a better basis for global analysis

RKM and all-

I highly recommend to one and all a brilliant essay by Giovanni Arrighi,
long at SUNY-Binghamton, now at Johns Hopkins, published recently in the
edited volume:

Abu-Lughod, Janet L., ed.  1999.  Sociology for the Twenty-First Century.
        U. of Chicago.

Arrighi's essay, which is Chapter 7, is entitled:  
        "Globalization and Historical Macrosociology."

It is impossible to summarize the densely argued 15-pages, but let me
extract a couple of points.

Arrighi critiques the prevailing views of globalization among what he for
shorthand calls the CHS and PEWS schools -- 2 sections of the ASA, the
Comparative and Historical Sociology section, which Charles Tilly has been
associated with, and the Political Economy of the World-System section,
formed around the work of Immanuel Wallerstein.  The CHS school is
state-centered, and the world-system school, of course, sees states as
components of larger core/periphery systems.

Arrighi points out, however, that on the question of "globalization" there
is substantial agreement:

"...let us notice that these disagreements arise in the context of a basic
agreement on the assessment that globalization is not as unprecedented a
phenomenon as most observers think and that an understanding of its
meaning and prospects requires a temporal horizon that encompasses
centuries, rather than decades." (123-4)

Let me skip to the conclusion:

"Instead of witnessing the usual fusion of a higher order of military and
financial power that has characterized all past replacements of one
leadership by another at the commanding heights of world capitalism, we
are witnessing a fission that leaves global military power heavily
concentrated in the hands of the declining Western hegemon and
concentrates financial power in East Asian hands."

Arrighi thus concludes (echoing Abu-Lughod 1989) that the world is most
likely to move, not to a world empire, but to a system of multiple
centers, with different rules of the game, which he encourages us to try
to imagine.  

[Of course this is not exactly in sync with Boswell & Chase-Dunn's
analysis, but along with "Spiral," it provides a much better systemic
basis for thinking about global change than one that focuses exclusively
on the details of IMF/World Bank/MAI/etc agreements, let alone on
fascinating but unverifiable conspiracy theories such as RKM's claim
that the U.S. was actually behind the Iranian revolution.]

RH