Tom Hall's and Dave Smith's comments raise some important issues. Let me
make a couple of observations:
1. The question of changing the name of the section may be secondary to
renewed efforts to attract members to the section. But it does bear on the
recruitment process. The issue is that 'world-system' is not just a nominal
title for a section. It carries a specific epistemological freight. The
section includes, minimally, either folks who are very attached to the
unique epistemological outlook of w-s perspective (long-term, holistic
analysis), or those who think globally largely in the present (without
committing themselves to a long-term historical position). Giovanni
Arrighi's 'perspective' may be different from (and less identifiable with)
Immanuel Wallerstein's, but they both share the long view in their analysis
of political economy. This is a fundamental marker.
So.....attracting 'members' to the section will not necessarily resolve the
epistemological issue. Who shall we attract, and under what auspices?
2. In a similar manner, the call for bringing women and minorities into the
section does not begin to address this epistemological issue. Arguably the
section has been led almost as much by women as by men over the last
decade. We have recently had 3 female chairs, and the council has continued
to recruit women into its ranks. Maybe we need more women, but that is not
my point. Many women involved in feminist scholarship are exploring
alternative epistemologies just like PEWS set out to do 20 years ago. It's
likely that minority scholars are doing the same as the politics of
identity becomes significant -- I don't know, but there's a lot of
rethinking going on and a lot of interesting people doing it, who are not
necessarily wanting to fold their interests into the big tent, or the
holism, of PEWS. So when we look to attract more (diverse) members, we need
to be more self-conscious about who we are, and who they are.
I'm not raising these questions as objections to Dave Smith's thoughts.
Rather I'm wondering out loud about some of the underlying issues in
staking out PEWS' future constituencies....
phil mcmichael
chair-elect
From:
Philip McMichael
Professor of Rural Sociology
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-7801.
Ph: 607-255-5495
Fax: 607-255-9984
email: pdm1@cornell.edu