Re: a world-system study of japanese social movements

Fri, 28 Mar 1997 15:45:29 -0500 (EST)
A. Gunder Frank (agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca)

Andre Gunder Frank and Marta Fuentes
"On Studying Cycles in Social Movements"
RESEARCH ON SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, CONFLICT AND CHANGE
L. Kriesberg, M. Doboswki, & I Walliman, Eds.
Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, vol. 17, 1994

contains stuff on soc movs in Eur & North Am
and on cycles in peasant movs also in Asia,Afr,Lat Am

also see
TRANSFORMING THE REVOLUTION, by S.Amin,G.Arrighi.A.Frank,I Wallerstein
Monthly Review Press 1990.

On Tue, 25 Mar 1997,
christopher
chase-dunn wrote:

> Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 18:05:38 -0500
> From: christopher chase-dunn <chriscd@jhu.edu>
> To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
> Subject: a world-system study of japanese social movements
>
> Elson Boles is working on a dissertation on an important social
> movement in Japan in the late nineteenth century. Boles is looking at
> the world-system contextual factors involved in this last millinarian
> rebellion and how it was related to Japan's incorporation into the
> Europe-centered system. An abstract of his thesis follows:
>
> ---------
> ABSTRACT: Ph. D. Dissertation
>
> TITLE: REBELS, GAMBLERS, AND SILK: Agencies and Structures of the
> Japan-US
> Silk Network, 1858-1890
>
> AUTHOR: Elson E. Boles, Sociology, Ph. D. Candidate, State University
> of New York, Binghamton
> eeb@hknet.com
> DEFENSE: 11 April, 1997
>
> ABSTRACT:
>
> In 1884, Meiji Japan's largest armed peasant uprising, involving
> 3000-7000,erupted in Saitama prefecture. The nature of the incident has
> been passionately debated among Japanese historians. The orthodoxy sees
> it as the climax of the Liberty Movement; revisionists argue it was the
> last and greatest millenarian peasant uprising.
>
> This study scrutinizes and resolves the debate by revealing the role of
> bakuto (gamblers) in this and other incidents tied to the Liberty
> Movement.
> The revision furthermore transcends the local focus of earlier studies
> by
> exploring the world-historical dimensions of the rebellion and related
> struggles. Social-history and world-systems
> perspectives are united through an multi-level movement from global to
> local developments, showing the world-historical dimensions of events
> and agencies and, conversely, the local faces of global-scale processes.
>
> The rebellion occurred as part of the Japan-US silk network's formation,
> 1860-84. The division of labor's emergence saw the decline of Chichibu
> petty sericulturists, the rise of new filatures in Japan, and
> high-technology silk weaving factories in the US. The
> interrelated class-patriarchal changes among the network's sectors
> engendered new forms of resistance, including the first known factory
> strikes in Japan, by women reelers in Kofu (1885-86), and strikes by
> silk workers in Paterson, New Jersey (1886-90).
>
> Meiji silk export development programs during the 1870s nurtured the
> network's formation. But Meiji state policy was less a product of
> Western ideas, as previously thought, than the reconstitution of earlier
> "domain development" strategies of Satsuma and Choshu han. Indeed,
> these domains seized power in 1868 on the basis of
> successful export-oriented accumulation 1750-1860, and then extend their
> strategies on a national scale after the Restoration.
>
> The retrenchment phase of modernization, 1880-86, triggered peasant debt
> deferral movements across Japan and repression of gamblers and political
> activists led to new inter-class alliances. This work explains, for the
> first time, how activists recruited
> bakuto and indebted peasants to form revolutionary armies, why the
> latter joined, and the "incidents of violence" that followed.
>
> Narrowing in on Chichibu with primary resources, we detail how local
> bakuto joined the Liberty Party and fused their party status with
> gambler-style chivalry. Villagers accepted redeemed bakuto as righteous
> leaders, reinvented millenarianism, and followed bakuto leaders in a
> revolt against corrupt officials and land expropriating
> creditors.
>
> As the last millenarian uprising in Japan, the uprising marks the
> terminus
> of Japan's incorporation into the modern world-system; the Liberty
> Movement, struggles by gamblers, and the Kofu and Paterson strikes,
> signify Japan's systemic transformation as part of the world-system.
>