Re: question

As a former Binghamton soc. grad (which doesn't necessarily qualify me), I find the first summary to which Daniel refers significantly misrepresents Wallerstein's work in an at least one way.  The article, which I note is not authored, refers several times to various "economies" of the world-system, such as "peripheral economies" and "disparities between the various types of economies."  Wallerstein in fact makes no such argument.  He envisions the world-economy as a "single division of labor" or a single economy that is stratified, structured, and made possible by an interstate political structure.  The division of labor and the political structure, as he argues in his seminal 1974 article, which may be found in _The Capitalist World-Economy_ (1979, Cambridge), "are two sides of the same coin." 

 

Here are a few basic elements of Wallerstein's w-s view: Peripheral areas do not have their own "economies."  The point of referring to an area as a "periphery" is not to suggest that its role in the world-economy is marginal.  On the contrary, the core wouldn't be core without a periphery.  The relation is part of a functional division of labor that is politically organized through the interstate structure.  Peripheral areas have coercive states (or former colonies, or territories) which ensure a supply cheap coerced and semi-coerced labor (and thus cheap goods, but also goods that can't or couldn't be produced in the core at the given technology or for reasons of climate or geography, such as coffee and crude oil).  The activities in which peripheral areas are engaged are the least profitable in the world-economy, resulting in a small middle class and a general poor standard.

 

But why read someone else's summaries -- including mine -- when Wallerstein has written plenty of his own?

-----Original Message-----
From: wsn-owner@csf.colorado.edu [mailto:wsn-owner@csf.colorado.edu]On Behalf Of Daniel Pinéu
Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2001 4:10 AM
To: Nina Eisenmenger
Cc: ! World Systems Network
Subject: Re: question

Dear Nina,

 

I'm about to leave on holidays for 3 weeks, so I do not have much time. However, I hope this helps. When it comes to your doubts about Wallerstein's original work on world-systems, I guess that the best "introduction" to it - presenting all the essential features - is this:

 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A WORLD ECONOMIC SYSTEM

A Summary of Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1974)

 

You can find it at  http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/wallerstein.html , hope it helps you out. As for the empirical work and used indicators, the best places that I can think of for you to start looking (if you haven't done that yet, that is), are the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton (http://fbc.binghamton.edu/index.htm), especially the following sections of it: http://fbc.binghamton.edu/fbcintel.htm (REPORT ON AN INTELLECTUAL PROJECT: THE FERNAND BRAUDEL CENTER, 1976-199), http://fbc.binghamton.edu/rwg.htm (RESEARCH WORKING GROUPS OF THE FERNAND BRAUDEL CENTER), and http://fbc.binghamton.edu/papers.htm (Papers of the Fernand Braudel Center).

 

I expect some of the other member of the list to be of far greater assistance than me, given their years of experience both of world systems theory and empirical work on it. Nonetheless, hope these first few refernces will aid you in your research. If there is anything else I can do, please contact me.

 

best regards,

Daniel Pinéu
danielfrp@hotmail.com

 

BA Hons. Political Science & International Relations
Universidade Nova de Lisboa