Re: Reflections

In reflecting on the recently-transpired FBC conference, the issue that
stands out most (for me) is the increasing tendency for
autocritique within the world-systems camp.  Five years ago, Wallerstein
wrote an essay amusingly entitled "The Rise and Future Demise of
World-Systems Analysis", wherein he predicted that after the clutter which
has accumulated in the course of the last 150 years has been cleared away
by world-systems analysis, historical social scientists will have finally
reached the stage of attempting new theoretical syntheses.  Some of the
offerings last Friday and Saturday suggest that we indeed find ourselves
in the opening phases of the "post-world-systems" age.

Wallerstein's own paper suggested that like many of the transitory
concepts of the past century (most having a shelf-life of not more than
20-30 years), it may be time to unthink various terms in the
world-systemists' own toolkit if they fail to account for the reality of
the longue duree.  Particular attention in this regard was devoted to the
term "antisystemic", given, as Boaventura de Sousa Santos noted, the
prevalence of dualistic (eg systemic vs. antisystemic) thinking within
the structures of knowledge of the modern world-system, as well as the
further disintegration of said system over the last 10 years to a
point where one is hard-pressed to find anything which can be qualified as
its opposite.  The question thus stands, it seems to me, not of
delineating the future of the system (is it presumed to be static?   what
future point in time shall be said to be definitive of such a  system?) or
of the purported agent of its abrogation (world party, etc.), but rather
of trying to project the future of what a recent article by Mohammed
Tamgidi in the FBC Review referred to as "other-systemic" movements.

The lead in this endeavor is taken by Giovanni Arrighi.  I have been
critical of his work in the past because of what appeared to me as his
overly economistic emphasis and an unwillingness to consider some
alternatives, but much of what he said this past weekend made it clear
that his thought remains very much on the cutting edge.  In expounding his
idea of the rising hegemon playing the Piedmontese function vis-a-vis the
so-called anti-systemic movements, he noted that 

1) there is a possibility that East Asia, the currently rising hegemon,
may become overwhelmed in the course of the current crisis, thus breaking
with past precedent and providing room for other alternatives (though
mostly quite unappealing ones).

2) the lead in articulating alternatives will be taken by what he referred
to as the "civilizational states" - namely China and India.  This is
significant not only because such alternatives involve the development of
structures and arrangements quite different from those which characterized
the modern world-system (and which continue to project a future
world-system as essentially a Westphalian-type polity writ large as global
state); but also because the inclusion of India represents a step forward
from just talking about an East Asia which merited attention primarily
because of its role as the main capital accumulator in the period
1960-1990.

3) finally, in response to a questioner, Arrighi offered that the notion
of antisystemic movements, if it is to be at all useful, must be extended
beyond 1848, where it has been traced to by world-systemists in
the past.  This means widening our scope beyond the mass party, explicit
orientation to the "overthrow" of the system, and this-worldly perspective
(whatever "this" world refers to).  In this light, Arrighi's placement of
the epicenter of the world revolution of 1968 in Asia opens up a huge new
research agenda (what historical examplars originating in these
regions require closer attention today?  how do we now reinterpret the
post-68 coalition and its possible trajectory (here we would do well to
recall Roszak's discussion of the "counterculture", the predecessor-term
to "antisystemic movement")?  How can we make the attainment of desired
goals more efficacious?

Wallerstein suggested that a positive side-effect of 9/11 was that the
intellectual shock may have liberating consequences.  Let's hope he was
correct.

-- 
Boris Stremlin
bstremli@binghamton.edu