Re: pie

On Tue, 1 Jun 1999, Ahmet Cakmak wrote:

>If this totality covers almost whole world geographically where is it
>environment ?

The world-system includes its environment. This is tautological. If by
"environment" we mean *natural* environment, then the world-system is
situated in and situates a natural environment.

I think the question you are asking is wondering what the world-system is,
or more specifically how we would know what it is, if there is not
something (at least one thing) to contrast it with. I think that
comparison is possible if we compare world-systems (or maybe even
different sorts of systems, such as historical systems and ecological
systems) or the same world-system at different points in time.

However, another goal is to uncover developmental dynamics. This is
looking for an internal dialectic, if you will, an impulse generated by
the organization of the system's parts. This requires a different logic of
explanation, one more akin to developmental biology where, instead of
comparing things (the Aristotelian model), we analyze the organization of
a thing and its emergent forms (the Hegelian model). This is where
world-system theory comes in for criticism, for example, from Skocpol, who
uses a different logic of comparative analysis than does Wallerstein
(which is why her critique may not only be incorrect but irrelevant from 
a world-system standpoint).

>If there is no environment how can ve define this totality ?

It would be an abstraction sans environment. Although this abstraction
has its usefulness.

>I just inform you that I began to impressed Niclas Luhmann's Socials
>Systems book nowadays...

I read that book last summer. It's a fun book. I don't know how helpful it
is. I haven't used any of it in my own thinking, but that may just reflect
poorly on me. I can say that Parsonsian structural-functionalism, of which
Luhmann's scheme is pretty much a variant (and maybe an even greater
exercise in obscurantism, if that's possible), is not the same as systems
conceptions built on the Leibniz-Hegelian mode of logic (which I believe
Wallerstein's model is built on).

>I also keep that the core has its own growth dynamics other than the
>resource transfer from the periphery. There is no contradiction between
>the two. And I begin to believe that the latter is more important than
>the former.

How would you conceive of the growth dynamic in the core independent of
its relation to the periphery? By this question I would like for the
answer to be an empirical-historical one rather than a thin abstraction.

Andy