re: chase-dunn re- Globalization and "world" systems

Mon, 17 Nov 1997 15:55:47 GMT
Richard K. Moore (rkmoore@iol.ie)

11/13/97, christopher chase-dunn wrote:
>richard moore's essay is fine.

Thanks - that's high praise on this argumentive list! (:>)

> a few small points:
>1. in Wallerstein's original usage there is a distinction between
>"world" and "global". global means Earth-wide. world means the world in
>which people live. in this sense world-systems were not always global.
>they got bigger over time. Tom Hall and I have developed a comparative
>world-systems perspective that looks at small, medium and large
>world-systems to see how and why they evolve (_Rise and Demise_ Westview
>1997).

Hmmm... I must admit my sentiments re/terminology are counter-academic. I
believe discussion of important issues should be carried out in terms that
have some hope of general comprehension. The World is the Earth, and
smaller things have names like "region" or "Mediterranean World" or
whatever. Once having borrowed the apt terminology of "world system",
"core", and "periphery", I prefer to give them common-sense definitions --
stated at the beginning of the book. Inventors of memes can't always
dictate their later evolution.

I certainly agree that the histories of less-than-world systems can be
strikingly informative of world-system structures.

>2. It is probably useful to distinguish between globalization as
>economic, political and cultural integration and globalization as a
>political project of the world bourgeousie. the latter is quite recent.
>the former have been upward trends for millenia in the sense that
>interaction networks have been getting larger...

We seem to be in agreement here. Alhough my granularity of my treatment is
large, I do distinguish strongly between the periods 1492-1945, 1945-1980,
and 1980-present, as regards different modalities of globalizing forces.
My characterization is that the political project was nascent/covert in the
1945-1980 period, and became overt, though deceptively propagandized, only
in the post-1980 era.

rkm