> Carl Dassbach wonders if Giovanni Arrighi's book, _The Long Twentieth
>Century_ (Verso 1994), employs a world-systems perspective
>and asks "what does it mean to adopt a 'w-s' perpective." I do not find any
>ambiguity here. Arrighi says he is theorizing about the modern world-system
>and I accept his word for it.
I also accept his word for it (and I don't mean to split hairs) but I would
point out that GA discusses the "world system:, i.e. _sans- hyphen, (see
page xi) and not the "world-system." As I recall, the hyphen is very
impoprtant: IW told us about the difference a hyphen makes and CC-D insisted
that the hyphen appear in the title of Journal of World-System Research.
Chris than asks: "What key elements of the world-systems perspective are
>absent that would make Carl ask this question?
My answer to this bears, in part, on my answer to Chris's next point -
>Carl questions the use of the term "evolution" ....
I questioned Chris's use of the term `evolution' in the study of history
becuase I believe that the term has an implicit teleological assumption,
namely, what comes `after' or later in a process is in some way (and I
admit that `some way' is a broad term) `superior' or better to what came
before. (For that matter, the word `development' also has a similar, but
weaker, assumption). Hegelians may talk about historical evolution but I
think that socil scientists can only talk about historical change.
>.... and contends that Immanuel
>Wallerstein holds that the "the system does not 'evolve' - it expands and
>deepens but the basic structures function in the same manner." Well I have
>also been a big proponent of this continuity thesis. Chapters 3 and 4 of
> my _Global Formation_ argue that the various "stages of capitalism"
>approaches are wrong and that the basic model of world-system cycles and
trends has
>operated unchanged for 500 years as the system expanded and deepened.
I have always believed that a crucial component of the world-system
perspective (with hyphen) has been a rejection of qualitative historical
change, i.e., stages of capitalism and Chris, I think, verifies my belief.
Hence, I would argue that it is GA's central concern with qualitative
development, what Chris calls stages and I call "incarnations" (I prefer
this term for the same reason I reject the term "evolution"), sets GA's work
"apart" from the world-system perspective.
It is thus not a matter of 'absence' that makes me ask the question of
"whether GA's book is w-s ? (as Chris puts it " What key elements of the
world-systems perspective are absent that would make Carl ask this question
) but rather what is included, so to speak, over, above and beyond the w-s
perspective.
>But I
>wrote that
>before reading about Arrighi's systemic cycles of accumulation.
>Arrighi's model gets the continuities and the changes right. His
>specification of
>accumulation regimes does not wipe out the validity of the basic cycles and
>trends model. But it adds to it those qualitative organizational changes
>that have allowed capitalism to adapt to its own contradictions. The
>question that now needs to be addressed is what, if any, changes did the
>different accumulation regimes make in the basic cycles and trends model?
I personally don't think that suggesting, as Chris does, that GA's book is
so revolutionary that it has has revised thinking about the world-system (
in the sense of a dialectical _aufhebung_ )is a solution becuase if
important and fundemental (what can be called _grund_) premises of a
theory/perspective are revised, we no longer have the same perspective. (I
maintain that w-s's rejection of qualitative change is perhaps on of the
most funamental principles of the perspective) I am also interested in what
IW would say - would he say that his thinking on these issued has changed?
>I now realize that the basic model was formulated with the British hegemony
>in the foreground and that is why there is so much emphasis on production.
I agree wholeheartedly but this has always been a problem in historical
interpretation, namely, that general "hsitorical theories, are derived from
specific instances" and violence is often to other realities to make them
`fit' the theory or model." (what better example of this then Rostow's
"stages of growth" model.
I'll end here - there is more that I want to say but I have to go to class.
I also ask, with Chris (and Pink Floyd) "is there anybody out there?"
Carl Dassbach
>
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Carl H.A. Dassbach E-mail: DASSBACH@MTU.EDU
Dept. of Social Sciences Phone: (906)487-2115
Michigan Technological University Fax: (906)487-2468
Houghton, MI 49931 USA