It seems that I have said enough wrongheaded things to provoke responses.
Wally asks - shall we debate the hyphen - we could because it seems to be
important to some people but I'd rather not. He also says that he has it on
"good authority" that the hyphen will be in the next edition. There is only
one "good authority" on this question, hence I assume that Wally is
referring to Giovanni Arrighi..
I am at a loss on how to reply to the question/issue of world-system theory
and qualitative change. It only seems to me that after denying the
centrality of qualitative change - at least that's my reading of IW
formulations - suddenly the importance of qualitative change - manifested in
stages of accumulation, industrial revolutions and the specificity of
hegemonies (or as Chris put it, that Great Britain is not the model of all
hegemonies) is right "up there" (in importance and theoretical centrality)
with the concepts such as core, periphery and semi-periphery.
It was not my intention to raise a debate about whether GA's book is
world-system. Instead, I raised the question to try and find out what it
means to adopt a "w-s" perspective. In my own case, I never saw myself as
working from a w-s perspective because my concerns included things such as
stages of accumulation, industrial revolutions or the historical specificity
of hegemonies, concerns which I gathered, from listening to IW in classes
and seminars and reading his work, were anathema to the w-s perspective.
Now, I suddenly find that these were always central concerns. It certainly
strikes me as either a strange (fluid, flexible) perspective or no
perspective at all, if it can accommodate and incorporate such contradictory
assumptions.
Apparently, I have also `offended' some people in raising a question about
the term `evolution." These were largely off-hand remarks and I have never
studied or devoted a great deal of thought to the uses and abuses of the
concept of evolution. Perhaps, my ignorance is a bliss because I have no
preconceived notions nor specific body of literature to guide me, only
logic. Moreover, because I admit to being ignorant about the subtleties, I
really don't want to engage in a debate about the term Instead, two brief
observations:
1. Bruce's clarification/distinction between evolution and teleology is is
not especially convincing because, on the one hand, everything seems to be
evolving. Moreover, I have a hard time understanding a distinction between
continuous change and discontinuous change because the former is true by
definition and the latter is a contradiction in terms.
2. Stephen Sanderson cites two of his books that deal directly with the
question of evolution. At present, I have neither but I do have his
MACROSOCIOLOGY text where he devotes a section to discussing "the nature of
socio-cultural evolution." According to Sanderson, socio-cultural evolution
is not teleological nor should it be confused with progress. Instead it is
a "a process of change whereby one sociolcutural form is transformed into
another" and specifically a process of qualitative change "that exhibits a
certain directionality."
Why then use the term evolution and raise all those nasty spectres which
seem to be implicit in the term? Evolution, in this usage, seems to refer
to how I understand change - as a DIALECTICAL PROCESS - i.e, a process of
transformation in a certain direction and where the subsequent stage/state
maintains some type of identity with the preceding state (as opposed to
being absolutely different and absolutely random).
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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