Re: Civilizations and Historical World Systems

 even china is amny things at differnet times. expanding and contracting 
geographical areas on the map.
more than half of known hisotory ruled by non-Han

gunder franj
On Thu, 12 Jun 2003
Threehegemons@aol.com
wrote:

> Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 15:12:21 -0400
> From: Threehegemons@aol.com
> To: ibnsubhi@yahoo.com, seyedjavad@hotmail.com
> Cc: wsn@csf.colorado.edu
> Subject: Re: Civilizations and Historical World Systems
> 
> "Would it not be more useful if we didn't reify civilizations?  One way to 
>think about China is to think of it as a name linked to a geographic location 
>in which there existed successive historical systems, which had a few features 
>in common, and each of which sustained (for a good deal of the time) myths 
>concerning civilization continuity.  In that case, instead of China the 
>civilization, we are perhaps talking empirically of five, six, or seven 
>different historical systems...  China is no doubt the strongest case for a 
>civilizationalist thesis.  It becomes harder to demonstrate inherent cultural 
>continuities everywhere else.  To be sure, if we narrow our analysis to the 
>scale and scope of a single historical system, then a 'geoculture' is part of 
>its 'systemness'."--Immanuel Wallerstein, "Hold the Tiller Firm: On Method and 
>the Unit of Analysis" in "The Essential Wallerstein", p149-159.
> Steven Sherman
> 




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               ANDRE    GUNDER      FRANK

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