World-systems theory (also known as world-systems analysis or the world-systems perspective)Immanuel Wallerstein, (2004), "World-systems Analysis." In World System History, ed. George Modelski, in Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), Developed under the Auspices of the UNESCO, Eolss Publishers, Oxford, UK is a multidisciplinary approach to world history and social change which emphasizes the world-system (and not nation states) as the primary (but not exclusive) unit of social analysis. World-systems theorists argue that their theory explains the rise and fall of states, income inequality, social unrest, and imperialism.
The "world-system" refers to the inter-regional and transnational division of labor, which divides the world into core countries, semi-periphery countries, and periphery countries. Core countries have higher-skill, capital-intensive industries, and the rest of the world has low-skill, labor-intensive industries and extraction of raw materials. This constantly reinforces the dominance of the core countries. This structure is unified by the division of labour. It is a world-economy rooted in a capitalist economy. For a time, certain countries have become the world hegemon; during the last few centuries, as the world-system has extended geographically and intensified economically, this status has passed from the Netherlands, to the United Kingdom and (most recently) to the United States.
Immanuel Wallerstein is the main proponent of world systems theory. Components of the world-systems analysis are longue durée by Fernand Braudel, "development of underdevelopment" by Andre Gunder Frank, and the single-society assumption. Longue durée is the concept of the gradual change through the day-to-day activities by which social systems are continually reproduced. "Development of underdevelopment" describes the economic processes in the periphery as the opposite of the development in the core. Poorer countries are impoverished to enable a few countries to get richer. Lastly, the single-society assumption opposes the multiple-society assumption and includes looking at the world as a whole.
Background
Immanuel Wallerstein has developed the best-known version of world-systems analysis, beginning in the 1970s.Wallerstein, Immanuel (1974). The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press.Paul Halsall Modern History Sourcebook: Summary of Wallerstein on World System Theory , August 1997 Wallerstein traces the rise of the capitalist world-economy from the "long" 16th century (c. 1450–1640). The rise of capitalism, in his view, was an accidental outcome of the protracted crisis of feudalism (c. 1290–1450).Wallerstein, Immanuel (1992). "The West, Capitalism, and the Modern World-System", Review 15 (4), 561-619; also Wallerstein, The Modern World-System I, chapter one; Moore, Jason W. (2003) "The Modern World-System as Environmental History? Ecology and the rise of Capitalism," Theory & Society 32(3), 307–377. Europe (the West) used its advantages and gained control over most of the world economy and presided over the development and spread of industrialization and capitalist economy, indirectly resulting in unequal development.
Though other commentators refer to Wallerstein's project as world-systems "theory," he consistently rejects that term.Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2004. The Uncertainties of Knowledge. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. For Wallerstein, world-systems analysis is a mode of analysis that aims to transcend the structures of knowledge inherited from the 19th century, especially the definition of capitalism, the divisions within the social sciences, and those between the social sciences and history. For Wallerstein, then, world-systems analysis is a "knowledge movement"Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2004. 2004a. "World-Systems Analysis." In World System History: Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, edited by George Modelski. Oxford: UNESCO/EOLSS Publishers, http://www.eolss.net . that seeks to discern the "totality of what has been paraded under the labels of the... human sciences and indeed well beyond".Wallerstein, The Uncertainties of Knowledge, p. 62. "We must invent a new language," Wallerstein insists, to transcend the illusions of the "three supposedly distinctive arenas" of society, economy and politics.Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1991. "Beyond Annales," Radical History Review, no. 49, p. 14. The trinitarian structure of knowledge is grounded in another, even grander, modernist architecture, the distinction of biophysical worlds (including those within bodies) from social ones: "One question, therefore, is whether we will be able to justify something called social science in the twenty-first century as a separate sphere of knowledge."Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1995. "What Are We Bounding, and Whom, When We Bound Social Research?" Social Research 62(4):839–856.Moore, Jason W. 2011. 2011. "Ecology, Capital, and the Nature of Our Times: Accumulation & Crisis in the Capitalist World-Ecology," Journal of World-Systems Analysis 17(1), 108-147, . Many other scholars have contributed significant work in this "knowledge movement."
Origins
Influences World-systems theory emerged in the 1970s. Its roots can be found in sociology, but it has developed into a highly interdisciplinary field. World-systems theory was aiming to replace modernization theory, which Wallerstein criticised for three reasons: its focus on the nation state as the only unit of analysis its assumption that there is only a single path of evolutionary development for all countries its disregard of transnational structures that constrain local and national development.
There are three major predecessors of world-systems theory: the Annales school, the Marxist tradition, and dependency theory.Carlos A. Martínez-Vela, The Annales School tradition, represented most notably by Fernand Braudel, influenced Wallerstein to focus on long-term processes and geo-ecological regions as units of analysis. Marxism added a stress on social conflict, a focus on the capital accumulation process and competitive class struggles, a focus on a relevant totality, the transitory nature of social forms and a dialectical sense of motion through conflict and contradiction.
World-systems theory was also significantly influenced by dependency theory, a neo-Marxist explanation of development processes.
Other influences on the world-systems theory come from scholars such as Karl Polanyi, Nikolai KondratievKondratieff Waves in the World System Perspective. Kondratieff Waves. Dimensions and Perspectives at the Dawn of the 21st Century / Ed. by Leonid E. Grinin, Tessaleno C. Devezas, and Andrey V. Korotayev. Volgograd: Uchitel, 2012. P. 23–64. and Joseph Schumpeter. These scholars researched business cycles and developed concepts of three basic modes of economic organization: reciprocal, redistributive, and market modes. Wallerstein reframed these concepts into a discussion of mini systems, world empires, and world economies.
Wallerstein sees the development of the capitalist world economy as detrimental to a large proportion of the world's population.Wallerstein, Immanuel (1983). Historical Capitalism. London: Verso. Wallerstein views the period since the 1970s as an "age of transition" that will give way to a future world system (or world systems) whose configuration cannot be determined in advance.Hopkins, Terence K., and Immanuel Wallerstein, coordinators (1996). The Age of Transition. London: Zed Books.
Other world-systems thinkers include Oliver Cox, Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi, and Andre Gunder Frank, with major contributions by Christopher Chase-Dunn, Beverly Silver, Janet Abu Lughod, Li Minqi, Kunibert Raffer, and others. In sociology, a primary alternative perspective is World Polity Theory, as formulated by John W. Meyer.
Dependency theory
World-systems analysis builds upon but also differs fundamentally from dependency theory. While accepting world inequality, the world market and imperialism as fundamental features of historical capitalism, Wallerstein broke with orthodox dependency theory's central proposition. For Wallerstein, core countries do not exploit poor countries for two basic reasons.
Firstly, core capitalists exploit workers in all zones of the capitalist world economy (not just the periphery) and therefore, the crucial redistribution between core and periphery is surplus value, not "wealth" or "resources" abstractly conceived. Secondly, core states do not exploit poor states, as dependency theory proposes, because capitalism is organised around an inter-regional and transnational division of labor rather than an international division of labour. Thirdly, economically relevant structures such as metropolitan regions, international unions and bilateral agreements tend to weaken and blur out the economic importance of nation-states and their borders.
During the Industrial Revolution, for example, English capitalists exploited slaves (unfree workers) in the cotton zones of the American South, a peripheral region within a semiperipheral country, United States.Wallerstein, Immanuel (1989). The Modern World-System III. San Diego: Academic Press
From a largely Weberian perspective, Fernando Henrique Cardoso described the main tenets of dependency theory as follows:
There is a financial and technological penetration of the periphery and semi-periphery countries by the developed capitalist core countries. That produces an unbalanced economic structure within the peripheral societies and between them and the central countries. That leads to limitations upon self-sustained growth in the periphery. That helps the appearance of specific patterns of class relations. They require modifications in the role of the state to guarantee the functioning of the economy and the political articulation of a society, which contains, within itself, foci of inarticulateness and structural imbalance.
Dependency and world system theory propose that the poverty and backwardness of poor countries are caused by their peripheral position in the international division of labor. Since the capitalist world system evolved, the distinction between the central and the peripheral states has grown and diverged. In recognizing a tripartite pattern in the division of labor, world-systems analysis criticized dependency theory with its bimodal system of only cores and peripheries.
Immanuel Wallerstein The best-known version of the world-systems approach was developed by Immanuel Wallerstein. Wallerstein notes that world-systems analysis calls for a unidisciplinary historical social science and contends that the modern disciplines, products of the 19th century, are deeply flawed because they are not separate logics, as is manifest for example in the de facto overlap of analysis among scholars of the disciplines. Wallerstein offers several definitions of a world-system, defining it in 1974 briefly:
He also offered a longer definition:
In 1987, Wallerstein again defined it:
Wallerstein characterizes the world system as a set of mechanisms, which redistributes surplus value from the periphery to the core. In his terminology, the core is the developed, industrialized part of the world, and the periphery is the "underdeveloped", typically raw materials-exporting, poor part of the world; the market being the means by which the core exploits the periphery.