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Wallerstein vs. Frank: imploding paradigms? by Elson Boles 06 March 2002 21:04 UTC |
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Here's an except of a somewhat draft
essay I'm presenting at a the Michigan Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters
conference this Friday. Footnotes, etc. have been omitted. Feedback
and comments, and suggestions on venues for publication on a later draft
welcomed.
When Worlds Collide: The Debate among World-Systems Analysts over Method and Abstraction
Elson E. Boles
Assistant
Professor
Dept. of Sociology
Saginaw Valley State University
University
Center
Saginaw MI, 48710
boles@svsu.edu
Introduction
The ongoing unraveling of the
legitimacy of Liberalism and national development coincides with the apparent
unraveling of the world-systems perspective. This is somewhat ironic
because world-systems analysts had been predicting both. As for the
latter, Wallerstein has expected that as the perspective becomes widespread, it
will develop a thousand variations and no longer cease to have a meaningful
identity, as occurred with Marxism (Wallerstein 1999: 192). However, in my
view the world-systems perspective is unraveling due to the success of the
debates among world-systems scholars in pointing to flaws in the perspective's
elemental methodological concepts.
The debate within the world-systems perspective began over substantive-empirical
issues. Between the mid-1970 and 1980s, the works of Wallerstein,
Chase-Dunn, Arrighi, Amin, and other practitioners suggested a consensus on a
theory of the modern world-system: that it emerged during the sixteenth century
and covered Europe, North Africa, colonized areas of the Americas. With
the publication of Janet Abu-Lughod's Before European Hegemony (1989), that
theory was put in doubt with an alternative theory. She argues that there
existed a larger world-system that spanned Eurasia during the thirteenth century
in which Europe played only a peripheral role as a "sub-system."
Developing this view, Frank (1990) began to argue that Abu-Lughod's thirteenth
century Eurasian world-system and Wallerstein's sixteenth century world-system
were not separate world-systems, but the same Eurasian world-system that began
5000 years ago. In reviewing this debate, I will cover
three topics. The first examines the false starts and mutual mis-readings
by the three main protagonists. It is important to know which criticisms
are accurate and which are not. The second topic concerns Frank's claim
that Wallerstein's work is Eurocentric and the response by Wallerstein and
others that Frank's work is Orientalist. The third and last topic assesses
the substantive or real issues in the debate and alternative methods for
world-historical analysis.
False
Critiques
There are a
number of false representations of other's positions that stem apparently from
sloppy reading or reflection on the part of the participants. It is
surprising given the high-level quality of their works. The first issue
concerns jargon. Wallerstein invented the concept "world-systems"
(hyphenated and plural) to distinguish his method vis-à-vis the Establishment
social sciences, and Frank and Gills created the term "world system" (singular
and unhyphenated) used by Frank, and Gills to distinguish their theory vis-à-vis
Wallerstein's theory of the modern world-system. The distinction,
according to Wallerstein, is that "world-systems" refers to the existence of
numerous world-systems in Eurasia and elsewhere prior to and during the time of
Frank's single "world system." Wallerstein, however, misrepresents Frank
when he writes that, "They use the singular because, for them, there is and has
been only one world system through all of historical time and space" and "They
cannot conceive of multiple 'world-systems' coexisting on the planet" (1996
[1991]: 294, 295). Similarly mistaken, Abu-Lughod claims that Frank and
Gills contend "there [has] been only a single world-system that has continued to
evolve over the past 5,000 years" (Abu-Lughod 1996: 279). In fact,
Frank and Gills are world-systems analysts in this regard, since they believe
there existed numerous world-systems. Wallerstein notes in the first
paragraph of the same article that Frank and Gill's 5000 year old system exists
only "for several thousand years," and thus not through all historical
time. Further, he observes that it exited within a limited space, "from
eastern Asia to western Europe and southward to include at least sought Asia,
south-west Asia, and northern Africa," (ibid: 292) which clearly is not all
historical space. Frank and Gills, for their part, are quite explicit:
"Unlike our nearly world (wide) system, the world-systems [of which Wallerstein
writes] are in a 'world' of their own, which need not be even nearly
worldwide. However, the 'New World' in the 'Americas' was of course home
to some world-systems of its own before its incorporation into our
(pre-existing) world system after 1492" (Frank and Gills 1996: 3). Frank
and Gills also tentatively follow the advice of Chase-Dunn and refer to the
world system that they analyze as a "Central world system" (Frank and Gills
1993: xix, 298).
Thus, not
only is Wallerstein and Abu-Lughod's assertions that Frank and Gills "world
system" is timeless and spaceless incorrect, but it is also true that Frank and
Gills' reference to the world-system they analyze as a "world system" is a
misleading reference if not meaningless one. They are world-systems analysts
too.
Finally, Abu-Lughod
misrepresents both Wallerstein, Frank and Gills on this issue. Regarding
her misrepresentation of Wallerstein, she states that he espouses the position
that "there has been only one world-system, the one that began with the
sixteenth century" (1996: 279). She also claims that Wallerstein "defends
reserving that term [world-systems] only for the modern world-system." (ibid.:
278). In fact Wallerstein has since 1974 consistently argued that prior to
and following the sixteenth century, until about 1900, there have exited many
world-systems on the planet, with two types: world-economies and
world-empires. Moreover, in the very same volume dedicated to the debate
which contains previously published contributions by Abu-Lughod, Frank and
Gills, and Wallerstein, Wallerstein writes, "For me there have been many
world-systems.The 'modern world-system' (or the 'capitalist world-economy') is
merely one system among many. Its peculiar feature is that it has shown
itself strong enough to destroy all others contemporaneous to it" (1996 [1991]:
294).
Given these
discrepancies about fundamentals, I find somewhat amusing the statement by Frank
and Gills in the Preface to a collection of articles by Abu-Lughod, Gills and
Frank, and Wallerstein, among others, that "This book is devoted to elucidating
this debate" (1996: xxi). No doubt the book succeeds in that endeavor if
one is already familiar with the works of its authors and is able to spot the
erroneous criticisms.
A Fight to the Bitter End: Eurocentrism and
ReOrientalism
The
worst feature of the debate is that Frank and Gills go on an ideological
warpath, accusing almost all other scholars of Eurocentrism. They
repeatedly take aim at Wallerstein, which makes some readers, who know of the
long-time friendship among these writers, wince. Frank and Gills attack
Wallerstein and others' contention that the modern world-system centered on
Europe expanded after the sixteenth century to conquer the entire planet.
They retort that Europe was part of a larger world-system, that prior the
sixteenth century Europe was a periphery, and that its rise to hegemony between
the eighteenth and twentieth century is/was only temporary. Frank and
Gills thus argue that the era of European hegemony has been shorter than
alleged, that East Asia was hegemonic longer, and that hegemony is now shifting
back to East Asia. It is this narrative which Frank believes constitutes
anti-Eurocentrism. The culmination of Frank's new views came with the
publication of Reorient (1999), an obvious play on the word. In it he
claims that the reason others have been unable to "reorient" their views to the
5000-year-old world-system dominated by China, is because of "ideological
[Eurocentric] blinkers."
Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi, and Samir Amin have responded with an entire
issue of Review (Volume XXII, Number 3, 1999) devoted to a critique of Franks
book and entitled "ReOrientalism," a play on Frank's word play. That Frank
equates Eurocentrism with the alleged denial of the East's domination (in an
encompassing Central World System) and an alleged focus on Europe's hegemony, is
an accusation that Wallerstein finds irritating and nonsensical. He
contends that by deny European domination, Frank is denying European
culpability: "What is so terrible about Europe's 'conquest of the world'
if it is nothing but the latest part of the ongoing march of the [Eurasian]
ecumene?" and explains that "My main point here however, is that this line of
argument is in no way anti-Eurocentric, since it accepts the basic set of values
that have been put forward by Europe in its period of world dominance and
thereby in fact denies and/or undermines competing value systems that were, or
are in honor in other parts of the world" (Wallerstein 1999:
181).
What then are the real
differences in their positions on the history of systems? Wallerstein sees
numerous world-systems in Eurasia rising and declining until the modern
world-system centered on Europe expanded to encompass the entire planet by 1900
destroying as it incorporated all other contemporaneous systems. Frank and
Gills acknowledge, like Wallerstein, that there were multiple world-systems on
the planet. However, they claim that a very large "world system" or
Central World System arose some 5000 years ago and spanned most of the Eurasian
land mass. In this view Wallerstein's world-systems are seen as parts of a
whole rather than independent systems. But like Wallerstein's view of the
modern world-system, they argue that in the era of European hegemony, the
Central World system expanded to incorporate other world-systems on the planet
by circa 1900. Somewhat between Wallerstein and Frank's position is
Abu-Lughod's. What Wallerstein sees as largely independently developing
world-systems, she sees as "sub-systems of the larger trade network.
Although she refers to this larger trade network as a "world system," she
contends, closer to Wallerstein's position than Frank's that it did not have the
same level of "systemicity" as did the "sub-systems." As for the origins
and existence of the encompassing trade network or the individual sub-systems,
she is the least clear because she does not detail when they began, and whether
or not it was always as large as the Eurasian landmass. She focuses on its
climax and argues that as it fell apart, Europe stepped in to recreate a new
world-system which it dominated. In her meta-narrative, she suggests a
cycle of unity and dissolution in the making of successive world-systems in
which the "sub systems" are united into a single Eurasian world-system, the
links between which then break down again into so many separate world-systems
that are then reunited.
The Substantive Issues: The Paradigm
Implodes?
There is
really just one substantive issue in this debate, and it is about significant
mutual causality in demarcating a unit of analysis. I will start with a
brief elaboration of what I think is the essence of unit of analysis
issue. The purpose of explicating one's unit of analysis is to
establish the boundaries of "significant mutual causality," which refers to the
measurable degree or level of interaction among people that is considered
systemic and thus makes them part of a social system (society). To qualify
as significant, their interaction must be sustained (systemic) and significant
to the extent that these relationships decisively, consistently, and mutually
shape peoples lives. The criterion by which people may have systemic
interaction that is indicative of significant mutual causality is a matter of
empirical investigation. World-systems may be presumed to exist, but must
be demonstrated empirically. As noted, Wallerstein's criterion for
measuring the boundaries of significant mutual causality is an axial division of
labor. But there may be other measures of interdependence, including, as
Chase-Dunn and Hall note, besides bulk-goods networks, other types of networks
may qualify as bounding criteria, including prestige-goods networks,
political/military networks, and information networks (Chase-Dunn and Hall
54). (However, whether or not these particular criteria qualify or not is
uncertain because Chase-Dunn and Hall do not provide sufficient historical
evidence.)
Thus, in general terms,
what we can say theoretically is that to qualify as binding and boundary
criteria, the actions of people must have a sustained and mutual causal effect
on each other to some significant degree that permits one to contend that their
relationships are systemic. Regarding the spatial dimensions of the unit
of analysis, interrelationships that constitute significant mutual causality
must always occur in some geographic area that necessarily has boundaries.
As one moves from the center of this area to the perimeters, a point will be
reached beyond which people have no significant and sustained interconnections
with those behind. These perimeters constitute the boundary of the
society, of mutual social-historical causality. Those beyond that point
are not interconnected to those within the boundary and therefore are not
members of that society.
Ascertaining the boundaries of society is a matter of empirical research.
This is not merely theory or assumption. We know, for example, that
peasants in the northern and southern parts of the Ming Empire were socially
interconnected through a tributary and redistributive political-cultural system
established by the state. We also know that the rise and demise of the
Ming Empire had little to do with, for example, the rise and demise of other
societies such as the Inca or Aztec empires. This high degree of mutual effect
is what conceptually distinguishes a relationship from an interrelationship, a
connection from an interconnection, arbitrary events, developments, and
processes that are "external" from those that are systemic and
"internal." People may have irregular contact that is very
significant, as perhaps with the diffusion of technology and cultural ideas or
temporary invasions, crusades, diseases, occasional wars, etc. Or people
may have systematic connections that do not qualify as systemic mutual causality
or which do not significantly impact the trajectory of a system's development,
as might be the case with long-distance trade in luxury
items.
In the debate with Frank,
Wallerstein waffles on this issue, opting to stress his definition of a
world-system rather than address the genuine issue of whether or not the trade
networks and processes described by Frank and Abu-Lughod constituted significant
and sustained causality or "systemicity." Wallerstein acknowledges that
Frank's (1990) "account is a fairly acceptable initial and partial outline of
what had been happening in the world between 8000 BC (or so) up to 1500 AD"
(1996: 293). And after agreeing that there existed world-economies between
the world-empires that were also part of an encompassing "trading network of the
oikumene.I even agree that, as a consequence, there may have been some common
economic rhythms between them" (1996: 294). That the Eurasian exchange
network is not a fiction and that there may have been encompassing "rhythms" may
be facts that pose a serious challenge to Wallerstein's claim that world-systems
as he defines them develop
independently.
Although, on
the one hand, much more research remains to be done before Wallerstein or
Frank's meta-narratives on various world-systems can be accepted or rejected
with any confidence, in my view the existing evidence favors Wallerstein's
position. It appears that Frank prematurely claims that the trade network
constituted a division of labor, an idea that Wallerstein flatly refutes.
To make their case, Frank and others need to provide strong evidence and detail
which demonstrate that the regions of the Central World System were truly
interdependent upon each other and not just connected, the latter fact being one
that everyone already agrees upon. It is not enough to show that
long-distance trade in luxuries was sustained or that the transmission of ideas
and knowledge from one region to another had profound effects on the development
of a region, as with for example, the importation of gunpowder, the compass, and
paper from China to Europe. They have yet to demonstrate significant
mutual causality, as Wallerstein did in his analysis of the modern
world-system.
On the other hand,
the theoretical matters regarding causality do need serious rethinking. If
the Eurasian trade and tributary networks that Frank, Abu-Lughod, McNeill (2000)
and others describe did not constitute world-systems by the criteria of
significant mutual causality and systemicity, they nevertheless did constitute
trade "systems" because the networks were sustained and structured. The
people within the cities and towns that arose as a result of the networks'
formation were mutually interdependent. And though they may not have
constituted a division of labor among themselves, the earnings of merchants in
different empires or world-economies did affect the local division of labor of
which they were part. In short, careful analysis is required because it
may be that these various networks had a causal impact on the development of
world-systems as Wallerstein defines them or on the "sub-systems" as Abu-Lughod
refers to them.
The problem in the
debate is that Frank's exaggerated claims that the long-distance trade networks
of his Central World System constituted a division of labor and thus a "world
system" make it fairly easy for Wallerstein to dismiss his argument and thus
evade the issue of whether or not the trade networks constituted a systemic
process and conditioned the "governing logic" of one or more world-systems (ala
Wallerstein). Wallerstein easily avoids this issue by refuting Frank en
toto on the basis of Wallerstein's own definition of world-systems rather than
on the basis of whether or not Frank's evidence, as opposed to his claims,
supports the idea of systemicity. While Frank claims to use the same
criteria - a division of labor - Wallerstein points out that the trade networks
to which Frank refers are composed of long-distance trade, and thus do not
constitute a division of labor by his definition. For Wallerstein a
division of labor is based on exchanges of bulk goods or necessities. Therefore,
because the Eurasian trade networks were based on trade in long-distance
"luxury" goods (low-bulk and high-profit goods), Frank's networks by definition
do not form a division of labor and thus do not constitute a
world-system.
Wallerstein
therefore slips around the issue of causality by raising his own particular
criteria for it. He does not dwell on the idea that there may be other
criteria by which to define his world-systems or other world-systems. The
only explicit reference by Wallerstein that I have found in which he addresses
systemicity with reference to Frank's work, and implies that criteria other than
a division of labor might suffice, is to deny any: "the systemic meaningfulness
of [Frank and Gills'] ecumene has yet to be established, in my view" (1999: 180
italics added). The second way Wallerstein slips around
the issue of systemicity is by attacking the weakest logic in Frank's
argument:
Everything that can be denoted as a system can be shown to be "open" at some points of its perimeter. One can always take this opening and insist that the presumed system is really part of some larger system. It will not take long to arrive at the largest of all possible systems, the universe from the beginning of its existence to now.Frank says the story does not start in AD 1500, but rather in 3000 BC (or so). Perhaps, but by what logic do we stop at 3000 BC? Why not 10,000 BC? Why not go back to Australopithecus, or to prehominids? (Wallerstein 1995b: 224)
On the one hand, Wallerstein's
critique seems reasonable, for there is no good reason for Frank to stop at 3000
BC. On the other hand, if everything that can be denoted as a system can
be shown to be "open" at some points of its perimeter, then the question really
is a matter of how big those openings are and how many might
exist.
Abu-Lughod, Frank,
and others have raised sufficient evidence to suggest that the Eurasian networks
they describe may have significantly impacted the development of Wallerstein's
world-systems. In view of Wallerstein's admission that there "may have
been some common economic rhythms between" world-empires and world-economies,
one must entertain the possibility that the larger "external" networks may have
indeed significantly affected the "governing logics" of world-systems or the
course of their development.
It is at this point in the analysis that the world-systems perspective seems to
begin imploding. If interaction between a system and another system or
between a system and a network-system is sufficiently substantial such that the
development of either cannot be adequately explained without taking into
consideration those "external" processes, then those processes must constitute
significant causality and may therefore not be external after all. I
suspect that detailed work will uncover much "gray" area, or many openings in
various perimeters, and that the hard line concepts of "external" and "internal"
that are key to the concept of world-systems will become difficult to make
without greatly oversimplifying. But this idea might be wrong because it
is possible, as Abu-Lughod's argument suggests, that a world-system may have an
internal governing logic (ala Wallerstein) even though it is simultaneously a
"sub-system," that is, part of a larger network-system that affects its course
of development but not significantly. I suspect Wallerstein holds this
view, but he does not make it explicit.
A Path Out the
Impasse? (Don't Throw the Baby Out with the Bath
Water)
Above I have
emphasized uncertainty in attempting to specify the binding and boundary
criteria that qualifies as constituting systemicity. This is because all
the conjecture in the world will not replace concrete analysis of the
concrete. There is probably a wide variety of criteria that may qualify as
significant mutual causality, and no doubt this will vary from system to system,
network to network, and according to their interrelationships. But if some
processes do not constitute significant mutual causality, they may nonetheless
be a necessary part of the historical explanation of the development of a social
system in question. What matters then is historical analysis and arguments
that establish, explain, and make convincing arguments about specific social
processes of specific historical social
systems.
World-systems analysts
have, moreover, tended to focus not just on a historical social system, but the
analyses of a system (or comparisons of systems) have tended to focus on the
development overarching structures, patterns, trends, and cycles, and have
underplayed contingent developments, events, and differences over time and space
within a system. The world-systems perspective has effectively become
synonymous with analyses of social systems at the structural level of
abstraction. Wallerstein made it clear from the outset that he "was
looking to describe the world-system at a certain level of abstraction, that of
the evolution of the structures of the whole system" (1974: 8) because at this
level the "'governing' logics which 'determine' the largest part of sequential
reality" can be found. And perhaps it is only at this level of
generalization that the very conception and existence of world-systems can be
made. But in conflating the "world-system level" of analysis (Hall 2000: 239)
with the analysis of world-systems, practitioners of the perspective have come
to argue that there is no "truly meaningful social change" within the
life-history of a system. As Wallerstein puts it, "This implies then that
the task is singular. There is neither historian nor social scientist, but
only a historical social scientist who analyzes the general laws of particular
social systems and particular sequences through which these systems have gone"
(Wallerstein 1991: 244).
In
other words, for world-systems analysts, there are no meaningful distinctions
among social phenomena beyond the systemic-structural generalizations,
categories, or "fields of inquiry." Chase-Dunn and Halls' comparative
approach is symptomatic of this problem per Wallerstein's critique (1995b) on
grounds of both methodology and political pragmatism. However, the problem
is just as evident in Wallerstein's analysis of the modern world-system and in
his typologies of social systems, which is the crux of the methodological
debate. World-historical scholars who are sympathetic to the world-systems
paradigm (McMichael 1990, 1991, 2000; Mintz 1977, 1978, 1985, 1991; Roseberry
1989, 1991; Tomich 1990, 1991, 1997; Wolf 1982, 2001) have nonetheless expressed
much dissatisfaction with the world-systemic level of generalization that has
come to characterize the world-systems perspective. While there is common
agreement that modern capitalism is a historically specific "system," these
critics find world-systems analyses that begin and end at the grandest level of
generalization possible of a system (or systems) to be problematic and
constraining from several angles.
In major world-systems works, the point of detailed analysis of local
conditions, if that is done, is to find analytical commonalities among diverse
phenomena by which the structural categories can be constructed. By this
method of analyzing world-systems, the variety of historically specific and
chanting circumstances and forms can be categorized as essentially the same and
explained by their function within the structure of the system, such as in
describing East Europe and New Spain in the long sixteenth century as
"periphery." There is legitimacy to this level of generalization because
it establishes systemicity. However, for the above mentioned critics, the
problem begins when analysis ends at that level of generalization. As with
Frank's super-materialist super-generalizations, the structural level analyses
of world-systems is only as accurate as it is general. It is useful and
insightful when it establishes systemicity and helps clarify the major trends,
cycles, patterns of the historical social system. However, that level of
generality cannot on its own explain the historical development of a social
system. The largest part of sequential reality is not explained, but
presumed, and diverse social phenomena are simplified and reduced to functional
essences. World-systems analysis is not alone in this regard. Tomich
argues that both the world-systems perspective and the "mode of production"
approach (as represented by Laclau and Brenner) begin with,
.a priori models through which the respective historical narratives are reconstructed. Each reconstruction creates a privileged realm of systemic necessity that is at once the source and arena of the 'laws of motion' of the system, while relations and processes [differences and distinctions] outside this realm are treated as contingent and secondary. Thus, theory and the history of capitalist development and class formation are collapsed into each other. The privileged concept becomes identical with the 'real history' of the system. The complexities of capitalist development are thereby reduced to a single dimension, which comes to define its essences as a historical system. (Tomich 1997: 295).
The conclusion that I draw from
this astute critique of world-systems analysis is that perhaps it is time to
reconstruct world historical processes in more open-ended and historically
concrete ways, ways that do not apriori exclude the possibility of connections
nor assumes connections with the idea of systemic boundaries but which embrace
historical contingency and complex causality networks. This is a
perspective, in McMichael's words, that that favors a "building up" rather than
a "filling in," of categories and
totalities.
The path out of
the impasse may be the rejection of the terms of the debate regarding whether
the systems are too big or too small, especially when claims are made on the
basis of incomplete information or models. Instead, efforts should be
placed on the reconstruction of each historical social system in detail,
including the various larger networks or larger processes within which it may be
embedded, and its relationship to other systems and networks, but also the
details. The details and particulars will not only vary from system and
context, but from time to time within any given system, network, or
region. And to acknowledge this is to observe that simple models or
meta-narratives are tantamount to a "nomothetic" method of analysis of a social
system. There is always the requirement to write the real history of a
social system and its world-historical context at multiple levels of
generalization. As someone once wrote, the "concrete is concrete because
it is the synthesis of many relations, thus a unity of the diverse." The
purpose, after all, is to understand social change in order to make intelligent
political choices in the present and not just to have interesting theories of
social change.
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