Rise and Demise: Comparing World-Systems
Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas D. Hall
Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
NOTE: Pricing is still being worked out...
see Tom Hall's Home Page for updates at end.
[the ! above is my shock that it's finally done :-)]
Abstract
Spanning ten thousand years of social change, this book examines
the ways in which world-systems evolve. A comparative study of
stateless societies, state-based regional empires, and the modern
global capitalist political economy, it reveals the underlying
processes at work in the reproduction and transformation of social,
economic, and political structures.
Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas Hall show that stateless
societies developed in the context of regional intersocietal
networks that differed significantly from larger and more
hierarchical world-systems. The processes by which chiefdoms rose
and fell are similar to the ways in which states, empires, and
modern hegemonic core states have experienced uneven development.
Most world-systems exhibit a pattern of political centralization
and decentralization, but the mechanisms and processes of change
can vary greatly.
Looking at the systematic similarities and differences among small
scale, middle-sized, and global world-systems, the authors address
such questions as: Do all world-systems have core/periphery
hierarchies in which the development of one area necessitates the
underdevelopment of another? How were kin-based logics of social
integration transformed into state-based tributary logics, and how
did capitalism emerge within the interstices of tributary states
and empires to eventually become the predominant logic of
accumulation? How did the rise of commodity production and the
eventual dominance of capitalist accumulation modify the processes
by which political centers rise and fall?
Rise and Demise offers far-reaching explanations of social change,
showing how the comparative study of world-systems increases our
understanding of early history, the contemporary global system, and
future possibilities for world society.
Table of Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
Part I: Concepts & Definitions
1 A Hundred Flowers Bloom: Approaches to World-Systems 11
2 Defining World-Systems 27
3 Two, Three, Many World-Systems 41
Part II: Explaining World-System Evolution
4: New Territories: The Problem of Incorporation 59
5: The Semiperiphery: Seedbed of Change 78
6: Iterations and Transformations: A Theory of
World-Systems Evolution 99
Part III: Investigations: Cases and Comparisons
7: A Very Small World-System 121
8: The Unification of Afroeurasia: Circa 500 B.C.E. -
1400 C.E. 149
9: The Europe-Centered System 187
10: Cross-System Comparisons:
Similarities and Differences 200
PART IV: Conclusions
11: The Transformation of World-Systems 233
12: Conclusions, Questions, Speculations 247
Notes 255
Glossary 271
References 276
Index 309
Thomas D. [tom] Hall
thall@depauw.edu
Department of Sociology
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN 46135
***EFFECTIVE FEB 1, 1997 NEW AREA CODE
765-658-4519
UNDER CONSTRUCTON: http://www.depauw.edu/~thall/hp1.htm