WSNers, PEWSers:
Being a junior person I hesitate to jump in and alienate people.
However I am glad to see some of these issues finally being raised
about PEWS's process and direction.
As someone who had hoped to submit a paper to Al Bergeson's session
I was very disappointed it was cancelled. I had been asking for an
environment session in PEWS for the past three or four years at
PEWS business meetings at ASA. That topics for the sessions seemed
to already be decided before the open suggestions were taken and then
final decisions were made by a small cadre always bothered me. Now
to have the session cut makes me more concerned about how we can make
PEWS more participatory and democratic.
I therefore believe PROCESS is part of the reason for PEWS's declining
membership. Talking with many people not in the section about how it
is perceived confirms this. Relevance, and substance of our topics,
clearly is another.
Al's three stages of PEWS' decline from concern about world poverty,
inequality and underdevelopment into esoteric minutia included a second
stage in which PEWS invited people from other areas to chair the section
in hopes of expanding its pull. I would say this was the beginning of
an unfinished expansion of what we consider world-systems research.
I believe we need to, thoughtfully, re-take that approach.
Any subject in sociology, I suppose, can be approached from a world-
system methodology and perspective. However WS work grew in the area
of development and third world poverty. THERE STILL IS NO DEVELOPMENT
SECTION IN THE ASA. Why doesn't PEWS expand its purview to include
development in its title? How about cross-national research? Macro-
sociology? Could we rename the section "COMPARATIVE INTERNATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT"? What about Macrosociology and International Development?
For those who don't like "development" because of its baggage (with
whom I sympathize but cannot find a decent replacement right now), how
about"MACROSOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY"??
What I'm trying to say is that PEWS faces a critical question, which
Mike Timberlake raised in the newsletter and people have been talking
about for years: do we want to limit ourselves to members who use the
same theoretical perspective? Most people don't categorize the New
International Division of Labour (NIDL), post-Fordism/Regulation School
or other new theories as "World-system theory." They therefore don't
consider themselves World-systemites. Why are we stuck with this old
terminology???
I ask this though I continue to use "a world-system approach" or
"a world-system analysis" as the subtitle to many of my recent papers
(most with Peter Grimes) which address environmental issues using
cross-national data sets. In several cases reviewers have dismissed world-
system theory as outdated and not that useful. While I obviously dis-
agree, the name has begun to limit us by creating turf-wars and the
section will decline as the "halcyon days" of the world-system approach
(1975-1985 probably) fade further back into the past. Fewer and fewer
young members will be recruited.
LET'S not get stuck on old terminology. We are all interested in
how societies change over time and often use a comparative perspective.
Why not change to an inclusive title to the section?
Timmons
By the way, the great leveling effect of the listserver could perhaps be
useful in more participatory decisionmaking during the periods
between business meetings at the ASA.
J. Timmons Roberts
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology/Program in Latin American Studies
Tulane University
New Orleans, Louisiana 70118 USA
timmons@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu