Yes indeed, that IS a DELIVERY FAILURE - at least from me Gunder to
Terry B, who does NOT get NONE of the points i am making, apparently.
Question is is the faoilure in the sender, the recipient, or in the
transmission, none of the above, or all of the above,
cheerfully transmitted
gunder frank
On
Fri, 6 Dec 1996, Terry Boswell wrote:
> Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 18:44:05 EST5EDT
> From: Terry Boswell <TBOS@social-sci.ss.emory.edu>
> To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
> Subject: Delivery failure
>
> In the recent debates, two definitions "system" are floating around
> that I think are leading people to talk past one another. One is a
> "strong" definition of system, in which actors form a system if they
> have an interdependent division of labor that includes the basic
> necessities for life among the majority of the system's population.
> A "weak" definition is a system is simply any group of actors that
> regularly interact in meaningful ways.
>
> Both definitions are appropriate, and some of the disagreement
> (perhaps unknowingly) is over which definition people are using and
> at what time. Both can be "world" rather than societal in scope, in
> the sense that the system comprises a 'world' if the actors are
> multiple cultures, states, and societies. One, admittedly awkard way
> to distinguish the defintions is a world-system (with hyphen) meaning
> the strong sense of the term and a world system (without hyphen)
> meaning the weak definition. By a "weak" definition, I do not mean
> inconsequential. Sometimes weak ties are more important than strong
> ones (as in predicting employment patterns). The international state
> system is a set of "weak" ties (i.e., it is not a state-system or an
> empire). But, the interaction of states has led to devastaing wars.
>
> Perhaps he will again disagree, but my impression is that what
> Gunder is describing prior to 1500 is a world system, not a
> world-system. The way I see it is that prior to 1500 we had a
> variety of world-systems, some of which were connected by a
> Afroeurasian world system (and others in the Americas and parts of
> Oceania and central Africa that were left out). By 1650, the
> European centered capitalist world-system had incorporated most of
> the Afroeurasian world system, along with several of the world-systems
> in the Americas, the west coast of Africa, and the East Indies. In
> some ways, the incorporation was not fully complete until the
> conquest of central Africa in the 1880s, but most of it was done by
> 1820. There is an old debate on whether to use 1820 or 1650 as the
> point of qualitative change in the system, that seems to be mixed in
> with the current discussion as well. For Europe, the Americas, the
> west coast of Africa, and the East Indies, the qualitative difference
> between 1500 and 1650 is, I think, obvious.
>
> Another question is Al Bergesen's search for a new paradigm. I will
> respond to that in a different post.
>
> Thanks for reading,
> TB
> Terry Boswell
> Department of Sociology
> Emory University
> Atlanta, GA 30322
>