Re: "rise of china" and wst

Some quick responses formulated yesterday....

What's amazing is how many of us may want to respond to this 
kind of a question.  There are many diverse issues at stake in this 
kind of a discussion.  The 'rise' of China and East Asia in particular 
as a region has been a focus of much energetic exercise 
especially over the last six years.  A lot of it has to do with world 
system studies.  There is a perspective that takes the world 
economy as unit of analysis and in the process has been able to 
make remarkably provocative statements regarding world history 
and its trajectory over time and space and place.  In the process it 
has also generated theoretical issues of importance (it has not 
displaced by any means the relevance of Marx: in fact the most 
powerful results of such a perspective have made creative 
innovations out of Marx and thereby enhanced his  theoretical 
status if anything).  So that is my first response, to the question of 
perspective and the nature of theory ( a means of explanation of 
history), though the perspective itself takes Europe as a starting 
point and it has a relative validity - in my opinion - in doing so in so 
far as it concentrates on systemic processes of capital 
accumulation worldwide.  The rise of China then may be 
considered as an outcome of the same systemic capital 
accumulation process which have been cyclical, crisis-prone, and 
riddled with 
contradictions. One of the contradictions of this process is the way 
in which capital accumulation is shifting in terms of its centre of 
gravity, from a place like the US, to a region like East Asia, a 
China-centred region. How do you see a 'hole' in the theory ( I am 
sure there are many holes in the theory but as a general trend, in 
the sense that the locus of capital accumulation is shifting to a 
China-centred world economy, is there too much doubt?  I am sure 
there is some especially given the military predominance of the US 
but that is part of the current crisis: with its only material base a 
militarized infrastructure, and with the 'financial expansion' that is a 
signal of a shift, the moment of US hegemony has been in crisis 
since at least 1968)?  And what is so startling about the the center 
of historical gravity shifting back to a space from where it began?  
'World history moves from East to West" as Hegel was fond of 
saying, and with the Enlightenment project that kind of a 
formulation also became a basis for a Eurocentric mode of 
interpreting history and the unfolding of civilizations.  But what is 
important is not Hegel's dictum but the logic of capital 
accumulation, very warped, very discriminatory, but also perverse 
for one who wants to see the centre of things stay in the West (I 
am not saying you see it that way).  

Regarding the concept of transition: I think along with the concept 
of bifurcation (popularized by Wallerstein and his collaborators) 
there is the concept of the aleatory, of an aleatory materialism 
(Althusser) that is of fundamental importance in my judgement.  
History in short is not determinate, but it (the historical past) is not 
determinant in the specificity of the present conjuncture (an 
overdetermined conjuncture) in so far as (i) the class struggle is 
determinant of the manner in which history will unfold as future (ii) 
our collective futures will be determined by the way in which we 
locate ourselves, of how we appropriate 'fortuna', of how we 
mobilize our individual and collective 'virtu', in a materialism that is 
aleatory.  Trichur K. Ganesh.



 

 

From:                   wwagar@binghamton.edu
Date sent:              Wed, 28 Feb 2001 18:04:01 -0500 (EST)
To:                     Richard N Hutchinson <rhutchin@U.Arizona.EDU>
Copies to:              world system network <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Subject:                Re: "rise of china" and wst


        World-system theory, like all others, is applicable only to the
past.  Anyone who sees it as more than a vague, fuzzy, and 
exceedingly
general guide to future events is, like the undersigned, foolhardy.

        Warren


On Wed, 28 Feb 2001, Richard N Hutchinson wrote:

> Today in my Contemporary Sociological Theory course I led a discussion of
> world-system theory.  I/we did not do justice to the topic, of course, as
> part of a whirlwind tour of theories.
> 
> But an issue came up that made me wonder about the theory, and that is the
> so-called "rise of China."  Perhaps I'm a bit slow and this is what Gunder
> has been trying to say for the past few years, but I found myself
> wondering if it doesn't challenge the theory at a basic level.
> 
> Here are some possibilities:
> 
> A) Is a peripheral country actually set to become a contender for
> hegemonic power?  If so, doesn't that knock a big hole in the theory?  
> 
> B) Is it actually the case that China, being a peripheral country, is
> not really going to be a contender for hegemon/core power any time
> soon?  (Perhaps, like the old USSR, it's really just moving up to
> semi-peripheral status?)
> 
> C) Perhaps the truth is some combination of the two (as in Kantor's recent
> study) and China can become quite powerful without becoming part of the
> "core" in terms of GDPPC?  What are the implications of that for the
> theory?
> 
> Are there other positions I've missed?  What is the evidence for each?
> 
> Hoping to trigger a productive debate,
> 
> Richard Hutchinson
> Weber State University
> remote Ogden, Utah
> 
> 
>