Al Bergesen raises good points but wrong headed conclusions. First some
housekeeping: there is no elite conspiracy. Decisions on PEWS session
content are made by an elected council and president. [Apparantly Al
has not served on the council or he would know this. I will gleefully
nominate him.] When word came that PEWS membership fell below 400, the
council had to cut a session. They cut Al's session on the enviroment,
about which he is understandably upset. That he somehow blames the
session on the future of the world-system for his demise and thinks that
the council's decision is an indicator of a flight of fancy that dooms
PEWS to irrelevance, is wrongheaded. I am not privy to the council's
discussion, but is the outcome fanciful? PEWS is co-sponsoring a
session on science and technology (being co-sponsored, it could not be
cut). This topic overlaps at least in part with enviromental issues.
There is also an open topic world-systems regular session and
enviromental sessions where papers could be sent. I encourage Al,
Timmons, Grimes and others to send their papers to one of these outlets
(if enough good papers arrive, the regular session can expand).
A panel on the future of the world-system could not be
so easily accomodated elsewhere. So, the decision may have been a bit
more practical than Al let on. There is also the issue of what PEWS
sessions should do as compared to other sessions. World-system theory
can be applied to a variety of topics -- the enviroment, race, gender,
ethnicity, development, war, culture and other topics, hot and not. A
strength of the theory is its diverse uses, but this is also a source of
decline in membership as people identify with the topics rather than
the perspective. While outreach is necessary, PEWS has a particular
responsibility to focus on the perspective itself. Does a session on
the future of the system fulfil that responsibility or does it
contribute to our irrelevance? I will try to give an answer in a later
post, but as a co-organizer, I obviously think the answer is that it is
an important topic. I even think that explaining what our perspective
offers for understanding and changing the future is precisely what we
need to do to make it MORE relevant.
Thanks for your time, Terry Boswell