From Peripheries to ”Peripheralization processes”: Re-conceptualizing social relations of
“Zones of extraction” and “Centres of accumulation” in world system and global history

Barry K. Gills

University of Helsinki

This paper explores a new conceptual vocabulary of reconceptualization of the “periphery”, understood as world-historical “processes of peripheralization”, rejecting analytical over-emphasis on spatial mapping of centre-periphery social formations understood primarily as (fixed) territorially bounded units of analysis. It suggests an historical understanding of socio-spatial hierarchies in world system and global history in which analytical focus is shifted onto the historical processes of formation of hierarchical social relations of extraction (of surplus/ wealth) and the historical formation and perpetual re-formation of “zones of extraction” subordinately linked to “centres of accumulation”. These same patterns exist in a structural context of “world system value chains”. Historical social mentalities of “value complex” and “accumulation complex” underlie the hierarchical world system value chain social relations. Understanding the interactions of historical variations of value complex within the global historical context of multi-centric, multi-civilizational, and multi-polity formations is a central analytical challenge for global history. The ultimate analytical challenge is to use this perspective to re-conceptualize global history as a whole, with a focus on producing systemically comprehensive knowledge of the global pattern of peripheralization processes and the global flows of transfer of surplus “upward” to elite classes and centres of accumulation at the apex of global hierarchies of wealth and power. Understanding the historical and presently on-going processes of transformation of Nature and human social relations into “peripheralized social relations of extraction and accumulation” on world scale is a central objective. (i.e. constructing a new global history of the changing class relations of accumulation on world scale)
Historically and in the present, elites in peripheralized zones of extraction organize the extraction of surplus (wealth) from Nature and human labour, subordinated to their own social power, while simultaneously functioning as organizational intermediaries in systematic transfer of wealth to elite classes of dominant centres of accumulation in world system value chains. Peripheral “strategies of resistance” seek to resist full subordination to the elite of the world system’s dominant centres of accumulation and entail a conflict of class interests between “peripheral elite” and “centre elite” of the world system. This conflict represents a perpetual historical tension within the hierarchical structure of the world system as a whole, and a primary source of dynamic diachronic patterns of transformation in world system hierarchy, via strategies of “ascent” historically and in the present era.