Re: AGF on Holism

Glad Moseley posted his account of the session on Re-Orient at the 
Washington AHAs.  I was starting to wonder whether we have now 
learned most, if not all, world system theory has to teach, and 
whether this research program is, accordingly, in a regressive state - 
I mean after four  months or so in the wsn list, I have yet to read 
a single intellectually stimulating  exchange!  Let me take issue, 
then, with AGF's appropriation of the concept "holism" in his recent 
posting to wsn where he amends  Moseley's account. I quote AGF's words: 
 
"AGF did of course push for WS approach on grounds that the whole
helps explain the parts. Explaining the parts within a
'scientific' framework that prioritizes ONLY or primarily  their 'unique'
'independent' factors ,apart from being scientificaly unsatisfactory,
can if carried to its logical conclusion land us up in the
politically dangerous Landes/Huntington."

It is extremely misleading, I think, to argue that world-sytem theory 
(ws) looks at the whole whereas those who do national 
history only look at the parts. For ws theory understands the 
whole only in the geopraphical-market sense of  analyzing the 
exchange connections between the different economic regions of the 
world. When AGF writes in ReOrient that "the whole is not 
only greater than the sum of its parts. It also shapes the parts and 
their relations to each other, which in turn transform the whole" 
(xxvii), he is really *reducing* the whole to the world market. And 
while he acknowledges that the parts "in turn transform the whole", 
it is clear he means 1) parts which have already been fundamentally 
shaped by the whole, and 2) parts which are mere *economic* regions 
of  a world economic market.

It is a plain contradiction to embrace holism at the very moment that 
one seeks to *derive* every non-economic factor (or indeed regional 
economic trends) from world-market relations. Holism and reductionism 
are simply too unfriendly to ever live together. Approaching regions 
in terms of their relations to the whole world should never preclude 
an appreciation of the relative distinction of each part, both between and 
within each part - beyond mere economic differences.  

If Landes "prioritizes ONLY or primarily" independent parts, 
AGF "prioritizes only or primarily"  world market relations; 
relations which are just another part, external exchange relations,
a part which  should not be ignored but which nonetheless is just 
another part.  

Truth is that on questions of methodology and understanding of 
rationality, there is little difference between AGF and Landes: both 
reduce the meaning of history to rational economic action, except 
that AGF has yet to provide a rational microtranslation of  his
macrosystem. Moreover both have a very narrow, incomplete 
understanding of  Weber's writings on rationality - something 
which AGF in particular has to be faulted with since Re-Orient is 
constructed precisely as a challenge (mainly) against the Weberians.  
Their basic flaw here is 1) the common one of limiting Weber's 
interpretation of the rise of the West to the Protestant-capitalist 
connection, and 2) the confounding of practical, formal, and 
theoretical rationality.

thanks, ricardo