1820 or 1650 as the > point of qualitative change in the system, that seems to be mixed in > with the current discussion as well. For Europe, the Americas, the > west coast of Africa, and the East Indies, the qualitative difference > between 1500 and 1650 is, I think, obvious. > > Another question is Al Bergesen's search for a new paradigm. I will > respond to that in a different post. > > Thanks for reading, > TB > Terry Boswell > Department of Sociology > Emory University > Atlanta, GA 30322 > From albert@U.Arizona.EDU Sat Dec 7 12:34:56 1996 Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 12:34:51 -0700 (MST) From: Albert J Bergesen To: wsn wsn , KHOO Khay Jin Subject: Re: eurocentrism In-Reply-To: Khay Jin and WSNers: What intrigues me at least with the idea of something of system, or society, or trade web, or world economy that is broader than east or west, that includes both, is the impication that has for classic social theory, and particularly Marx and Weber. The interest, then, is about the possibilities of a larger and longer web of east west ties than previously built into theories of capitalist development, the rise of the west, modernization, etc. There is a lot more to Marx/Weber than their separation of things western (capitalist relations of production, or protestat ethic rationalism) from things eastern (asiatic mode of production, traditionalism) but it has become a central taken for granted assumption, or received knowledge, about the world. I guess the appearance of economic dynamics in east asia today along with the years that have passed since the initial formulation by Marx and Weber have led to a growing questioning of some of their basic paradigmatic assumptions. >From this point of view I am the one doing the rarified analysizing, pulling out only certain parts of a rich body of thought to make only certain points. And from the ponit of view of your research in the village all this does seem pretty thin. I won't disagree. But a simplification is, I think, somewhat necessary to get the the heart of things, or of paradigms, and maybe it is an oversimplification or even a distortion that is necessary for one to leave one paradigm and propose another. I think of Marx's Robinsoe Caruso story to make fun of classical economic models. It was say overdrawn. Martin Luther's writings are often like a crazy mad man making all sorts of wild charges about the Pope and the church. Here, I think, at the end of the 20th century, haveing been saddled with the assumptions of Marx and Weber and all their descendants who have really only modifed and not replaced their basic outlooks, we, of thoretical bent in professional social science, are looking for a new framework, a new way of seeing things. What Gunder contributes is, among many things, is to present before us just a slice of the facts and realities of Chinese/Indian/Arabic economic activity, institutions, etc. that operated just fine and were not sloth-like, traditional, steeped in tradion, lacking innovation, and all the other things that are part of most all macro level social science thinking from Marx/Weber to Polanyi throughWittfogel to even Wallerstein (where it is in Europe, and from European crisises, that the world system emerges to spread elsewhere and incorporate others into this world economic system). Europe was already part of a world system--it did not create one. And the issue really becomes paradigmatic. You know, one can see the ancient near east, the early modern west, or 1500-1800 China/Asia as separate systems, or as hegemonic centers of one humanocentric system. The center could have been in the ancient hear east, then China/India, then Europe/North America and now back to China/Japan/East Asia. That is a different perspective than seeing these as separate systems which rise and fall because of their own internal dynamics. And that is the key theoretical point being implicitly raised: the rise of the west is the rise of capitalism is the rise of the capitalist mode of production from the feudal mode of production is the story Marx tells. Everything is endogenous to the West. For Weber the reply or counter is still intra-west: it is that the rise of the west is the rise of rationalism is the rise of protestantism is a change in western religious systems is, therefore, endogenous to the west. So, from a global point of view Marx and Weber are the same--endogenists. Wallerstein was supposedly a world system, but where did it come from: again endogenistic origin--the crisis of feudalism in the west led it to reach out to the rest of the world. So, from Marx to Weber to Wallerstein they differ, of course, but they are also the same in that they all believe in the endogenous nature of fundamental change in the west that led to its altered state in the world. Standing against this position is the new paradigm that has the west already in an alrready existing world system--the afroeurasian long term world economy. So, from this assumption (i) Europle/the west could not be the origin of the world-system, for it already existed; (ii) change in the west did occur, yes, but since it was part of a larger system that must be factored in to understand the change that took place, and (iii) that change may actually be a consequence, not a cause, of changes in the largher encompassing afroeurasian world economy. Therefore (iv) the distinctiveness or exceptionalism of the west AS THE ORIGIN OF ITS RISE is probably not so, for those differences (if they do exist and there is a debate here) are probably the CONSEQUENCE of changes within the afroeurasian system as a whole. Global systemic change led to the shift in centers, or the few hundred year ascendence of the west, and global system ic changes are leading to the return of centerness to Asia. This is not to say that during those years there wasn't colonialism, or pain, conquest, control exerted by Europe over the rest of the world--thats a fact. But surges of peoples, conquests, terror has gone bacvk and forth across parts of the world, and it may very well be that with technological development the European expansion was more severe than others prior--although arguments about the Huns and Mongols could be made. But looking to the future, and lets assume an Asian dominated 21st century who is to say that the use of weapons there, or holocausts there, will not lead to things being done that were not done before, and for the 21st century to be considered the most brutal yet. Is that Asians? Was 19th century colonialism, 20th century nuclear war and holocaust European? Yes. But it is also the world historical system with power centere in different parts and being exercised by those parts. I don't want to dismiss responsibioity for what was done, but the world continues to unfold and what will be done will have to wait and be seen. So, that is some of the reasoning behind this disquiet with Marx/Weber/Wallerstein. It is some of the reasoning behind this search for a broader view and for some social science paradigm that closes the east west divide. Not to eliminate the differencesw that are there, but to better understand the interconnectedness that has been there and to try and grasp the effects it may have had upon the way to have lived. Theorizing capitalism by Marx and Weber was such an effort at what they thought was the collective totality in their time. But their totality only went as far as the west--the east was different in essential belief and mode of production. The more we know about eastern economies, the more we know about the actual connections between east and west, about how the silver from Peru ends up in China, the more we now question the reality of that divide between the so called capitalist, modernist, west and the tranditionalist, backwardnest, rest. 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 Dec 7 14:47:05 1996 Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 16:47:39 -0500 (EST) From: "A. Gunder Frank" To: Albert J Bergesen Paulo Frank Subject: Re: eurocentrism In-Reply-To: THAT = what Bergensen says = is what I have been trying to say, first in my 1991 critique of Wallerstein [reprinted in Frank & Gills 1993] then in my 1994/95 critique of Braudel and Wallerstein [eg. in Sanderson ed. 1995] and now at much greater length and not limited to the CRITIQUE of received theory from Marx Weber to Wallerstein [and Frank!], bur extending to offering an ALTERNATIVE, which is also not limited to showing that Asia did OK [as Bergesen correctly attributes to me] -- indeed did MORE and BETTER until 1800 - but offering a WORLD economic analyis of why the East "declined" and the West "rose" [cyclically=temporarily!] and HOW they did so IN RELATION to each other, both as part and parcel of a truly WORLD SYSTEM [NO hypen!] structure and dynamic, which far exceeds in time and space the Wallersteinian "capitalist" "modern world-system" [with a hyphen]. Only Bergesen and his literally literary skills say it much better and much shorter! [When my son Paulo was 15 years old, he said in one sentence what it took me several books to TRY to say: "If Latin America was colonial, it could NOT have been feudal." In "our" terminology, it could not have been feudal if it was part and parcel of the "world-system." We [ I dunno if at the age of 33 Paulo now wants to or not, but apparently Bergesen and I are doing so] might extend the same idea/wording to read "IF EUROPE WAS PART OF THE WORLD SYSTEM, IT COULD NOT HAVE BEEN "capitalist." Much less could Europe have been the locus/inventor of "capitalism"! Happy Pearl Harbor Day!! - reflect on that!!! Gunder Frank n Sat, 7 Dec 1996, Albert J Bergesen wrote: > Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 12:34:51 -0700 (MST) > From: Albert J Bergesen > To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK > Subject: Re: eurocentrism > > Khay Jin and WSNers: What intrigues me at least with the idea of > something of system, or > society, or trade web, or world economy that is broader than east or west, > that includes both, is the impication that has for classic social theory, > and particularly Marx and Weber. The interest, then, is about the > possibilities of a larger and longer web of east west ties than previously > built into theories of capitalist development, the rise of the west, > modernization, etc. There is a lot more to Marx/Weber than their > separation of things western (capitalist relations of production, or > protestat ethic rationalism) from things eastern (asiatic mode of > production, traditionalism) but it has become a central taken for granted > assumption, or received knowledge, about the world. I guess the > appearance of economic dynamics in east asia today along with the years > that have passed since the initial formulation by Marx and Weber have led > to a growing questioning of some of their basic paradigmatic assumptions. > > >From this point of view I am the one doing the rarified analysizing, > pulling out only certain parts of a rich body of thought to make only > certain points. And from the ponit of view of your research in the > village all this does seem pretty thin. I won't disagree. > > But a simplification is, I think, somewhat necessary to get the the heart > of things, or of paradigms, and maybe it is an oversimplification or even > a distortion that is necessary for one to leave one paradigm and propose > another. I think of Marx's Robinsoe Caruso story to make fun of classical > economic models. It was say overdrawn. Martin Luther's writings are often > like a crazy mad man making all sorts of wild charges about the Pope and > the church. Here, I think, at the end of the 20th century, haveing been > saddled with the assumptions of Marx and Weber and all their descendants > who have really only modifed and not replaced their basic outlooks, we, of > thoretical bent in professional social science, are looking for a new > framework, a new way of seeing things. What Gunder contributes is, among > many things, is to present before us just a slice of the facts and > realities of Chinese/Indian/Arabic economic activity, institutions, etc. > that operated just fine and were not sloth-like, traditional, steeped in > tradion, lacking innovation, and all the other things that are part of > most all macro level social science thinking from Marx/Weber to Polanyi > throughWittfogel to even Wallerstein (where it is in Europe, and from European > crisises, that the world system emerges to spread elsewhere and > incorporate others into this world economic system). Europe was already > part of a world system--it did not create one. > > And the issue really becomes paradigmatic. You know, one can see the > ancient near east, the early modern west, or 1500-1800 China/Asia as > separate systems, or as hegemonic centers of one humanocentric system. > The center could have been in the ancient hear east, then China/India, > then Europe/North America and now back to China/Japan/East Asia. That is > a different perspective than seeing these as separate systems which rise > and fall because of their own internal dynamics. And that is the key > theoretical point being implicitly raised: the rise of the west is the > rise of capitalism is the rise of the capitalist mode of production from > the feudal mode of production is the story Marx tells. Everything is > endogenous to the West. For Weber the reply or counter is still > intra-west: it is that the rise of the west is the rise of rationalism is > the rise of protestantism is a change in western religious systems is, > therefore, endogenous to the west. So, from a global point of view Marx > and Weber are the same--endogenists. Wallerstein was supposedly a world > system, but where did it come from: again endogenistic origin--the crisis > of feudalism in the west led it to reach out to the rest of the world. > So, from Marx to Weber to Wallerstein they differ, of course, but they are > also the same in that they all believe in the endogenous nature of > fundamental change in the west that led to its altered state in the world. > > > Standing against this position is the new paradigm that has the west > already in an alrready existing world system--the afroeurasian long term > world economy. So, from this assumption (i) Europle/the west could not be > the origin of the world-system, for it already existed; (ii) change in the > west did occur, yes, but since it was part of a larger system that must be > factored in to understand the change that took place, and (iii) that > change may actually be a consequence, not a cause, of changes in the > largher encompassing afroeurasian world economy. Therefore (iv) the > distinctiveness or exceptionalism of the west AS THE ORIGIN OF ITS RISE is > probably not so, for those differences (if they do exist and there is a > debate here) are probably the CONSEQUENCE of changes within the > afroeurasian system as a whole. Global systemic change led to the shift > in centers, or the few hundred year ascendence of the west, and global > system ic changes are leading to the return of centerness to Asia. > > This is not to say that during those years there wasn't colonialism, or > pain, conquest, control exerted by Europe over the rest of the > world--thats a fact. But surges of peoples, conquests, terror has gone > bacvk and forth across parts of the world, and it may very well be that > with technological development the European expansion was more severe than > others prior--although arguments about the Huns and Mongols could be made. > But looking to the future, and lets assume an Asian dominated 21st century > who is to say that the use of weapons there, or holocausts there, will not > lead to things being done that were not done before, and for the 21st > century to be considered the most brutal yet. Is that Asians? Was 19th > century colonialism, 20th century nuclear war and holocaust European? > Yes. But it is also the world historical system with power centere in > different parts and being exercised by those parts. I don't want to > dismiss responsibioity for what was done, but the world continues to > unfold and what will be done will have to wait and be seen. > > So, that is some of the reasoning behind this disquiet with > Marx/Weber/Wallerstein. It is some of the reasoning behind this search > for a broader view and for some social science paradigm that closes the > east west divide. Not to eliminate the differencesw that are there, but > to better understand the interconnectedness that has been there and to try > and grasp the effects it may have had upon the way to have lived. > > > Theorizing capitalism by Marx and Weber was such an effort at what they > thought was the collective totality in their time. But their totality > only went as far as the west--the east was different in essential belief > and mode of production. The more we know about eastern economies, the > more we know about the actual connections between east and west, about how > the silver from Peru ends up in China, the more we now question the > reality of that divide between the so called capitalist, modernist, west > and the tranditionalist, backwardnest, rest. > > > > > 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 esommer@direct.ca Sat Dec 7 19:16:46 1996 Date: Sat, 07 Dec 1996 17:37:20 -0800 To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: esommer@direct.ca (eric steven sommer) Subject: Re: eurocentrism Hi Albert, I'm a member of the world systems mailing list but have been quesent in the list of late due to other activities. I wanted, however, to just send you this private `side-bar' to say I liked - and learned from - your analysis of the world system as one humanocentric world system, with hegemonic centers rising and falling in different geographic locales. This `more wholistic' account of human history and affairs is a means of giving due weight to particular epoches (hegemonic centers), while maintaining a clear view of the network of interactions between all cultures and geogrphic locales. Thanks for the ideas. Bye the way, if you're interested in social liberation, you might want to check out the Stewards Planetary House website, whose URL is cited below in the signature line at the end of this e-mail letter. Thanks, Eric Sommer, CEO, Advanced Data Management, and member of Stewards Planetary House ====================== The Stewards Planetary House ========================== "Organizing the Planetary Underclass of working and non-working poor people as the Stewards or caretakers of the World." Website address: http://www.InstantWeb.com/P/Planet/sphhome.htm ============================================================================== =======================Personal Information ================================ Information on the Center for Total Human development and my personal projects and networking document: http://www.InstantWeb.com/P/Planet/ ============================================================================== From TBOS@social-sci.ss.emory.edu Sun Dec 8 21:31:21 1996 From: "Terry Boswell" Organization: Social Sciences, Emory Univ. To: tbos@social-sci.ss.emory.edu, wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Sun, 8 Dec 1996 23:27:57 EST5EDT Subject: world system or world-system? "World system or world-system?" was the original title of my previous post. A mishap in our misbegotten computer system was responsible for the mistake of changing it to "delivery failure." At least Gunder enjoyed the computer's editing. I thought some definitional clarity might resolve some of our differences, and despite claims to the contrary, there were several significant points of agreement in the rejoinders. Gunder agreed that the pre-1500 Afroeurasian system was a world system (without hyphen, i.e., a set actors with meaningful interactions) and not a world-system (with hyphen, i.e., a densely interacting set of actors with a division of labor that encompases the basic neccessities of life of the majority of the population). I do not know when (or even if) he thinks it became an integrated world- system (1650?, 1820?, 1989?). More important, however, is agreeing on the concepts, as resolution now depends on empirical evidence on the degree of integration and division of labor in the system to say if and how it changed from one type to the other (or at least moreso, if we do not get lost in the politics of "centrisms"). If one agrees that the loose Afroeurasian world system became an integrated world-system, then one needs a theory of transformation (what I call of the rise of capitalism and no better name has been suggested). The transformation thus cannot simply be a cycle or shift in the old A system, as Al seems to claim. In fact, the empircal story being told by all concerned is of a BREAK in the A system caused by the Arab intervention in the silk routes and an EXOGENOUS introduction of the Americas into the equation. Marx, by the way, was not entirely endogenous as his 'primitive accumulation' starts with the exogenous introduction of the Americas. But, I agree with Al about Weber. If one denies that there was a transformation, then one is left with the more difficult empircal position of saying that the degree of integration, division of labor, and penetration into daily lives of the system is not really different in kind now than it was 500 or 1000 or 5000 years ago. To claim as such, would in effect deny the difference in the two meanings of the term "system." Once the difference in the terms is recognised, then it becomes increasingly difficult to deny the transformation. As I have said before, knowing more about the long life of the "A" world system and of the role of China in it, makes the capitalist transformation all that more remarkable and important. However much I disagree on other matters, for me, the work of Frank and others is a tremendous contribution on that score and to demonstrating the expanded utility of world(-)system theory. So much so, that Al's long sought for paradigmic shift may have already ocurred. That is a topic I would like to shift to and hear from others about. And if so, what is the source and development of the modern world-system out of the ancient world system? the degree of integration and extent of a division of labor He has also agreed that pre-1500 Europe was not capitalist. He may think that there is no such thing as capitalism, but that is at least more easily r Date sent: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 16:47:39 -0500 (EST) Send reply to: agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca From: "A. Gunder Frank" To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Re: eurocentrism Originally to: Albert J Bergesen THAT = what Bergensen says = is what I have been trying to say, first in my 1991 critique of Wallerstein [reprinted in Frank & Gills 1993] then in my 1994/95 critique of Braudel and Wallerstein [eg. in Sanderson ed. 1995] and now at much greater length and not limited to the CRITIQUE of received theory from Marx Weber to Wallerstein [and Frank!], bur extending to offering an ALTERNATIVE, which is also not limited to showing that Asia did OK [as Bergesen correctly attributes to me] -- indeed did MORE and BETTER until 1800 - but offering a WORLD economic analyis of why the East "declined" and the West "rose" [cyclically=temporarily!] and HOW they did so IN RELATION to each other, both as part and parcel of a truly WORLD SYSTEM [NO hypen!] structure and dynamic, which far exceeds in time and space the Wallersteinian "capitalist" "modern world-system" [with a hyphen]. Only Bergesen and his literally literary skills say it much better and much shorter! [When my son Paulo was 15 years old, he said in one sentence what it took me several books to TRY to say: "If Latin America was colonial, it could NOT have been feudal." In "our" terminology, it could not have been feudal if it was part and parcel of the "world-system." We [ I dunno if at the age of 33 Paulo now wants to or not, but apparently Bergesen and I are doing so] might extend the same idea/wording to read "IF EUROPE WAS PART OF THE WORLD SYSTEM, IT COULD NOT HAVE BEEN "capitalist." Much less could Europe have been the locus/inventor of "capitalism"! Happy Pearl Harbor Day!! - reflect on that!!! Gunder Frank n Sat, 7 Dec 1996, Albert J Bergesen wrote: > Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 12:34:51 -0700 (MST) > From: Albert J Bergesen > To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK > Subject: Re: eurocentrism > > Khay Jin and WSNers: What intrigues me at least with the idea of > something of system, or > society, or trade web, or world economy that is broader than east or west, > that includes both, is the impication that has for classic social theory, > and particularly Marx and Weber. The interest, then, is about the > possibilities of a larger and longer web of east west ties than previously > built into theories of capitalist development, the rise of the west, > modernization, etc. There is a lot more to Marx/Weber than their > separation of things western (capitalist relations of production, or > protestat ethic rationalism) from things eastern (asiatic mode of > production, traditionalism) but it has become a central taken for granted > assumption, or received knowledge, about the world. I guess the > appearance of economic dynamics in east asia today along with the years > that have passed since the initial formulation by Marx and Weber have led > to a growing questioning of some of their basic paradigmatic assumptions. > > >From this point of view I am the one doing the rarified analysizing, > pulling out only certain parts of a rich body of thought to make only > certain points. And from the ponit of view of your research in the > village all this does seem pretty thin. I won't disagree. > > But a simplification is, I think, somewhat necessary to get the the heart > of things, or of paradigms, and maybe it is an oversimplification or even > a distortion that is necessary for one to leave one paradigm and propose > another. I think of Marx's Robinsoe Caruso story to make fun of classical > economic models. It was say overdrawn. Martin Luther's writings are often > like a crazy mad man making all sorts of wild charges about the Pope and > the church. Here, I think, at the end of the 20th century, haveing been > saddled with the assumptions of Marx and Weber and all their descendants > who have really only modifed and not replaced their basic outlooks, we, of > thoretical bent in professional social science, are looking for a new > framework, a new way of seeing things. What Gunder contributes is, among > many things, is to present before us just a slice of the facts and > realities of Chinese/Indian/Arabic economic activity, institutions, etc. > that operated just fine and were not sloth-like, traditional, steeped in > tradion, lacking innovation, and all the other things that are part of > most all macro level social science thinking from Marx/Weber to Polanyi > throughWittfogel to even Wallerstein (where it is in Europe, and from European > crisises, that the world system emerges to spread elsewhere and > incorporate others into this world economic system). Europe was already > part of a world system--it did not create one. > > And the issue really becomes paradigmatic. You know, one can see the > ancient near east, the early modern west, or 1500-1800 China/Asia as > separate systems, or as hegemonic centers of one humanocentric system. > The center could have been in the ancient hear east, then China/India, > then Europe/North America and now back to China/Japan/East Asia. That is > a different perspective than seeing these as separate systems which rise > and fall because of their own internal dynamics. And that is the key > theoretical point being implicitly raised: the rise of the west is the > rise of capitalism is the rise of the capitalist mode of production from > the feudal mode of production is the story Marx tells. Everything is > endogenous to the West. For Weber the reply or counter is still > intra-west: it is that the rise of the west is the rise of rationalism is > the rise of protestantism is a change in western religious systems is, > therefore, endogenous to the west. So, from a global point of view Marx > and Weber are the same--endogenists. Wallerstein was supposedly a world > system, but where did it come from: again endogenistic origin--the crisis > of feudalism in the west led it to reach out to the rest of the world. > So, from Marx to Weber to Wallerstein they differ, of course, but they are > also the same in that they all believe in the endogenous nature of > fundamental change in the west that led to its altered state in the world. > > > Standing against this position is the new paradigm that has the west > already in an alrready existing world system--the afroeurasian long term > world economy. So, from this assumption (i) Europle/the west could not be > the origin of the world-system, for it already existed; (ii) change in the > west did occur, yes, but since it was part of a larger system that must be > factored in to understand the change that took place, and (iii) that > change may actually be a consequence, not a cause, of changes in the > largher encompassing afroeurasian world economy. Therefore (iv) the > distinctiveness or exceptionalism of the west AS THE ORIGIN OF ITS RISE is > probably not so, for those differences (if they do exist and there is a > debate here) are probably the CONSEQUENCE of changes within the > afroeurasian system as a whole. Global systemic change led to the shift > in centers, or the few hundred year ascendence of the west, and global > system ic changes are leading to the return of centerness to Asia. > > This is not to say that during those years there wasn't colonialism, or > pain, conquest, control exerted by Europe over the rest of the > world--thats a fact. But surges of peoples, conquests, terror has gone > bacvk and forth across parts of the world, and it may very well be that > with technological development the European expansion was more severe than > others prior--although arguments about the Huns and Mongols could be made. > But looking to the future, and lets assume an Asian dominated 21st century > who is to say that the use of weapons there, or holocausts there, will not > lead to things being done that were not done before, and for the 21st > century to be considered the most brutal yet. Is that Asians? Was 19th > century colonialism, 20th century nuclear war and holocaust European? > Yes. But it is also the world historical system with power centere in > different parts and being exercised by those parts. I don't want to > dismiss responsibioity for what was done, but the world continues to > unfold and what will be done will have to wait and be seen. > > So, that is some of the reasoning behind this disquiet with > Marx/Weber/Wallerstein. It is some of the reasoning behind this search > for a broader view and for some social science paradigm that closes the > east west divide. Not to eliminate the differencesw that are there, but > to better understand the interconnectedness that has been there and to try > and grasp the effects it may have had upon the way to have lived. > > > Theorizing capitalism by Marx and Weber was such an effort at what they > thought was the collective totality in their time. But their totality > only went as far as the west--the east was different in essential belief > and mode of production. The more we know about eastern economies, the > more we know about the actual connections between east and west, about how > the silver from Peru ends up in China, the more we now question the > reality of that divide between the so called capitalist, modernist, west > and the tranditionalist, backwardnest, rest. > > > > > Albert Bergesen > Department of Sociology > University of Arizona > Tucson, Arizona 85721 > Phone: 520-621-3303 > Fax: 520-621-9875 > email: albert@u.arizona.edu > Terry Boswell Department of Sociology Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322 From austria@it.com.pl Mon Dec 9 04:54:42 1996 From: austria@it.com.pl Date: Mon, 9 Dec 1996 12:54:17 +0100 (MET) Subject: The Great December Debate To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Dear colleagues, part of what goes on has been dealt with in my quantitative critique of the 'pure' world system approach (in line with Senghaas and Elsenhans, whose English language contribution should not be overlooked in this context), published with Macmillan and Saint Martin's Press New York, 1993, under the title: 'Towards a Socio-Liberal Theory of World Development'. Kind regards from Warsaw (Labour Attach, Austrian Embassy) Arno Tausch (Innsbruck University, Dep. of Political Science) From agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca Mon Dec 9 13:19:53 1996 Date: Mon, 9 Dec 1996 15:20:33 -0500 (EST) From: "A. Gunder Frank" To: Terry Boswell Subject: Re: world system or world-system? In-Reply-To: <723173783D@ss.emory.edu> Well its nice to have some "agreement" with Terry. I agree with Terry's paragraph No. 4 beginniing with"If one denies" ending with [No] transformation. the trouble is that Terry does NOT agree! And thanks to the computer snafu that gave us the correct title! at least as good as Terry's. Paradigm shift? well yes, but the trouble is thatr Terry does not want any, or at least not one that would oblige him/us to give up that good ol' holy cow. If anybody wants, i can post my last chapter on theoretical conclusions on what NOT to do, and theoretical implkications for what YES to do instead. cheers gunder On Sun, 8 Dec 1996, Terry Boswell wrote: > Date: Sun, 8 Dec 1996 23:27:57 EST5EDT > From: Terry Boswell > To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK > Subject: world system or world-system? > > "World system or world-system?" was the original title of my previous > post. A mishap in our misbegotten computer system was responsible > for the mistake of changing it to "delivery failure." At least > Gunder enjoyed the computer's editing. > > I thought some definitional clarity might resolve some of our > differences, and despite claims to the contrary, there were several > significant points of agreement in the rejoinders. Gunder agreed > that the pre-1500 Afroeurasian system was a world system (without > hyphen, i.e., a set actors with meaningful interactions) and not a > world-system (with hyphen, i.e., a densely interacting set of > actors with a division of labor that encompases the basic > neccessities of life of the majority of the population). I do not > know when (or even if) he thinks it became an integrated world- > system (1650?, 1820?, 1989?). More important, however, is agreeing > on the concepts, as resolution now depends on empirical evidence on > the degree of integration and division of labor in the system to say > if and how it changed from one type to the other (or at least > moreso, if we do not get lost in the politics of "centrisms"). > > If one agrees that the loose Afroeurasian world system became an > integrated world-system, then one needs a theory of transformation > (what I call of the rise of capitalism and no better name has been > suggested). The transformation thus cannot simply be a cycle or > shift in the old A system, as Al seems to claim. In fact, the > empircal story being told by all concerned is of a BREAK in the A > system caused by the Arab intervention in the silk routes and an > EXOGENOUS introduction of the Americas into the equation. Marx, by > the way, was not entirely endogenous as his 'primitive accumulation' > starts with the exogenous introduction of the Americas. But, I agree > with Al about Weber. > > If one denies that there was a transformation, then one is left > with the more difficult empircal position of saying that the degree > of integration, division of labor, and penetration into daily lives > of the system is not really different in kind now than it was 500 or > 1000 or 5000 years ago. To claim as such, would in effect deny the > difference in the two meanings of the term "system." Once the > difference in the terms is recognised, then it becomes increasingly > difficult to deny the transformation. > > As I have said before, knowing more about the long life of the "A" > world system and of the role of China in it, makes the > capitalist transformation all that more remarkable and important. > However much I disagree on other matters, for me, the work of Frank > and others is a tremendous contribution on that score and to > demonstrating the expanded utility of world(-)system theory. So much > so, that Al's long sought for paradigmic shift may have already > ocurred. That is a topic I would like to shift to and hear from > others about. > > > > > > > > > > > And if so, what is the source > and development of the modern world-system out of the ancient world > system? > > > the degree of integration and extent of a division of > labor > > He > has also agreed that pre-1500 Europe was not capitalist. He may > think that there is no such thing as capitalism, but that is at least > > > more easily r > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Date sent: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 16:47:39 -0500 (EST) > Send reply to: agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca > From: "A. Gunder Frank" > To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK > Subject: Re: eurocentrism > Originally to: Albert J Bergesen > > THAT = what Bergensen says = is what I have been trying to say, > first in my 1991 critique of Wallerstein [reprinted in Frank & Gills 1993] > then in my 1994/95 critique of Braudel and Wallerstein [eg. in Sanderson > ed. 1995] and now at much greater length and not limited to the CRITIQUE > of received theory from Marx Weber to Wallerstein [and Frank!], bur > extending to offering an ALTERNATIVE, which is also not limited to showing > that Asia did OK [as Bergesen correctly attributes to me] -- indeed did > MORE and BETTER until 1800 - but offering a WORLD economic analyis of > why the East "declined" and the West "rose" [cyclically=temporarily!] > and HOW they did so IN RELATION to each other, both as part and parcel of > a truly WORLD SYSTEM [NO hypen!] structure and dynamic, which far exceeds > in time and space the Wallersteinian "capitalist" "modern world-system" > [with a hyphen]. Only Bergesen and his literally literary skills say it > much better and much shorter! [When my son Paulo was 15 years old, he said > in one sentence what it took me several books to TRY to say: "If Latin > America was colonial, it could NOT have been feudal." In "our" > terminology, it could not have been feudal if it was part and parcel of > the "world-system." We [ I dunno if at the age of 33 Paulo now > wants to or not, but apparently Bergesen and I are doing so] might > extend the same idea/wording to read "IF EUROPE WAS PART OF THE WORLD > SYSTEM, IT COULD NOT HAVE BEEN "capitalist." Much less could Europe have > been the locus/inventor of "capitalism"! > > Happy Pearl Harbor Day!! - reflect on that!!! > Gunder Frank > > > n Sat, 7 Dec 1996, > Albert J Bergesen wrote: > > > Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 12:34:51 -0700 (MST) > > From: Albert J Bergesen > > To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK > > Subject: Re: eurocentrism > > > > Khay Jin and WSNers: What intrigues me at least with the idea of > > something of system, or > > society, or trade web, or world economy that is broader than east or west, > > that includes both, is the impication that has for classic social theory, > > and particularly Marx and Weber. The interest, then, is about the > > possibilities of a larger and longer web of east west ties than previously > > built into theories of capitalist development, the rise of the west, > > modernization, etc. There is a lot more to Marx/Weber than their > > separation of things western (capitalist relations of production, or > > protestat ethic rationalism) from things eastern (asiatic mode of > > production, traditionalism) but it has become a central taken for granted > > assumption, or received knowledge, about the world. I guess the > > appearance of economic dynamics in east asia today along with the years > > that have passed since the initial formulation by Marx and Weber have led > > to a growing questioning of some of their basic paradigmatic assumptions. > > > > >From this point of view I am the one doing the rarified analysizing, > > pulling out only certain parts of a rich body of thought to make only > > certain points. And from the ponit of view of your research in the > > village all this does seem pretty thin. I won't disagree. > > > > But a simplification is, I think, somewhat necessary to get the the heart > > of things, or of paradigms, and maybe it is an oversimplification or even > > a distortion that is necessary for one to leave one paradigm and propose > > another. I think of Marx's Robinsoe Caruso story to make fun of classical > > economic models. It was say overdrawn. Martin Luther's writings are often > > like a crazy mad man making all sorts of wild charges about the Pope and > > the church. Here, I think, at the end of the 20th century, haveing been > > saddled with the assumptions of Marx and Weber and all their descendants > > who have really only modifed and not replaced their basic outlooks, we, of > > thoretical bent in professional social science, are looking for a new > > framework, a new way of seeing things. What Gunder contributes is, among > > many things, is to present before us just a slice of the facts and > > realities of Chinese/Indian/Arabic economic activity, institutions, etc. > > that operated just fine and were not sloth-like, traditional, steeped in > > tradion, lacking innovation, and all the other things that are part of > > most all macro level social science thinking from Marx/Weber to Polanyi > > throughWittfogel to even Wallerstein (where it is in Europe, and from European > > crisises, that the world system emerges to spread elsewhere and > > incorporate others into this world economic system). Europe was already > > part of a world system--it did not create one. > > > > And the issue really becomes paradigmatic. You know, one can see the > > ancient near east, the early modern west, or 1500-1800 China/Asia as > > separate systems, or as hegemonic centers of one humanocentric system. > > The center could have been in the ancient hear east, then China/India, > > then Europe/North America and now back to China/Japan/East Asia. That is > > a different perspective than seeing these as separate systems which rise > > and fall because of their own internal dynamics. And that is the key > > theoretical point being implicitly raised: the rise of the west is the > > rise of capitalism is the rise of the capitalist mode of production from > > the feudal mode of production is the story Marx tells. Everything is > > endogenous to the West. For Weber the reply or counter is still > > intra-west: it is that the rise of the west is the rise of rationalism is > > the rise of protestantism is a change in western religious systems is, > > therefore, endogenous to the west. So, from a global point of view Marx > > and Weber are the same--endogenists. Wallerstein was supposedly a world > > system, but where did it come from: again endogenistic origin--the crisis > > of feudalism in the west led it to reach out to the rest of the world. > > So, from Marx to Weber to Wallerstein they differ, of course, but they are > > also the same in that they all believe in the endogenous nature of > > fundamental change in the west that led to its altered state in the world. > > > > > > Standing against this position is the new paradigm that has the west > > already in an alrready existing world system--the afroeurasian long term > > world economy. So, from this assumption (i) Europle/the west could not be > > the origin of the world-system, for it already existed; (ii) change in the > > west did occur, yes, but since it was part of a larger system that must be > > factored in to understand the change that took place, and (iii) that > > change may actually be a consequence, not a cause, of changes in the > > largher encompassing afroeurasian world economy. Therefore (iv) the > > distinctiveness or exceptionalism of the west AS THE ORIGIN OF ITS RISE is > > probably not so, for those differences (if they do exist and there is a > > debate here) are probably the CONSEQUENCE of changes within the > > afroeurasian system as a whole. Global systemic change led to the shift > > in centers, or the few hundred year ascendence of the west, and global > > system ic changes are leading to the return of centerness to Asia. > > > > This is not to say that during those years there wasn't colonialism, or > > pain, conquest, control exerted by Europe over the rest of the > > world--thats a fact. But surges of peoples, conquests, terror has gone > > bacvk and forth across parts of the world, and it may very well be that > > with technological development the European expansion was more severe than > > others prior--although arguments about the Huns and Mongols could be made. > > But looking to the future, and lets assume an Asian dominated 21st century > > who is to say that the use of weapons there, or holocausts there, will not > > lead to things being done that were not done before, and for the 21st > > century to be considered the most brutal yet. Is that Asians? Was 19th > > century colonialism, 20th century nuclear war and holocaust European? > > Yes. But it is also the world historical system with power centere in > > different parts and being exercised by those parts. I don't want to > > dismiss responsibioity for what was done, but the world continues to > > unfold and what will be done will have to wait and be seen. > > > > So, that is some of the reasoning behind this disquiet with > > Marx/Weber/Wallerstein. It is some of the reasoning behind this search > > for a broader view and for some social science paradigm that closes the > > east west divide. Not to eliminate the differencesw that are there, but > > to better understand the interconnectedness that has been there and to try > > and grasp the effects it may have had upon the way to have lived. > > > > > > Theorizing capitalism by Marx and Weber was such an effort at what they > > thought was the collective totality in their time. But their totality > > only went as far as the west--the east was different in essential belief > > and mode of production. The more we know about eastern economies, the > > more we know about the actual connections between east and west, about how > > the silver from Peru ends up in China, the more we now question the > > reality of that divide between the so called capitalist, modernist, west > > and the tranditionalist, backwardnest, rest. > > > > > > > > > > Albert Bergesen > > Department of Sociology > > University of Arizona > > Tucson, Arizona 85721 > > Phone: 520-621-3303 > > Fax: 520-621-9875 > > email: albert@u.arizona.edu > > > > Terry Boswell > Department of Sociology > Emory University > Atlanta, GA 30322 > From U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Mon Dec 9 17:15:51 1996 Date: Mon, 09 Dec 96 16:06:02 CST From: "d." Subject: arab interference in chinese silk route? To: World System Network Some residual doubt always lingers as to whether the learned contributors to this list know what they are talking about, but the needle is now over into the red zone, the light is flashing, and the baloney-detedctor alarm is making loud, horrid noises. The reason, this time, is that someone, I forget who, it doesn't matter, really, mentioned offhandedly and inter- alia-listically, something about "Arab interference in the Chinese silk trade," which nobody noticed. What the Arabs did was, basically, conquer Persia. The Silk Route, land version, was managed by Sogdians, Central Asian Iranians, from the Sassanid Empire through Afghanistan up to Kucha, where they exchanged goods with Kucheans (Tocharians) who carried the Persian goods (including Byzantine or European exports if any plus specie) the rest of the way to Changan in North China. The silk went the other way. This is a gross oversimplification, of course, as branches of the Silk Route ran as far west as the Caucusus (due to a scheme hatched by the Gok Turk qaghan to deal silk direct to the Byzantines in the 540s via Lazica, which is now in the Republic of Georgia, more or less, and is called Abkhazia today). The Persians also carried on the sea trade with China. This reached its pre-Islamic peak in the sixth century. At that time, resident Persians and Indians in Guangzhou bought up the silk, which they shipped to Sri Lanka and sold it to other Persians for final shipment to Persia, Aela (Elath-Aqaba, in Byzantine Palaestina III), or Byzantine Egypt. The Persians made a very great deal of money this way, and made evem more after 571 by conquering Yemen. It was much cheaper in principle, to send the silk by ship than by camel, but the legal Byzantine customs duties were steep, and the fact that the Byzantine state was at this time corrupt even in its own terms raised the costs that much more. by *smuggling* the silk into the Byzantine empire, on the other hand, the Persians not only cut costs, but managed to trade profitably with their enemy even in time of war, which was most of the time. The Persians were sending so much silver home from South Arabia they claimed to have found a silver deposit which the South Arabians themselves never knew about. The events of the 630s, whcih abolished the Persian-Byzantine border by eliminating both powers, conquered as they were by the Arabs, should have greatly stimulated world trade had everything else been equal, which it was not. It is important to know that, during the sixth century, North China and South China were politically spearate. They were, in effect, in competition. The Southern Empire dealt directly with the Persians, who were present in Guangzhou in considerable numbers and were known to the Chinese as *Posu*. The Southern Empire's successive political regimes were lax, slack, and crooked. Possibly, they did not know that the Gok Turks, who created unified political control over Central Asia in 552, did not like the Persians very much. What happened after the Arab conquest of Persia was, at first, that what had been Persian trade routes became Arab trade routes insofar as, or to the extent that, Persians, who either converted to Islam or did not, though increasingly did, were subjects of the Arab Caliphate. The people who carried on the trade with China were the same as before, except in that they now increasingly spoke Arabic, albeit using Persian loan words for matters nautical. The Chinese of Guangzhou called the Arabs *Dashi*, who were conceptually differentiated from *Posu*, though not in practice. What actually occurred, during the first half of the Tang Dynasty, that is, until the heroic Arab repulse of Chinese imperialist aggression in 751, was Chinese expansionism, hegemonism, and great power chauvinism directed against the Arabs, though hardly exclusively. For exemple, the Tang government gave asylum and diplomatic support to Sassanid pretenders after the death of the last Persian monarch, Yazdigerd III, in 651. In 662, for example, the government of emperor Gaozong intervened on behalf of the Sassanid prince, Peroz. In the first half of the eighth century, the Tang expanded across Central Asia, almost to the very doorstep of the Persian, subsequently Arab, frontier. It was, in part, Umayyad complaisance in the face of the apparent Chinese menace which in part precipitated the Abbasid Revolution (747-750). In 758, during the reign of Suzong, the *Dashi* and the *Posu* sacked Guangzhou, according to the Tang dynastic history. The Arab histories do not mention it. It is not known whether this was part of the Arab-Chinese war which began with the Arab victory over the Chinese march on Samarkand at the Battle of the Talas River in 751. In any case, by 758, the Tang government had a crisis much closer to home, in North China, to worry about, in the form of the seizure of power by General An Lushan and his successors, which unleashed a civil war lasting until 763. After this, the Tang were permanently cut off from West Asia by land. Guangzhou was reopened to Arabs and Persians in 792. Oh, it's not true, by the way, that the Chinese were "immune to capitalism." They came down with a bad case of it in the eleventh century, and nearly died of it in the fourteenth. But they fought it off, as they did the Bubonic Plague, at the same time. Resistance to the Plague appears to be longer-lasting, more efficacious, than that to capitalism, though everybody's come down with the latter at this time. As your mother said, "Don't touch that! You don't know *whose* germs are on that thing!" Daniel A. Foss From U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Tue Dec 10 11:18:00 1996 Date: Tue, 10 Dec 96 11:11:31 CST From: U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Subject: connecticul yankee seal-silk trade 1792-1811 To: World Systems Network /* How Yankee Seal Clubbers Made A Truly Historical Amount Of Money Due */ /* To The Emperor's Lover's Dictatorship Without Realizing What Hit Them*/ /* Any More Than The Seals. Or, Don't Count Your Seals Before They're */ /* Extinct. */ In 1792 Elijah Austin, of New Haven, Connecticut, conceived the bright idea of selling a commodity, pelts of the South American fur seal, which cost him essentially nothing, in Guangzhou, China, in exchange for Chinese silk, porcelain, and other luxury goods. The initial voyage returned a tidy profit; the Chinese bought up the seal pelts at seventy-five cents each. Austin forthwith died, and his interest in the enterprise was bought up by his partner, Ebenezer Townsend, whose plans were more ambitious. As owner of the Olive Street Shipyard, New Haven, Townsend built the good ship Neptune, at 350 tons and carrying twenty guns ! the largest ship ever built in New Haven to that time, and custom-built for the sealing trade with China. The world's largest market for furs at this time consisted of the Mandarins, or metropolitan officials, of Beijing. Then, as now, and for a thousand years by this time, bright young Chinese had hailed, disproportionately, from the mild to balmy climes of the Lower Yangzi region and the Southeast Coast, the economic-core areas of the Empire. The winters in Beijing were, and still are, bitter cold, with biting winds. The fur coat became as highly functional as it was fashionable. Moreover, for every official thus clad, there were wives, concubines, relative, and hangers-on. As the Chinese say, "When a person Attains the Way Dao, his dogs and chickens also go to heaven." The demand for furs was, in the eighteenth century, supplied hitherto by Russians and the *coureurs du bois* of what was, until 1759, French Canada. The advantage of the men of Connecticut lay in the fact that, for them, killing aquatic mammals had long been, one might say, Traditional. As I previously mentioned, already in 1653, during the First Anglo-Dutch war, bellicose Connecticut marauders conquered what is now Suffolk County, Long Island, from Dutch New Nederland, and forthwith founded the whaling industry of Southport on the South Shore of their sub-colony. Compared to hunting whales, killing seals was positively *fun*, if hardly likely to give rise to epic novels, "Call me Ishmael," and that sort of thing. The Neptune departed New Haven in 1796, reaching Guangzhou Canton two years later, October 1798. Much of the intervening time was spent in the Falkland Islands, massacring the dense population of South American Fur Seal, *Arcotocephalus australis*, which covered the place. Then, as now, control of the Falklands was disputed. The British had seized them in 1774; Spain claimed them. There was nothing the Spanish authorities in La Plata could do about the US sealing industry had they known or cared, as the Kingdom of Spain was alliied to the French Directory and the Netherlands in the war against Britain, to which the reactionary Administration of John Adams, elected in 1796, was covertly allied (due to Federalist horror of the French Revolution). The British authorities, such as they were, looked the other way, accordingly, as they themselves had not the slightest notion of how to make money out of the local seals. The total complement of the Neptune was 36 men and boys, aged 14 to 61, average age 23. This includes Daniel Greene, captain, age 30 and veteran of one previous voyage to China; also, Ebenezer Townsend, Junior, supercargo, i.e., commercial agent, who alone did nothing on board ship or off. About half of these men eventially returned to New Haven. Several died of scurvy or drunken shipboard accidents. Eleven of them were deposited on the godforsaken rock, Mas Afuera, off the Chilean coast, where they set to work killing 100,000 seals, awaiting pickup by their comrades; they were basically forgotten about, however. It was not until two years later that another New Haven ship happened to call at Mas Afuera and picked up the survivors. Working feverishly, not least because they were on piecework, the men of the Neptune clobbered seals with abandon, then set to the less- appetizing labour of preserving the pelts. "I like sealing well," wrote the ship's doctor, David Forbes. They managed to bash to death about 80,000 seals, both on the Falklands and in Patagonia. That done, they made their aforementioned stop at Mas Afuera, then called at the Sandwich Islands, or Hawaii, today, where they may have inadvertently eaten sufficient citrus fruit to have saved them from further scurvy. Then, on to Guangzhou, where they struck it really rich. This is what made the voyage of the Neptune truly historic, though not even the crew had any idea of it at the time. The semioffical Guangzhou "Hong" merchant, whose name is given as "Ponqua Sumity," offered not the expected seventy-five or eighty cents per pelt, but the astounding price of three dollars and twenty-five cents. What could have *possibly* stimulated the demand for fur coats in Beijing to this fantastic extent? The years spanning the voyage of the Neptune, 1796-1799, were in China those of the dictatorship of Hoshen. Hoshen was a dashing Manchu nobleman with whose looks the emperor Qianlong was quite taken. Or so it was said. The sexual cravings of senile octogenerian emperors are at this time ill-understood. Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany, 1871- 1888, was another case. During the very last years of the official reign of Qianlong (1736-1796), Hoshen was made Fourth Councillor on the Qing dynasty's supreme Inner Court governing body, the Grand Council. For the institutional history of the Grand Council, see Beatrice S. Bartlett, Monarchs and Ministers, University of California Press, 1991. In 1796 Qianlong, for reasons of filial policy and modesty, abdicated, lest he reign longer than his grandfather, the Kangxi emperor (1661-1722). But Qianlong and, of course, his cronies and proteges, contined to retain their grip on power: In 1797, Hoshen was promoted to First Councillor. In this capacity, he was even better placed to commit the offense for which he was executed shortly after the death of Qianlong himself, in 1799, by the incoming regime of the Jiaqing emperor (1796/1799-1820). This was the illicit use of the top-secret palace communication system between the Inner Court (ie, the monarch's personal Privy Council, in effect the ruling clique) and the Outer Court (ie, the official agencies of government, or the Civil Service properly speaking) for the purpose of transmitting privileged tipoffs as to large state purchases to favoured merchants and speculators for the purpose of "insider trading." The confiscated fortune of Hoshen was given as a billion dollars, or some such astronomical sum, at the time at least three times the total annual expendure of the central state administration. This may have been exaggerated; for as Bartlett believes, it was impossible, under the circumstances, for the real offenses to be spelled out without prejudice to the top-secret character of the communications channels which Hoshen most likely misused. The moral outrage of the Qing Court at the time of Qianlong'a death reflected accumulated grievances as to misgovernment and corruption which had scarred the emperor's latter years. A revolt of White Lotus sectarians, the Yellow Turbans, had taken most of the 1790s to suppress. Then, the dictatorship of Hoshen had unleashed a veritable orgy of conspicuous consumption which offended conservative sensibilities. Though Confucian officialdom generally speaking lived in splendour relative to the mass of the population, it was expected to maintain a posture, as well as a discourse, of frugality relative to the opulence of the Court, such that, in times of fiscal stringency, it was routine to urge cost-cutting measures on the Son of Heaven and his luxurious establishment. It was obvious, however, from the reception of the Neptune's cargo, and the great good fortune of Ebenezer Townsend, who pocketed the vast sum of $100,000, and Ebenezer Townsend, Jr, who kept another $50,000, and the federal government of the United States of America, which took $80,000 in customs dues (at a time when the total per annum tax receipts of the State of Connecticut, from property levies, were only $75,000), that extreme-yuppieistic conspicuous consumption was gripping the bureaucratic and mercantile smart set of Beijing. Perhaps, all at once, just too many people were "Attaining the Way," not to mention all of their "dogs and chickens" who "also go to heaven." The transaction itself, whereby the Neptune's cargo went for the then-astronomical figure of $280,000, raises the more particular suspicion that, the higher the price, the bigger the surcharges due to "insider trading" and other corrupt practices which might be hidden in it. It was all too good to last, and it was. As noted, the throw-the- rascals-out ambience in Beijing after 1799, with the associated drive for economy and frugality, led to the nosedive of the price paid for seal pelts, back to the original level of seventy-five or eighty cents each, if not less. This did not deter the Yankee traders, however. Emboldened by the proceeds of the tons of silk, "thousands of crates of tea," Chinese porcelain (monogrammed by the manufacturer, upon request, for the New Haven customer), Nankeen cotton cloth (tough fabric for workingmen's pants in those days, like denim today, and equally fashionable), and other valuable goods, the shippers of New Haven kept coming back. Until the voyage of the Betsy, in 1811. The Betsy's crew killed 110,000 South American Fur Seals. This is a record which has stood for all time. For the reason, you see, that the South American Fur Seal had become extinct (or the next thing to it, Endangered Species In Extremis). Grateful acknowledgements to the Museum of the New Haven Colony Historical Society. Daniel A. Foss From cjreid@netcom.com Tue Dec 10 14:25:52 1996 Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 13:05:27 -0800 (PST) From: "Charles J. Reid" Subject: Re: WSN digest 191 To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Hi, Folks! What're the 10 most important books that must be read to learn about World Systems Theory? -- Charlie Reid cjreid@netcom.com "Salus populi suprema est lex" (Cicero) The welfare of the people is the highest law. --------------------------------------------- From agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca Tue Dec 10 15:46:45 1996 Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 17:47:32 -0500 (EST) From: "A. Gunder Frank" To: "Charles J. Reid" Subject: Re: WSN digest 191 In-Reply-To: Answer: None of the above! WRITE YOUR OWN!!! cheerfully sbmitted Gunder Frank On Tue, 10 Dec 1996, Charles J. Reid wrote: > Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 13:05:27 -0800 (PST) > From: "Charles J. Reid" > To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK > Subject: Re: WSN digest 191 > > Hi, Folks! > > What're the 10 most important books that must be read to learn about > World Systems Theory? > > > > -- Charlie Reid > > cjreid@netcom.com > "Salus populi suprema est lex" (Cicero) > The welfare of the people is the highest law. > --------------------------------------------- > From agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca Tue Dec 10 15:51:56 1996 Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 17:52:44 -0500 (EST) From: "A. Gunder Frank" To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Eurocentric vs. Euro-dominant history (fwd) F Y = WSN? - Interest, and especially in re Warren Wagar's postings! respectfully forwarded gunder frank ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 16:48:55 -0500 From: "whitney@neu.edu Whitney Howarth, Northeastern Univ" Reply-To: H-NET List for World History Subject: Eurocentric vs. Euro-dominant history From: Whitney Howarth, World History Center, Northeastern University whowarth@lynx.dac.neu.edu ***Eurocentric vs. Euro-dominant history*** Most scholars purusing World History as a research field will agree that a Eurocentric model does not successfully present our global historical reality. Though many world history textbooks still tend to fall short of the "global" mark, an increasing number of world history monographs tend to focus on world-systems and cross-cultural interactions (i.e. Wallerstein and Curtin). Educators, wisely, often supplement these textbooks with such monographs in hopes of presenting a fuller narrative of the past, and to formulate a new historiography which does not perpetuate Eurocentrism. Ideally, I envision a world historical methodology which embraces connections and searches for patterns trans-nationally, but find myself often perplexed by the numbers of contemporary world historical pieces which tend to promote the "dominance" of Europe (post-1500) as the prevalent theme of research. Within this category I include books like Walter Rodney's *How Europe Underdeveloped Africa* and Daniel Headrick's *Tools of Empire* -- books which by no means take a Eurocentric stance, but which, nonetheless, do present world history through a Euro-dominant perspective. (Headrick's thesis for example, for those unfamiliar with his work, explains Europe's ability to expand into Africa only after the development of machine guns, quinine and steam boats). Similarly, works such as Alfred Crosby's *Ecological Imperialism* and Willian McNeill's *Plagues and Peoples* attempt to explain Europe's status historically in the world system (in this case biologically, rather than technologically) without attaching a qualitative meaning to that status. It appears then that world history post-1500 is dominated by a model of dominance (!) which I find unsettling at best. Though quite fond of the above mentioned texts and appreciative of their efforts to present a new perspective to "old" subjects, I remain wary of the precedent they may establish. I hope that scholars who have denounced a Eurocentric approach to world history have not done so merely to adopt a Euro-dominant one. If such is the case, it seems likely that we are merely substituting one myopia for another. From kjkhoo@pop.jaring.my Tue Dec 10 19:43:46 1996 Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 10:43:27 +0800 In-Reply-To: To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: KHOO Khay Jin Subject: Re: Eurocentric vs. Euro-dominant history (fwd) Whitney Howarth, World History Center, Northeastern University, by way of AG Frank writes: >I hope that scholars who have denounced a Eurocentric approach to >world history have not done so merely to adopt a Euro-dominant one. If >such is the case, it seems likely that we are merely substituting one >myopia for another. Is there any serious doubt of Europe's ascent to dominance post-1500 or 1600? Which is not to say that it will remain so forever -- signs to the contrary are quite evident. Nevertheless, it seems self-evident, even from the vantage point of Southeast Asia, that Euro-America continues to dominate, at least attempts to continue to do so. Why then the coyness about it? Could this be a case of "where you stand depends on where you sit"? To twist Howarth: I find myself often perplexed by those who wish to downgrade the dominance of Europe (post-1500) and am extremely wary of the precedent, not to say myopia, they may establish. Euro-dominance does not have to mean that only Euros are actors, imposing their will as they please, responsible for every single event, twist and turn -- a one-sided affair. That was the illusion of Euro-American dependency theorists. My viewpoint has been categorised as classical (presumably in reference to a European intellectual tradition), although it might be pointed out that the classical (and contemporary) viewpoint in Southeast Asia is indeed of Euro-dominance which, happily, Southeast Asia may be in somewhat better position than, say, Africa, to challenge and question not by re-interpreting the facts of history but by staking out new position and ground and, in good classical modernist fashion, the unarguable fact of phenomenal economic growth. Cheers. Khay Jin From ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au Tue Dec 10 21:52:16 1996 Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 15:50:58 +1100 From: "Bruce R. McFarling" Subject: Re: Eurocentric vs. Euro-dominant history (fwd) In-reply-to: To: KHOO Khay Jin On Wed, 11 Dec 1996, KHOO Khay Jin wrote: > Whitney Howarth, World History Center, Northeastern University, by way of > AG Frank writes: > > >I hope that scholars who have denounced a Eurocentric approach to > >world history have not done so merely to adopt a Euro-dominant one. If > >such is the case, it seems likely that we are merely substituting one > >myopia for another. > > Is there any serious doubt of Europe's ascent to dominance post-1500 or > 1600? Which is not to say that it will remain so forever -- signs to the > contrary are quite evident. Nevertheless, it seems self-evident, even from > the vantage point of Southeast Asia, that Euro-America continues to > dominate, at least attempts to continue to do so. Why then the coyness > about it? Could this be a case of "where you stand depends on where you > sit"? > To twist Howarth: I find myself often perplexed by those who wish to > downgrade the dominance of Europe (post-1500) and am extremely wary of the > precedent, not to say myopia, they may establish. Following this discussion, I find plenty of reason to doubt European dominance within the period post-1500. I have more trouble finding reasons to doubt European dominance within the period post-1800. Or, to put it differently, it is not surprising that a Eurocentric narrative of Europe's post-1500 interaction with the rest of the world dwells on those parts of the world where Europe was dominant. Understanding European dominance circa post-1800 is probably better served by also including those places and times that Europe was not dominant. In my minds eye, I compare the areas of European dominance in the Americas and in Africa, and it seems like *immediately* post-1500 Europe was best prepared to dominate societies without the advantage of metal-working skills, whereas in the 1800's (after much European development and African underdevelopment), it was possible for European states between themselves to dictate the allocation of sovereign authority over much of Africa. Virtually, Bruce R. McFarling, Newcastle, NSW ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au From agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca Wed Dec 11 06:52:34 1996 Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 08:52:55 -0500 (EST) From: "A. Gunder Frank" To: KHOO Khay Jin Anthony Reid , mark selden Subject: Re: Eurocentric vs. Euro-dominant history (fwd) In-Reply-To: I cc this to Anthony Reid in re SEAsia, and Mark Selden in re China/sea. Yes there is not only "serious" doubt that "Europe rose to dominance post 1500 or 1600" BUT it is TOTALLY FALSE. The fact that SOME people think Europe was the dominant in Southeast Asia does NOT make it true, and even Khoo - thank you! - adds that the Europeans "tried". But they did NOT succeeed! And being unbable to succeed even in the little islands of SEA, and certainly not in the big ones and even less in continental SEA, a forterioriu Europeans could not - and DID NOT - even aspire to do so elsewhere in Asia. Nor did anybody even think so before about 1800. The revisionist re-writing of history realy began in the 19th century from a perspective of European power at that time, and even that was not allthat it was and still is cracked up to be, as future RE-revisionist historical work is likely to demonstrate. Respectfully submitted gunder frank On Wed, 11 Dec 1996, KHOO Khay Jin wrote: > Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 10:43:27 +0800 > From: KHOO Khay Jin > To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK > Subject: Re: Eurocentric vs. Euro-dominant history (fwd) > > > Whitney Howarth, World History Center, Northeastern University, by way of > AG Frank writes: > > >I hope that scholars who have denounced a Eurocentric approach to > >world history have not done so merely to adopt a Euro-dominant one. If > >such is the case, it seems likely that we are merely substituting one > >myopia for another. > > Is there any serious doubt of Europe's ascent to dominance post-1500 or > 1600? Which is not to say that it will remain so forever -- signs to the > contrary are quite evident. Nevertheless, it seems self-evident, even from > the vantage point of Southeast Asia, that Euro-America continues to > dominate, at least attempts to continue to do so. Why then the coyness > about it? Could this be a case of "where you stand depends on where you > sit"? > > To twist Howarth: I find myself often perplexed by those who wish to > downgrade the dominance of Europe (post-1500) and am extremely wary of the > precedent, not to say myopia, they may establish. > > Euro-dominance does not have to mean that only Euros are actors, imposing > their will as they please, responsible for every single event, twist and > turn -- a one-sided affair. That was the illusion of Euro-American > dependency theorists. > > My viewpoint has been categorised as classical (presumably in reference to > a European intellectual tradition), although it might be pointed out that > the classical (and contemporary) viewpoint in Southeast Asia is indeed of > Euro-dominance which, happily, Southeast Asia may be in somewhat better > position than, say, Africa, to challenge and question not by > re-interpreting the facts of history but by staking out new position and > ground and, in good classical modernist fashion, the unarguable fact of > phenomenal economic growth. > > Cheers. > > Khay Jin > > From wwagar@binghamton.edu Wed Dec 11 08:58:28 1996 From: wwagar@binghamton.edu Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 10:58:58 -0500 (EST) To: "A. Gunder Frank" Subject: Re: Eurocentric vs. Euro-dominant history (fwd) In-Reply-To: On Tue, 10 Dec 1996, A. Gunder Frank wrote: > F Y = WSN? - Interest, and especially in re Warren Wagar's postings! > respectfully forwarded > gunder frank > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 16:48:55 -0500 > From: "whitney@neu.edu Whitney Howarth, Northeastern Univ" > Reply-To: H-NET List for World History > Subject: Eurocentric vs. Euro-dominant history > > From: Whitney Howarth, World History Center, Northeastern University > whowarth@lynx.dac.neu.edu > > ***Eurocentric vs. Euro-dominant history*** > > Most scholars purusing World History as a research field will > agree that a Eurocentric model does not successfully present our > global historical reality. Though many world history textbooks still > tend to fall short of the "global" mark, an increasing number of world > history monographs tend to focus on world-systems and cross-cultural > interactions (i.e. Wallerstein and Curtin). Educators, wisely, > often supplement these textbooks with such monographs in hopes of > presenting a fuller narrative of the past, and to formulate a new > historiography which does not perpetuate Eurocentrism. Ideally, > I envision a world historical methodology which embraces connections and > searches for patterns trans-nationally, but find myself often perplexed > by the numbers of contemporary world historical pieces which tend to > promote the "dominance" of Europe (post-1500) as the prevalent theme > of research. > > Within this category I include books like Walter Rodney's *How > Europe Underdeveloped Africa* and Daniel Headrick's *Tools of Empire* -- > books which by no means take a Eurocentric stance, but which, > nonetheless, do present world history through a Euro-dominant > perspective. (Headrick's thesis for example, for those unfamiliar with > his work, explains Europe's ability to expand into Africa only after the > development of machine guns, quinine and steam boats). Similarly, works > such as Alfred Crosby's *Ecological Imperialism* and Willian McNeill's > *Plagues and Peoples* attempt to explain Europe's status historically in > the world system (in this case biologically, rather than technologically) > without attaching a qualitative meaning to that status. It appears then > that world history post-1500 is dominated by a model of dominance (!) > which I find unsettling at best. Though quite fond of the above mentioned > texts and appreciative of their efforts to present a new perspective to > "old" subjects, I remain wary of the precedent they may establish. > > I hope that scholars who have denounced a Eurocentric approach to > world history have not done so merely to adopt a Euro-dominant one. If > such is the case, it seems likely that we are merely substituting one > myopia for another. > > Dear Gunder and All, All this ingenious hair-splitting about Eurocentric and Euro-dominant and world-system versus world system and Gunder Frank/Bergesen versus Wallerstein and whether there was or was not an Afroeurasian world system with or without the hyphen is getting us nowhere unless we stop thinking of ourselves as omniscient scientists studying the human adventure through our super-powerful electron microscopes. We are not above the fray looking down, we are IN it, right up to our eyebrows. Obviously everything that almost everybody has said thus far has some merit, depending on the questions one asks of history and the perspective from which one casts his/her gaze and the hypotheses with which one works. Because of the questions I ask and the perspective I occupy, I agree almost 100% with Immanuel's latest posting, and hence I said "Bravo!." But does this mean that Immanuel is "right" and Gunder is "wrong"? Of course not. We can conceptualize and slice up world history in a jillion ways. The past is, strictly speaking, unknowable. We merely draw pictures of it, word-pictures that do not and cannot and will not ever correspond to the reality itself. I am not saying we should stop drawing our pretty pictures, only that we should stop thinking of ourselves as gods who have, or soon will have, the Truth. A little postmodern humility would go a long way toward civilizing our dialogue with each other and with the tens of billions of people who came before us. Peace and love, Warren From chriscd@jhu.edu Wed Dec 11 09:48:02 1996 11 Dec 1996 11:46:45 -0500 (EST) 11 Dec 1996 11:45:02 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 11:46:23 -0500 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: top ten To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu Organization: Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.21218 USA to Charles J Reid and others interested, the 10 most necessary books are: start with Richard J. Shannon, An Introduction to the World-systems Perspective, Westview press 1996 (2nd edition). then the classics: Fernand Braudel, The Perspective of the World, Volume 3 of Civilization and Capitalism. now published by University of California Press. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System Vols. 1-3 Andre Gunder Frank, World Accumulation 1492-1789 Samir Amin, Accumulation on a World Scale Joshua Goldstein, Long Cycles Christopher Chase-Dunn, Global Formation Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century Christian Suter, Debt Cycles in the World-Economy Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas D. Hall, Rise and Demise That is more than ten if you count all the volumes. Only two of them are by me because I am trying to appear modest. chris From SKSANDER@grove.iup.edu Wed Dec 11 13:07:37 1996 11 Dec 1996 15:07:25 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 15:07:25 -0500 (EST) From: s_sanderson To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Organization: Indiana University of Pennsylvania Chris Chase-Dunn's top 10 books in world-system theory would be my top 10 too. All excellent choices. However, I might also include the three volumes of Immanuel Wallerstein's essays, all published by Cambridge University Press: THE CAPITALIST WORLD-ECONOMY (1979), THE POLITICS OF THE WORLD-ECONOMY (1984) AND GEOPOLITICS AND GEOCULTURE (sometime in early 90s). I might also immodestly suggest chapter 6 of my SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS (Blackwell 1995). It surveys a great deal of the literature and situates world-system theory within the context of a more general theory of social evolution. Stephen Sanderson From ba05105@binghamton.edu Wed Dec 11 13:44:35 1996 From: ba05105@binghamton.edu Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 15:45:08 -0500 (EST) To: "Charles J. Reid" Subject: Re: WSN digest 191 In-Reply-To: Lessee... Strictly author's own opinion (of course) and lets keep in mind that Worlds Systems is a perspective rather than a precise theory... 1) The Modern World System Vol 1. Immanuel Wallerstein 2) The Perspective of the World Fernand Braudel 3) The Great Transformation Karl Polanyi 4) Before European Hegemony Janet Abu Lughod 5) Long Twentieth Century Giovanni Arrighi 6) Logic of World Power Franz Schurmann 7) Europe and the People Without History Eric Wolf 8) Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale Maria Mies 9) Unthinking Social Science Wallerstein 10) PUrsuit of Power William McNeil Above is a list heavily influenced by Grad program here in Binghamton. INterestingly,most of the above books are stabs at their questions rather than definitive resolutions. And I'm struck by how I can't even think of a stab at the question of how the processes of the modern world system (or, if people prefer, the 5,000 year world system) has affected the non-human world and vice versa. On Tue, 10 Dec 1996, Charles J. Reid wrote: > Hi, Folks! > > What're the 10 most important books that must be read to learn about > World Systems Theory? > > > > -- Charlie Reid > > cjreid@netcom.com > "Salus populi suprema est lex" (Cicero) > The welfare of the people is the highest law. > --------------------------------------------- > > From TBOS@social-sci.ss.emory.edu Wed Dec 11 16:05:45 1996 From: "Terry Boswell" Organization: Social Sciences, Emory Univ. To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 18:02:16 EST5EDT Subject: Re: top ten + I would add to the list, Modelski and Thompson's _Leading Sectors and World Powers_. For understanding more contemporary global issues like the rise of the NICs and "globalization," I recommend, Phil McMichael's _Development and Social Change_ and Peter Evans' _Emedded Autonomy_. More? Date sent: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 11:46:23 -0500 Send reply to: chriscd@jhu.edu From: chris chase-dunn To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: top ten to Charles J Reid and others interested, the 10 most necessary books are: start with Richard J. Shannon, An Introduction to the World-systems Perspective, Westview press 1996 (2nd edition). then the classics: Fernand Braudel, The Perspective of the World, Volume 3 of Civilization and Capitalism. now published by University of California Press. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System Vols. 1-3 Andre Gunder Frank, World Accumulation 1492-1789 Samir Amin, Accumulation on a World Scale Joshua Goldstein, Long Cycles Christopher Chase-Dunn, Global Formation Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century Christian Suter, Debt Cycles in the World-Economy Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas D. Hall, Rise and Demise That is more than ten if you count all the volumes. Only two of them are by me because I am trying to appear modest. chris Terry Boswell Department of Sociology Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322 From I.R.Douglas@Bristol.ac.uk Wed Dec 11 17:55:01 1996 for ; Thu, 12 Dec 1996 00:50:54 GMT Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 00:52:18 +0000 From: Ian Robert Douglas Reply-To: I.R.Douglas@Bristol.ac.uk Subject: re: top ten To: World Systems > What're the 10 most important books that must be read to learn about > World Systems Theory? >Answer: None of the above! WRITE YOUR OWN!!! >cheerfully submitted >Gunder Frank Dear Charlie, In case you are like me, and a mere mortal in comparison to Gunder's ability to write *his* own, I would recommend (in addition to those already mentioned) the following: Some are not 'world system' texts, but are important nonetheless: 1) William H.McNeill _The Rise of the West_ (see also his wonderful epilogue to Stephen Sanderson's (ed) _Civilizations and World Systems_) 2) William H.McNeill _Plagues and People_ (not normally seen as 'world system' analysis, but an amazing addition to world history) 3) William H.McNeill 'A Defence of World History_, in _Mythistory and Other Essays_. (opening chapter pretty neat also) 3) Lewis Mumford _The City in History_ 4) Lewis Mumford _Technics and Civilization_ (again, not standard 'world system' ground, but rather world history .. stunning erudition with a refreshing sense of social concern) 5) Marshall Hodgson _The Venture of Islam_ 3 Vols 6) Michael Mann _The Sources of Social Power_ 2 Vols 7) Marshall Sahlins _Stone Age Economics_ 8) Norbert Elias _The Civilizing Process_ 9) Fernand Braudel _The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II_ 2 Vols 10) I guess you must know the following already, but don't forget the important work by Barry Gills and Gunder Frank, extending the world system project: Andre Gunder Frank and Barry Gills (eds) _The World System_ best wishes/sincerely ian.r.d. _______________________________________________________________________ Ian Robert Douglas, Department of Politics, "In attempting to uncover the deepest strata University of Bristol, of Western culture, I am restoring to our Bristol, BS8 1TU, UK. silent and apparently immobile soil its rifts, its instability, its flaws; and it is I.R.Douglas@bris.ac.uk the same ground that is once more stirring Tel: (0117) 928 7898 under our feet." (Michel Foucault) Fax: (0117) 973 2133 http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Politics/70112.html http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Politics/JPP _______________________________________________________________________ From br00196@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu Wed Dec 11 22:06:48 1996 Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 00:07:36 -0500 (EST) From: Moi To: ba05105@binghamton.edu Subject: Another great World-systems book In-Reply-To: Try Gulliver's Travel, byt Jonathan Swift. It is the ultimate world-systems book. And that's with or without the hyphen! From biosphere@vest.theorysc.gu.se Thu Dec 12 02:34:09 1996 Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 10:36:18 +0000 From: MERLE JACOB Reply-To: biosphere@vest.theorysc.gu.se Organization: Dept. of Theory of Science and Research, University of Gothenburg To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: sad news Dear World systemers, I have some sad news. I am not certain how many of you are familiar with the work of Herb Addo. Herb was a West African scholar working in the Caribbean (Trinidad) and a strong proponent of the World Systems perspective. I recently received news that Herb is no longer with us. He died in Ghana, his home country. Merle Jacob. From B.K.Gills@newcastle.ac.uk Thu Dec 12 03:37:18 1996 From: "Barry Gills" To: tbos@social-sci.ss.emory.edu Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 10:36:04 GMT0BST Subject: the difference a hyphen makes Dear World System Net Discussants, There has been an exchange of views between Gunder, Terry Boswell, Al and others on central issues of definition in world system theory, versus world-system theory. Terry has called for definitional clarity, agreement on concepts, and an empirical resolution to certain questions. The difference a hyphen makes is quite significant and was precisely intended by us to do so when we dropped the hyphen back in 1990. We have been working in the World Historical Systems Group of ISA since 1989 to promote dialogue and joint research among those scholars interested in understanding processes of long term large scale social change. We did not set out to achieve a unity of theoretical perspective amongst the membership nor did we achieve any such unity. When we attempted to seriously address the question of definitions and concepts among ourselves at the conference in Lund, Sweden, we decided that consensus on definitions and concepts was not possible. What we opted for was a set of processes in world history that we could all subscribe to and which could form the basis of a common research interest, if not a programme. This being the case, I do not think it is appropriate or useful to try to do what Terry is suggesting in the way that he is suggesting it. That is, I do not accept the proposal to judge the world system theory (without a hyphen) of Frank and Gills by the standards and criteria of the world-system theory (with a hyphen) of Immanuel Wallerstein (with all respect). The upshot of Terry's comments is that our world system theory becomes a special theory for pre-1500 world history, and that thereafter we should accept that the world system was transformed into a world-system, based on the criteria for integration in 'necessities' as established in Wallerstein's framework. One of our fundamental points of difference with Wallerstein from the beginning ('The Cumulation of Accumulation' Dialectical Anthropology 1990) was that we rejected both his criterion of trade in 'daily necessities' (as some others had already done before us) and instead created a formulation based on the regular and significant exchange of surplus between areas or zones of production, which involved their producing classes and their elites in a mutual social relation. This was also different from David Wilkinson's criteria that systemic conflict interaction was necessary. We posited an 'economy/polity contradiction' instead, whereby the real economic system of a political jurisdiction (such as a state or even an 'empire') normally exceeds the area of the polity or state proper, and Wilkinson refined this by adding that the 'economy leads the flag' in the historic process. We also rejected Wallerstein's criteria of integration, as I said above, since we had a very different way of defining the systemic in the first place. In my view, this is inded an interesting empirical question, but not in the strict temporal dichotomisation that Terry suggests- ie the conventional world-system view that world economic history is defined fundamentally by the rupture between the pre-1500 system and a post 1500 'capitalist' one. I think there is quite good reason to investigate the degree to which so-called 'daily necessities' were in fact widely traded even in the ancient world economy. This also turns on how one defines such commodities. Certainly metals, pottery, vegetable oil, grain, slaves, were traded widely in the ancient world economy, though one needs to clarify the logistical limits of such trade circuits obviously, and compare them to longer distance circuits of trade in very high value goods, such as jems ans spices. Chase-Dunn and Hall have done excellent work on trying to model the overlap of different kinds of exchange networks, but in an overarching framework of the world economy which certainly doies not revert to the world-system method of chopping up each civilisational region of the world into separate world-economies. Gunder and I debated head on with Wallerstein and Palat on this issue in Review (special isue) in 1992 in the '1700 BC 1700 AD paper on world system cycles and hegemonic shifts. Gunder has further extended this argument, following a joint paper we did while he was visiting professor here at Newcastle in 1994 on "Asian hegemony", where we argued that contra Wallerstein and Palat's insistence that the Indian Ocean, and China both constituted separate world economies in the 16th century, that they were both already long integrated into the world system, and moreover, ASIA was hegemonic in that system from 1450-1750,, and NOT Europe. It was my task to formulate a model of a 'multi-core' world system, in which there are usually several contending core areas, ratyher than the 'uni-core' world-system model. Thus, Frank and Gills talk about 'hegemony-rivalry' rather differently from Wallerstein, and we defined hegemony quite differently. We had a discussion of this 'hegemony' issue at ISA a few years ago, which was partly published in the Mershon Review. We could reach no consensus on the definition of the concept, and indeed some of us ( David Wilkinson, George Modelski) were quite adamant about the limitations of that concept full stop. The rest of us, including Arrighi and Robert Cox, seemed to concede that 'hegemony' was an exception rather than a rule if by hegemony one meant a moment or even an era where only a single core-state truly dominated the world economically and politically. As to the question of capitalism, I think Gunder said it well when he argued that this concept is more ideological than social-scientific, which also goes for fuedalism and for socialism as well. I resisted this argument at first, but eventually came to agree with it on the whole. However, I have said before that the issue rests on the lack of proper distinction between 'capital' (as Ekholm and Friedman define it in their seminal Review article reproduced in The World System (Frank and Gills 1993) ie abstract wealth, with command over labour power, and the much more totalising concept (and prone to reification) of 'capitalism, which I belive we owe to Werner Sombart and not to Marx in any event. I have argied consistently that 'capital' has existed and been central to world system economic development since the beginning, and it was precisely this argument that was the crux of the first jont article I penned with Gunder "The Cumulation of Accumulation'. If you now try to say we can 'reconcile' the difference between Frank and Gills world system theory in which capital and capital accumulation are central from the beginning circa 2500 BCE (or earlier) and Wallerstein wherein capital accumulation doesn't figure significantly until the 16th century I am bounfd to say you are barking up the wrong tree Terry! I do think AL formulated it well in one of his recent comments on Eurocentrism, ie Europe was already a part of the world system before 1500 (but in a fairly 'peripheral' position. There was already thriving capital accumulation in that system- as Abu-Lughod has so brilliantly demonstrated. The debate over the 'merchant capital' class in my view is imprisoned inan outmoded frmaeowrk of analysis derived from Marxism. If one reads Before European Hegemony more carefully, one may note that fundamental aspects of later Wert European capitalist institutions and practices, both in finance and in business contract, where innovated in the ancient and early medieval world , probably in what we now call the Middle East, and certainly Arab commercial practices were quite a direct model for 'Italian' capitalist practices. So where and when did 'capitalism' arise?? Braudel suspects the 13th century or earlier, Abu-Lughod implies an Islamic capitalist commerical core of early medieval vintage, etc. Trying to say that the world system becomes the world-system because it becomes for the first time truly 'capitalism' once Europe is hegemonic is perhaps no more nor less than another way of trying to salvage something of the grand narrative of the rise of Europe that I thought most of us were ready to reject. There is another way of doing it. With respect. Barry K. Gills University of Newcastle upon Tyne England From chriscd@jhu.edu Thu Dec 12 08:13:18 1996 12 Dec 1996 10:12:58 -0500 (EST) 12 Dec 1996 10:12:47 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 10:14:11 -0500 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: [Fwd: Women's Rights Day: In memory of Peng Wan-ru (fwd)] To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu Organization: Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.21218 USA Thu, 12 Dec 1996 00:57:09 -0500 (EST) Thu, 12 Dec 1996 00:57:01 -0500 (EST) 11 Dec 1996 22:56:57 -0700 (MST) Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 00:56:55 -0500 From: Ishtaritu@asu.edu Subject: Women's Rights Day: In memory of Peng Wan-ru (fwd) To: chriscd@jhu.edu ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 22:43:30 -0700 (MST) From: ide4bubu@imap1.asu.edu To: WSN@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Women's Rights Day: In memory of Peng Wan-ru (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 9 Dec 1996 22:50:34 -0800 (PST) From: Taiwanese Student Association To: tsa@off.ugcs.caltech.edu Subject: Women's Rights Day: In memory of Peng Wan-ru Dear Friends: Peng Wan-Ru, a long-time activist in Taiwan's feminist movement and the director of the Department of Women's Development of the Democratic Progressive Party, was raped then killed on November 30th. This killing was not only a despicable crime but also a cruel reminder that violence against women is very much a living issue in Taiwan. Peng's death is a heartbreaking loss; the pain, sorrows, and anger of losing her to such a ruthless crime are widely shared. As fellow believers in gender equality and social justice, we feel compelled not to let her death become a mere addition to Taiwan's crime statistics. We cannot let her die in vain. Her belief in gender equality and social justice must be carried forward. Peng was known to be a fighter. In memory of her untimely death and her efforts in advancing women's rights in Taiwan, we propose the establishment of the Women's Rights Day on the last Sunday of every November. It was on the last Sunday of this past November she was last seen alive, and she spent the whole day making a better future for women in Taiwan. The Women's Rights Day will be a day not only for remembering her and all the female victims of violence, but a day to show solidarity in the fight for social, political, and legal reforms to achieve gender equality in Taiwan. The memorial service for Peng Wan-Ru will be held in late December. We plan to present this proposal and the name list of the supporters to her family and various organizations in the women's movement on December 20th. If you support our proposal, please sign in the following web sites: http://www.taiwanese.com/peng. If you cannot get access to the Web, you can e-mail your name to any of us. If you have friends who want to sign but do not have access to the internet, please sign for him or her. We urge you to sign by 11:30PM, December 19th, Taiwan Time, so we can have the final count of the signatures. Huang Chang-Ling University of Chicago hua8@midway.uchicago.edu Chang Sheng-Lin UC-Berkeley schang1@ced.berkeley.edu Po Lan-Chih UC-Berkeley pol@ced.berkeley.edu Sun Jui-Sui UCLA sssun@ucla.edu From agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca Thu Dec 12 08:27:31 1996 Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 10:28:20 -0500 (EST) From: "A. Gunder Frank" To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: good and bad GOOD for you Barry! = Bad for YOU Terry!! Amen!!! fraternally/sororaly and respectfully submitted gunder From D.Ohearn@Queens-Belfast.AC.UK Thu Dec 12 08:34:35 1996 Thu, 12 Dec 1996 15:39:20 GMT Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 16:33:17 PST From: "Denis O'Hearn" Subject: call for papers, esa To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu ********* CALL FOR PAPERS ********** sessions on: GLOBALIZATION: TECHNOLOGIES, ENVIRONMENTS AND FUTURES at the EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 3rd EUROPEAN CONFERENCE August 27-30 1997 on the theme 20th CENTURY EUROPE: Inclusions/Exclusions (deadline for abstracts: 15 January 1997) WSNers (and W-SNers): I am co-convener of sessions with the above theme at the Conference of the European Sociological Association, August 27-30 1997 at the University of Essex in Colchester, north of London. The other co-convener is Vittorio Capecchi of Dipartimento di Scienze Educazione, Bologna. Since WSN has had several lively discussions on world-system environments and futures (not to mention Eurocentrism) recently, I'm sure there are a number of you with something to contribute. We are allocated up to five sessions, so there is still room for some subthemes to be supply-driven. From my own interests, I would particularly like to invite papers on the future implications of globalization/technology for the European periphery (including non-EU regions like Eastern Europe). Costs will be reasonable (fee around 100 pounds for ESA members and reasonably priced room and board), and there are opportunities for fellowships for Eastern European scholars. Abstracts (250 words - Deadline 15 January 1997) should be sent in two copies, one to me and one to Essex, at the following addresses: Denis O'Hearn Department of Sociology & Social Policy Queens University of Belfast Belfast BT7 1NN N. of Ireland e-mail: d.ohearn@qub.ac.uk fax: 44 (1232) 320668 Conference Organiser - ESA Conference Department of Sociology University of Essex Wivenhoe Park Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ United Kingdom e-mail: ESA97@essex.ac.uk Fax: +44 (1206) 873410 EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 3rd EUROPEAN CONFERENCE The European Sociological Association hosts its Third European Conference on August 27-30 1997 at the University of Essex in Colchester, north of London. The conference theme is: "20th Century Europe: Inclusions/Exclusions". The theme will be explored focusing particularly on the issues of gender, ethnicity, class and age in the restructuring of European societies throughout this century and the role of European sociological insights in the understanding of inclusionary and exclusionary changes. From agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca Thu Dec 12 09:17:43 1996 Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 11:18:31 -0500 (EST) From: "A. Gunder Frank" To: H-NET List for World History Subject: Gunder Frank response to Brown, Kalivas, Schmieder Brown correctly and usefull calls for a re-examination of starting points/s and methodology. But HIS starting point and HIS methodology are no help. For to start with he only repeats that there is "no question of European dominance" in the early modern period. Well, one starting point is precisely to re-examine this "question," and the more we do the more we find that there is NO question that Europeans were NOT dominant in the world. Brown's "methodology" also does not help: He says world-system and all that downplays production and up-plays commerce. For starters, there can be NO commerce without production. the whole point is that the commerce is part and parcel of a division of productive labor - all around the world in the period Brown refers to. And in PRODUCTION, - NOT to mention its commercialization - Europe was soooo marginal that Europeans were not even able to sell anything in the world market, except silver - which they did NOT even produce themselves! Byt any and all measure of total production, porduction per capita, productivity, competititveness, trade - and also the technology and institutions that supported the former - China, India, and even South East Asia and West Asia were FAR ahead and more important than Europe. Moreover even the rates of INCREASE in the same were greater in Asia than in Europe, and supported a rate of population increase of about 0.6% a year in Asia comapred to 0.3% a year in Europe during the centuries before 1750, when an inflectin in these propulation growth rates ocurred. So Brown is only leading us even farther down the same old Eurocentric garden path, and offers just the opposite of a new departure or methodology! Alas!! Kalivas adds, yes but surely the Europeans weere laying the "groundwork" before 1800 for their acheivments after that. To a rather limited extent, insorfar as that gourndwork did support the sudden increase in population growth rates from 0.3% before 1750 to over 1% a year in Europe after that. But it is totally MISleading - and no contribution to "re-examining starting points and methodololgy" to argue that in general what Europeans did after 1800 built on their own groundwork between 1500 and 1800. Even more MISleading is Schmieder's suggestion that we should trace the European grondwork even farther back through the "middle ages" WITHIN Europe. Precisely THAT has been the Eurocentric tunnel vision/tunnel history "departure" and "methodology" of most historians, ALL economic historians, and social "scientists" from Marx Weber to Braudel and Wallerstein. the latter did however add a "colonial" dimension through which Europeans did not doethe "groundwork" all by themselves. In fact they did hardly any of it! And what the Europeans did between 1500 and 1800,most Asian did much more so and better [see above]! So it was not that "groundwork" per se that can account for what happened after 1800 - unless by "groundwork" we mean what the WHOLE World did before 1800, not especially or even significantly what the Europenas did! To elucidate or even to investigate that - what really happened - we DO need to "re-examine" the real staring point/s and use a rather different methodology from any still employed by Brown,Kaliva, Schmieder - and [who are in the good = bad company of] virtually everybody else! Wake UP, Haines!! seriously submitted gunder frank From hoopes@ukans.edu Thu Dec 12 09:19:01 1996 Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 10:23:20 -0600 From: "John W. Hoopes" Reply-To: hoopes@ukans.edu Organization: Dept. of Anthropology, University of Kansas To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Top ten list Thanks to all who have been contributing to the "top ten" question. I passed along a synthesis of the lists to one of my graduate students, who came back with the following questions: >Thanks for the World Systems Theory reading list! I have what is >surely getting to be an "old" question: Who are the women authors on >the subject? Which, if any, of their works might be considered >"necessary"? Just a question. One might also ask which would be key works from authors representing other than "core" societies. John Hoopes University of Kansas hoopes@ukans.edu http://www.cc.ukans.edu/~hoopes From 6500jk@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu Thu Dec 12 09:52:24 1996 Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 08:53:17 -0800 (PST) From: Judi Kessler <6500jk@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu> To: "John W. Hoopes" Subject: Re: Top ten list In-Reply-To: <32B03178.3917@ukans.edu> Sassen, Saskia. 1991. The Global City. Princeton On Thu, 12 Dec 1996, John W. Hoopes wrote: > Thanks to all who have been contributing to the "top ten" question. I > passed along a synthesis of the lists to one of my graduate students, > who came back with the following questions: > > >Thanks for the World Systems Theory reading list! I have what is >surely getting to be an "old" question: Who are the women authors on >the subject? Which, if any, of their works might be considered >"necessary"? Just a question. > > One might also ask which would be key works from authors representing > other than "core" societies. > > John Hoopes > University of Kansas > hoopes@ukans.edu > http://www.cc.ukans.edu/~hoopes > From hoopes@ukans.edu Thu Dec 12 10:09:19 1996 Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 11:13:40 -0600 From: "John W. Hoopes" Reply-To: hoopes@ukans.edu Organization: Dept. of Anthropology, University of Kansas To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Top ten list References: <32B03178.3917@ukans.edu> (I hope this is easier to read...) Thanks to all who have been contributing to the "top ten" question. I passed along a synthesis of the lists to one of my graduate students, who came back with the following questions: > >Thanks for the World Systems Theory reading list! I have what is >surely getting to be an "old" question: Who are the women authors on >the subject? Which, if any, of their works might be considered >"necessary"? Just a question. > One might also ask which would be key works from authors representing other than "core" societies. John Hoopes University of Kansas hoopes@ukans.edu http://www.cc.ukans.edu/~hoopes From austria@it.com.pl Thu Dec 12 11:19:34 1996 From: austria@it.com.pl Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 19:19:17 +0100 (MET) Subject: The List of Ten - An East European/Latin American Perspective To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Colleagues, the lists are good - but sometimes hopelessly Amero-centric. If I had to teach a course across the Great Pot again, I'd select the following titles about theories and the struggles of people in the one and single capitalist world economy - also with the necessary dimension of the conflict structure, that capitalism created over the last 500 years, and also comprising historical aspects of theories (like Kalecki) that I find are absolutely vital when one works - like I do for the last 4 years - in a East European semi-periphery. It also contains classics - like the one by our late friend Herb Addo - which are often overlooked in America. I also include Kunibert Raffer's path-breaking analysis of Unequal Exchange; else an unresolved basic concept of the Wallerstein school. The list is a list of 5 pages (pardon me) My List of 5 Addo H. (1986), 'Imperialism: the permanent stage of capitalism' Tokyo: United Nations University. Akerman J. (1936) 'Economic Progress and Economic Crises' London and Basingstoke: Macmillan. Amin S. (1992), 'Empire of Chaos' New York: Monthly Review Press. Apter D. (1987), 'Rethinking Development: Modernisation, Dependency and Post-Modern Politics' Newbury Park, CA.: Sage. Beaud M. (1990), 'Histoire du capitalisme de 1500 nos jours' 4e dition revue et corrige en 1990, Paris: ditions du Seuil Bernal-Restrepo S. S.J. (1991), 'Katholische Soziallehre und Kapitalismus' in 'Veraendert der Glaube die Wirtschaft? Theologie und Oekonomie in Lateinamerika' (Fornet-Betancourt R. (Ed.)), pp. 21-38, Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder. Berryman, Ph. (1987), Liberation Theology: The Essential Facts about the Revolutionary Movement in Latin America and Beyond New York: Pantheon Books Boff C. and Boff L. (1984), Salvation and Liberation: In Search of a Balance between Faith and Politics Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Boff L. and Boff C. (1988), Introducing Liberation Theology Trans. Paul Burns. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Bornschier V. and Chase-Dunn Ch.K. (1985), 'Transnational Corporations and Underdevelopment' N.Y., N.Y.: Praeger. Chase-Dunn Ch.K. (1991), 'Global Formation: Structures of the World Economy' Oxford and New York: Blackwell David A. and Wheelwright T. (1989), 'The Third Wave. Australia and Asian Capitalism' Sutherland, New South Wales: Left Book Club Cooperative Ltd. Dubiel I. (1983), 'Der klassische Kern der lateinamerikanischen Entwicklungstheorie. Ein metatheoretischer Versuch' Munich: Eberhard Ellacuria I. S.J. (1989), 'Utopia y profetismo desde Amrica Latina. Un ensayo concreto de soterologa historica' Revista Latinoamericana de Teologa (San Salvador, El Salvador), 6, 17: 141-84. Elsenhans H. (1983), 'Rising mass incomes as a condition of capitalist growth: implications for the world economy' International Organization, 37, 1: 1-39. Flechsig St. (1994), 'Ral Prebisch (1901-1986)-ein bedeutendes theoretisches Vermaechtnis oder kein alter Hut' Utopie kreativ, 45/46, Juli/August: 136-155. Frank A.G. (1990), 'Revolution in Eastern Europe: lessons for democratic social movements (and socialists?),' Third World Quarterly, 12, 2, April: 36-52. Frank A.G. (1992), 'Economic ironies in Europe: a world economic interpretation of East-West European politics' International Social Science Journal, 131, February: 41-56. Frank A.G. and Frank-Fuentes M. (1990), 'Widerstand im Weltsystem' Wien: Promedia. Frank A.G. and Gills, B. (Eds.)(1993), 'The World System: Five Hundred or Five Thousand Years?' London and New York: Routledge, Kegan&Paul. Froebel F. et al. (1986), 'Umbruch in der Weltwirtschaft' Reinbek: rororo aktuell (English translation: Cambridge University Press). Goldstein J.S. (1985a), 'Kondratieff Waves as War Cycles' International Studies Quarterly, 29, 4: 411-444. Goldstein J.S. (1988), 'Long Cycles. Prosperity and War in the Modern Age' New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Gonzales Casanova P. (1973), 'Sociologa de la explotacin' Mexico D.F.: Siglo XXI. Griffin K. (1987), 'World Hunger and the World Economy. And Other Essays in Development Economics'London, Basingstoke and New York: Macmillan/Saint Martin's Press. Griffin K. and Gurley J. (1985), 'Radical Analyses of Imperialism, the Third World, and the Transition to Socialism: A Survey Article' Journal of Economic Literature, 23, September: 1089-1143. Griffin K. and Knight J. (Eds.)(1990), 'Human Development and the International Development Strategy for the 1990s' London and Basingstoke: Macmillan. Gutierrez G. (1988), A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation Trans. and ed. Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson. Rev. edition, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Hettne B. (1994), 'The Political Economy of Post-Communist Development' The European Journal of Development Research, 6, 1, June: 39-60. Kalecki M. (1979), 'Essays on Developing Economies. With an Introduction by Professor Joan Robinson' Hassocks, Sussex: The Harvester Press. Kay C. (1989), Latin American Theories of Development and Underdevelopment London and New York: Routledge, Kegan and Paul. Kay C. (1991), 'Reflections on the Latin American Contribution to Development Theory' Development and Change, 22, 1: 31-68. Kleinknecht A. (1987), 'Innovation Patterns in Crisis and Prosperity: Schumpeter's Long Cycle Reconsidered' London and Basingstoke: Macmillan. Kleinknecht A. et al. (Eds.) (1993), 'New Findings in Long-Wave Research' New York: Saint Martin's Press. Lernoux P. (1980), Cry of the People Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Olson M. (1982), 'The Rise and Decline of Nations' New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Polanyi, K. (1944/1957), 'The Great Transformation' Boston: Beacon. Polanyi, K. (1979), 'Oekonomie und Gesellschaft' Frankfurt a.M.: suhrkamp taschenbuch wissenschaft. Popper Sir K. (1991), 'The Best World We Have Yet Had. George Urban Interviews Sir Karl Popper' Report on the USSR, 3, 22, May 31: 20-22. Prebisch R. (1983), 'The crisis of capitalism and international trade' CEPAL Review, 20, August: 51-74 Prebisch R. (1984), 'Five Stages in My Thinking on Development' in 'Pioneers in Development. A World Bank Publication' (Meier G.M. and Seers D. (Eds.)), pp. 175-191. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Preston P.W. (1987), 'Rethinking Development. Essays on development and Southeast Asia' London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Raffer K. (1987), 'Unequal Exchange and the Evolution of the World System Reconsidering the Impact of Trade on North-South Relations' London, Basingstoke and New York: Macmillan/Saint Martin's Press. Raffer K. (1989), 'Sovereign Debts, Unilateral 'Adjustment', and Multilateral Control: The New Way to Serfdom' (Singer H.W. et al. (Eds.)), New Delhi: Ashish Publishing House. Raffer K. (1995), Lo que es bueno para los Estados Unidos debe ser bueno para el mundo. Propuesta de una Declaracin Universal de Isolvencia Persona y Sociedad, Instituto Latinoamericano de Doctrina y Estudios Sociales ILADES, 9, 2, Septiembre: 64 - 73. Raffer K. and Singer H.W. (1996), The Foreign Aid Business. Economic Assistance and Development Cooperation Cheltenham and Borookfield: Edward Alger. Reich R. B. (1992), 'The Work of Nations. Preparing Ourselves for 21st-Century Capitalism' New York: Random House, Vintage Books Edition. Senghaas D. (1985), 'The European Experience: A Historical Critique of Development Theory' Leamington Spa, Dover: Berg. Shaw T. M. (1995), Globalisation, Regionalisms and the South in the 1990s: Towards a New Political Economy of Development The European Journal of Development Research, 7, 2, Dec.: 257-275 Steger H. A. (1989), 'Weltzivilisation und Regionalkultur. Wege zur Entschluesselung kultureller Identitaeten' Munich: Eberhard. Steger H. A. (1990), 'Europaeische Geschichte als kulturelle und politische Wirklichkeit. Hornruf von der anderen Seite des Limes.' Munich: Eberhard. Stephens J.D. (1991), 'Industrial Concentration, Country Size, and Trade Union Membership' American Political Science Review, 85, 3, September: 941-949. Szlajfer H. (1977), 'Nachzuholende Entwicklung unter den Bedingungen des Weltmarktes: Das Beispiel der polnischen Entwicklung' Probleme des Klassenkampfes, 7, 27: 7ff. Tausch A. (1991a), 'Russlands Tretmuehle. Kapitalistisches Weltsystem, lange Zyklen und die neue Instabilitaet im Osten' Munich: Eberhard. Tausch A. (1991b), 'Jenseits der Weltgesellschaftstheorien. Sozialtransformationen und der Paradigmenwechsel in der Entwicklungsforschung' Munich: Eberhard. Tausch A. (1993, with Fred Prager), 'Towards a Socio-Liberal Theory of World Development' Basingstoke and New York: Macmillan/St. Martin's Press. Tausch A. and Boer E. de (1996), 'The Imperative of Social Transformation' under review at Basingstoke and New York: Macmillan/St. Martin's Press. Tausch K. (1993), 'Frauen in Peru. Ihre literarische und kulturelle Praesenz' Munich: Eberhard, Schriften zu Lateinamerika, Band 5. From edtgg@cc.newcastle.edu.au Thu Dec 12 14:52:17 1996 wsn@csf.colorado.edu; Fri, 13 Dec 1996 08:51:03 +1100 Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 08:51:03 +1100 Date-warning: Date header was inserted by cc.newcastle.edu.au From: Thomas Griffiths Subject: A single addition to the Top ten list To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu A single addition to the "top ten": Juan Antonio Blanco. 1995. Tercer Milenio: Una Visi=F3n Alternativa de la Posmodernidad. La Habana: Centro Felix Varela. This text is a contribution to wst from non-core Cuba, providing a great account of the Soviet Union and (largely implicitly) Cuba within the world-system and the implications of this. Blanco shows how the development project of socialist Cuba was based on premises common to those of capitalism ("the other great culture of modernism"), with outcomes that have undermined many of the early objectives of the Revolution.=20 Thanks to the others for the humbling lists. Thomas G. Griffiths PhD Research Student=20 Faculty of Education, University of Newcastle.=20 NSW. 2308. Australia. From harlowc@cats.ucsc.edu Thu Dec 12 17:44:45 1996 Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 16:47:43 -0800 From: Christian Harlow Reply-To: harlowc@cats.ucsc.edu Organization: Department of Sociology, UC Santa Cruz To: WSN Subject: A necessity on any WST reading list!!! For a glance at the existential/spirtual/political inspiration for the World-Systems perspective i would recommend Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. Wallerstein's motivation for WST and many current adherents comes from an understanding of the human atrocities committed by the many guises of imperialistic global capitalism. Fanon's work is a passionate peice which highlights the injustice created by the world system(while not naming it such). Daniel Chirot has gone so far as to say (in Skocpol's, Vision and Method in Historical Sociology) that Wallerstein's is the theory justifying "third world" liberation. P.S. Wallerstein was crucial in getting Fanon's work published in English. Cheers, Christian Harlow University of California, Santa Cruz From thall@DEPAUW.EDU Thu Dec 12 18:09:19 1996 12 Dec 1996 20:09:11 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 20:09:10 -0500 (EST) From: "Thomas D. [Tom] Hall, THALL@DEPAUW.EDU" Subject: My contribution to 10 best To: Network World-Systems M E M O R A N D U M TO: WSNers FROM: Thomas D. Hall, THALL@DEPAUW.EDU 317-658-4519 RE: 10 best books DATE: December 12, 1996 The lists that have been appearing have been quite good. I would like to suggest, however, a slightly different approach. Cut the list somewhat, and supplement it with a few review articles. The latter can then guide one to the appropriate monographic literature according to one's interests. Why the different approach? WST is a book field, where much of the best work is in detailed world-system analyses of specific topics, place, and/or times. To single out 4, 5, or 10 best books would not fully sample the field. I think a better approach would be to read some of the central works, then sample, according to interests the more specialized studies. This strategy would reveal that world-systems work is not so core- or even euro-centric as is often claimed. Also to see how a world- system perspective works, it is better to get past the programmatic statements, and dig into actual detailed analyses of places and times not discussed in book list. The books on my list would be: Wallerstein: MWS, I, II, III Chase-Dunn: Global Formation *Arrighi: The Long Twentieth Century *Sanderson: Civilizations and World-Systems Chase-Dunn & Hall: Rise & Demise: Comparing World-Systems [I include the latter because it summarizes much of the work done so far on precapitalist world-systems] *These two are reviewed in the journal issue noted below. Martin, William G. 1994. "The World-Systems Perspective in Perspective: Assessing the Attempt to Move Beyond Nineteenth Century Eurocentric Conceptions." Review 18:2(Spring):145-185. Chase-Dunn, Christopher and Peter Grimes (1995). "World-Systems Analysis." Annual Review of Sociology 21:387-417. Three of the five articles in the newly published special section of _Sociological Inquiry_ 66:4(Fall 1996) [separate complete announcement posted separately], summarize much of world- systems literature and have extensive bibliographies to are useful in following many topics. Thomas D. Hall, The World-System Perspective: A Small Sample from a Large Universe, 440-454 This is my own overview, which complements Martin and Chase-Dunn & Grimes reviews. Peter Peregrine, Archaeology and World-Systems Theory, 486-495 This is a good overview of the archaeological literature in and around world-systems perspective. Colin Flint and Fred M. Shelley, Structure, Agency and Context: The Contributions of Geography to World-Systems Analysis, 496-508 This is a good overview of work done by geographers in the world- system tradition. Tom Hall thall@depauw.edu Department of Sociology DePauw University Greencastle, IN 46135 317-658-4519 From thall@DEPAUW.EDU Thu Dec 12 18:10:04 1996 12 Dec 1996 20:09:59 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 20:09:59 -0500 (EST) From: "Thomas D. [Tom] Hall, THALL@DEPAUW.EDU" Subject: Special Journal issue on WST To: Network World-Systems I am pleased to announce that the issue of _Sociological Inquiry_ with a special section on World-Systems Theory is now published. Special Section of _Sociological Inquiry_ 66:4(Fall) World-Systems Theory Guest Editor Thomas D. Hall Table of Contents ARTICLES: Thomas D. Hall, The World-System Perspective: A Small Sample 440-454 from a Large Universe Wilma A. Dunaway, Incorporation as an Interactive Process: 455-470 Cherokee Resistance to Expansion of the Capitalist World-System, 1560-1763 Alvin Y. So and Stephen W.K. Chiu, Modern East Asia in World-Systems Analysis 471-485 Peter Peregrine, Archaeology and World-Systems Theory 486-495 Colin Flint and Fred M. Shelley, Structure, Agency and Context: The 496-508 Contributions of Geography to World-Systems Analysis BOOK REVIEWS: The Long Twentieth Century, by Giovani Arrighi Reviewed by Walter Goldfrank 509-511 The Colonizer's Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History by J. M. Blaut Reviewed by Stephn K. Sanderson 511-513 Civilizations and World-Systems: Two Approaches to the Study of World-Historical Change, edited by Stephen K. Sanderson Reviewed by J. B. Owens 513-517 East Asia and the World-Economy by Alvin Y So and Stephen W. K. Chiu, Reviewed by Ravi Palat 517-519 Tom Hall thall@depauw.edu Department of Sociology DePauw University Greencastle, IN 46135 317-658-4519 From pwturner@indiana.edu Fri Dec 13 07:49:33 1996 Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 09:49:30 -0500 (EST) From: "Paul W. Turner" To: WSN@csf.colorado.edu Subject: WST and Deforestation I am trying to put together a bibliography on WST and deforestation. So far, the bib is not very large, but maybe that's just a function of the fact that there's not much out there. So far, I have: Chew, Sing C. 1995. "Environmental Transformations: Accumulation, Ecological Crisis, and Social Movements." In A NEW WORLD ORDER?, ed. David A. Smith and Jozsef Borocz, 201-215. Westport, CT: Praeger. Smith, David A. 1994. "Uneven Development and the Environment: Toward a World-System Perspective." HUMBOLDT JOURNAL OF SOCIAL RELATIONS 20(1): 151-175. (This article cites a proposal submitted by Roberts and Grimes to look at deforestation from a WST perspective; does anyone know if any publications have come from this yet?) If anyone could point me to any other readings tying deforestation to capitalist expansion/capital accumulation, I would be grateful. Thanks for the help...Paul Paul Turner, Research Assistant Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis Phone: 812-855-1223 513 N. Park Street FAX: 812-855-3150 Bloomington, IN 47408 email: pwturner@indiana.edu From emerald@lark.cc.ukans.edu Fri Dec 13 09:51:38 1996 Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 10:51:35 -0600 (CST) From: "David N. Smith" To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: New insight into an old question In-Reply-To: Dear friends, I'm writing to call your attention to a newly pending publication which is, I think of considerable relevance for many of the issues debated by list members. This is the English-language edition of Marx's so-called "ethnological notebooks," which will appear next year (or perhaps 1998) under the title Patriarchy and Property: The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx. These notebooks -- systematic annotations of major works by Morgan, Maine, Phear, and Lubbock -- formed the basis for Engels' famed Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, but go far beyond Engels in terms of the richness of what they say about Afroeurasian and American cultures, both in premodern times and in the non-Western world of the late nineteenth century. I'll say more about the substance of this book in a moment, but first, I'd like to ask list members who are interested in Marx's notebooks to let me know. As editor, I'm in the midst of delicate negotiations with the publisher over a variety of issues (the press run, total pages, the font size, etc.) and it would help me greatly to be able to report that there is lively interest among potential readers, reviewers, and so on. Hence, if you'd seriously consider reading or reviewing Patriarchy and Property, or perhaps assigning it to your students, I would greatly ap- preciate hearing from you. Just send me a private reply to this note, okay? (With your name, position, affiliation, address, and any other pertinent data, e.g. friends who should hear about this, courses you may assign this to, etc.) Many thanks, in advance, for your support! Marx's views, of course, are not the last word on any of the subjects of interest to list members, but they are also richer and quite a bit more complex than many people suppose. The ethnological notebooks in particular are valuable for the light they shed on Marx's understand- ing of African, Asian, American and ancient European cultures, which interested Marx, in the twilight of his life, in connection with his continuing work on Capital. When Marx wrote his voluminous notes on Morgan, Maine et al. in the years 1879-1882, he was steeped in work on the concluding section of what we now know as Vol. 2 of Capital, where, for the first time, Marx began to systematically inspect the question of the global spread and sway of capital (under the rubric of the "expanded" accumulation and reproduction of capital). This led Marx to consider carefully the character of the cultures that capital was encountering. An epochal collision was underway -- between capitalist Europe & North America and a world of cultures that antedated and, to varying degrees, posed obstacles to capital. Marx *could* have simply posited the "solvent" power of money, and left it at that. But by 1879 he was well aware that cultures have powers of resistance that cannot be discounted. To grasp the spe- cificity of these powers, Marx needed to put capital in context on a world scale. That, briefly, is what he began to do in the ethno- logical notebooks. And the result is a cornucopia of valuable data on Marx's views on many relevant issues, including, e.g., the tran- sition from the Mughals to the British in Bengal, the nature of the village commune in India, clan culture and structure in Africa and the Americas, matriliny and marriage, totem and taboo, etc. Marx's notebooks don't mark a fundamental departure from classical Marxian themes (capital, class, value) but they do represent the start of an effort to extend and contextualize these notions. (Rosa Luxemburg made a similar effort, also on the basis of Capital Vol. 2, in her Accumulation of Capital.) Many of the most interesting recent WSN debates have pivoted around related themes -- the possibility of going beyond "endogenist" theories of the rise of capitalism, the clash of "world-systems" (hyphenated) and "world systems" (unhyphenated), the degree to which capitalism is the "totality" posited by Marx (and Weber), and so on. Closer attention to Marx's notebooks won't resolve any of these debates, but will, I think, help to see them in a slightly different light. Much of what Marx has to say in these notebooks is unfamiliar (partly because Engels gave the notebooks a very skewed and selective reading, stressing the ancient European past at the expense of Marx's far greater concern, the non- Western world in his own day). Together with related works, e.g., his notes on Kovalevsky's study of empire and land tenure (1879), which are appended to Lawrence Krader's Asiatic Mode of Production, Marx's ethnol- ogical notebooks have something genuine to offer. My hope is that the English-language edition of these notebooks will make this clear. Thanks, and I'll look forward to hearing from anyone with a further interest in this project. David Smith David N. Smith Department of Sociology University of Kansas Lawrence KS 66045 emerald@lark.cc.ukans.edu PH (913) 864-4111 FAX (9913) 864-5280 From chriscd@jhu.edu Fri Dec 13 13:12:26 1996 13 Dec 1996 15:11:19 -0500 (EST) 13 Dec 1996 15:10:35 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 15:11:59 -0500 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: sociology position To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu Organization: Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.21218 USA ================================================ Lecturer in Sociology University of Canterbury Christchurch New Zealand Applications are invited for the above position in the Department of Sociology. The minimum qualification on appointment is the Ph.D. degree or equivalent. Preference may be given to a candidate with expertise in the sociology of development and post-colonial societies, preferably in the Asia-Pacific region. The Department will require the appointee to contribute to teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels and also to provide supervision in the postgraduate programme. There is an emphasis on team teaching in the Department. The salary for Lecturers is on a scale from $45,000 to $55,000 per annum. Applications close on 2 April 1997. Academic enquiries only may be made to the Head of Department, Dr Bob Hall, Fax 03 364 2977, Email: . Conditions of Appointment and Information for Candidates will be mailed on request to Email: . Applications, quoting Position No. SO24, must be addressed to: The Registrar, Attention Staffing Section, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch. The University has a policy of equality of opportunity in employment ================================================ =========================================================== Dr Bob Hall, Head of Department Department of Sociology, University of Canterbury Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand Phone: 64-0-3-364-2187; Fax: 64-0-3-364-2977 "...the first wisdom of Sociology is this -things are not what they seem" (Peter Berger) =========================================================== From chriscd@jhu.edu Fri Dec 13 13:20:10 1996 13 Dec 1996 15:19:27 -0500 (EST) 13 Dec 1996 15:19:10 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 15:20:33 -0500 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: [Fwd: Foreign Policy Internship/Winter-Spring 97] To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu Organization: Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.21218 USA Fri, 13 Dec 1996 12:01:28 -0500 (EST) Fri, 13 Dec 1996 12:00:59 -0500 (EST) 13 Dec 1996 10:59:05 -0600 (CST) by mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3/mcfeeley.mc-1.17) 13 Dec 1996 10:32:43 -0600 (CST) 13 Dec 1996 11:28:50 -0500 (EST) 13 Dec 1996 11:28:55 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 11:28:55 -0500 From: Carlos Osorio Subject: Foreign Policy Internship/Winter-Spring 97 Sender: owner-lasnet@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu To: BOB , Note Activ-l , Angie Armer , Mariana Bustamante , Angel Calderon , note Canala-l , Central America List , "Jennifer K. Ceriale" , Christine Dooley Haskins , Doug Clifford , julia cummings , dem4 , dosorio , Christopher A Fons , Fristine MacTaggart , Robbin Garber , "JOSE B. GONZALEZ" <76423.2172@COMPUSERVE.COM>, Mary Connell Grubb , H-Latam-n Reply-to: cosorio@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU FOREIGN POLICY - DECLASSIFIED PAPERS THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, an independent, nonprofit research institute and library, seeks student interns to assist part-time on a project concerning "The History of the Guatemalan Armed Forces." The interns will research U.S.-Guatemala relations since the 1970's, examining bilateral diplomatic, political, human rights, defense and security issues. The research will contribute to a broad archive project on the role of the United States in Central America, resulting in publication of a collection of declassified government documents on the subject. The National Security Archive undertakes research projects to enrich the debate on American public policy by making available to scholars, researchers and Congress internal government documentation on a variety of key foreign, defense and intelligence issues. The intern will participate in the project in a number of substantive ways. Depending on the project's needs and the interests of the intern, those may include: tracking down bibliographies on U.S.-Guatemala relations, assembling a set of secondary sources for reference (from Facts on File, specialized journals and newspapers, human rights reports, university theses, and Internet on-line databases); collecting data from government documents (DOD, CIA, DOS, NSC) on security assistance, intelligence and human rights; building an extensive chronology of events; drafting glossary entries on key names and organizations; investigating leads on U.S.-Guatemala relations; and writing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and appeals. The position is available immediately. REQUIREMENTS: Applicants must be able to make a commitment for a minimum of four months (one semester), 10-20 hours a week. The Archive is seeking applicants with strong writing and research skills, and some understanding of U.S. policy in Latin America. Proficiency in Spanish is helpful but not required. OTHER IMPORTAT INFORMATION: The internship is a non-paid position. In the past, interns have asked their education institutions to contact the National Security Archive to coordinate and obtain credits for the internship. Schedules and time-tables are flexible so interns can visit and get familiarized with different academic and federal agencies of the Capital region - Congress, Library of Congress, Pentagon, Universities and others. TO APPLY: Send a resume, short writing sample, one or two recommendations and a transcript by mail to the attention of Carlos Osorio at the address below. Carlos Osorio National Security Archive Suite 701 The Gelman Library 2130 H St., NW Washington D.C. 20037 Tel: (202) 994-7219 Fax: (202) 994-7005 E-mail: cosorio@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu Applicants are also encouraged to send their resumes and a cover letter in advance via e-mail or fax. The Archive's offices are on the 7th floor of The Gelman Library (George Washington University), and applicants in the Washington D.C. area are welcome to drop in and introduce themselves. Carlos Osorio National Security Archive Phone: (202) 994-7219 Suite 701, Gelman Library Fax: (202) 994-7005 2130 H St. NW Email: cosorio@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu Washington, D.C. 20037 From p34d3611@jhu.edu Sun Dec 15 12:27:17 1996 15 Dec 1996 14:27:06 -0500 (EST) 15 Dec 1996 14:27:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 14:26:47 -0500 From: Peter Grimes Subject: Tributary Mode of Prod. To: WSN In the recently renewed debate over how to conceptualize the role of Europe in the creation of the current world, no one has addressed the utility of Samir Amin's concept of the "Tributary" mode of production. I have long found it useful, & would be most interested in reading the thoughts of others on its contnued relevance in the light of recent debate. --Peter Grimes From rross@clarku.edu Sun Dec 15 12:48:00 1996 Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 14:43:00 -0500 (EST) From: "ROBERT J.S. (BOB) ROSS, CHAIR OF SOCIOLOGY" Subject: New Web Site on Corporations (fwd) To: Progressive Sociology Network , WORLD SYSTEMS Network , cenloe , rford , bvitalis , dangel , blondon , SDS -- Al Haber , Allen Young , Betty Garman Robinson , Bill Hartzog <102106.2177@compuserve.com>, Bill Hartzog , bohmerp@elwha.evergreen.edu, Cathy Wilkerson , Clark Kissinger <73447.1527@compuserve.com>, conadel@vassar.edu, Cory-Ellen Nadel , David & Lynn Strauss , Deb Levine , Diana Steinberg , Dick Flacks , Dorothy Burlage , danny schechter , Egleson , Egleson/ Brown <73067.3511@compuserve.com>, Elizabeth Stanley , Eric Craven , Eric Mann , George Brosi , Honey Williams , Jack Kittredge , Jeff Jones/ Eleanor Stein , Jeremy Brecher , Jesse Rothstein , jessicamphillipsfein@mail.columbia.edu, Jill Hamberg , Jim Monsonis , Jim Russell , Joan Goldsmith , John Bancroft , Judith Bernstein-Baker , Kathy McAfee , Ken Cloke , Klonsky , lahammond@ucdavis.edu, Leni Wildflower <100561.2652@compuserve.com>, Lenore Gensburg , Liora Proctor-Salter , Marc Flacks , Marilyn Katz , Marilyn Webb , mariya strauss <71112.2765@compuserve.com>, Marsha Steinberg , Michael James , Michael James , Mickey Flacks , Mike Spiegel , Oli Fein , Pardun/ Garvy , Paul Lauter , paul.lauter@trincoll.edu, pmillman@chroma.com, Rick Horevitz , Rick Salter , Robb Burlage , Sara Monsonis , Stan Nadel , Stanley Aronowitz , Steve Goldsmith , Steve Tappis , Sue Thrasher , Todd Gitlin , Vivian Rothstein , Webb.Lee@mgh.harvard.edu, Dave Wellman ***************************************************************************** Robert J.S. Ross 508 793 7243 Department of Sociology fax: 508 793 8816 Clark University 950 Main Street Worcester, MA 01610 ******************************************************************************* ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 11:22:22 -0800 (PST) From: Michael Eisenscher Reply-To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu To: Labor Research and Action Project Subject: New Web Site on Corporations >/* Written 9:18 PM Dec 11, 1996 by trac in igc:women.news >/* ---------- "New Corporate Watchdog Web Site!!!" -- */ >From: trac@igc.apc.org (Corporate Watch) > >** Please cross-post and redistribute ** > >12/10/96 > >CORPORATE WATCH WEB SITE ONLINE >http://www.corpwatch.org > >A new watchdog website dedicated to monitoring the >activities of transnational corporations went online >today. > >Corporate Watch is designed to provide journalists, >activists and policy makers around the world with up to >date information and analysis on social, ecological and >economic impacts of transnational corporations. > >"We intend to be an online clearinghouse for >information on these companies," explained Corporate >Watch editorial board member Antonio Diaz. > >The site will also serve as a mini-online magazine that >runs features on related issues. > >"One of the reasons we've created Corporate Watch is to >keep an eye on all those Fortune 500 companies that are >jumping on the World Wide Web bandwagon," remarked the >site's editorial coordinator, Joshua Karliner. "That's >why our first Feature focuses on the corporatization of >the Internet itself." > >Entitled "The Battle for the Future of the Internet," >the Feature includes commentary from Hot Wired >executive producer Gary Wolf, media and technology >critic Jerry Mander, NetAction director Audrie Krause, >and Brazilian Internet activist Carlos Afonso. > >The Corporate Watch site also includes: > > *An eight part nuts and bolts manual on how to >research transnational corporations. > > *Monthly "greenwash" awards given out by Corporate >Watch and the environmental group Greenpeace to the >most outrageous corporate "environmental" >advertisements. > > *An Image Gallery, with a permanent environmental >art collection and rotating monthly exhibits. This >month's exhibit features images from Bhopal, India, >commemorating the 12th Anniversary of the Union Carbide >Gas Disaster. > > *In-depth analysis on corporate globalization, >including reports from the Institute for Policy Studies >in Washington DC and the New Delhi, India-based Public >Interest Research Group. > > *News from various sources, including >Multinational Monitor, the Malaysia-based Third World >Network, Ecuador-based Oil Watch. > > *Direct Links to the Corporate Watch Affiliate >Group--a collection of organizations which provide in >depth research services. > > *Links to hundreds of other websites with analysis >of or information produced by transnational >corporations. > > >Corporate Watch is a joint project of TRAC--the >Transnational Resource and Action Center and IGC--the >Institute for global communications. > > >contact: Joshua Karliner >tel: 415-561-6567 >fax: 415-561-6493 >email: trac@igc.org >web: http://www.corpwatch.org > >** Please cross-post and redistribute ** > >- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - >George Gundrey ggundrey@igc.apc.org 415-285-4604 >Internet Publishing * Networking * Training * Project >Management >- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > > ************************************************** Michael Eisenscher Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy Program University of Massachusetts-Boston 391 Adams Street Oakland, CA 94610-3131 ------------------------------------------------------------- Phone: (510) 893-8382 (voice/fax) E-Mail: meisenscher@igc.apc.org ************************************************* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. --Frederick Douglass ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca Sun Dec 15 12:55:39 1996 Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 14:56:28 -0500 (EST) From: "A. Gunder Frank" To: Peter Grimes Subject: Re: Tributary Mode of Prod. In-Reply-To: NO Comment, because I find it less than useless, in fact misleading, so much so that it seems to have entrapped even Peter. My son Paulo says that "no comment" IS a comment! gunder On Sun, 15 Dec 1996, Peter Grimes wrote: > Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 14:26:47 -0500 > From: Peter Grimes > To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK > Subject: Tributary Mode of Prod. > > > In the recently renewed debate over how to conceptualize the > role of Europe in the creation of the current world, no one has > addressed the utility of Samir Amin's concept of the "Tributary" > mode of production. I have long found it useful, & would be most > interested in reading the thoughts of others on its contnued > relevance in the light of recent debate. > > --Peter Grimes > From rene.barendse@tip.nl Sun Dec 15 14:27:30 1996 (Smail3.1.29.1 #16) id m0vZOCG-000DnRC; Sun, 15 Dec 96 22:34 MET id <01BBEAD4.CFD798C0@amsterdam13.pop.tip.nl>; Sun, 15 Dec 1996 22:10:42 +-100 From: barendse To: "'wsn@csf.colorado.edu'" Subject: Eurocentric Eurodominance Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 22:10:31 +-100 Nice to see the interesting discussion on Eurocentrism/European = dominance has resurfaced again.=20 If I may humbly be permitted a few remarks: 1.) I think D.Fosse' is quite right asking the basic question `why = should the Chinese have been immune to capitalism'. Indeed - and why = should the `Arabs' (whatever we mean by that) have been and why should = the Indians, or the Persians, or indeed the Russians? The Arabs are a = good case, since, indeed, as Abu Lughod rightly surmises from the = literatuire many of the normal practices of account-keeping and settling = of accounts are not so much derived from the Arabs as derived from a = common Mediterrenean pool of tcommercial practices, which was used in = the southern (`Islamic' whatever that means) and `northern" (or = `Christian' whatevrt that means) Mediterrenean. If you like one could = also draw the ancestry of capitalism back to say the Byzantine empire - = or for that matter the Jews and Syrian Christians. T he thing is -and I think this was the revolutionary aqrgument of the = Mediterrenean by Braudel th-at `Islamic' `Greek Orthodox' and `Catholic' = civilisation shared one common Mediterrenean environment until at least = the sixteenth century. It was not so much a question of one = `civilisation' dominating the other -say `Europe' dominating `Islam'- = rather one class dominating the other. Thus, for example, the ruling = class of the Ottoman empire was not `European' and not `Islamic' since = it included many Greek Orthodox landowners or to mention an example = which I find striking - when the Portuguese arrived in India the = Venetian seniora sent representatives to Cairo in order for the Mamluks = to construct a fleet to throw their `European' competitors out of India. = Who is dominating whom here ?=20 Now, this could be put in a wider context: in the sixteenth to = eighteenth century the issue in the Indian Ocean or the South China seas = is not really `Europe' dominating `Asia' ; it is one group of landlords = and traders seeking to oust competitors and/or impose its dominance upon = the peasantry and/or nomads. This group might include Europeans or it might nott. Thus, for example, = even in the case of the High Mighty Dutch East India Company it is often = overlooked that IN ASIA its operations were almost completely financed = by Indian and Chinese moneylenders - this is not merely a question of = collaboration: `Asians' collaborating with `Europeans'. Without the = pre-existing credit network the Dutch East India Company could simply = not have operated. Did the Chinese or Indian bankers exploit the Dutch = East India Company therefore ?=20 I think the question is simply not relevant - in the case of Java for = example (and yes I would argue that the `Dutch' did not `dominate' Java = until 1750 - lthe Dutch in Batavia were not exploiting the nearby = pasisir - area, Chinese planters were exploiting the peasants and = selling the sugar for a guaranteed price to the Dutch East India Company = which mostly sold it to the Persian court. I would say the Chinese are = using the Dutch to exploit the peasantry - to whose profit ;actually = ,was Java a periphery of Persia with the Dutch East India Company = serving as a vehicle ? I think the terms `Europe' and `Asia' and a = fortiori `Europeans' and `Asians' are not relevant. 2.) While I will not quarrel on points of detail with A.G.Frank the = point of whether Asia was more advanced than Europe or not is, I think, = not relevant either - if /one was to make a rough guesstimate of GNP per = capita in the mid eighteenth century -measured according to such = measures as purchasing power or calorie intake- I think New England = would have been top of the bill immediately followed by the Dutch = Republic, England and -here I am diverting from what is usual- Persia = and maybe Siam , Japan and Atjeh, Bengal, however, would have been very = low on the list andd so would have been much of rural China. How do you = measure advanced ? It is not just a question of how much is produced but = also how it is distributed - furthermore, as Mark Elvin argued some time = ago, even if you start from something like `rtrechnological advancement' = technology tends to adapt to the society in which it is based until the = nineteenth century- thus, for example, Indian technology was highely = advanced in the seventeenth century in achieving high output by maximum = division of tasks rather than by input of fixed capital. than = European technology but was less advanced in the use of machinery = And that was perfectly rational since India was very short of steel for = example and machines need a lot of steel. The argument whether Europe = was more advanced than Asiaia should therefore rather be: in which = context and to whose benefit ?. Practices which may not seem very = advanced from our perspective might be very advanced from a different = perspective which 3.) somewhat amounts to adressing the issue raised by I.Wallerstein = whether social science itself is euriocentric - although one could = advance the obvious answer that Kautilya, Nizam ul Mulk or Ibn Khaldun = were social scientist avant la lettre this would be too easy. Basically = one might argue that social argument in Islam and Hinduism is closely = linked to the study of the law - that a seperate social science = developed in Europe may then be linked to the rise of Roman law - and = the courtly bureaucracy while on the contrary independent investigation = in social science was stiffled after the `islamic renaissance of the = fifteenth century' by the rise of states like the Ottoman and the = Safavid empire with their link to single schools of law and their single = mode of investigation of social reality - basically in Europe the law = solidified into a solid, immutable system which had no direct relations = with social reality so that a separate branch of scholarship arose to = investigate social reality while in the Islamic countries -and in = Islamic India- such issues were investigated as legal issues. The point = with this is the following: Islamic legal investigation is as exactingly = rational as `western' social science in its most exacting form (say = econometrics); they are two forms of social science starting from = different points of departure but obeying to precisely the same = standards of rational inquiry. There is no contrast between a `rational' = west and an `irrational' east as some of the postings seem to imply. = Normal rules of science e.g. precise presenting of evidence, = `falsification', acknowledgement of authority, logical presentation of = arguments and the like apply as much to western social science as to = Islamic law (or to `Hindu' gramatic investigation or dharmashastra). = `Western' mathematics is partly an Arab invention as in many ways is = expirimental natural science. Mathematics and natural science (and = linguistics and astronomy and biology etc. etc.) are human - of course, = what kind of things one does with the knowledge may differ from society = to society. 4.) Pace Khoo Khay Jin most of this is well known and has actually been = revealed by assidious studies by Orientalists (pace Said) not since they = wanted to dominate but because they were curious just as one studies the = Andromeda nebula or star-clusters not to rule the universe but because = one is curious. Although more detailed studies are always welcome some = parts of the non-western world are meanwhile as well studied as the = western world (I think more US academicians are working on Korea or = Vietnam than on Poland or modern Greece) it is not lack of material = which is the problem, the problem is that classical orientalistics is = secluded in an opaque language of its own and questions of its own. The = importance of the single world system argument (with or without hyphen) = is that it may open a gate to a wider conceptualisation of problems and = in that way to new issues for micro-investigations. 5.) Finally I am a bit puzzled by W.Wagar's posting: - it may not be = very humble but it reminds me a bit of Hegel's famous dictum that `the = owl of Minerva only flies in the evening' meaning that any period = interprets its history differently; the problem, humility aside, is that = some of our zilion interpretations may be better -meaning applicable to = more facts than others- and perhaps even more true than others. Try = applying it to the holocaust (6 milion Jews were not killed or the = Jews are themselves to blaime for the hololocaust) and the problem with = the statement `any world picture' is as good as any other is clear. = Anyhow- why spend the evening writing dull pieces if this `world = picture' is as good as any other - why not write poems, play games, or = just watch TV ? Cheers R.J.Barendse Leiden University=20 From U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Sun Dec 15 16:45:01 1996 Date: Sun, 15 Dec 96 14:12:29 CST From: U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Subject: what dominance meant 1405-1433 To: World System Network "Perhaps China did not really want to expand." - Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System, Volume I, p. 17. What this presumably meant at the time, perhaps still does, might be rendered, "In light of demonstrable Chinese ability to project power all around the Indian Ocean rim, in the guise of the seven voyages of Admiral Zheng He and the Ming Treasure Fleet between 1405 and 1433, the failure to keep up the effort in this direction thereafter is mysterious. It is explicable only in psychocultural terms, possibly some sort of immunity to capitalism, as it is, from the standpoint of capitalitic self-interest extremely shortsighted. Moreover, when one considers what the Portuguese made of their opportunity shortly thereafter, with a much lesser effort, it looks retrospectively suicidal." Does anyone recall the tourism-advertising slogan used by TAP, the Portuguese national airline, before the Revolution of 1974? *Portugal Is Europe Before It Changed*. There need have been nothing whatever capitalistic about a country which, as late as 1667, was judicially murdering textile manufacturers on charges of evil-spirit possession. What the Portuguese had, as of 1498, was a commodity for exchange, West African gold; a shopping list, Indian spices; and naval guns. Their arrival was no accident of timing, as the system-wide industrial and commercial depression which set in with the arrival of the Bubonic Plague circa 1350 had bottomed out around 1400 and was back up to something like its former levels. Contrast this with Ming China in 1405. (a) It had nothing to export in commodity exchange. (b) There *was no Indian Ocean trade to take over*. (c) Due to the pervasive technical Luddism of the Ming founder, there was no longer any gunpowder artillery in China. (d) As a result, such trade as was stirred up could only take the form of politically motivated gift exchange. (e) The projection of Chinese power at sea could only begin to pay for itself, after a heavy initial outlay, as a result of political extortion. (f) In furtherance of political extortion, it is necessary to have what was called, during the Administration of Lyndon Baines Johnson, "credibility." See following paragraph. (g) Due to the rather strange state-building intentions of the Ming founder, the fiscal constraints upon state policy were extremely tight, inflexible, and consequently unequal to any such self-imposed responsibilities. (h) The Ming army, finally, was a paper kitten, due to the fiscal utopianism, Paranoia, and, as above, Luddism of the Ming founder. Each of a-h has its own explanation, which unfeasable here and now. In 1406, the year after the Treasure Fleet set out on its first voyage, the Yongle emperor sent 200,000 men into Vietnam to restore China's loyal vassal, the Tran dynasty ruler who happened to be a refugee across the border at the time, to his rightful throne. This action was taken at said legitimate ruler's request. It is most highly unlikely that the Yongle emperor, who seized power in 1402 and reigned until 1424, or any of his advisers, had thought out the inner logic of the policy of expansion associated with that ruler's name. Zheng He, like Vasco da Gama and the latter's successors, was opportunistic; to this very day, and possibly at the time, nobody knows what the Treasure Fleet was *for*. What we do know are the contingencies it was provided for. These include one victorious war and three other armed interventions: 1405, Majpahit, Java--intervention in succession to the throne. 1405-6, Palembang, Sumatra--protection of Chinese colony from local officials. 1409, Malacca defended against claim by Majpahit. 1410, Sri Lanka--defeat of royal army in pitched battle. In other words, if you are willy-nilly committed to conducting gunboat diplomacy, and there are no guns on the boats, you are logically compelled to maintain a fairly sizable army afloat, indefinitely, and at enormous cost. So, it is a simple statement of fact by Jacques Gernet, in A History of Chinese Civilization the book I happened to bring to the computer lab today that, "The big maritime expeditions of the Yongle era were contemporaneous with the big military operations in Vietnam and its occupation from 1406 to 1427." (p. 401) The author does not state that there was any logical connection between the two, and it is not likely that any such logic was perceived at the time. Though it is apparent that, if a system of client states was to be established, a demonstration had to be made of readiness to intervene, conquer, or permanently occupy any or several of these states as an object lesson. As I said, "credibility." Furthermore, for over a thousand years, Vietnam had been China's gateway to the exotic products of the South Seas. That was why it had been conquered in the first place, in 216 BC under the Qin dynasty; again in 111 BC, under emperor Wu of the Former Han; once again by General Ma Yuan for emperor Guangwudi of the Later Han in 42-43 AD after the revolt led by the Trinh sisters; and so on for every instance of Chinese weakness followed by political reunification or recovery. During the Tang dynasty, China suppressed numerous revolts and fought logistically difficult wars against the Buddhist kingdom of Nan Zhao in what is now Yunnan Province to retain its grip of Vietnam up to the very moment when the Chinese people's hero, the salt smuggler Huang Chao, broke the back of the dynasty. It was only in 937, with China split into ten states, that Vietnam became independent, due to what would in this century be called a "people's war of national liberation," that is, a peasant war, whose leader, and subsequent first emperor of Vietnam, was a peasant. When the Song (960-1279) reunified China, it was faced by hostile powers, Khitan and Tangut empires, on two fronts, and was militarily ineffectual, besides. Unlike the eastern portion of the ancient Nam Viet, which is now Guangdong Province and, indeed, the entire West River system through it, the Red River valley of Vietnam was never settled by immigrating Chinese. It had been densely populated to begin with; Chinese had always come as soldiers, administrators, officials, and merchants. Romans, Persians, and Arabs also came to the Hanoi Jiaozhou region (the latter two, of course, from 758 to 792, when Guangzhou was closed to them). In the context of systemwide trade depression, however, Vietnam would have loomed as a naval base (as it indeed was in this century, until 1989 or 1991, if we include Champa, site of Cam Ranh Bay, which was also occupied at this time), and a place with plenty of trees and marijuana (for sails and rope), hundreds of miles closer to the South Seas than the existing Treasure Fleet base at Nanjing. It would be stupid and silly, not to mention anachronistic, to say, "But the Vietnamese always beat the Chinese, because the Vietnamese are patriotic." The way certain sport teams *always* lose to other teams. The previous invasion of Vietnam from that direction, by the Mongols in the 1260s, was part of an otherwise-brilliant strategy used against the Southern Song: First, the Mongols swiftly overran the somnolent kingdom of Dali, successor to Nan Zhao in present-day Yunnan, which replaced a somnolent border with hundreds of miles of war front. Vietnam lay southeast of Dali, with hundreds more miles of frontier. This Mongol strike failed. What distinguished this Chinese campaign in Vietnam was the enormous scale of the commitment. If we consider the Treasure fleet and the war as parts of the same policy, it represents one of the best-planned and sustained policy efforts of the 276 years of the Ming dynasty (1368- 1644). As early as 1391, 50 million trees were planted around Nanjing, then the capital. This is where the treasure fleet was built. Though, as no construction occurred until Yongle seized power in 1402, it might be that this was merely part of billion-tree reforestation program which was part of taking marginal agricultural lands out of cultivation following the Bubonic Plague depopulation. More relevant to the context was the lessons taught by the career of Tamerlane. He was the Asian analogue of the English lords in the Hundred Years War, after the Bubonic Plague added zest to it. One is reminded of Edward the Black Prince deveastating everything in his path between Normandy and Gascony. As I've previously said, in the aftermaths, or the intervals between, major epidemics, one commonly finds states with shrunken populations and resources, but undiminished or even enhanced ambitions. There is a despair about current or foreseeable production, to which corresponds an alacrity to acquire by armed robbery and mass murder someone else's production and resources. It may happen that someone who starts off with no resources to speak of, but adapts quickly to living off other people's resources, will prove endlessly victorious once the *mana* or *baraka* of unimpeded conquest and spoliation accrues. So with the the Arabs of Early Islam after the state-weakening effects of the Plague of Justinian and the mutual predations of Byzantines and Sassanids. So, also, with Tamerlane's Qipchaq Turks. Whilst posing as a defender of Sunni Islam (and descendant of Jinghiz Qan), he made war almost always against Muslim states, the Sultanate of Delhi, the Turkish khanates of Persia, the Ottoman Sultanate (Battle of Ankara, 1402). Unlike the Arabs of Early Islam, Winning was the Only Thing; governing was uninteresting or of secondary importance. Chaos followed his death. He seemed to prove, while he lived, that Southern and Western Asia was a power vacuum; and it was that much more so afterward. As Tamerlane was exhibiting the Ottoman Sultan, Bayezid I, in a cage following his 1402 victory, Zhu Di, fourth son of the Ming founder and Prince of Yan, was conducting massive political purges in the smoking ruins of Nanjing, where the body of his nephew and predecessor was never identified. The deceased had been young, decent, well-meaning, and stupid. The Paranoid Ming founder's final paroxysm of purges had murdered all of his generals, even those from his rise to power. He replaced them with his own sons, of whom there were twenty-four. He had thereby created a system of appanages, with warlord princes commanding private armies in their own fiefs, in complete contradiction to his original Paranoid intentions. (See Ray Huang, Taxation and Finance in Sixteenth Century China, 1971). The Ming state, as originally planned, was designed to preclude the possibility of any challenger getting control of local concentrations of money and military units. Each provincial revenue-collection point had multiple sources of income, with mandated specific expenditures on local agencies or army units already laid down; each of these might have multiple sources of funds in turn. It proved impossible to unscramble this mess, only to commute in-kind or forced-labour payments for cash. The level of taxation was itself set well below capacity, with collection at the local level itself unpaid and dependent upon "tax captains" serving by rotation, as well as local groupings of tens and hundreds of families collectively responsible for arrears. Which meant, in effect, when the terror was lifted after 1398 the peasants were paying through the nose to gangsters in order to get out of voluntary obligations and forced labour, as well as paying the taxes which the recrudescently powerful landlords did not. The army was designed to feed itself and fight, in order to ostensibly cost the state and taxpayers next to nothing. In actuality, it did the former or neither. It was equipped with the cheapest, hence technically most primitive, weapons in use. The same principle applied to Luddism in all areas of state operation. In salt manufacturing and minting the copper coinage, the cheapest and, consequently, lowest- productivity methods were always chosen. Part of the explanation was, indeed, keeping the level of taxation as low as possible; and part was a genuine technical regression compared to the Mongol period. Thirteenth and fourteenth-century mathematical treatises were no longer understood. In one symptomatic case, the Ming founder imported a complete astronomical observatory from Persia, installing it in Nanjing. Later, it was moved by Yongle to the new capital, Beijing, where it still is. Nobody knew, in the early fifteenth century, that it would not work at the new latitude. In the civil war between Yongle and his nephew, the half-million government troops were disgracefully beaten by a small, but rapidly growing, fraction of that number. This was the first battlefield test of the Ming founder's army. Yongle's gesture of early 1405, whereby he announced his intent for peaceful and friendly relations with several neighboring states, including Vietnam, was insincere propaganda. He'd heard that Tamerlane was marching from Samarkand with a half million men to invade China. Had Tamerlane and any few thousand soldiers actually arrived, Yongle might have been dead meat. But Tamerlane died of natural causes on the march. The army sent into Vietnam was the same, unreformed, service previously beaten. So long as there was no serious resistance, that is, until 1417 or 1418, nobody worried, however. By 1421, the Vietnamese, under their Ly ruler, had wiped out the Chinese army in a surprise offensive, which proved decisive. To cover up the disaster, Yongle insisted on having a victorious war against the usual national enemy, the Mongols. In a famous confrontation, the Minister of Revenue brought two baskets to his audience with Yongle. These proved, when opened, to contain the severed heads of his two sons; the Minister stabbed himself to death on the spot. The Chinese empire was irremediably broke as well as beaten. China did not expand because it could not, which was ascertained by trying it. Daniel A. Foss From U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Sun Dec 15 17:54:00 1996 Date: Sun, 15 Dec 96 18:12:45 CST From: "Daniel A. Foss" Subject: forgot one To: World Systems Network In the list of armed interventions in the previous post, there should have been a mention of: 1415, "Chinese troops intervened in the internal affairs of Samudra-Pasai, in northwestern Sumatra." (Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization, p. 401.) Notice that, with the exception of the Sri Lankan war, all the interventions occurred in the Indonesia-Malaysia region, which was a Chinese trading partner for hundreds of years. So was Sri Lanka, come to think about it. But as I said, 1405-1415 represented the Slack Season. Now, did Vasco da Gama, or even Alfonso de Albuquerque, do anything this nasty? This entire period, from 1331 (outbreak of Bubonic Plague in China) to 1431 (victory and death of Joan of Arc, ensuring language-based nation states in Europe) was a wildly contingent conjuncture, such that nobody could tell who, what, or where would become the core area of the world system, for what reason, or whether, should there actually be capitalism, what it would look like. One thing is clear. If there was to be capitalism, it would not be in China after 1368, or even earlier. Where as of 1331, the Chinese version was the leading contender among proto-capitalisms. If, therefore, the core of the World System was not to be in East Asia, it had to be somewhere else, since with capitalism, we no longer allow polycentric world-systems. Is that right? Now, logically, if WS theory is correct, *the core must be somewhere*, and *the core cannot be China anymore*, so *the core has got to be elsewhere*, therefore *the core must be European*. This allows for the core being a metaphysical entity, too, of course. If you don't see the point of this, call me. Daniel A. Foss From p34d3611@jhu.edu Sun Dec 15 20:14:31 1996 15 Dec 1996 22:13:43 -0500 (EST) 15 Dec 1996 22:13:07 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 22:03:56 -0500 From: Peter Grimes Subject: Deforestation & WST To: WSN Paul Turner recently asked: (1): I am trying to put together a bibliography on WST and deforestation. So far, the bib is not very large, but maybe that's just a function of the fact that there's not much out there. PAUL: You are correct. The application of WST to deforestation is still new, so much remains to be done. The two articles you found are good beginnings. I would also bring your attention to some other books and authors. While this other work has not been written from an explicitly WST perspective, they each tell stories and contain analyses consistent with it: (a) THE FATE OF THE FOREST, Susanna Hecht & Alexander Cockburn, Harper & Row (Harper Perennial), 1990; (b) TROPICAL DEFORESTATION, Thomas Rudel and Bruce Horowitz, Colombia University Press, 1993. (c) DEFORESTATION IN THE 19TH C. DEFORESTATION IN THE 20TH C. Both published by Duke, I believe, and edited by Forest Tucker. The Authors: Thomas Rudel Tom Dietz Forest Tucker (2): Smith, David A. 1994. "Uneven Development and the Environment: Toward a World-System Perspective." HUMBOLDT JOURNAL OF SOCIAL RELATIONS 20(1): 151-175. (This article cites a proposal submitted by Roberts and Grimes to look at deforestation from a WST perspective; does anyone know if any publications have come from this yet?) Roberts/Grimes got a 2-year grant from the NSF in 1992 to study CO2 emissions from a WST perspective. We started our research with a cross-sectional, cross-national analysis of emissions for just the year 1989. We then expanded our analysis across time to cover the period 1950-1990, and intend ultimately to assess the correspondence between the respective growth rates of atmospheric carbon, population, GDP, and exports at a global level from c 1800 to 1990-5. While deforestation is a major contributor to carbon emissions, reliable data is scarce. Much of what passes for deforestation data is inferred/imputed from population growth (itself often inferred from spotty and suspect national censuses). So, in our work, we tackled deforestation only in the 1989 piece. That original piece has yet to be published, but in the meantime our first take on the post-war time series is forthcoming in WORLD DEVELOPMENT 25 (2) [Feb 1996], titled "Carbon Intensity and Economic Development 1962-1991: A Brief Exploration of the Environmental Kuznets Curve". We are working now on a more detailed analysis of the period 1950-1990 for (we hope) ultimate publication in a special issue of JWSR on WST & the environment. We have also presented papers at each of the ASA mtgs since 1992 as well as ISA & SHE. The bottom line of our research to date is that the re- organization of the international division of labor during the 1970's & 1980's has resulted in a shift of the dirtiest industries out of the core and into the semiperiphery and upper periphery. Meanwhile deforestation is becoming increasingly due to international corporate activity. I hope that this has helped. Good Luck. -Peter Grimes From mb242@is6.NYU.EDU Sun Dec 15 20:58:01 1996 Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 22:57:50 -0500 (EST) From: MOHAMMED BAMYEH To: "John W. Hoopes" Subject: Re: Top ten list In-Reply-To: <32B03D44.456C@ukans.edu> try janet abu-lughod's 'before european hegemony.' it should unquestionably be on the list. mohammed bamyeh On Thu, 12 Dec 1996, John W. Hoopes wrote: > (I hope this is easier to read...) > > Thanks to all who have been contributing to the "top ten" question. I > passed along a synthesis of the lists to one of my graduate students, > who came back with the following questions: > > > >Thanks for the World Systems Theory reading list! I have what is > >surely getting to be an "old" question: Who are the women authors on > >the subject? Which, if any, of their works might be considered > >"necessary"? Just a question. > > > One might also ask which would be key works from authors representing > other than "core" societies. > > John Hoopes > University of Kansas > hoopes@ukans.edu > http://www.cc.ukans.edu/~hoopes > From thall@DEPAUW.EDU Mon Dec 16 11:24:17 1996 Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 13:23:50 -0500 (EST) From: "Thomas D. [Tom] Hall, THALL@DEPAUW.EDU" Subject: ordering Soc Inq WST special issue (fwd) To: History World list World-L , Archaeology theory Several people have inquired where the special issue of Soc Inq might be acquired. Here is the info from the U. Texas Press Journals Dept.: Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 10:21:41 -0600 From: Amanda Timmons Subject: Re: ordering single issues o Here are the single issue prices: INDIVIDUAL: $7.00 INSTITUTIONAL: $14.00 CANADIAN/MEXICAN POSTAGE: add $2.00 ALL OTHER FOREIGN: add $3.00 512-471-4531 fax: 512-320-0668 the _SI_ URL is: http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/ Sociological Inquiry University of Texas Press Journals BOX 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 Please feel free to contact me should you have any further questions or concerns. Sincerely, Amanda Timmons Accounts Asst. Journals Division amanda@utpress.ppb.utexas.edu ----------- Tom Hall thall@depauw.edu Department of Sociology DePauw University Greencastle, IN 46135 317-658-4519 From wwagar@binghamton.edu Mon Dec 16 14:00:01 1996 From: wwagar@binghamton.edu Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 16:00:47 -0500 (EST) To: barendse Subject: World-Pictures In-Reply-To: <01BBEAD4.CFD798C0@amsterdam13.pop.tip.nl> Dear barendse et al.: There is no need to be puzzled. I did not say that one world picture is as "good" as another. Of course some theories seem applicable to more facts than others, i.e., seem to US in OUR time and in OUR place. We have the responsibility as scholars to devise theories and concepts of the maximum utility and fidelity to the "known" "facts." But I am saying that all theories and concepts and even facts (as verbalized or quantified by us) are relative to our perspectives in space and time, and since no one person has exactly the same perspective as any other, and no one person is immune to change over time him/herself, it is impossible to reach the ding-an-sich as it would appear to an omniscient being. As one ant said to the other while standing on her ant hill and surveying the starry heavens above, "Gee, doesn't it make you feel insignificant!" Your insignificant servant, Warren Wagar On Sun, 15 Dec 1996, barendse wrote: > 5.) Finally I am a bit puzzled by W.Wagar's posting: - it may not be very humble but it reminds me a bit of Hegel's famous dictum that `the owl of Minerva only flies in the evening' meaning that any period interprets its history differently; the problem, humility aside, is that some of our zilion interpretations may be better -meaning applicable to more facts than others- and perhaps even more true than others. Try applying it to the holocaust (6 milion Jews were not killed or the Jews are themselves to blaime for the hololocaust) and the problem with the statement `any world picture' is as good as any other is clear. Anyhow- why spend the evening writing dull pieces if this `world picture' is as good as any other - why not write poems, play games, or just watch TV > > Cheers > R.J.Barendse > Leiden University > > From albert@U.Arizona.EDU Mon Dec 16 14:52:27 1996 Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 14:52:09 -0700 (MST) From: Albert J Bergesen To: Peter Grimes Subject: Re: Tributary Mode of Prod. In-Reply-To: there are two problems with the tributary mode: (i) it is a societal concept and does not bridge the east/west divide in its essence, and (ii) it would greatly underestimate the amount of Asian and other economic activity that is no different from western production/exchange except that it is called something from a "tributary mode of production" rather than a "capitalist mode of production". 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 p34d3611@jhu.edu Wed Dec 18 22:30:23 1996 19 Dec 1996 00:29:54 -0500 (EST) 19 Dec 1996 00:29:53 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 00:29:47 -0500 From: Peter Grimes Subject: Dangerous virus (fwd) To: WSN , Timdroidsky ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 01:54:20 -0500 From: BARBARA LARCOM To: p34d3611@jhu.edu Subject: Dangerous virus Below find a forwarded message I ran across in my travels tonight. -- Barb Topic 197 VIRUS-ALERT chosso women.dev 7:43 AM Dec 16, 1996 (at travel-net.com) From: chosso@travel-net.com (M Chossudovsky) Subject: Virus Alert - PENPAL GREETINGS Importance: High If anyone receives mail entitled: PENPAL GREETINGS! please delete it WITHOUT reading it. Below is a little explanation of the message, and what it would do to your PC if you were to read the message. This is a warning for all internet users - there is a dangerous virus propagating across the internet through an e-mail message entitled "PENPAL GREETINGS!". DO NOT DOWNLOAD ANY MESSAGE ENTITLED "PENPAL GREETINGS!" This message appears to be a friendly letter asking you if you are interested in a penpal, but by the time you read this letter, it is too late. The "trojan horse" virus will have already infected the boot sector of your hard drive, destroying all of the data present. It is a self-replicating virus, and once the message is read, it will AUTOMATICALLY forward itself to anyone who's e-mail address is present in YOUR mailbox! This virus will DESTROY your hard drive, and holds the potential to DESTROY the hard drive of anyone whose mail is in your inbox, and who's mail is in their inbox, and so on. If this virus remains unchecked, it has the potential to do a great deal of DAMAGE to computer networks worldwide!!!! Please, delete the message entitled "PENPAL GREETINGS!" as soon as you see it! And pass this message along to all of your friends and relatives, and the other readers of the newsgroups and mailing lists which you are on, so that they are not hurt by this dangerous virus!!!! Michel Chossudovsky Department of Economics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, K1N6N5 Fax: 1-613-7892050 E-Mail: chosso@travel-net.com Alternative fax: 1-613-5625999 From hoopes@falcon.cc.ukans.edu Wed Dec 18 23:10:19 1996 Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 00:10:15 -0600 (CST) From: JOHN HOOPES To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: PENPAL GREETINGS! > This is a warning for all internet users - there is a dangerous virus > propagating across the internet through an e-mail message entitled > "PENPAL GREETINGS!". DO NOT DOWNLOAD ANY MESSAGE ENTITLED "PENPAL > GREETINGS!" > > This message appears to be a friendly letter asking you if you are > interested in a penpal, but by the time you read this letter, it is too > late. The "trojan horse" virus will have already infected the boot > sector of your hard drive, destroying all of the data present. It is a > self-replicating virus, and once the message is read, it will > AUTOMATICALLY forward itself to anyone who's e-mail address is present. Sorry, but this appears to be another "GOOD TIMES" virus hoax (now immortalized with the status of urban legend). The virus is the warning message itself, which will be propagated endlessly as long as someone believes it is worth forwarding. It's not, but I'm a good host... From lmc29@columbia.edu Thu Dec 19 07:54:25 1996 Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 09:54:13 -0500 (EST) From: Linda Minfa Chen Sender: lmc29@columbia.edu To: PeaceNet World News Service Subject: Dangerous virus (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 00:29:47 -0500 From: Peter Grimes To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Dangerous virus (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 01:54:20 -0500 From: BARBARA LARCOM To: p34d3611@jhu.edu Subject: Dangerous virus Below find a forwarded message I ran across in my travels tonight. -- Barb Topic 197 VIRUS-ALERT chosso women.dev 7:43 AM Dec 16, 1996 (at travel-net.com) From: chosso@travel-net.com (M Chossudovsky) Subject: Virus Alert - PENPAL GREETINGS Importance: High If anyone receives mail entitled: PENPAL GREETINGS! please delete it WITHOUT reading it. Below is a little explanation of the message, and what it would do to your PC if you were to read the message. This is a warning for all internet users - there is a dangerous virus propagating across the internet through an e-mail message entitled "PENPAL GREETINGS!". DO NOT DOWNLOAD ANY MESSAGE ENTITLED "PENPAL GREETINGS!" This message appears to be a friendly letter asking you if you are interested in a penpal, but by the time you read this letter, it is too late. The "trojan horse" virus will have already infected the boot sector of your hard drive, destroying all of the data present. It is a self-replicating virus, and once the message is read, it will AUTOMATICALLY forward itself to anyone who's e-mail address is present in YOUR mailbox! This virus will DESTROY your hard drive, and holds the potential to DESTROY the hard drive of anyone whose mail is in your inbox, and who's mail is in their inbox, and so on. If this virus remains unchecked, it has the potential to do a great deal of DAMAGE to computer networks worldwide!!!! Please, delete the message entitled "PENPAL GREETINGS!" as soon as you see it! And pass this message along to all of your friends and relatives, and the other readers of the newsgroups and mailing lists which you are on, so that they are not hurt by this dangerous virus!!!! Michel Chossudovsky Department of Economics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, K1N6N5 Fax: 1-613-7892050 E-Mail: chosso@travel-net.com Alternative fax: 1-613-5625999 From chriscd@jhu.edu Thu Dec 19 09:23:50 1996 19 Dec 1996 11:23:27 -0500 (EST) 19 Dec 1996 11:23:24 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 11:24:44 -0500 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: [Fwd: Peru noticias] To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu Organization: Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.21218 USA Wed, 18 Dec 1996 21:53:18 -0500 (EST) Wed, 18 Dec 1996 21:53:16 -0500 (EST) 18 Dec 1996 20:48:16 -0600 (CST) by mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3/mcfeeley.mc-1.17) 18 Dec 1996 18:32:06 -0600 (CST) 18 Dec 1996 17:32:08 -0700 (MST) Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 19:29:48 -0500 From: Molly Molloy Subject: Peru noticias Sender: owner-lasnet@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu To: LASNET Reply-to: mmolloy@LIB.NMSU.EDU I'm sure there are lots of other resources out there to follow the Peru hostage situation, but this site has really up-to-date bulletins: Radioprogramas del Peru http://www.rpp.com.pe/ Molly Molloy New Mexico State University Library Las Cruces, NM 88001 505-646-6931 mmolloy@lib.nmsu.edu http://lib.nmsu.edu/staff/mmolloy From hoopes@ukans.edu Thu Dec 19 09:25:58 1996 Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 10:30:14 -0600 From: "John W. Hoopes" Reply-To: hoopes@ukans.edu Organization: Dept. of Anthropology, University of Kansas To: Ishtaritu@asu.edu Subject: Re: Dangerous PENPAL GREETINGS! virus References: Ishtaritu@asu.edu wrote: >> Sorry, but this appears to be another "GOOD TIMES" virus hoax (now >> immortalized with the status of urban legend). The virus is the warning >> message itself, which will be propagated endlessly as long as someone >> believes it is worth forwarding. It's not, but I'm a good host... > I'm a little confused by what was meant by your message. Are you saying > that the virus is in the message saying that there is a > virus....or....are you saying that there is no virus under the message > entitled PENPAL GREETINGS??? I guess I'm a little computer > illiterate......help. As the poet William S. Burroughs is wont to say, "A word is a virus." What I was saying is it is the "virus warning" message that is the actual virus. However, before you switch off your computer in a panic, rest assured that your hard disk is safe and nothing bad will happen to your files. A virus, broadly defined, is a nuisance whose sole purpose is self-replication through infection. The virus warning message is just that. It contains no harmful executable code. It is "nothing more" than words. However, individuals will read it and then think they are doing their friends and associates a favor by distributing copies to everyone they know. The message is replicated thousands upon thousands of times, appearing in emailboxes around the world, doing little more harm than taking up bandwidth, storage, and memory and wasting the few moments time required to read it and forward it on (more if one takes the time to add an extensive comment...) The effects on individuals are minimal, but the cumulative waste of energy on a worldwide scale is truly awesome. The myth that one risks damage to precious information simply by reading a email message is what drives the replication of this message/virus. It is similar to the myth that one can contract AIDS or other sexually-transmitted diseases by using a public toilet. It has no basis in reality. John Hoopes From p34d3611@jhu.edu Thu Dec 19 09:55:58 1996 19 Dec 1996 11:55:24 -0500 (EST) 19 Dec 1996 11:55:15 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 11:54:57 -0500 From: Peter Grimes Subject: virus message (fwd) To: WSN ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 09:40:09 -0500 From: Linda Minfa Chen To: Peter Grimes Subject: virus message Hi Peter: Thanks for passing along the penpal greetings virus alert. I actually had it in my INBOX and managed to delete it. I've sent the warning along to others. happy holidays, Linda Chen From U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Thu Dec 19 18:16:43 1996 Date: Thu, 19 Dec 96 14:55:39 CST From: "Daniel A. Foss" Subject: gunder frank's mistake To: World Systems Network There's a story that, fifteen years after the end of the Vietnam War, US and Vietnamese generals got together for a nostalgia fest. "You'll have to admit," said a US general, that the US army defeated the Vietnamese People's Army in every single battle that they fought." "That is true, the Vietnamese general replied, "but it is not relevant." When Gunder Frank tells us that Portugal, a country with a mere million and a half people - he may even be exaggerating slightly - could not have possibly dominated the Indian Ocean trade because Portuguese population, resources, and production stood to those of Asia like a flea to an elephant, the latter is *true*, but not *relevant*. He might even have told us that Vasco da Gama, in 1498, while in Malindi, East Africa, hired an experienced Arab navigator, already internationally famous around the Indian Ocean, to guide the Portuguese to Calicut; otherwise, they would have got lost. This factoid is also *true*, but not *relevant*. Imagine, instead, the impact of a *business*, in possession of naval artillery, on the Indian Ocean free trade zone. One aspect of Malindi which is known to have struck da Gama even more than its Human Resources was the local availability of Indian rice. The Indian Ocean was a free- trade zone comprising small, competitive coastal states and large numbers of small shipowners likewise competing in a free market. If the local potentates raised customs dues conspicuously, trade might shift to competing ports. Goods, by Mediterranean standards, were cheap. The situation, that is, was ripe for takeover by a gangster. The part the Portuguese played in the rise of capitalism was heavily dependent on the fact that there was nothing much capitalistic about them. Portugal was an *economic Tamerlane*. Recall the previous post: Tamerlane had Qipchaq Turks with few resources whom he *adapted to live off much larger polities* with inadequate, Plague-reduced, resources. "What?! That is garbled nonsense!" Says the reader, if any. It is the hallmark of developing capitalism that the unified ruling- and-exploiting class of the tributary mode of production bifurcates into occupational specialties, broadly speaking, the politico-military and the entrepreneurial. These have hardened in the mature form into the Public Sector and the Private Sector. Following a period of blurring, variously called Keynsianism, Welfare State, Mixed Economy, Swedish Model, or eg Arab Socialism, the edges are resharpening such that anything the state does well is Sold Off and what it does poorly is Cut. In the local variant of the Tributary Mode known Mediaevally as the Feudal Lordship, cashflow-yielding "natural monopolies," from the local watermill for grinding grain or the winepress or the tolls to get in and out of places were conceded as a matter of course to the lord, especially, in the case of customs, to the Lord King, as in Tunnage and Poundage. This was even more true of Portugal than most places, as West African gold, from the 1440s, became a royal monopoly, and by the early sixteenth century was bringing in 120,000 cruzados a year, a cruzado representing 3.5 grams of gold. Tell your children that the mythical Prince Henry the Navigator was not curious about the Nature of the Universe but about where the gold which crossed the Sahara increasing in price manyfold along the way was coming from, and whether it was possible to steal it. The answer to the latter was No, but it was indeed possible to "get it wholesale." The pepper monopoly was founded immediately upon da Gama's return, bringing in 130,000 cruzados for 1506 and 300,000 cruzados by 1516. Dom Joao II and Dom Manuel I were not competitive capitalists of the sort who cut prices to beat the competition. The protocapitalist Venetians, typically, feared they were, so hugged the Egyptian Mamelukes for warmth; but the Portuguese carefully followed the Venetian price-leadership and sold at exorbitant Mediterranean prices. Withal, Portugal was a precursor of capitalism, which Venice was not. Mediaeval protocapitalism was *discontinuous* from capitalism. The Mediaeval city-states, the Florentine banks of the thirteenth and early fourteenth century (which were depositories for Papal taxes: Peter's Pence, Annates, First Fruits, etc, without which Papal power was impossible), the Feudal Monarchy states of France and England (which were legalistic compromises, cases of arrested development, compared to late-fifteenth- century Second Growth), all had to be swept away. Goldsmith, in The Building of Renaissance Florence, reminds us that Francesco Datini of Prato, whose archive from circa 1450 was so lauded by Werner Sombart and Fernand Braudel, was a *screwball* for his time and place. What was remarkable about the Portuguese clique, their vassals, and their hirelings was *the absence of a sense of limits*. "He who holds Malacca has his hands around the throat of Venice," wrote the first Portuguese ambassador to China. That intrepidty of a Mario Puzo gangster going around the world to make someone an offer which cannot be refused is precisely what was important. Mediaeval Europe had been, by the 1330s, cramped, crabby, legalistic, increasingly confining, hardened in orthodoxy, technically stagnant, and overpopulated hence famine-ridden. It had almost literally nowhere to go, and might have gone there, as China did later, almost forever (until, that is, Yuan-dynasty style Chinese, with no sense of limits, "opened" it like something I am Forbidden to eat). Then the Bubonic Plague... "There you go *again*!" Why am I such a monomaniac about this? Because the Bubonic Plague represents a challenge to social science theory, which as a true product of a civilization which also produced capitalism, *refuses to admit any limits*. If it can be shown that a catastrophe analogous to an asteroid hitting the Earth from outer space (which also happens), ie, exogeneous to sociological explanations, and smiting the Guilty (ie, the Rational, Progressive, nonEurocentric) equally with the Wicked (ie, Backward, Regressive, European), it will become possible to transcend the sterile theoretical blockages about Why is Capitalism here and not there? Is Capitalism, anyway? Who says the victims lay down and took it? What did Capitlism arise out of, now that we know that it actually exists, as it must have arisen out of what looked Capitalistic previously, right? Wrong. Capitalism exhibits in all its phases a minority inhabiting a subjective space of *no limits* and *acting accordingly* whilst *parasitic* off vast majorities *constrained by very severe limitations*. It presupposes a society in which a culture of limitations is reproduced along with the means of subsistence. In its mature form, it ideologically denies the objective reality of the social constraints which make it possible, creating an imaginary world inhabited by a figment called The Individual, whose Needs are Unlimited and on whom objective social constraints are defined out of existence: "If I can make it, so can you." "You can do anything you want, if you really want to." "Your Inferiority is entirely in your mind." Fictitious Equality exists in Rights and Opportunities, whilst objectively real social inequalities are adjusted for the purpose of *reproducing the emotional plausibility of the Success-Failure dichotomy*. The phrases "make it" (USA) and "get it on" (Britain) mean both "upward social mobility" and "sexual intercourse" for very good reasons. ("You can make it if you try." How about, say, "Real Comers *lay tracks* for the Little Engine That Could*." If I must be gross.) . The Bubonic Plague, a species of End of the World, had drastic cultural, as well as economic, effects which remain unthought-about. Specifically, for example, in both Europe and China, there appeared Nouveau Traditional cultures which were subtly different from the preceding Traditional cultures. To clarify, a culture is Traditional, literally, if you *presume at the level of the taken-for-granted* that it has been Handed On to you. Ming China was explicitly dedicated, ideologically, to nailing shut again the wide-open (if because it had been blasted open) economic and cultural world of the Mongol regime, with its profiteering depraviites, its show- business vulgarities, its laxity and permissiveness. (See John C. Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy, Columbia, 1983. Few people today thing of Mongols as having been overindulgent; but your perspective is obviously warped by not having Experienced the violent-criminal depredations of the properyless, as the Ming founder's Confucian braintrust had.) In the Islamic world, there was Tamerlane, who would, immediately or after an interval, be followed by the builders of Gunpowder Empires. In Europe, there was a prolonged period of predatory adventuring (Hundred Years War including the involvement of Castile and Portugal, Chioggia War between Venice and Genoa 1378-1381, Florence's War of the Eight Saints 1375- 1378 ending in a brush with proletarian revolution, many many more). The warfare was waged by mini-Tamerlanes like Edward the Black Prince, governor of Aquitaine. It was contemporaneous with social upheavals like the Jacqueries, the Normandy rising against the English in 1435, the *ciompi* insurrection in Florence, the English Peasant War, the Paris rising of 1360 and that of Etienne Marcel of 1402, the Hussite movement in Bohemia from 1409 and its revolutionary Taborites after 1419 (who fought with the Chalice in one hand and the Blade in the other. (The reactionary backlash from this in Germany was the Witch Craze.) All of which left behind little cultural pockets of *No Limits* which, because states were reduced to political garbage even where "state- building" - Where would we go for cliches without Charles Tilly? - had been advanced, France and then England when the War was brought back home, was reproduced indefinitely. In Germany, political garbage already, the demolition job was completed; lynch law ruled the countryside. And so on. Because there was a sense of Impending Doom, and with good reason, as the population was falling from 80 million to 55 million (Braudel) or from 67 million to 40 million (Jacques LeGoff), cultural Tamerlanes appeared, manifested, Experienced. --Giovanni Bocaccio dropped out of Law School and wrote a dirty book, excuse me, *humanist classic*, set during the Bubonic Plague. --Later, while many Forentines gave their children to the Church, as their fourteenth-century ancestors hadn't, the Medici acted as if the banking business was not *cool*, threw a Big Party, and invited all the artists. --Mystics invented the *Devotio Moderna*. Heretics, however, committed Excess in pursuit of the Primitive Church. See Hussites, above. Even the vestigial Byzantine Greeks had their *hesychasm* movement. --A freak accident of the Hundred Years War, Burgundy, confected a courtly culture of violent crime and chivalrous romance, ending with Charles the Rash (d. 1477, in combat). The most intense pockets of *No Limits* were in Castile-Aragon. Portugal was a slightly milder place, as it usually tended to be, until Philip II took it over after the Quixotic death of King Sebastian in the desert at Mers el-Kebir (1578) and the brief reign of Cardinal Henry (d. 1580). The fact remains that Dom Joao II threw Columbus out for the crank he was. But after Granada, in 1492, his neighbours believed that *literally anything* was possible, so long as it wasn't expensive. When Columbus, that Castilianized Genoese, washed ashore on the Portuguese coast in 1493, Dom Joao II, always the good sport, took him to Lisbon to Dry Out. Columbus thereupon dictated the "Sovereigns' Letter," published in 1992 by a Spanish historian. In it, Columbus announces to *los reyes catolicos* that he is now prepared to recover Jerusalem from the Infidels, for which he requests "fifteen thousand foot and five thousand horse." Kirkpatrick Sale, in his book review, thought this objectively impossible, as the Ottomans were there. In fact, Selim the Inexorable did not take the place from the Mamelukes, and Egypt with it, till 1517. It was impossible because Columbus was delusional, living in *No Limits* without so much as a patent of nobility to his name. Briefly, then: (1) it matters *not at all* for the emergence of capitalism that a place like Portugal (or Spain) lacked the institutional infrastructure of then-capitalism, so long as that institutional infrastructure existed somewhere that happened to be convenient: Italy, Germany, Burgundy. (2) Capitalism *qualitatively changed* production. This is, in fact, the only thing to be said for it. If Asia was *itself* incapable of qualitatively changing what it produced, as was so, it was inevitably going to be harnessed, by successive invaders by sea and later by land, to adapt *quantitatively* what it produced: At one time the Mughal Empire was induced to export huge quantities of very cheap cotton textiles to England. At another time British India was coerced into *importing even cheaper* cotton textiles while exporting money. India was made to grow opium to sell to China which was made to import it or else, to get China to export money. This is the same China which had expiated its wave of conspicuous consumption during the dictatorship of Hoshen (1796-1799) by executing him. Opium was already coming in. Six years earlier, before his affair with Hoshen, Qianlong told Lord Macartney, "Our Celestial Empire produces all things sufficient to our needs." That is the voice of *limits*; it's the legacy of the Ming founder. (3) Gunder Frank acknowledges that by 1800 we may allow that Europe dominated Asia, whatever he means by that. But *it is not possible to get from 1500 to 1800* without allowing for the Portuguese doing something real in and to Asia, and explaining why they were there. Which is not obvious. Also, explicating their cultural impact, which was in some ways weird. The Portuguese Arabized Latinism, *mandarim*, "commander," got into South Chinese argot as *mandarin*, "someone from Beijing," as in Mandarin dialect, Mandarin cuisine. We may have Latinised Arabisms, eg, *amir*, "commander," which in the twelfth century Kingdom of Sicily becomes Ammiratus Ammiratorum, which becomes Admiral, *almirante*. Daniel A. Foss From U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Thu Dec 19 20:35:12 1996 Date: Thu, 19 Dec 96 21:08:38 CST From: "Daniel A. Foss" Subject: correction: ming artillery To: World Systems Network In a previous post I said that due to the Ming founder's "principled Luddism" there was "no longer any gunpowder artillery in China." This is incorrect. There was no longer any *cast* gunpowder artillery in China. What was in favour was *wrought*, ie, *forged* artillery, which was cheaper. This represents a big difference in safety and development potential. A seamed metal barrel will burst after a few shots, so it is not wise to use it in combat without anticipating losing a substantial number of personnel. Certainly, it should never be used on ships. For extra mobility, also cheapness, a wooden tube was used. The "supernatural function cannon" which the third Ming emperor, Yongle (1402- 1424), mentioned as having used on a campaign in Mongolia in 1414 were probably of this kind. "Supernatural function" alludes to the Daoist origins of gunpowder, an interesting story. Admiral Zheng He's Treasure Fleet was seawhorthy only because the Treasure Fleet was an entirely eunuch enterprise, from Admiral Zheng He himself on down. Anything done by the Ming state which was not explicitly authorized by statute law (which regulated the Outer Court, the civil service) had to be done via an Inner Court agency, ie, the eunuchs, who were the Emperor's personal slaves. (Tsai, The Eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty, SUNY, 1996) What the eunuchs did or were in charge of was adequately funded, from Palace slush funds. To the Officials in the Civil Service, it would seem, for ideological reasons, that the funding was lavish or wasteful, with the eunuchs self-evidently swimming in a sea of corruption. By the same token, anything done by the Civil Service was funded on a shoestring, and anything it produced was by the cheapest methods and of low quality. It followed that the ships built by the Officials were so flimsy that sailors exchanged Final Farewells with their wives and children before embarking. Daniel A. Foss From cemck@cs1.presby.edu Fri Dec 20 08:41:27 1996 Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 10:41:26 -0500 (EST) From: Charles McKelvey To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Travel Seminar in Cuba The Center for Development Studies and the Facultad Latinoamerica de Ciencias Sociales (Programa Cuba) are jointly sponsoring a travel seminar in Cuba for social scientists and historians from the United States. The seminar will be conducted in English from June 2 to June 21, 1997. For more information, send U.S. mail address (by January 15) to Dr. Charles McKelvey, Center for Development Studies, 210 Belmont Stakes, Clinton, South Carolina, 29325; phone: (864) 833-8385 or (864) 833-1018; FAX 864-833-8481; e-mail: cemck@cs1.presby.edu. From U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Fri Dec 20 14:55:51 1996 Date: Fri, 20 Dec 96 11:58:42 CST From: U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Subject: palaeonotology of capitalism To: World Systems Network The sociological palaeontology of capitalism is contaminated with evolutionary biology, itself elsewhere a wonderfully useful idea. But here, the Panda Sucks Its Thumb. "Capitalist" forms, institutions, whatevers, are *a priori* assumed to have developed out of whatevers which temporally preceded them, whether or not in the societies under study or being compared the earlier whatevers fortified massively conservative fixtures of the social formation whose reproduction was tantamount to precluding capitalist development; where the later whatevers were, equally *a priori*stically, hailed as essential features of Modern Capitalism. Terminological digression: Prior to the Women's Movement, sociologists would have written, in place of my nebulous "whatevers," *social structures*, as the evolutionary biologist continues to write *morphological structures*. As we now realize, *social structures*, as manifestions of *yang*, stand proudly *erect* until *fatally undermined* by *yin*. Today, as we all recognize, there are, and rightly so, *social cavities* and even *social mineshafts*, the latter bearing menacing warnings to the effect of AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and HARDHATS NO ADMITTANCE. We have all read numerous versions of basically reshuffled or rehashed models sharing the following features. Firstly, the *post hoc ergo propter hoc* fallacy. The positive version is in effect, "Given that capitalism developed or occurred here, meaning, the West (Euroarmenia and Japan), with admission slightly higher for Japanese than others since they're *latecomers* so *consequently look funny*, that which is now West had *preconditions* for capitalism, such as Feudalism. The modification of the Weberian-Parsonian explication of the *preconditions* thesis to fit Japan was accomplished by the infamous Marion J. Levy, whose nonsense was regurgitated whole, for fifty or more pages, by Fernand Braudel in Volume Three of Capitalism and Civilization. The negative version, which symmetry-fetishists such as Max Weber and Latinists for whom the *filioque* clause (the Double Procession of the Holy Spirit) is meaningful may develop *pari passu* with the positive, holds that where "pristine capitalism" did not originate *could not ever* have developed capitalism, for reasons which the author will tell you with, if anything, even greater enthusiasm than those adduced for its positive-version *preconditions*. This is due to the author's intense conviction that the Failure to develop capitalism is indicative of *essential* Inferiority of the Failures to the Successes. The psychotic tendencies (often more than merely that) of Max Weber were elicited by his fixation upon Rationality, allegedly related to his abstinence from sexual intercourse except for one occasion, with Marianne Weber's best friend. Consider that he attempted a book arguing the Rationality of "Western music" compared to the Other. The foregoing vicious smear is necessary in light of the pervasiveness of Weberian influence. Mark Elvin, Patterns of the Chinese Past, Stanford, 1973, argues that the Mediaeval Chinese city was unsuitable for capitalist development in that there was *no civic consciousness* in which case, why did each city have its own City God?. Relatedly, there was *no political separation* between city and countryside, as in Europe. There is no effort to explain why sharp political-jurisdictional demarcations promote capitalist development. Consider that among the first acts of the French Revolution, by mob action in many places even prior to legislation, was precisely the destruction of such boundaries as relics of "feudalism," the latter a coinage of that moment. It should rather be argued that, in Western Europe, the inhabitants of towns persevered *despite* having to endure encapsulation either for local supremacy in context of the wider rural-based feudal polity; or more often as confinement by territorial lords facilitating the mulcting of inhabitants within. Consider the recent study by Ann Wroe, A Fool and His Money: Life in a Divided Town in Fourteenth-Century France, 1995, of Rodez, Languedoc, during the Hundred Years War and, yes, the Bubonic Plague. It was divided by a walled frontier *within*. The City proper was ruled by the Bishop, whose regime bled it white for the Cathedral, a "sinkhole for money" begun in the late thirteenth century and more or less completed two hundred years later. The Bourg, on the other side of the internal wall, was taxed till it screamed by Count Jean I of Armagnac, shakily allied to Charles V of France against Edward the Black Prince, ruler of Aquitaine. Nowhere is to be seen Weber's Noble Savage Capitalists, bound by *conjuratio* against the Baddies Outside. The less history you know, the more plausible the full-blown Weberian hypothesis looks. Not surprisingly, it was taken to its logical conclusion by the anthropologist Marvin Harris, who for many years styled himself "cultural materialism." Harris wrote, quite baldly, that feudalism was progressive, in human history, because it made possible the city states, which made possible capitalism, which made possible Western Civilization. Because Harris considers himself a Marxist, and Marx, in historical sociology, was a Weberian *avant le lettre*. Do not let the Mode of Production gibberish fool you. Perry Anderson, who knows considerably more history than Marvin Harris, and argued E.P. Thompson to death with Marxist theory besides, wrote much the same idea in Passages From Antiquity to Feudalism, 1973. In Lineages of the Absolute State, 1974, he characterized absolute monarchies in early modern Europe as consodlitated or congealed expressions of feudal aristocracies in an epoch when capitalists per se were immature. Nowhere does he suspect that aristocracies were *politico-military specialists* of capitalist societies, howbeit with *funny costumes and powdered wigs*. *Where*, though, was the *most sophisticated absolute hereditary monarchy* ever built? In China, during the Ming 1368-1644 and Qing 1644-1912 periods. The Ming, however, gave rise not to the French Rovolution but to the rebel Li Zicheng; and the Qing, to the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace, 1850-1864. Second, we have all been exposed to the *reified continuity of the West*. This is a consequence of positing a *je ne sais quoi* or essence which gave rise, in the fullness of time, to Capitalism, the highest stage of *Homo sapiens sapiens*. From the standpoint of the Classical Greeks, the Romans would be, geographically speaking, to their west, but hardly as of c. 450 BC, civilized even if accompanied by an Etruscan; and as for c. 146 BC, they'd been politely told by Polybius that opinion to the effect that Romans were not civilized was unhealthy. Visible resemblances in Imperial Rome to later tourist attractions in India, such as painted temples where dancers locally called "fantails" exhibited themselves, were neither coincidental nor more substantive than social features shared with China in the same period. This was all before Christianity, which will never be known, thanks to Constantine and his biographer, Eusebius. The historian Fergus Millar writes, "If we may trust Eusebius, and why should we not,..." Historians of Stalinism may not say this of, say, Zhdanov. This entire demolition job is requisite to inquiring of Wallersteinian application to China and Europe of the appelations World System, World Empire, and *immunity to capitalism*. For, by the criteria of qualitative changes in production and a No Limits cultural ambience in a fraction of the population, capitalism on a self-sustaining basis *had been achieved* as of the Yuan dynasty. "What!?" If, say, that is true, how would you go about verifying it? It is certainly the case that it ceases to be true *after the first third or so of the fourteenth century*, and whilst not acknowledging that China was capitalist at this time, Mark Elvin, in Patterns of the Chinese Past, 1973, which builds on decades of Japanese research on what is now known as the Song Economic Revolution, offers a demographic-migrational cum economic-productivity explanation for why it should have happened in the middle of the fourteenth century. The trouble is that his explanation, which manages to ignore the Bubonic Plague and the Revolution of 1351-1368 entirely, would require a century or a century and a half for the stated causes to have had the observed effects. Capitalism, were it to have come to China, would have had *funny costume*. Property law would have been quite strange. Family law would have been even stranger, as it was, in Mediaeval China as later, contrary to prevailing sexual mores for a socially prestigious man to limit *licit* sexual relations to one woman; possibly scandalous. The precocious appearance of printed paper money was most striking, but is explicable by the cumbersome character of the copper or bronze coins used for small *and* large transactions. Paper money had its inception in certificates of deposit issued to salt merchants by the state salt monopoly in exchange for silver bullion or copper cash. The invention of printing facilitated emergence of genuine paper currency in the Song period, backed by the state salt monopoly's anticipated ability to sell salt, a necessity of life, to the mass of the population. So long as, with experience, the state succeeded in refraining from temptation to simply print money, and Assumption Number One held, the currency grew in stability, ease of circulation, and variety of denominations. In 1355, however, Assumption Number One failed, due to Bubonic Plague depopulation, massive famine consequent upon rapid deurbanization due to disease such that owners of "manors" worked by serfs, tenants, and landless labourers ceased feeding their "staffs." The latter died like flies also. In 1344, the entire family of Zhu Yuanzhang, son of a landless labourer in the Huai valley, died of the Plague, and the the starving, homeless teenager donned robes, shaved his head, and went forth with begging bowl as a Buddhist monk. (We don't know whether this was merely Unofficial or utterly Phony, as Authentic certificates of ordination were issued exclusively by the Bureau of Buddhist Affairs or the Bureau of Daoist Affairs of the Ministry of Rites, and these conferred legal tax exemptions. As do our municipal bonds. For this reason, genuine ordination certificates circulated as quasi-monetary financial instruments, subject to quotation, speculation, and brokerage trading.) Depending on the historian, Zhu Yuanzhang went underground or did what would become better- kept-hidden until either 1348 or 1351. He was either a believer in the White Lotus religion or he was not. He either fought for patriotic reasons after 1348 or joined a "red army," ie, military unit of the Red Turbans, the "politcal arm" of the White Lotus. (See John C. Dardess, Conquerors and Confucians, Columbia, 1973, for "red armies.") With Plague and famine, salt smugglers, who to the extent that the state's fiscal soundness depended on the salt monopoly, like Bourbon France, tended to figure in or, like Huang Zhao in the late Tang (who burned Guangzhou, recall), led mass movements as heroes of the people, did so again. Some of these, in the Lower Yangzi, became politically important by 1348. State revenues were shrinking from low land tax yields, which landlords had had practice evading for a thousand years anyway, and now from commercial taxes, with commerce dwindling in Plague-stricken ports. After peasant war broke out, when faced with death at rebel hands in 1352, the Yangzi landlords (Dardess, ibid) "served notice that they would rather rebel than pay arrears of taxes." The Yellow River changed its course in 1347, and the immediate precipitant of peasant war was the conscription of 200,000 men in 1350 to dig a new channel in Plague-infested Shandong province. The peasant war which broke out in the Yangzi valley seized control of *exactly* the same territory ruled by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace *exactly* 600 years later. No accident, either. Both religions were led by archetypal Messianic figures of the Chinese Popular Religion, which has mutated and developed for hundreds or even thousands of years as elites have pretended to avert eyes and hold noses. Such people never win, but they may facilitate the rise of those who do or fatally wound the material and moral viability of a political regime: the *shifting of the mandate*. Han Shantong was regarded in the 1340s as a manifestation upon earth, *avatar*, of the Maitreya Buddha, the Buddha of the Future, whose Advent at the "turn of the *kalpa*" would bring or restore a reign of justice to the wicked world of the present. Han Shantong, reportedly, syncretized a doctrinal stew of Mahayanism (Maitreya), Central Asian Manichaeanism (the advent of the Prince of Radiance who wars against the Prince of Darkness), and the Daoist veneration of the Great Mother, if she is the same deity as the Eternal Mother mentioned by the historians. (In later times, eg, the rising of 1813, the mantra of White Lotus was, "Eternal Mother in Our Original Home in the World of True Emptiness," womblike bliss.) Han Lin'er, son of Han Shantong, called himself *xiaominwang*, Lesser Prince of Radiance, heralding He Who Will Be Even Greater. In 1850, the labourers in Shandong discovered a buried stone statue, planted there by sectarians for ready discovery. The authorities, smelling trouble, arrested Han Shantong, and in early 1351 the terrified Han Lin'er called for an immediate rising with his preparations yet incomplete. (When or who ever started the revoluton according to plan.) The Mongol Yuan regime had in 1350 what the Qing conspicuously lacked in 1850: and energetic, brilliant young Prime Minister, Toghto, who was additionally a great and resourceful administrator. He held office during 1340-1344 and 1349-1355. Unlike the Qing of the future, he acted swifly to prevent the rebels from consolidating a political regime in the lower and middle Yangzi valley. Though forced to print money to cover expenses, he swiftly seized, by late 1353, most rebel-held cities; by January 1355, only Gaoyu, strategically located on the Grand Canal (which fed Beijing), held by a salt smuggler, held out, but was surrounded and about to be stormed. At the last moment, Toghto was deposed (it was feared he had dessigns on the throne, which he should have carried out much earlier considering the current emperor's lassitude and stupidity), exiled, then murdered, aged 42. At this time, 1355, the paper money went into hyperinflation, the state could not pay itself, and collapse of the state ensued. None of this could have occurred in Europe before 1793 or 1918, perhaps. TO BE CONTINUED. BUILDING CLOSING. Daniel A. Foss From ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au Sat Dec 21 00:27:32 1996 Date: Sat, 21 Dec 1996 18:26:23 +1100 From: "Bruce R. McFarling" Subject: Re: palaeonotology of capitalism To: U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU On Fri, 20 Dec 1996 U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU wrote: > ... "Given that capitalism developed or occurred here, meaning, > the West (Euroarmenia and Japan), with admission slightly higher for > Japanese than others since they're *latecomers* so *consequently look > funny*, that which is now West had *preconditions* for capitalism, such > as Feudalism. ... E.A.J. Johnson locates emergance of a capacity for sustained industrial development in a particularly high density of urban / rural contact, for which a requirement is a balanced central place structure (though, _contra_ Rondinelli etc. this by no means suffices). Jane Jacobs makes a similar argument. So in his argument, the critical institutional innovations of the Tokugawa Shoguns (?: I'm more comfortable with south Atlantic history than the West and East Asian histories y'all toss around) is the castle towns, and the requirements that _daimyo_ provide for the upkeep of their kin that are being held as hostages by the Shogun. So, regarding, > ... For, by the criteria of qualitative > changes in production and a No Limits cultural ambience in a fraction of > the population, capitalism on a self-sustaining basis *had been achieved* > as of the Yuan dynasty. What did the the hierarchies[1] of central place structures look like in the Yuan dynasty, and what happened to them with the demographic collapse? Virtually, Bruce R. McFarling, Newcastle, NSW ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au [1] Hierarchy used here in the broad sense of a structure defined by a mapping of "superior"/"inferior" relations, and not in the narrow sense of an archy of hieros. From U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Sun Dec 22 17:33:04 1996 Date: Sun, 22 Dec 96 17:22:36 CST From: U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Subject: china tried capitalism continued To: World Systems Network All it requires, really, to envision China, circa 1290-1330, as the Core of a capitalist world-system propriety of hyphen uncertain *and* as the hegemonic state in an Asian state system is *ignoring the fact of regression*, at first quantitative, as in Europe and the Near East; then qualitative, due to Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang's pursuit of what Ray Huang calls "agrarian simplicity," by autocratic absolutism, legislation, and massive terror. (I myself formerly believed that the numerous parallels between the careers of Zhu Yuanzhang and Mao Zedong were sheer coincidence or at most of structural and cultural origin, to be explained by social science; but there is explicit evidence, from Dr Li Zhisui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, p. 441, otherwise.) By "state system" I have meant, over the years I have written for this list, states fighting, trading, and acculturating at the elite level to one another (the latter known in archaeology by Colin Renfrew's coinage, "peer polity interaction") for a prolonged if determinate and finite historical period. This terminates, in *nearly* all cases, in either *unification*, usually military and most often by a "marcher state"; or in "system collapse" (Renfrew, again). The Asian state system, to be discussed here, one of the rare exceptions when one power perpetrated what I call "picking up its marbles and going home," or perhaps, "I'm not a hegemonic state, I'm a World Empire," following Plague, Revolution, foundation of the Ming dynasty, and the banning, in 1370, of foreign trade except under the guise of interstate gift exchange, the opportunity wherefor presenting itself in the dearth of "private," ie, nonstate, foreign trade to prohibit. The declaration of China as a World Empire at that time was ideological and explicit. Possibly the most symptomatic indicator of the qualitative difference between Mongol Yuan China as a hegemonic state and Ming China as a World Empire was the development of military technology. In 1241 the Mongols introduced firearms, designed by Chinese engineers, into Europe at the battle of Sajo, when they reduced the army of King Bela IV of Hungary to a pile of rusting scrap. But these firearms were experimental stuff; they were made of bamboo. The final stage in the development of the handgun was not taken till the reign of the second Mongol emperor of China, Temur (1294-1308), when metal barrels were introduced. As an active participant in a state system where China had enemies and only one ally, the Empire of the Il-khan of Persia, the authorities in Beijing, who were actually far more rational and responsible than the dissipated drunks they are still made out to have been, did not perceive that the politico-military world had cut them any slack. To their west were two hostile powers, so closely allied they may for practical purposes be considered a unit. To the north was the Empire of Ogodei, whose ideological mission and raison d'etre was to make incessant war on the state ruled by Khubilai and his descendants, on grounds that said Khubilai, in 1260, stole the Great or Grand Qanship from the House of Ogodei at an irregular kuriltai, what we today would call a "rigged election." Incessant raids into Yuan-ruled territory made for varying degrees of danger, contingent upon the collusion of a fraction of the Mongol ruling elite in China. Grave crises transpired in 1308 and 1328. Which all merely illustates the opening for power-maximization conferred by ideological legitimacy. This invariably has weird, screwball consequences, eg, House of Lords, Electoral College, and Guelphs vs Ghibellines. In 1976 I met Werner Cahnman on the street near Columbia University and, faking the polltaker, said, "It's the 12th century and, if the election were held today, are you Guelph or Ghibelline?" "Ghibelline!" "I *thought* so." And meant that. More serious was the Chagatai empire, which not merely backed the Ogodeis; it also sat right over the Chinese Mongol silk pipeline between the North China plain and Genoese Caffa on the Black Sea. Fortunalely for the silk trade, the Chagatais, who controlled most of Central Asia, had the empire of the Golden Horde to their north and west; trouble with the Chagatais could be circumvented by alternative routes through Golden Horde territory to the east of the Caspian. Golden Horde territory ran through South Russia nearly to the Caucasus and the Black Sea shores, where territorial disputes festered. I am certain that, when Eurocentrism ends at last, the Golden Horde will be revealed as a wealthy and well-ruled state: As is well-known, Modern Russian vocabulary dealing with quintessential state activities, eg, "money," "prison," "whip," and "China" are of largely Mongol derivation; whilst items of consumption and commerce, eg, "tea," are Chinese. Russian *kitay*, "China," alludes to the Mongolish Khitan, or Liao Empire, whose ruling-house scion designed the Mongol state administration after a lifetime under the rule of the sinified Jurched or Ruzhen (Jin dynasty). Russians served side-by-side with Arabs in Mongol Beijing, filling jobs Chinese believed rightfully theirs, to be sure. Mongols were racists, but mixed up their categories of lesser races in a refreshingly innovative way. Russians and Arabs, like Turks, were *semu*, Associated Peoples, ranking just below the master race of Mongols themselves. (Northern Chinese, *hanren*, were superior, racially, to Southern Chinese, *nanren*; though the circumstance that the latter had much more money than the former was hardly ignored.) The other major powers were: the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria, which had beaten the Mongols at tha battle of Ain Jalut in 1260 and driven the last of the Crusaders into the sea in 1291. Hardly the least of the great powers was the Sultanate of Delhi, which bordered the Il-khan empire to the east as the Mamluks did to the east. These facts rendered Chinese assistance to Persia of the utmost importance. Persia was the largest Chinese export market, whereto it sent porcelains with arabesque designs, specialized for the Near Eastern taste. Chinese hydraulic engineers rebuilt irrigation works on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; but then, even if the Chinese Mongols =Yuan dynasty, Chinese-speaking Mongols didn't know it, it was a Chinese general who led the army which sacked Baghdad in 1258 during Hulagu's campaign. Shortly after Persia and China became part of a common political world, Chinese acquired the art of cultivating cotton from Persia. In a trice, by 1292, some Chinese invented the cotton gin; and howbeit it would impress you no end, and lend much-needed plausibility to this tale, I cannot give you her name. My suspicion is that no Chinese male would have *bothered* lightening women's work. A hemp-spinning machine had been mass-marketed in the *Wang Zhen nongshu* (1313), just before the bottom fell out of the hemp market; and possibly there wasn't time prior to the Plague to invent a cotton-spinning analogue. Khubilai's finance minister had been an Arab (executed 1290, concession to popular demand). Similarly, Chinese fiscal experts introduced the use of paper currency into Persia, with disastrous results, according to Rashid al-Din, vizir and historian. (The Il-khan regime officially adopted Islam in 1306.) More substantial was the impact of Chinese art on Persian miniatures. No mention has been made of the Southeast Asian states and South Seas trading emporia. Janet Abu-Lughod has covered the ground regarding the latter quite well, if indeed she overestimates the autonomy of Majapahit or Malacca or Penang with respect to China. They all lay within the Chinese sphere of influence; though it is true that Khubilai's invasion of Java, with six thousand Korean-built ships, was repelled. They did not evade the zone of Chinese commercial dominance and settlement. I can find assertions by historians, Mongolophopes every last one of them, that the trade of, say, Chuanzhou, in Fujian, expanded; or that the Mongol regulations for the Superintendency of Maratime Customs at Guangzhou were more liberal than the Song, though inconsistently so, with allowances for corruption and evasion, etc, there is not a single claim that commerce shrank. Gernet says, "evidence dating from 1349 mentions existence of a Chinese colony at Tomasik, on the very spot where the great Chinese city of Singapore was to develop in the twentieth century." The theoretical significance of the latter factoid is that Elvin's hypothesis, alluded to in the preceding post, as to the cessation of Chinese technical development after the "first third of the fourteenth century" is that, prior to, let's call it December 31, 1331, because 1331-2 saw the outbreak of Bubonic Plague in the Beijing region, Chinese had places to migrate into, which raised the average productivity of labour in the frontier regions as well as in the regions emigrated from. Then, as of January 1, 1332, the frontier closed, and the average productivity of labour stagnated or declined. Had the Chinese, says Elvin, had places more remote to migrate to, as the British did in the West Indies, taking with them as they went a bunch of Africans who'd found Africa an unendurably *boring* Experience, you see, they might have continued to increase the average productivity of labour. Well, if Chinese were indeed migrating into a Chinese sphere of influence at the time of maximum Chinese commercial hegemony, hence expanding and diversifying Chinese international trade, then Elvin's supposition is refuted. The reader, if any, no doubt thinks me a crank for supposing *primitive tribal savages* living in *stinking yurts* and *slobbering on yakfat* while *drunk on kumiss* could possibly know what to do with *civilized people like Arabs* who would *never* have lived in TENTS! Actually, the common denominator, in all the Mongol-ruled states, is a certain harsh competence which brushed aside local tradidions for expediency's sake, causing unpopularity. For instance, Mongol officials favoured plowing over ancestors' graves to increase the Chinese arable, and opposed foot-binding. They were doctrinally eclectic, according the superstitions of all peoples equal status, contingent on whim of the ruler. Khubilai's spiritual advisor was a Tibetan lama. Sayyid Ajall of Bukhara was made governor of formerly Buddhist Dali, now Yunnan; his descendants ruled it until 1380 when the Ming annexed it as unfinished business of their liberation of China from Mongols; and by then the indigenous population was substantially Muslim, including the boy eunuch subsequently named Zheng He who in 1382 was carried off to the appanage of Zhu Di, Prince of Yan, at Beijing. China, it would seem, was cracked wide open, as it had never been before. The Mongols made a single paper currency circulate north and south; writing paper bank cheques came into general use everywhere. There was free circulation of ideas to the utter horror of Confucian conservatives, who complained that in these wicked days, the robes and trappings of the Confucian scholar were in some cases no more than fake fronts for profitmaking business (Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy, p. 8). By suspending the famous Civil Service examinations until 1315, the Mongol Yuan regime diverted an enormous amount of intellectual talent into commerce, show business (Chinese theater or opera), the fine and coarse arts, the military, and certain branches of industry. (The fate of iron-and-steel, hence also coal, production is not clear. Iron-and-steel reached a peak, which is controversial, of either 35,000 or 125,000 tons a year by 1100.) "What about science and mathematics? You mean to tell me, the Chinese could do *anything* without Aristotelian logic?" "The Chinese got their Aristotle from the same place Regular people got it: translation from the Origincal Classical Arabic into Archaic Classical Chinese, which has been a deader language longer than Latin, Classical or Church." This is all not relevant. Chinese science and mathematics wore *funny costumes*. By this, I mean that, whereas what might be called Formal Reason, ie, making an argument to demonstrate the truth of something *authoritatively*, was the exclusive monopoly of Confucians, whose objective in using it was invariably arriving at eternal moral certainties or "general prinicples," science and mathematics were the preserve of avowedly *non-rational people*. Mathematicians, for example, belonged to the Complete Truth Sect of Daoism. These people do not appear to have given mathematics a subcultually distinct appearance which identifies it as wordly, predictable, and unmysterious to other mathematicians. All mathematics is inevitably an impenetrable mystery to those who never learned it, and feel feel stupid, also persecuted by Jews or Asian immigrants accordingly. But even to nonmathematicians, Western methematics looks, uh, sciencelike. Chinese mathematics, when it was in flower, looked like the Wisdom of the Mystic East. For instance, right now I'm looking at a diagram, sloping off to the left, of horizontal lines, vertical lines, T-symbols both upright and upside-down, and in the lower-right-hand corner, a slashed circle a bit lika a Prohibited symbol. The circle is a positional zero; the slash indicates a negative number, and the diagram is to be read 2X**3+15X**2+166X-4460=0. To the right of that diagram is a picture of Pascal's Triangle of the binomial coefficients, published in a 1303 book entitled Jade Mirror of the Four Principles (in sufficient quantity that, albeit nobody would understand it, or even care, a hundred years later, it Came Down To Us. Gunpowder was discovered by Daoist alchemists in the ninth century. At first it was used to make flashes, loud noises, and the famous acrid stench. It was customary, in the quest for the elixir of Immortality, to turn over lethal poisons and explosives to the Ministry of War. The first use of gunpowder in combat dates to the early tenth century. The explosive property of the mixture was not discovered until much later: There is a fascinating article, in a collection entitled Religion in T'ang and Sung China, entitled "Strengthening the Seal of Office." This describes Thunder Rites, a Daoist magical technique used in the twelfth century, at the behest of local magistrates struggling against illegal shrines operated by sorcerers (*wu*) on behalf of deities (*shen*) unrecognized or even marked for suppression by the Ministry of Rites. It is not clear, from the text of the article, whether the magistrates believed in the efficacy of the supernatural on the Enemy side or on his own. The Daoist magician was charged with blowing up the outlaw shrine, killing (*sha*) the officiating sorcerer along with it. This is not exactly state-sponsored terrorism repressing the free exercise of religion, as it cannot be established that the magistrates, or their superiors, were aware that the efficacious ingredient was gunpowder. There can be no doubt of that. There is mention of explosions, acrid smoke, danger to the practitioner, and the mixture of "realgar, charcoal, sulfur and honey." The presence of honey in this list is not explained. Confucianism sacralizes kinship and deference rituals, politely ignoring the supernatural except for the cult of Heaven, explicitly associated with rulership, and those deities explicitly recognized and given titles by the state. In the Song and Yuan (Mongol) periods, all deities were ranked by length of title, eight characters, six, four, and two. The bureaucracy thus made a supernatural in its own image, illegal sects excepted. Yet it was still taboo for the Confucian official to engage in invocation of the supernatural in doing his job; the Daoist did this for him. The wording of the Thunder Rites manual, as cited, gives no inkling that the Daoist supposed that gunpowder without talismans, spells, incantations, and such, was efficacious; or of course vice versa. Yet, it works. **** Qualitative concepts are slippery. In Marxist scripture, for example, the criteria for attaining the exalted (relative to feudalism) degree of Capitalist Mode of Production are given as (1) generalization of the circulation of commodities; and (b) capital-labour relation as the dominant relation. What these mean is not merly qualitative but "historically relative." There is no doubt, for example, that the "generalization of the circulation of commodities," etc, is greater in contemporary Equatorial Guinea than in seventeenth-century England. Yet the latter was an advanced-bourgeois power for its time and place. A Marxist theorist asked me only yesterday whether I could rightly say that "the capital-labour relation was the dominant relation" in the Song and Yuan periods. I told this person that, in the Southern Song capital of Hangzhou, population 1.25 million, the Chinese restaurant was invented by the twelfth century, and for the explicit purpose of affording to the working class a place to have affordable lunch. Furthermore, on the landed estates, the qualitative distinction in terms of proletarianization between and among serfs, tenants, and landless labourers is a function of the overall commercialization and industrializtion of the economy as well as the degree of compulsion exercised by the master/employer. We may recall that, in "Actually non-Existing Socialwasm" there was considerable scope for the coercion of labour from disfavoured sectors of the very class whose dictatorship was the pretext for such abuse. To put it one final way, stage theories must allow for what I have called "funny costmes." If I am conceded the right to define capitalism in terms of *qualitatively changing production* including both products and productive techniques, a "No Limits" ambience in some sector or subcultural pocket of the ruling- exploiting class, and the occupational bifurcation, within that class, of politico-military and entrepreneurial specialists, then: I am most certainly entitled to state that the line, once crossed, may be said to have been recrossed. History is not *unilinear* unless *unilinearity is determined*. I am holding that, if the distinction between a capitalist hegemonic state and a World Empire is empirically valid, and the same society which, in 1200 had been the first, by 1300 is now the second, may by 1400 be the second given that, as Phil Austin once said, "If you push something hard enough, it will fall over." Am I making a mockery of theory? Certainly, because all theory gets a little funny around the edges. All social-science theory must make provision for having overlooked transitions that were ignored where they did not occur twice. It must, further, make provision for sheer dumb luck, asteroids from outer space, Bubonic Plague, and Zhu Yuanzhang. It must explain exactly why and where it cannot explain. Daniel A. Foss From U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Sun Dec 22 20:57:51 1996 Date: Sun, 22 Dec 96 18:54:44 CST From: "Daniel A. Foss" Subject: primitive accumulation in europe before 1500 To: World Systems Network Immanuel Wallerstein told me off line that I had not explained the rise of capitalism in Europe before circa 1500, whereby it was made possible for Columbus and da Gama to do what they did, recognizing of course that someone else would have, in either case, done exactly the same. Or if da Gama had not hired Ahmad ibn-Majid in Malindi, he would have got to Calicut anyway, with some delay, and made somewhat less money. These matters were already determined, like Newton's "discovery" of the calculus, howbeit slightly before Leibniz. The short answer is, *conversion of massive taxation of the Western European peasants into capital*, including *anticipations of taxation*. Wallerstein, in Volume One of The Modern World System, rightly emphasized the enserfment of Eastern European peasants, notably in Poland and East Elbia, to meet the demand for increased production under conditions of relative labour shortage in the East and recovery of population to something like pre-Plague levels in the West. But the story begins earlier, in 1429. *In retrospect*, it looks, seems, makes sense, that some sort of French esprit, elan, morale, protonationalism, or JNSQ - *je ne sais quoi* - must have, via historical inevitability, Caused French resistance of Anglo-Burgundian occupation. This is not, actually, so obvious. Consider. It's 1429, and France is four touchdowns behind at the opening gun of the fourth quarter in the Hundred Years War. Despite the best efforts of Charles V the Wise (1364-1380) and Bertrand du Guesclin, Marechal de France, there French nobility, under Charles VI the Mad (1380-1426), reverted to allowing only one play in its playbook, the frontal assault and cavalry charge, for which they were shot up by English longbows at Agincourt (1415); those who were not had their throats cut in a massacre of prisoners ordered by Henry V (1409-1422) which shocked Shakespeare two centuries later, to find inclusion in the greatest English deadwhitemale's subtextual philosophy of history. By treaty in 1421, Henry married Elizabeth, probably not the biological daughter of Charles VI by Isabelle of Bavaria. The offspring, if any, was to be heir of England *and* France upon the deaths of both monarchs; this was the infant Henry VI of England (1422-1461, 1469-1470) who, by age six and monarch on both sides of the Channel, was Retarded if not yet psychotic. Much of all this was facilitated by the Family Feud among French Princes of the Blood, whose Deeper Causes I haven't studied as hard as I should've, culminating in the bloody murder of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy (1384-1404), which changed an appanage into a Major European Power. That is, a Major European Power at this time might be considerably more miniscule compared to the Mamluk, Ottoman, or Delhi Sultanates. Burgundy allied with England, whose cloth, withal, competed with the local product; this contradiction in turn added spice, or instability, to the situation. It is not, strictly speaking, necessary for World-System Theorists to know this stuff; but it *develops character*. Charles VI had a male heir, if you were a member of the Armagnac faction, defined so far as I know in contradistinction to the Burgundian faction. This man, Charles, Dauphin of France, was almost certainly not the biological offspring of Charles VI. Aspersions I have cast upon the Virtue, Moral Character, and Family Values of Isabelle of Bavaria are those recorded at the time, and I should state for the record that all persons should have the right to free choice of sexual partners, excepting of course those to whom I am married, which is a purely theoretical proviso at this time. The utterance of Charles VI, "Who is this woman? I never saw her before in my life!" was perhaps the least psychotic utterance he ever said. In accordance with the Salic Law (qv), it was allegedly and suppositiously *illegal* for the Throne of France to pass through the female line; which, in the past, however, had proved contingent upon whom the candidate was, inter alia. In which case, Dauphin Charles was, by right, law, and God's Will, Charles VII, though Retarded. This was, at the time, a learned, and among anti-Burgundians, a fighting, proposition; howbeit, it lacked a certain *zing*. Note: I have always said that it is necessary to maintain a posture of value-neutrality toward bizarre political systems, including our own, excpting when mass murder is committed above and beyond the call of duty. With that in mind, I must confess to inordinate fascination with the most bizarre of them I can find. The would-be or might-be Charles VII was not quite even a wannabe, wallowing or languishing in moral and material squalor, in 1429, as the English, led by the Duke of Salisbury, Regent of France for the child, later childish, Henry VI, closed in on one of the last defensible places not yet captured, Orleans. It was here and now that the schizopolitics of Jeanne d'Arc transformed the situation. Schizopolitics is the solution, via bizarre indirection, of a problem which is either unthinkable or, if consciously formulated, insoluble to the best-informed commonsense of that society and epoch. That commonsense, of course, may look very weird indeed to the people of another time and place; and any observer of political or social-movement actors must take care to separate the objectively impossible, the advocacy whereof is *counterempirical*, from the Impossible, in the ideological sense. The practitioners of schizopolitics who've made names for themselves have exploited ideological blind spots whose existence gave rise to the pre-existing *a priori*tization of the commonsensicality of Impossibility. The uppercased Impossible is accordingly the *counterReal*, ie, contrary to the Reality enforced as objectively real, but ideologically misrepresented, by your Shrink. Daniel A. Foss: Social constraints are objectively real. Dr Aronson: Sociology is just your Paranoid delusional system. Examples of practitioners of schizopolitics include: Muhammad, Constantine the Great, Columbus, the Camisard rebels in Languedoc (1689-1693), Fra Girolamo Savonarola, Zhu Yuanzhang, and Mao Zedong. I have not entirely made up my mind about Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, but I am leaning at this time to *yes*. The single most conspicuous common feature among practitioners of schizopolitics, victorious or otherwise, is their unpredictability. Should one appear, and make some perceptible difference in history due to the low-visibility character of social reality at the time due to impenetrable peasoup fog of ideological mystification and delusion, this is a Good Thing, or a Bad Thing, depending, but it cannot be predicted. If the Bubonic Plague was an Asteroid from Outer Space, the practitioner of schizopolitics is a large or small meteorite. If some statistical probability of the manifestation of a schizopolitical figure may somehow be calculated, the identification of this or that present, past, even future historical conjuncture as one wherein or whereat one will appear, with whichever consequences, is not. Anyway, it wouldn't be the way to bet, given the odds, whatever they'd be, would be long against it happening at all. Theory, as I said earlier today, must take into consideration where theory has no business. (Note that I have omitted the rich treasure trove of human religious creativity. For many centuries, all social movements were also religious movements; the reverse, however, was true of only a minority of religious movements, though all claimed generalized human significance. Then an apparently irreversible trend called Secularization modified this a bit. More recently, things have got *really confused* out there. Ask your local Christian, Muslim, even Jew. In India, ask your local BJP or Shiv Sena voter. Only the Chinese, somehow.... There *are* some borderline cases where it is difficult to ascertain, as during the English Revolution, the social-movement stature of a figure like George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, when he said, "I was commanded by the Lord to take off my shoes. I stood still, for it was winter.") I hope, therefore, to have established that there was no historically determined necessity for a *second side* to appear, with a passionate desire to beat the Anglo-Burgundians and *win* the Hundred Years War. This is what Jeanne d'Arc was told to accomplish by Sts Michael and Catherine, who were imaginary. What Jeanne d'Arc had going for her was that, in the context of the society and culture into which she was born, she was the lowest form of life: virgin unmarried childless female peasant. Via a *liminal inversion*, in Anthrogibberish, she was able to induce hardbitten French knights and men-at-arms to commit the unthinkably taboo act of attacking the English from the rear when catching them in suitable position; the stakes used by the longbow-archers precluded the formation from moving. Whilst at night, refraining from touching finger to holy body, as Jeanne's virginity was etiological to victory as Samson's hair. Then, by God's will, as he had none of his own whatsoever, Charles was induced, puttylike, to get properly crowned at Rheims; and Jeanne had got one touchdown back. Having imparted what is in US politics called *momentum* to the French side, which in some sense did not previously exist all that much, Jeanne was abandoned by her own unit when wounded, to ensure certain capture by the Enemy. This was part of the inner logic; the problem solved was changing the fighting to ensure victory, as opposed to the social prestige of Chivalrous Class, without endangering the social order whereof Chivalry was ideologically indispensible. Charles VII the Well-Advised (1426 or 1431-1461) nominally presided over the pitiless reconstruction of the state, pronounced as Built by George Duby as early as Philip Augustus, 1180-1218, though Charles Tilly might not go that far. Rapacity, fiscality, and not a little rascality went into the raising of a trained, disciplined standing army, which France, as we may now speak of it, could definitely *not* afford, and it was this army, using the sneaky, cowardly, chicken**** battletactics sanctified by God, which won the battle of Formigny in 1450, tying the score in the Hundred Years War. Lavish further expenditure yielded a mastercraftsman-made collection of cast-metalbarelled gunpowder artillery, puny as the guns were compared to those lumbered up to the walls of Constantinople by Mehmed II (1451-1481) the same year, but which sufficed to enfilade and rake to shreds the English forces at the battle of Chatillon, 1453, which ended in a French win in Double Sudden Death Overtime, 116 years, in the Hundred Years War. Think not of France doing anything for you; think of what you can pay for France. La France, wasn't that a brand of bleach. Damn well bled white, weren't they. Calais remaind in English hands; but France had conquered the whole of Gascony, rival claims whereto had been the bone of contention over which the war broke out. The same year, 1453, saw a particularly spectacular peasant war in England, called Jack Cade's Rebellion. This was so memorable that, in 1689, someone adopted the nom de guerre Jack Cade in deposing the Second Lord Baltimore, Proprietary Lord of Maryland, as part of the North American colonial theater of the Glorious Revolution, as it was called, in the British Isles. The war had been Brought Back Home, to England. With England clearly losing, a species of Peace Movement, or anti-Lancastrian opposition, appeared among the less- parasitic propertied classes, disseminating, eg, The Libell of Englysshe Policye (1450), but what was fought about was the Throne. The epoch of headhunting in high places called the Wars of the Roses was such that the English gladly paid monstrous taxes for the illusion of peace at the hamfisted dictation of Edward IV, whose reign got interrupted anyway by a restoration of Henry VI, followed by the latter's final murder followed by thirteen whole years of arbitrary executions at variable intervals. This lazy if violent king left children, and a serial killer brother to watch them, with inevitable results, with lots more headhunting, followed by a war fought between gangs of mercenaries, which Richard III lost. Henry ap Twdr didn't at first seem much better, but after fighting off two invasions, he reaped the benefits of weariness with political instability, as well as hugely excessive taxes announced fraudulently as intended for war against France, but squirrelled away for a rainy day. Who was Henry VIII. How the latter squandered the whole contents of the piggybank, confiscated one third the land area of England, sold that off, went broke anyhow, is outside our Period. Oh, yes, Italy. The Peace of Lodi, as your historical Atlas will tell you, broke out in 1454, with very great quantities of money having been consumed in idiotic warfare which changed practically nothing. All of this, too, went to furthering the rise of capitalism, in the local form of Milanese armament manufacturers, plate armour being a matter of life or death. Europe and China both had privileged classes immune, legally or fraudulently, from taxation. The burden, in both, was on peasants. Why it was, at all comparable periods, possible to tax Europeans *much* more heavily than Chinese peasants, is an answerable question, but not here and now. Daniel A. Foss From U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Mon Dec 23 14:52:40 1996 Date: Mon, 23 Dec 96 13:16:02 CST From: "Daniel A. Foss" Subject: comparative state fragility To: World Systems Network If you look at the map of Europe, there's patches of fertile littorals around the Mediterranean, Atlantic coast, North Sea, Baltic, and one dear to the inhabitants of Britain which is a continuation of that across the Channel into the Midlands. (Considring the affective loadnings on "home" which, I have read, are opaque to North Armenians, it may be more noteworthy than I know that these are the Home Counties. This region, Champion and Champagne alike, was just large enough to constitute the agricultural, hence political core area of feudalism. Inland from the littoral strips is the odd alp, Else the tediously insular patchwork valleys of a jutting peninsula or actual island, ie, of the type surrounded by water, which may have, at times, been politically unified, though at others, the scrounging of the several valleys' separate surpluses, then aggregating them, has seemed "too big of a hassle," as the young people used to say when I was too old to know what they were talking about. Even in the center of Central Europe, which nonEurocentrists know is merely a matter of perspective, there hunkers behind a crescent of megahills or minimounts, called Sudeten by those who would be kept out, within which lies the wholly landlocked peninsula of Bohemia, not to be confused with Bohemianism since the days of Charles IV of Luxembourg (1334-1378). Tis said that during the Plague-era apocalypse fad Bethlehem Chapel in Praha was the in place to go for End of the World sermonizing, and Charles caught a scorcher. The ascetic, whose name I forgot, but may be looked up in Kaminsky's Hussite Revolution, scourged himself with iron rods, drawing blood over his rags, clotted with common filth hitherto. Inter alia he called the Holy Roman Emperor "Antichrist" to his face, which Charles, radical-chic liberal that he was, laughed off, but the ascetic's superiors did not, kwowing full well how important chastisement and retribution was to the poor fellow. This illustrates both the prevalent smugness of elites all over Europe, subsuming thereunder everything covered by Int Hist West Civ, and the fearful, trepitation-laden unthinkability of shaking said smugness (where not absolute serenity) which has persisted next-to-forever in takenforgrantedness, this by East Asian standards. The exception which proves the rule is South-Russia/Ukraine. Part of the nomad-steppe zone, a continuation of Central Asia, into Early Modern times, it is a vast flatness whereonto huge peasant wars march in and, once the cumbrous Russian Imperial bureaucracy has been sent into gearspinning partial efficacy, fleeing out again yet, withal, Caught: noplace to hide. So Razin, so Pugachov. East Asia exhibits on the Atlas two agricultural zones of vast extent, the North China Plain, as populous in Chinese Classical Antiquity as the Roman Empire, and the Yangzi Valley ecosystem, by the European Mediaeval period even more densely populated than, and outnumbering, the North. Each of them is, nevertheless, also a corridor. The river-valley ecosystems are canyons of vast girth, on either side being located rough terrain which, in the pinch of famine, which is chronic, is cultivable ie terraceable; yet is, frankly, "a bitch," if you are are the security forces, to catch aught in what might get away from you or get you first. The practical consequences of all this are, somehow, that in Europe each country has had a maximum of one social revolution; the same is true of the Near East. Egypt, for instance, was the beneficiary of the only social revolution in its history in 968, when Fatimids, or Isma'ilis, who had, unbeknownst to them, invented the vanguard revolutionary party, called al-Dawa, whose relentlessly-disciplined professional-revolutionary agents, da'is, called each other, Hodgkin says, "Comrade," combined military pressure from without with subversion within to pull off the classic Third International fantasy of How It Should Be Done which never was, in the 1930s, I mean. Though the broad masses understood as little of Party Doctrine, esoteric meanings of letters and numbers, as their latter-day counterparts under Actually non- Existing Socialwasm, they did obtain the most efficient and honest government in Egyptian history, which Communism never matched whilst in power; and the latter epoch, for Communism, was all of 74 years for the Fatimids, compared to 124 years if you follow one reckoning; or 203 years, if another. Party splits are part of the game. Shi'a, of course, means Party, and what else is new. (The foregoing was included, irrelevant as it seems, as it is something it is felt you should know for your own good and characterological development, having spoiled yourselves by somehow evading knowing it.) Iran leads the Near East with two, 747-750 and 1979-1982?. China has had four full-fledged social revolutions, whose most dramatic social-conflict manifestations have been peasant wars. Objection. Overruled; how Theda Skocpol defines her terms cannot be my problem; I suggest she mortify the flesh with fasting and prayer until she fits her definition to the observed data. Two of these revolutions, at the very least, have had *bobkes* to do with the capitalist world market. Excuse me, I didn't mean to use such language. . Numerous other peasant wars have lasted for years, in some cases developing highly, uh, novel or innovative social institutions, such as indefinite celibacy by the device of assignment of husband and wife to different work units; eg, Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. I'm sure that the female subject population had a Meaningful Celibacy Experience, considering the quality of life alloted to Chinese wives prior to the Taiping, and afterward. The abolition of footbinding, under the circumstances, was a mixed blessing, as we have been apprised, of late, of the white-racist bias in the interpretation of this admittedly weird Chinese fetish, succeeding eyebrow-fixations in the tenth century. Among the earliest was the Red Eyebrows war, which slew the usurper Wang Mang as he sat in his throne room, AD 23, surrounded by magic tricks to ward off harm. In 184, the simultaneous revolts at opposite ends of the country of the Great Peace (Shandong) and Five Pecks of Rice (Sichuan) Daoists held out till 189, ensuring the rise of a dictator killed the same year in a coup led by Cao Cao and a few of his friends, offering slightly better manners instead. The Han dynasty was finished; by 196, Cao Cao was the Septimus Severus of North China. In 399, Sun En, a Daoist pirate-guerilla, launched his "dragon soldiers," possibly psychedelically drugged, against the Southern Empire along the Fujian coast. Those profiting, General Huan and General Liu, fought for power, with the latter victorious. The next occasion for social upheaval, however, spelled doom for the ruling Great Families of the Southern Empire. This was the revolt of Hou Jing, who soon lost control of the movement, having had no prior intention to exterminate the ruling class from whose funds he had expected to get paid. The aristocracy, emperor and all, were nailed in their palaces from the outside, bereft of slaves and serfs, and left to starve in floral finery. Survivors fled to blueblood relatives in the North. I haven't included the foregoing in the count of four social revolutions, as it had no effect on the Turco-Mongol ruled North. In previous posts, I have related the obscure class wars of the ninth and tenth centuries, coeval with the introduction of footbinding. Briefly, Tang tomb sculpture shows lance-knights in plate armour, pennons flying; ladies of this class are shown, also on horseback, playing polo. Stories were told, with the explicit purpose of arousing disgust not unmingled with contempt for the pedigreed aristocracy, to the effect that, when a nobleman got home from work, so to speak, and his wife wanted to go out for a ride, she borrowed his boots along with his horse. Feet, the larger the better for stabilizing oneself on a horse, became class-enemy-affect-loaded. Pari-passu, eyebrow preoccupations disappeared. Discussion of Buddhism has been omitted for oversimplification purposes. The White Lotus, the longest-lived of the subversive sects, was reportedly or allegedly (by historians) founded "before 1133," which is of course "after 1127," the year the Song dynasty took refuge in Hangzhou, its "temporary camp," not "capital," you understand, unless you suppose the Guomindong creative innovators, following the loss of the North to the Jurchet or Ruzhen (*Jin* dynasty, 1126-1234), de facto inaugurating the feeble Southern Song (1127- 1279). That is, 1127 was an End of the World occasion, and it was not yet certain that Yangzi mud would halt the steppe cavalry; the front was not restabilized till 1142, this all during the reign of Gaozong, 1127-1162. It is quite important for historical sociogists to persevere with the rote memorization of lists of dead kings, those whose names ending in -zong as much as those ending in Roman numerals, for the development of character and nimbleness in modelbuilding. All historical-sociological grand theories originated as bricolage, and those who got buffaloed early by memorizing dead king lists never got to suspect they were as good as us. "Dad, what did you learn in school in Krakow?" "Names of Polish kings." This should give you enough of the picture. The dirty secret of Confucianism is hysterical fear of social revolution. This is made explicit in the Book of Xunzi, d. 265 BC, whose work is a complete functionalist sociology, replete with all the repressive, terroristic implica- tions you always suspected were immanent, or just plain lurking, subtextually. But there is no pussyfooting around in Xunzi. Each chapter commences with the refrain, "The nature of man is evil; his goodness is acquired training." So much for the socialization process. It might have been wonderful, some of us used to think, wistfully, had Emile Durkheim or, far better, Talcott Parsons been ghostwritten by Henry Kissinger or Samuel P. Huntington or Herman Kahn. Yet there it is. All Confucian scholars know it; nearly all politely ignore it. Xunzi did not make the Four Books; Mencius did, instead. The latter you were Responsible For on the Tests; Xunzi, They Took Points Off for. Which is how I got to read it in college, Homer Dubs trans, and found it refreshing compared to standard sociogibberish of the day. In first year of grad school, I translated Talcott Parsons into Xunzi, which got published by my advisor who, next only to my mother, spoiled me rotten to my utter Later Life discomfiture, which both mama and Maurice R. Stein figure had nothing to do with them but Evil Drugs or something. Xuzni was, I think, write about both of *them*. Anyhow, the article, called colloquially "the Parsons article," made me famous for ten minutes, which made me feel shortchanged by five, so here I still am. Xunzi made it explicit as you can get that the purpose of good government, if there is any distinctive purpose to the latter, is prevention of social revolution. What's more, it is the foundation of social morality and, if the clever prince can pull it off, there will be economic growth, "the ten thousand things will increase," and the opposite of class war, which is translated harmony, but loses absolutely nothing in the translation when rendered "social integration." If we have time, this class, we will go into the theory of the division of labour and the argument for monogamy (related to the fact that, when the PLA was recruiting en masse during 1947-1949, the Communists promised wives to the usual 20% of the young male population too poor to get married: "If the strong oppress the weak, the weak will not obtain any sex relation." Pretty raw stuff, hey. Here is the argument for good government, the core of Xunzi's social theory: "When his horse is uneasy harnessed to a carriage, a gentleman *zhunzi*, "son of a lord," later Prince, hereditary nobleman, appointed high official, or any member of the ruling class in whatever capacity, Superior Man. is not comfortable in his post. When a horse is uneasy harnessed to a carriage, nothing is as good as calming it; just so, when the common people are uneasy under an administration, nothing is as good as being kind to them. Recruit the worthy and the respectable. Appoint the sincere and respectful. Promote filial piety and brotherliness. Care for the orphaned and widowed. Aid the impoverished. If such is the case, the common people will be comfortable under the administration. If the common people are comfortable under the administration, only then will the gentleman be comfortable in his post. *It is traditionally said* my emphasis--daf, "The ruler is like a boat; the common people are like water. It is water that supports the boat, and it is also water that overturns the boat." This is my point. Therefore, if a ruler of men desires contentment, nothing is as good as governing peace- fully and loving the people; if he desires glory, nothing is as good as promoting ritual and respecting his officers; and if he desires esteem, nothing is as good as honoring the worthy and employing the capable. These are the great principles of the true gentleman." (Fragment cited for rhythm of prose style ! by Charles O. Hucker, China's Imperial Past, 1975; cited by me for its nails-in-your-head paranoid-horror-inducing quality. Cursory sideways glances, it will not bear too hard a stare, at the passage above reveals the injunction to the practice of the governmental art as if one were being constantly watched by one's social inferiors. An Entity is Out There and it is Everywhere, with Infinite Eyes; Never Misses a Thing. Slack off, and it Kills. You say, hey, I'm not a boat, I'm a fish; the fish lives in the water and *does not ever* float on top of the water doing nothing; the water goes, *boat*, sink you! On at least two occasions in Chinese history, there has been a two party system, with alternation in office: one party, the activists, has advocated beneficent intervention in the economy, benefiting the lowest classes, in particular, and conspicuoulsly, howbeit large boodle may, and of course always did, accrue to the already-privileged. The Opposition, called Conservatives, argued that the level of taxes entailed by the activists was an explicit invitation to social revolution or class war. Activists took the form of Wang Anshi's New Policies, in effect 1068-1085 and 1102-1126. When Wang Anshi, learned commentator on the *Yijing* I Ching, was appointed Prime Minister by Shenzong of the Northern Song, Sima Guang, commentator of the ancient Book of History and author, during the Wang Administration, of the Mirror For Aid In Government, a history of China from 404 BC to his own day, told him, "You take office to save the people. I step down to save them from you." Upon Wang's death, Sima Guang was appointed Prime Minister, repealing every last single reform. The reformers argued that state finances, the armed forces, and the entire economy was in danger of ruin, with foreign wars (against steppe-nomad empires) looming. Conservatives, while the reformers were in power under Huizong, 1102-1125, argued that the ruin was caused by the inauguration of reform in the first place. Huizong was famed for painting bird pictures, which were truly quite lovely; and he was rather conspicuously complacent in executing three leaders of National University student riots in 1125; these had called for patriotism and, by implication, impugned that of the emperor, who was a slacker and soft on barbarism. He ended his days in Jurched ie Ruzhen (*Jin*) captivity. The Southern Song, after this, would allow no dangerous drivel about what is called, these days, interference with the free market or even "unleashing the awesome power of free market forces." There are downsides to this, of course. Does anyone out there want me to actually tell you what it was that Zhu Yuanzhang *did* that knocked China off the capitalist block (or finished off what Plague and civil war had started), and how-wherein he was Mao Zedong's role model, as is reported by Li Zhisui, whom nobody asked about this, so to this extent is credible? I say this because it would take lots of writing, who knows, book length, which is beyond my powers. So you will I fear be required to *watch* me write it, screwing up while I do so. More likely, not write it, decide that I was Wrong at an earlier stage, the way I have, this week, repudiated what I wrote for WSN on related and overlapping matters in 1992. Truth *and* consequences. Or, you can continue to believe the congenial baloney you do already. Rise of capitalism, why. Rise of capitalism, illusion. Why China could not develop capitalism even though capitalism is illusory. You know exactly what I'm talking about, you, plural. Which is it going to be. BUILDING COMING DOWN. EVERYTHING MUST GO. Daniel A. Foss From timmons@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu Thu Dec 26 11:27:54 1996 Date: Thu, 26 Dec 1996 12:32:03 -0600 To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu From: timmons@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu (J. Timmons Roberts) Subject: TEN WORST CORPORATIONS OF 1996 (fwd) Here's a new post on a topic long of concern to world-system types. Contact info is as the bottom. Timmons Roberts > > Monday, December 23, 1996 > >MULTINATIONAL MONITOR ANNOUNCES TEN WORST CORPORATIONS OF 1996 > > Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Caterpillar, Daishowa, Daiwa >Disney, Freeport, Gerber, Mitsubishi, Seagram's, and Texaco are >the Ten Worst Corporations of 1996, according to an article in >the December 1996 issue of Multinational Monitor magazine. > Multinational Monitor's ten worst list, now in its >ninth year, is designed to highlight the most egregious acts of >corporate crime, violence and other wrongdoing. > Russell Mokhiber, the author of the article, chastises the >Clinton administration for "failing to confront corporate crime >and violence head on" and for failing to "admit to an ugly >reality -- corporate crime and violence inflicts far more damage >on society than all street crime combined." > Mokhiber points out that while the FBI reports burglary and >robbery combined cost the nation about $4 billion in 1995, white- >collar fraud, generally committed by educated people of means, >costs at least 50 times as much -- $200 billion a year, according >to very conservative estimates. > Similarly, while the FBI puts the street homicide rate at >about 24,000 a year, the Labor Department points out that more >than twice that number -- 56,000 Americans -- die every year on >the job or from occupational diseases such as black lung, brown >lung, asbestosis and various occupationally-induced cancers. > The Ten Worst Corporations for 1996 are: > * ADM, for committing price-fixing crimes that cost >consumers $500 million. [PD NOTE: an ag corporation] > * Caterpillar, for anti-union practices. > * Daishowa Inc., for clearcutting timber areas in Alberta, >Canada, then suing a citizen group in Canada for trying to bring >public attention to the company's destructive activity. > * Daiwa Bank Ltd., for committing financial crimes that >resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in customer losses. > * Disney, for hiring sweatshop contractors in the Third >World, including Burma and Haiti, to sew Disney garments. > * Freeport McMoRan, for polluting areas near one of its >copper mining sites in Irian Jaya, Indonesia. > * Gerber for pressuring Guatemala to exempt baby food >products from the country's tough infant formula law. > * Mitsubishi, for destroying tropical rainforests around the >world and for tolerating widespread sexual harassment at >Mitsubishi Motor's Illinois facility. > * Seagram's, for lifting a 48-year old voluntary ban on >broadcast advertising of distilled spirits. > * Texaco, for mistreating minority employees, and then >seeking to destroy documents to cover up the episode. > Multinational Monitor, founded by consumer advocate >Ralph Nader in 1980, is a monthly magazine that focuses on issues >of multinational corporate power. > > For More Information > Please Contact: > Rob Weissman at > (202) 387-8030 or > Russell Mokhiber at > (202) 737-1680 > > > > > ****************************************************************** Timmons Roberts Assistant Professor Department of Sociology/Center for Latin American Studies Tulane University New Orleans LA 70118 tel: 504-865-5820/FAX 504-865-5544 timmons@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu ****************************************************************** "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi ****************************************************************** From U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Fri Dec 27 13:37:18 1996 Date: Fri, 27 Dec 96 12:25:10 CST From: U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Subject: economic and demographic statistics in 14th century To: World Systems Network Dear Bruce R. McFarling, You ask such good questions that I fear that, whilst there are lots of statistics, some of them are quite bizarre or opaque as to what they might actually mean. For instance, when the Mongol Yuan regime introduced capitation tax, hitherto collected by them exclusively in North China, to South China as well, to alleviate embarassing cashflow problems, the population reported by the census of 1290 fell by 30 million from the previous combined totals for North and South China, about 100 million, without considering probable natural increase to a minimum of 115 million. Central Place Theory," which you rightly emphasize, is the basis for G. William Skinner's introduction of the construct of "Macroregions" into the study of Chinese market hierarchies. See his three major theoretical articles in George William Skinner (Ed.), The City in Late Traditional China, Stanford, 1977. This applies best to the Qing period (1644-1912), when population and commercial patterns were assuming the form in which the Europeans found them. Before that, there are Very Serious Problems. Specifically, discontinuities due to disease and warfare. The West Yangzi Macroregion was decimated during 1644-1646 by an insane peasant rebel run amok, according to dubious accounts. Since the death toll he boasted of exceeded the maximum population possible, and most of his troops apparently disobeyed his orders to murder everyone they could catch, it is likely that there were more refugees than dead. The depopulation and economic ruin of Sichuan is, however, a fact. When we go back to what in common parlance is called Mediaeval times, that is, Five Dynasties (907-960), Northern Song (960-1126), Southern Song (1127-1279), Yuan (1279-1368), and Ming (1368-1644), we find at the outset a division of China into ten states. From 923, the Khitan, or Liao Empire, occupied parts of North China below the Great Wall, and by the late tenth century, the Northwest China Macroregion (Shaanxi and Gansu) was mostly occupied by the Xixia or Western Xia, a nomad empire ruled by Tanguts (speaking Tibetan or a language related thereto). From this time until 1126, the political entity called China was faced with two formidable hostile powers, each copying the latest Chinese technology (or innovating their own), employing Chinese administrators and engineers, and *governed more efficiently and effectively than China itself*. That this is *counterintuitive* is sufficient to warn us about how little we may actually know about the significance of the much-vaunted meritocratic Chinese bureaucracy, recruited by civil service examination, which comes into flower at just this time; there is a book by John W. Chafee, The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China, SUNY, 19861994, which covers this. To illustrate the political situation, the capital of the Liao was the present Beijing, which means Northern Capital, but was then called by the Liao Nanjing, Southern Capital. Between the two hostile great powers, the Song empire, from 1004, was paying, annually, five hundred thousand rolls of silk and three hundred thousand ounces of silver in tribute. The nomads were superior in cavalry, of course; this followed from the extermination of the knightly aristocracy in the Chinese social revolution of the ninth and tenth centuries, whose symbolic events are the revolt led by the salt smuggler Huang Chao in the 870s and the deposition of the Tang by the peasant-born Zhu Wen in 907. The grave atmosphere of the time let to a seriousness in policy debate unmatched anywhere else in the world for centuries. Energetic but incoherent economic measures were taken, such that an ironmaster, presumably working on government orders, was raided in 1055 on suspicion of plotting rebellion by the local authorities, as he had several thousand employees; with 500 of these, he then actually did rebel. This raises a question about Song industry, which is that the iron and coal deposits were located in rural areas, so did not correspond with commercial centers. Anyway, we now come to the big push. Wang Anshi, the Prime Minister from 1068 to 1085, introduced the New Policies, intended to make the Song regime a permanent warfare state. To fight the major powers, he raised an army of 1.25 million men by conscription, building state factories for the mass production of armour and weapons. To boost agricultural production, including silk, he established a rural credit administration intended to help small landowning peasants, but which of course did not neglect the owners of large estates, who opposed the scheme anyway, in particular the measures for state intervention in the grain economy for famine relief. Most ingenious was the Tea and Horse Administration, which gave a monopoly on tea for trade with the nomads on the frontier to the Southwest tea producers, with screams of pain from Southeast tea growers. The scheme not only got cavalry horses for the army; it even made a profit of three million strings-of-cash a year, thought a lot of money for the time. The state obtained the iron and steel for the weapons factories by letting contracts to private ironmasters, who seem to have been let alone. After repeal, in 1085, the New Policies were reinstated in 1102 but were blamed for the military disasters of 1126 and thereafter, notably the loss of the whole of North China. It is not possible to estimate how much iron was produced before that point any more accurately than "somewhere between 35,000 tons and 125,000." As for population, from a country with an elite focused on the capital, Kaifeng, at the time of its fall having a population of a million and a half, and one of the three cities on Earth with street lights (the other two were Cairo and Cordoba), the Southern Song empire decentralized into regions whose elites intermarried only within the region, exhibited local separatisms, and had in common the grand metaphysical synthesis of Zhu Xi (1130-1200), conducive to withdrawal from national politics to pursue discipline and cultivation of Mind. Wang Anshi came to figure in Cold War politics when, in the 1950s, Lin Yutang published a biography of Su Tongbo (aka Su Shi, d. 1107), poet, painter, Conservative statesman (and flagrant foot-fetishist in the arts). Yutang's hero opposed the "socialistic" Reformers. This is merely one, and not the worst, of the screwball distortions of the Mediaeval paleaontology of capitalism to exhibit "blowback" onto contemporary affairs, whilst compounding the existing ideological confusion about the past, the latter already possessing sufficient ideological confusion about itself to more than suffice. The Reformers had made the honest mistake of positing that Civilized (Advanced) government should be more competent than Barbarian government; also, that Civilized (Advanced) armies, raised in levee en masse and lavishly equipped by the state, should outfight or at least overwhelm Barbarian armies, howbeit the state officials, soldiers, and generals on both sides were Chinese. Under the Committee of Public Saftety, in 1793-1794, Lazare Carnot, "Organizer of Victory," had made analogous assumptions, substituting Republican for Civilized, Old Regime for Barbarian, and European for Chinese; he was proven correct. The Reforemers were not; their warfare state was disgracefully beaten in 1125-1126 by a newer and tougher nomad state, that of the Jurched, or Jin. From this time onward, it was taboo for the Song rump state to intervene in the economy. It became quite clear that the Yangzi valley estate ("manor," in Selvin's usage) owners would no longer pay taxes for support of the bloated Song military establishment which, now permanently on the defensive, was deployed mainly for chasing bandits, from whom it became increasingly indistinguishable: soldiers were former bandits, vice versa. The Southern Song state funded itself on commercial taxes (including the salt monopoly), with foreign trade and consumer goods industries looming more and more important. Hangzhou, the Temporary Camp, *Xingzai*, Marco Polo's Quinsay, had a population of 1.25 million at its peak, circa 1250- 1275 (Jacques Gernet, Daily Life in China, 1250-1275). Hangzhou was a factory town, featuring "Shipbuilding, silk production, and porcelain- and-paper making" (R. Huang, China: A Macrohistory). The urban working class (rural proletariat aside) sufficed for the genesis of the Chinese restaurant. Foreign trade centred on the Lower Yangzi, Central Coast, and Southeast China macroregions, with the great port of Chuanzhou, in Fujian, and the longstandingly polyglot Guangzhou, in modern Guangdong, as huge and growing trading ports whose trade expansion continued under the Mongol Yuan. Over half the imports were what Chinese called "drugs," which to Europeans would subsume such categories as condiments, "health food," medicines, and real or placebo psychoactive substances. The repute of powdered rhinoceros horn, kingfisher feathers, tiger bone, and *gu* juice (for sex witchcraft) is excessive. The tiger, withal, is being at this time hunted to extinction, and bear bile is being extracted on an industrial basis on the Burmese frontier in circumstances redolent of US poultry factories. It is important to stress that both North and South China were technically progressive, though they economically diverged. The iron and coal mines of the Northern Song remained, but on the other side of a political frontier. Mathematics and science flourished in the North, literature and publishing in the South. The most certain thing about the size and density of the population of the Beijing region is its annihilation after 1331. In that year, "nine tenths died" in what is now Hebei province, surrounding Beijing, then called Khanbalit or Dadu. As the holocaust of Bubonic Plague persisted into 1332, two Mongol emperors and a crown prince died. In 1941, an ethnographic survey conducted by social scientists attached to the Japanese railway administration in North China could not find a single village whose foundation antedated the accession of the Ming founder, Zhu Yuanzhang, in 1368, or more likely, that of the third Ming emperor, Zhu Di, in 1402. The principal difficulty in determining what happened to the Chinese population is census accuracy. As mentioned above, when the Mongols united China in 1279, North China had been collecting capitation tax; whilst South China had been collecting acreage tax. At first, Khubilai thought to demonstrate to the former Southern Song subjects that the Mongol state, by eliminating the cost of an army which could not and would not defend the country would *save money*, notwithstanding the fallen regime's ostensible commitment to Confucian frugality. As suggested in a previous post, the persistence of returns to a largely-negative state, rarely doing much for the underlying population, but eschewing costing too much in revenues, either for fear of provoking social upheaval, is a theme of Confucianism from its inception, with this gradually assuming the proportions of orthodox state doctrine. Khubilai's salutary intent withered before his conquistadorial itch, in the worst maritime-imperialist idiocies prior to the Spanish Armada. As any eighth or ninth-century Arab or ninth-century Viking knew, before you invade a place you know nothing about, you raid it, and refrain from going ashore in strength before you know that whatever is in there is not waiting for you. The Arab conquest of Spain in 711, for example, was preceded by large- scale raids in 710. Khubilai invaded Japan twice, Vietnam twice, and Java, with 6,000 ships, in 1293. In 1290, a census was taken reflecting his high taxes. The Yangzi valley landlords, having evaded taxes to the Southern Song, were not going to pay anything to the Mongols, either. In 1293, a troubleshooting agency was set up to check on tax delinquencies in the Yangzi valley. (This is in a collection entitled China Under Mongol Rule.) The following year, Khubilia died, and in 1295, his successor, for reasons yet to be explained, abolished the agency because "violations are few." That had not been true for hundreds of years. Morris Rossabi, in Khuibilai Khan, claims that the Mongol census of 1290, which showed a population of 70 million, was accurate, whilst the Ming census of 1395, which counted 65 million Chinese, must have been crooked, as all Ming censuses were crooked. The raw count never exceeded 70 million through the whole Ming dynasty, though the real population may have tripled. There is good reason to suppose, however, that there was an honest count in 1395: fear. Zhu Yuanzhang had just completed the fourth wave of massive blood purges in 1393, or it was still going on, so one would hope nobody would be so foolish as to fake census returns in this period. Once the pressure of the terror was removed, of course, all bets were off. Comparison of populations of selected cities in the last years of Southern Song with the first Ming counts shows a decline of two-fifths, attributable to Bubonic Plague, and not out of line with what happened in Europe. But the Chinese cities were larger to begin with; they surely grew during the Yuan if commerce increased, as it certainly did. Not merely maritime commerce from the Lower Yangzi, Central Coast, and Southeast Coast ports, but across Central Asia via the Mongol Silk Pipeline to Caffa on the Black Sea. Also, via Korea, across the Sea of Japan. The most pitiful aspect of Khubilai's foreign policy is that, a mere few years after his disastrous invasions, Chinese were settling down to do business as immigrants to Japan, Vietnam, and the site of modern Singapore (which is not all that far from Majapahit, on Java, where Zheng He found Chinese settled in the early fifteenth century). The idea of naturalized immigrants in Japan is bizarre, of course, but then, Traditional Japanese culture, like all Traditional cultures, has changed beyond recognition several times over the centuries and millennia, like the European. Unless you believe in Essences. The Bubonic Plague made a mess of Japan as it did many other places. Frankly, I would love to curl up with a good book on the Hojo Period as good as William Wayne Farris' Population, Disease, and Land in Early Japan and The Heavenly Warriors for prehistory through the Heian Period; and Conrad Totman's Early Modern Japan. The Hojo collapsed in 1333, possibly or Elsewise, months or a year after the killer Plague in Northeast China. Political chaos continued till 1338, with Go-Daigo's efforts at imperial restoration partly coinciding with, then in contradiction to, Ashikaga Takauji's designs on a restored Bakufu. Civil war continued between the rival branches of the Imperial House and adherents for another fifty years; and nothing was ever very calm or orderly for long during the Ashikaga (Rokuhara) period. Japan was peripheral to the Chinese core economy, and collapsed with it. There was no basis for Sino-Japanese trade after that. Imaginarily, Daniel A. Foss From U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Mon Dec 30 14:53:02 1996 Date: Mon, 30 Dec 96 14:27:36 CST From: "Daniel A. Foss" Subject: the time warp of wu han, cultural revolution victim, 1965 To: World Systems Network Wu Han was the first victim of the Great Proletarian Revolution. On December 8, 1965, Dr Li Zhisui, Mao Zedong's personal physician, came to see his patient about the latter's barbiturate habit, and was handed a pamphlet by Yao Wenyuan, future Gangster-of-Four, denouncing Wu Han's hit play, Hai Rui Dismissed From Office. Wu Han was at this time Vice- Mayor of Beijing. A professional historian, he was also "a professor at Peking University and one of the country's leading Ming dynasty historians." The play dealt with an incident in 1565, when Hai Rui (1510-1587), historically a utopian-reactionary screwball, of the type called an Upright Official, whom what passed for Public Opinion at the time allowed to speak Absolute Moral Truth to power and quite frequently get away with it, called the Jiajing emperor (1521-1566) "vain, cruel, selfish, suspicious, and foolish." (Ray Huang, 1587: A Year of No Consequence, p. 135) Hai Rui was indeed fired, after some delay condemned to death, and even greater delay, released upon the death of the Jiajing emperor in late 1566. All politically aware Chinese, of whatever persuasion at that time and since, with the exception of Wu Han himself, believed that the play alluded to Mao's dismissal of Marshal Peng Tehuai as Defense Minister after the Marshal had chewed him out to his face at the Anshan Conference in 1959 for the chaos of the Great Leap Forward, then compelled Mao to exercise self-criticism in 1962 after the most lethal famine in human history. The Marshal was, however, a serious statesman, who had no resemblance to the historic Hai Rui. Dr Li Zhisui continues, about Wu Han, in The Secret Life of Chairman Mao, p. 441: "Mao's longtime interest in Ming dynasty history had brought him into early contact with Wu Han. After Mao's encouragement to study history, I sometimes sat in on his chats with Wu Han. Mao had criticized an earlier work of Wu's - a biography of Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang called Beggar Turned Emperor - for its historical inaccuracies, its critique of Zhu's role in the Red Turban Army, and its use of Zhu Yuanzhang to criticize the modern-day Chiang Kai-shek. In a series of remarks that would have been heresy had they come from anyone but Mao, the party chairman defended Chiang's role in history - from his northern expedition in 1926-27 to his refusal to succumb to political pressure from the United States to his insistence on the indivisibility of China. Wu Han had accepted Mao's criticisms, though, and his authorship of a play about Hai Rui seemed to agree with Mao's own call to study the example of Hai Rui. I could not understand why either Wu Han or the play were under attack." On the following page: "Had he Wu Han not followed Mao's suggestion to change the name of his biography of Ming dynasty founder Zhu Yuanzhang from Beggar Turned Emperor to The Biography of Zhu Yuanzhang? Had he not written Hai Rui dismissed from office in answer to Mao's call to learn from Hai Rui?" Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398, emperor 1368-1398) was the last peasant-born ruler of China prior to Mao himself. What the foregoing appears to say is that not only did Mao Zedong change the history of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries to conform to the political exigencies of the twentieth. He changed the twentieth century in accordance with a delusional misunder- standing of the fourteenth. Wu Han's biography was published in 1949. At that time, Wu Han seems to have believed that Zhu Yuanzhang began as a revolutionary guerrilla fighter, but turned into a reactionary under the influence of his Confucian brain trust. This is a position taken by John C. Dardess of the University of Kansas in Confucianism and Autocracy, Columbia, 1983. When the Mongol state collapsed with the fall of the Prime Minister, Toghto, in 1355, followed immediately by the plunge of the paper currency into hyperinflation, the former White Lotus prophet and overall leader of the Red Turban rebels, Han Lin'er, proclaimed the Song dynasty (a name with patriotic, ie, anti-Mongol, overtones) in the ancient capital of Luoyang, in North China. His regime there lasted four years, 1355-1359, till a pro-Mongol warlord expelled him. Meanwhile, Zhu Yuanzhang had nominally recognized Han Lin'er, used his calendar, and after his fall, kept him as a household pet till 1367. Acknowledging that Zhu Yuanzhang was indeed gaining credit with reactionary Confucian absolutists, it is also true that he was promising his ex-Red Turban soldiers "Land to the tiller!" according to a 1990 article by Ray Huang in Ropp (Ed.), Chinese Tradition. The possibility must be explored that Zhu Yuanzhang was able to convince his followers of all persuasions that he believed equally in irreconcilable and contradictory policies because he actually did. After he came to power, Zhu Yuanzhang required all households to possess a copy of his Grand Monitions. He made the four volumes of his thought required reading in the schools. He introduced an "agrarian command economy" (Elvin), prized "agrarian simplicity" (Ray Huang), practiced commercial autarky (compare Maoist idealization of "by our own strength") and, most conspicuously, conducted four waves of blood purges on the based on fear of exaggerated or imaginary conspiracies. These claimed 100,000 lives out of a Chinese population one-tenth that under Mao Zedong. I would like to raise this issue. Zhu Yuanzhang was the most important single individual to affect the economic development of China after the Bubonic Plague disaster from the 1330s to the 1350s (with the usual major recurrences, as in Europe, as late as 1629). He was thus the most important single individual affecting the later backwardness of China relative to Europe. Mao clearly used him as a role model, but got his significance for Chinese economic history wrong, by encouraging belief in the "sprouts of capitalism" in the sixteenth century, under the late Ming. Neither Chinese nor Europeans organized their Medieval or Early Modern historiography in terms of an athletic event whose objective was to be first to cross the finish line to capitalism. The study of history, notably that of China, has been befouled by ideological smog reflecting anachronistic latter-day concerns, where Chinese have been further confused when believing they were "using the past to criticize the present." Zhu Yuanzhang, thus, has become "a brief history of the future." Daniel A. Foss From U17043@UICVM.UIC.EDU Tue Dec 31 14:05:43 1996 Received: from UICVM.UIC.EDU (UIC-VMNET.CC.UIC.EDU [128.248.2.49]) by csf.Colorado.EDU (8.7.6/8.7.3/CNS-4.0p) with SMTP id OAA23999 for ; Tue, 31 Dec 1996 14:05:42 -0700 (MST) Message-Id: <199612312105.OAA23999@csf.Colorado.EDU> Received: from UICVM.UIC.EDU by UICVM.UIC.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 1828; Tue, 31 Dec 96 15:05:35 CST Received: from UICVM (NJE origin U17043@UICVM) by UICVM.UIC.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 3813; Tue, 31 Dec 1996 15:05:33 -0600 Date: Tue, 31 Dec 96 13:55:24 CST From: "Daniel A. Foss" Subject: sheer dumb luck and nonlinear time To: World Systems Network The emergence of capitalism in Europe was made possible by a great deal of sheer dumb luck. There were three aspects to the critical conjuncture, the second third of the fourteenth century (and a little after that): 1. Differential effects of the Bubonic Plague, reflecting the initial lesser sophistication and urbanization of Europe. This was, in terms of social theory, as I have said, something like an asteroid hitting Earth from outer space. 2. Greater susceptibility of the Chinese state to fall before peasant war and social revolution, as had happened many times already in China, if almost never in Europe. 3. The impact of the unique personality of Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the Ming dynasty, who created an economic and political regime, by legislation and by massive use of political terror, which condemned China to economic strangulation, cultural suffocation, and political isolation for two hundred years. This is not how he saw it, of course. It's the way a historian such as Ray Huang sees it in retrospect. People do not make history in linear time. They have utopias, retrospective and prospective. They imagine Golden Ages, Good Old Days, Second Comings of Christ, the Hidden Imam, the Maitreya Buddha, the Mahdi, the Jewish Messiah, the Prince of Radiance, the Higher Stage of Socialism some indefinite time after the Advent of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. This is all to help make history in a heavily imaginary present. Other aspects of the past are dis-imagined, obliterated. The future is erased from the political imagination as mysteriously as it appeared in the first place. How recently was it that we were prepared to accord a major place in world history to Mao Zedong, who himself was avowedly role-modelling on Zhu Yuanzhang, the previous peasant who came to power in China six hundred years earlier. It was Zhu Yuanzhang, for example, who had instituted "the public reprimanding of individuals who had committed misdeeds in the village" (Huang, 1587: A Year Of No Consequence, p. 142), perhaps the original for "struggle sessions." It was Zhu Yuanzhang who had had his Six Maxims carved in giant characters on mountainsides. Yet to this very day, we focus on the impact of the copy, for good or ill, and ignore the original, whose impact was the more important, as it did not prove immediately reversible at his death. For both Mao and Wu Han, biographer of Zhu Yuanzhang, it was an important question whether the Ming founder ever actually believed in the White Lotus religion of the Red Turbans. To Communists, this was religious claptrap, redolent of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, in the same Yanzi Valley region five hundred years later. Yet it is certain that the Red Turbans, including the unit joined by Zhu Yuanzhang, copied the military organization of the Mongols, with units of half the size (where a Mongol division of 10,000 men became a brigade of 4,500, and a regiment of 1,000 became a battalion of 500), these in turn being copied in turn into the *wei-so* system of the Ming army (Charles O. Hucker (Ed.), Six Ming Studies, Columbia, 1967). The Taipings were part of modern Chinese history, and the fact that they were losers was consequential. Similarly, it is puzzling that Mao defended Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-Shek) when Wu Han compared Zhu Yuanzhang to the latter. (See citation from Dr Li Zhisui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, yesterday.) Clearly, in retrospect, it was on the fact that Zhu Yuanzhang, like Chiang Kai-Shek, had been a sonofabitch, not that he had been a reactionary (which is an anachronistic question) that Mao defended them both. Zhu Yuanzhang's destruction of Prime Minister Hu Weiyang, in 1380, and tens of thousands of people along with him, may have been the prototype for the entire Cultural Revolution itself. The office of Prime Minister, which had existed for hundreds of years, was not only abolished; advocacy of its restoration was made punishable by death. Daniel A. Foss