Re: w-systems & worldviews

Tue, 9 Dec 1997 14:52:03 +0600
Nikolai S. Rozov (rozov@nsu.ru)

Dear Chris and All

as for me i do not share Chris's version of materialism
('M.Harrisism', why not Marxism? see below), but prefer social
ontology where each of main spheres (layers) of human condition:

1) material: geography-ecology-technology-demography,
2) psychical: psychics-behavior-communication-interaction,
3) social: (geo)politics-economics-law-social order, and
4) cultural: ideology-worlviews(religion-art-philosophy-sciences)

are autonomous and at the same time deeply interconnected,
and have not constant, but SHIFTING leadership in various historical
epochs and types of societies, f.e. according to R.Carneiro:

geography->demography->warfare->politics(states,empires)

then, maybe

religion->economics->geography-transportation->
geoeconomics-technology-demography->geopolitics->
ideology-science-technology->geoeconomics - mass communication

comments?

Nikolai

>From: christopher chase-dunn <chriscd@jhu.edu>
>
>the best world-system stuff on world views i have seen is that by
>the anthropologist Jonathan Friedman (_Cultural Identity and Global
>Process_Sage 1994). Al Bergesen has written insightfully about art
>and hegemony, and I like what David Harvey says about the
>relationship between flexible specialization and postmodernism in
>his _The Condition of Postmodernity_. But I remain an
>unreconstructed Marvin Harrisite (ist). Ideas are mainly reflections
>of material interests.

(sic! the last thesis is not cultural materialistic, but purely
a marxist-leninist one! - NR)

>But even I have to admit that the current hegemony of neoliberalism
>in a context of declining U.S. hegemony and global crisis is a
>rather interesting phenomenon. Go figure.
>chris

******************************************************
Nikolai S. Rozov, PhD, Dr.Sc. Professor of Philosophy
E-MAIL: rozov@nsu.ru FAX: 7-3832-397101
ADDRESS: Philosophy Dept. Novosibirsk State University
630090, Novosibirsk, Pirogova 2, RUSSIA

Moderator of the mailing list PHILOFHI (PHILosophy OF HIstory and
theoretical history). URL=
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~dew7e/anthronet/subscribe/philofhi.htm
*********************************************************************