Anthropology Archive

Extending worldsystem analysis

• Romantic Strategies Exclusively For Married Men
• American Pronunciation Guides for ESL Perfectionists
• The Secret of How To Grow African American Hair

The work of Frank and Gills (1993) on the date of the origins of the world-system, mentioned above, has led to other interesting possibilities for world-systems analysis. If the world-system developed long before the capitalist period, then pre-capitalist and non-capitalist world-systems are also theoretically possible. Frank and Gills's own analysis was historical, tracing the origins of the modern world-system back to ancient Mesopotamia, via the civilisations of Mediterranean Europe. But another possibility for the use of the world-system concept is to refine it as an ideal type for use in comparative analysis, and this has been carried out most systematically in the work of Chase-Dunn and Hall during the 1980s and 1990s. They define their core concept in the following way:

We define world-systems as intersocietal networks that are systemic ... [that is] they exhibit patterned structural reproduction and development. We contend that the developmental logics of world-systems are not all the same, though they do share some general properties ... We envision a sequence of changes in which thousands of very small-scale world-systems merged into larger systems, which eventually merged to become the global modern world-system . How and why did these many small systems coalesce and transform over many millennia into a single, global world-system? (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997: 4-5; original emphasis)

This brings out well three propositions that are central to their work. First, world-systems are intersocietal; that is, they link together societies. This derives from the old political-economy critique of modernisation theory, that societies cannot be studied in isolation from one another. Second, they are systemic, sharing general properties of development. Third, over time many world-systems have merged together, finally creating the single integrated capitalist world-system that we see today.

Chase-Dunn and Hall offer other variations on the world-system theme. Unlike many authors, they do not take core-periphery relationships for granted, but as something to be investigated in each case. In their view, a world-system could theoretically consist of a network of partners of equal status (1997: 28). They also spell out the different kinds of networks through which societies are connected with one another, based on flows of information, prestige goods, power, basic foodstuffs and raw materials. The largest networks are usually those within which information flows, followed by those in which prestige goods are exchanged. Next in size are what they call 'political/military networks' (PMNs), forming political units, while 'basic goods networks' based on the exchange of foods and raw materials tend to be smaller still.

How does evolution take place in the world-system? In Chase-Dunn and Hall's analysis (1997: 249), this is a result of three linked processes: 'semi-peripheral development', 'iterations of population pressure and hierarchy formation', and 'transformations of modes of accumulation'. Like other world-system theorists, they argue that many of the most dynamic and interesting innovations and developments take place in the semi-periphery, enabling semi-peripheral societies to overtake societies in the core, creating a leap-frogging effect. Many of these developments are influenced by population dynamics, with population growth and increasing social complexity being followed by dramatic decline due to warfare or the arrival of pathogens from outside.

The key dynamic for the evolution of world-systems, however, lies not in modes of production as in orthodox Marxist theory, but in modes of accumulation, defined as 'the deep structural logic of production, distribution, exchange and accumulation' (1997: 29). Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997: 30) distinguish four modes of accumulation: kinship modes, 'based on consensual definitions of value, obligations, affective ties, kinship networks, and rules of conduct'; tributary modes, based on political (including legal and military) coercion; capitalist modes, based on the production of commodities; and socialist modes (which they describe as 'hypothetical'), that is, democratic systems of distribution based on collective rationality. Different modes can co-exist within the same system, and there are also transitional and mixed systems. The final concept they use to tie all this together is that of incorporation, the process through which separate systems become linked (1997: 59). The nature of this process changes with the mode of accumulation (1997: 249).

This leads to a typology of world-systems based on the mode of accumulation, which incorporates many of the classic categories of earlier anthropology (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997: 42-4):

1. Kin-based mode dominant A. Stateless, classless
2. Sedentary foragers, horticulturists, pastoralists
3. Big-man systems
4. Chiefdoms (classes but not states)
5. Tributary modes dominant (states, cities)
6. Primary state-based world-systems (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus Valley, Ganges Valley, China, pre-Columbian Mexico and Peru)
7. Primary empires in which a number of previously autonomous states have been unified by conquest (Agade, Old Kingdom Egypt, Magahda, Chou, Teotihuacan, Huari)
8. Multicentred world-systems composed of empires, states and peripheral regions (Near East, India, China, Mesoamerica, Peru)
9. Commercialising state-based world-systems in which important aspects of commodification have developed but the system is still dominated by the logic of the tributary modes (Afroeurasian world-system, including Roman, Indian, and Chinese core regions)
10. Capitalist mode dominant
11. The Europe-centred sub-system since the seventeenth century
12. The global modern world-system

Chase-Dunn and Hall emphasise that they are not putting forward a unilinear theory of evolution: transformations have been similar across regions only in a broad sense, and development has always been uneven. What they attempt to do is specify the kinds of organisation and production that are necessary to allow this uneven development to take place. They are therefore interested not only in technology, ecology and demography, but also 'those social institutions that facilitate consensus, legitimate power, and structure competition and conflict within and between societies' (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997: 5). Typically it is not the most developed societies now that are most likely to develop fastest in the future: the 'leading edge' of social complexity is constantly moving as societies leap-frog one another to take over the lead, as happened in the case of Europe overtaking Asia.