In my first ever posting to WSN (of Thu, 23 May 1996 19:06:08)
I maintained:
I think
Pearson has completely succeded in drawing our attention precisely to
real WSN issues raising most pressing question of reconstructing the
traditional world system approach which looks now more and more
defective, especially clearly with the treatment of the pre-Modern
intersocietal communiction networks (and of course [though it appears
a bit less self-evident] with respect to the Modern one).Pearson
paper calls again for the substitution of the primitive and simplistic
core - s/periphery-periphery scheme with more sophisticated and
appropriate categories, or at least for a radical reconstruction of
these categories.
After presenting some relevant South Arabian data (to which I added
some more data in my postings of 28, 31 May and 3 June) I concluded:
I just find the traditional world
system categories and approaches completely inapproprite to deal
with the material I
work with and completely support the call (inherent in Perason's
paper) for the radical reconstruction of the WS theory. Hence, instead
of discussing secondary parapolitical points basing ourselves on the
assumption that the WS theory is something finally proved and
established and it could be considered a firm ground to discuss
anything it seems more appropriate to think if this ground is really
firm, if it is safe to discuss anything on it. May be it is more
reasonable to create such a ground first?
Now I must say that all the discussion which has followed the
original Pearson's posting has just convinsed me that I was right.
All the attempts to fit the uncomfortable data into the old scheme
does not appear successful at all.
E.g. Wallerstein wrote on Thu May 30 00:51:02 1996:
> i believe that unequal exchange
> only exists within systems, and when trade is between systems, it is equal,
> and therefore non-exploitative. and i believe with him that <a society can
> export products which it does not value, but which are valued in other
> areas>. indeed, i believe that is what constitutes trade between systems.
This is actually rather similar to one of the propositions which I
suggeated for the interpretation of the "uncomfortable" South Arabian
data. However, this is not sufficient at all and could only be
regarded as a first step towards a more reasonable theoretical model.
Yes, South Arabia of the second half of the 1st mil. BC could be
regarded as a "world-system" or "world-economy" (if we use the set of
definitions proposed by Wallerstein). But if we use the normal
<system is such a set of elements which has integrative properties,
i.e. such properties which none of the elements has>, we should
consider South Arabia as an element of the Circum-Mediterranean
system (which in its terms might be regarded as an element of the
World System) . Again if we use normal (not "world") system categories (see
my previous postings) South Arabia should be regarded as its
periphery. However, it appears to have been "core-exploiting",
"capital-accumulating" periphery (for which I have already provided a
selection of data of the original sources).
By the moment nobody has shown how all this could be accomodated by
the traditional WS theory without its radical reconstruction.
P.S. I finished my first posting to the WSN with a post scriptum
which I shall repeat again:
I would not like anyone to think that what was said could be
only relevant for exotic old times - take e.g. the modern Arabian oil
exporting countries exploiting the "core" ones.
Dr Andrey Korotayev, Senior Research Fellow
Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences
12 Rozhdestvenka, Moscow 103753, Russia
ANDREI@RSUH.RU