Dear Gunder and all those involved in the current debate on WSN;
I have been able to monitor only part of the discussion in the
past two weeks due to editing responsibilities for special issues
of Third World Quarterly and of New Political Economy forthcoming
soon and being finalised now, but my 'silence' has not been due to a
lack of interest. On the other hand, it might be construed as a
'meaningful silence' by some, since I have had reservations about the
content, manner, and direction of much of what I have managed to
read. Gunder has, true to form(!) now provided something of a summary
(from his point of view of course) of most of the exchanges. I have
read this today This brief reply is both to Gunder and an open
contribution to all those involved in the debate.
I think that there are some sound and important points to be
made about the errors of excessive "Eurocentrism", but the critique
of such excessive Eurocentrism can itself be taken to an extreme if
we are not careful. Gunder and I have laid out the sketch of a
single world economic system going back to the 3rd millennium BCE
with A/B phases and hegemonic shifts, as ou are all no doubt fully
aware. However, such a description was only the beginning and a
signpost to a new research agenda. Many many questions remained
unaddressed and the definition of the "world system" itself was in
fact a minimalist one- i.e. regular exchange of surplus. In this
sense it was fairly "economistic" or more appropriately
"materialist". But defining the world economic system itself was and
is by no means such a simple exercise. There is much much more that
should be done to further develop such a conception of the world
system. Sweeping generalisation, even when backed by much evidence,
is still a risky business, espcially when taking in such vast time
and space scales. When our own group (The World Historical Systems
Group -IPE section- ISA) met in Lund Sweden over a year ago I argued
that "over-systematicity" was a genuine problem in the world system
approach initially developed in my joint work with Gunder Frank. Nor
did we ever satisfactorily address the causes of economic cycles
acroos the world system - to my mind. When we wrote early papers on
Eurocentrism, we had a personal admonition from William H. McNeill
not to over-state the case against European innovativeness in the
early modern period. There was an earlier debate on this that Peter
Taylor organised in Political Geography and which was later published
as a book as well. McNeill's point is that it isn't necessary to
argue that nothing special happened in Europe in order to make the
point about its context being in a real world wide and more Asian
centred world economy. I think this may be the right balance. Yes,
the world system was more Asian centred for longer than many have
argued, and this is a point Gunder and I developed together in
Newcastle some 2 years ago, wrote a paper about and circulated it to
some of you. Gunder has gone on to write an entire book about this
and has done great service by doing so. Nevertheless, I think it is
possible to tip the balance too far and make the mistake Bill McNeill
warned us against. World economic "catalyst" was surely the real
source of Europe's enormous burst of capital accumulation. We begin
to arrive back at Wolf or other readings of the industrial revolution
as the really sharp differentiating point between the "before
European hegemony" in the world economy and "after European hegemony"
and thus away from Wallerstein's 16th century break point on European
hegemony. But we would still disagree with Wallerstein on Europe's
role in bringing about a true world economic system (happened much
earlier and not driven by European centres or ERuropean invention of
capitalism). That's progress (no pun intended).
Must go for now,
Sincerely,
Barry Gills