Journal of World-Systems Research

Editorial Note

Andrej Grubačić, Rallie Murray — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

The editor's introduction for the Summer/Autumn 2023 issue of Journal of World-Systems Research.

Power, Profit, and Prometheanism, Part II

Jason W. Moore — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Immanuel Wallerstein

Christopher Chase-Dunn — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Cancelling Apocalypse by Risking to Envision

Salimah Valiani — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Review Of: Does Skill Make Us Human?

Patricia Ward — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

The Travesty of “Anti-Imperialism"

William I. Robinson — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Immanuel Wallerstein’s Lasting Legacies

Valentine M. Moghadam — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Europe in a State of Denial

Boaventura de Sousa Santos — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

The Case for a Decolonization of Global History

Javier García Fernández — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

The Political Economy of the Carnation Revolution (1974–75)

Ricardo Noronha — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Following the military coup of April 25th, 1974, Portugal experienced a revolutionary period characterized by unprecedented levels of labor unrest and political radicalization. As the social landscape suffered a profound transformation, key-sectors of the economy were nationalized, many firms went into self-management, and large areas of the south were swept by land occupation. When the country’s democratic Constitution was brought to vote on April 2, 1976, it contained numerous references to “socialism,” “self-management,” “planning,” and “agrarian reform,” bearing witness to a widespread commitment to build a “classless society.” What eventually took shape, however, was a mixed economy under a parliamentary regime, very similar to that of countries like Greece and Spain, both of which experienced far less dramatic democratic transitions. Drawing on the writings of Immanuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi, and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, this article analyzes the plans and strategies devised to ensure a socialist transition in the semiperiphery of the capitalist world-system during the 1970s.

Wallerstein’s Decline and Fall of the Capitalist World-System

Randall Collins — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Immanuel Wallerstein

John W. Meyer — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

A Theorist’s Appreciation of Immanuel Wallerstein’s Analysis of Inter-Societal Dynamics

Jonathan H. Turner — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Immanuel Wallerstein and the Genesis of World-Systems Analysis

Craig Calhoun — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Every Day I Write the Book

Peter Wilkin — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

The article examines the concept of geoculture understood as a form of dominant ideology in the twenty-first century. It situates this in the context of the attempt by conservative and liberal elites in the core states to frame a coherent understanding of the post-Cold War world with which to guide, justify, and legitimize policies and actions. The dominant geoculture has come to be framed by two contrasting grand narratives which establish a framework for legitimate intra-elite debate and understanding of the post-Cold War era: Neoliberalism and the Clash of Civilizations. The significance of these two intra-elite grand narratives is that they represent a break with what Wallerstein has called “centrist liberalism,” which has tended to dominate the geoculture of the modern world-system.

Assessing Core-Monopolization and the Possibilities for the Semi-Periphery in the World-System Today

Aryaman Sharma — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Drawing upon both classic and more contemporary world-systems analysis, along with oft-forgotten sections of Arghiri Emmanuel’s work on technology, this paper studies, through a quantitative and qualitative comparative method, the history and development of the global semiconductors industry, its selective spatial re-organization/peripheralization over time, and the logic of technology transfers within the context of core-monopolization of high profit industries. The paper then draws comparisons between semiconductors and prior core-monopolized industries like the automobile industry, and analyzes attempts at entry into core-like production by the large semi-peripheries such as China and India and the difficulties faced by them not only by the structural limitations of the world-system but also due to opposition from the core nations (like the U.S.-China Trade War). Resultingly, the analysis concludes that significant upward mobility for the large semi-peripheries through entry into core industries is, within the current capitalist world-system, largely unfeasible.

Erratum: Review Of: Creolizing the Modern

Andrej Grubačić — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Volume 29(1) of the Journal of World-Systems Research initially included a review of the book Creolizing the Modern: Transylvania Across Empires by Anca Parvulescu and Manuela Boatcă. Due to editor error the review was uploaded with Anca Parvulescu's name misspelled. Accordingly, a slightly revised version of the review has been restored to its original publication site, and the editors apologize for any confusion.

Erratum: Review Of: Creolizing the Modern

Andrej Grubačić — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Volume 29 (1) of the Journal of World-Systems Research initially included a review of the book Creolizing the Modern: Transylvania Across Empires by Anca Parvulescu and Manuela Boatcă. Due to editor error the review was uploaded with Anca Parvulescu's name misspelled. Accordingly, a slightly revised version of the review has been restored to its original publication site, and the editors apologize for any confusion.

Erratum: Introduction to the Symposium

Marilyn Grell-Brisk — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Volume 29 (1) of the Journal of World-Systems Research initially included the article "Introduction to the Symposium: Parasitism and the Logics of Anti-Indigeneity and Antiblackness" by Marilyn Grell-Brisk. When first published the article was missing a key citation. Accordingly, a slightly revised version of the review has been restored to its original publication site.

Shades of Red

Toufic Sarieddine — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

To address literature on U.S.-China hegemonic competition, this paper examines the properties of China among select Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) states which pertain to the features of hegemony per world-systems analysis and how it compares to the United States and regional powers Brazil and South Africa. I demonstrate that Beijing has made significant progress propagating its modus operandi by way of greater yuan use and imposing its legal code on examined BRI states, economic dominance through besting competitors in exports to these states, achieving an overall trade surplus as well as setting up free-trade zones to maintain and enhance this, and establishing a stream of revenue from examined states via high-interest, short-term loans, income from projects, and trade surpluses. In military dominance, China has made gains in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and Pakistan. Meanwhile, Washington remains dominant in Peru, and, with Paris, more culturally dominant in SSA.

Review Of: Creolizing the Modern

José Itzigsohn — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Review Of: Creolizing the Modern

Miloš Jovanović — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Editorial Note

Andrej Grubačić; Rallie Murray — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0400

The editor's introduction for the Winter/Spring 2023 issue of Journal of World-Systems Research.

Introduction to the Symposium

Marilyn Grell-Brisk — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0400

The Field is Upon Us

Adrienne Pine — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0400

The Silence of the Intellectuals

Boaventura de Sousa Santos — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Insights from General Complexity Evolution for Our Current Situation

David J. LePoire — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Will the pace of change in our global technological society continue to accelerate? Or will it follow the path of most previous technological waves, which slowed down as they matured? The purpose of this paper is to explore how historical general evolutionary processes involving increased energy flows and corresponding higher complexity levels might have contributed to the global problems we face today with regard to energy, environmental, inequality, and demographics. This situation will be compared with various integrated complexity evolutionary models of three major phases in evolution (life, humans, and civilization). While natural ecosystems seem to have both positive and negative feedback mechanisms to prevent the onset of senescence, the current economic system seems to have avoided constraints to enter a positive feedback loop that results in unsustainable resource use and pollution. There are still many contrasting interpretations of what this means for the near future, but integrating insights from these perspectives may help us better understand these processes.

A Thermodynamic Interpretation of the Progression of Historical Processes

Mark Paul Anthony Ciotola — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0400

This article examines the long-term rise of human civilization in terms of the emergence of socio-physical dissipative structures, including cities, agricultural systems, infrastructure and relevant economic enterprises. The laws of thermodynamics, the Principle of Least Time, and the phenomena of complexity and emergence are briefly reviewed and accepted as assumptions. The concepts of thermodynamic work, power and efficiency are likewise reviewed. Also examined are the emergence of medium-term dissipative structures, such as the rise and fall of dynasties, resource and economic bubbles in terms of thermodynamic theory. The impact of thermodynamic constraints on the emergence and fall of such structures is examined. Particular attention is paid to the interactions between physical resource use and the social progression of those structures. Areas of applicability to World-Systems is discussed.

Einstein’s Problem

Albert J. Bergesen — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0400

This paper focuses upon the human migratory trajectory from eons on planet Earth to slowly moving out into orbital space and whether world-systems theory must craft new theoretical frames to grasp the possible problems arising from the existence of a single social system comprised of actors distributed across terrestrial and orbital platforms, dubbed here as “Einstein’s Problem.”

Cycles and Transformation

Lewis Michael Birley — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

This article offers a new analysis of China’s politico-economic system from a world-systems perspective. My basic argument is that the novelty of China’s system is not, as McNally (2020) argues, its hybrid fusion of neoliberal market dynamics with strong centralized political control. China’s real historical significance comes from the combination of a centralized, state controlled financial governance structure that is highly insulated from the control of outside actors situated within China’s large extended geo-space. I argue that China’s intense state control of economic reality, and especially its “internalization” of financial institutions within its state architecture, can be seen as an adaptive strategy that makes sense from the perspective of the long term development of governance within the capitalist system. I then conclude with observations around the possible consequences for established core powers of China’s structural separation and power in the financial realm.

The Violent Crackup of the Post-WWII International Order

William I. Robinson — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Trade Wars and Disrupted Global Commodity Chains

Paul S. Ciccantell, David A. Smith, Elizabeth Sowers — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

The literatures on global commodity chains and global value chains rest on an unquestioned assumption: the continual expansion of globalization. The Trump Administration's trade wars challenged this foundational assumption and even today the new Biden regime also hints at the shift away from global supply chains. We find that the prior administration’s efforts caused continued disruption of long-established commodity chains in steel, aluminum, automobiles, and other manufactured products. Flows of raw materials, intermediate products and components, and finished goods now confront higher costs. Firms continue efforts to restructure commodity chains in ways that will require the disarticulation of some nodes and the creation of new nodes. We claim that these trade wars and breakdown of global commodity chains (GCCs) may in fact mark the start of the breakdown of the U.S.-led world order. This shift harkens the onset of a new era of economic and geopolitical conflict. A key question: has this disruption of old patterns and rise of new ones continued in the post-Trump era? Does the familiar pattern of globalization continue – or is competition, contestation and disarticulation leading to sectoral economic changes that drive larger patterns of economic ascent, dominance, and decline in the world economy?

Reflections on Walden Bello

Javier Ezcurdia, James Anderson — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0400

The online censorship and subsequent arrest of scholar-activist Walden Bello is the latest instance of a disconcerting trend during a period of hegemonic crisis. To understand how a respected scholar ended up in jail and in grave legal trouble on very feeble accounts, we have to unpack the full implications of this case, and place it in relation to ongoing structural changes within the world-system—namely, the decline of the United States as global hegemon, the ascendancy of far-right authoritarianism as a popular political framework, and the use of institutions and technologies developed under liberal-democratic rule by authoritarian regimes for purposes of social control during a period of flux. The crisis offers an opportunity to reconfigure systemic arrangements through coordinated solidarity networks characterized by forms of organization and ways of relating that embody prerogatives and values different from those that predominate in the modern world-system and from those that reproduce the capitalist world-economy; which, more likely than not, will have authoritarian tendencies in the decades to come. As a conclusion, we offer some of the possibilities the global left has for these upcoming decades in regards of large coalitions aimed at changing the structure of the world-system at large.

Weathering the Crisis

Roberto Ortiz — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

This article unpacks the relational nexus between financialization and energy—in this case oil—that shaped the 1970s world-economic crisis and that is again central in the convergence between climate change and accumulation crises. Focusing on these critical moments when profitable opportunities for capital narrow and the world-system enters a period of turbulence, I explain the ways in which energy and finance have been central in crisis formation and, in turn, in capitalists’ search for ways out of crises. Starting with a discussion of the 1970s global conjuncture, I explain the role of the “energy crisis” in the first general recession of post-World War II era. I show how the oil price hike of the early 1970s—which compounded the core’s accumulation crisis while also representing a challenge to unequal trade by dramatically revaluing a key global South export—was channeled into fuel for global North financial accumulation via petrodollar recycling and global South debt. Building on this history, I provide a brief examination of this nexus between finance and energy in the ongoing climate crisis. Today the global capitalist class profits from continuing fossil-fueled accumulation and, increasingly, from the grafting of financial instruments onto socio-ecological disruptions.

The Challenges of Building the World Women’s Democratic Confederalism

Eleonora Gea Piccardi — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Assessing the Stability of the Core/Periphery Structure and Mobility in the Post-2008 Global Crisis Era

Martín Jacinto — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

How did the hierarchy of the world-system adapt to the impact of the 2008–09 global economic crisis? How did a country's position in the world-system influence their upward mobility during the crisis? This paper investigates the core/periphery hierarchy of the global trade network before and after the 2008–09 crisis. The central argument posits that the global trade network follows a core/periphery hierarchy in relation to the new international division of labor (NIDL) in the twenty-first century, and a country's placement within that hierarchy had a varying effect on their upward mobility following the 2008–09 crisis. Utilizing social network analysis of 191 countries engaged in global trade, I discover that the core/periphery structure remained unchanged after the 2008–09 global financial crisis, although many countries in intermediate positions experienced upward shifts. However, not all countries were able to achieve upward mobility, indicating that only a few semi-peripheral and peripheral countries were better positioned to improve their status compared to most non-core countries.

Review Of: The Biomedical Empire

Durgesh Solanki — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0400

Review Of: Oil Crisis in Iran

Val Moghadam — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0400

Editorial Note

Andrej Grubačić — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0400

The editor's introduction for the Summer/Autumn 2022 issue of Journal of World-Systems Research.

Introduction to the Special Issue

Spencer Louis Potiker — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's introduction to the special issue on non-state movements and spaces.

Encountering Other Cultural Universes on the Brink of Chaos

Boaventura de Sousa Santos — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0400

Power, Profit, and Prometheanism, Part I

Jason W. Moore — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0400

Theories of Antifascism in the Interwar Mediterranean Part II

Kristin Plys — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0400

The current proliferation of authoritarianism across both core and periphery is one political articulation of the current crisis of the capitalist world-system. Authoritarianism similarly proliferated in previous periods of crisis, in the 1970s and 1980s in the peripheries, and in the 1930s and 1940s in the core. In Part I of this essay, I detail how world-systems analysts have long been attuned to describing and analyzing chaotic moments in between systemic cycles of hegemony, but less attention has been given to the rise of authoritarianism in these chaotic phases. The multiple crises of hegemonic transition engenders an ideological contestation between Fascism and Communism revealing the limitations of Liberalism, the foundational ideology of the world-system. In such periods of hegemonic breakdown, anarchists developed autonomous strategies of resisting authoritarian rule at both the point of production (the worker-occupied and self-managed workplace) and at the point of leisure (the autonomous zone of the infoshop or café as resources and interventions in the joint struggle against capitalism and authoritarianism. These theories are important to recover for the contemporary fight against a resurgent authoritarianism across the world-system in the current conjuncture.

From Wallerstein to Rothschild

Andrzej Turkowski, Tomasz Zarycki — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0400

This article investigates a neglected issue of the influence of systemic transformation in Central and Eastern Europe on the (sub)field of social sciences and more broadly on local fields of power. Our case study concerns a vibrant and internationally connected network of scholars from various disciplines and generations who were involved in developing and popularizing a dependency paradigm in communist Poland. As we show that the fall of communism and related transformation in the Polish field of power brought about dramatic shift in terms of their career trajectories as well as their ideological orientation and in consequence a sudden disappearance of this academic ecosystem. On this basis we argue about wider changes—encompassing marginalization of the “critical,” autonomous tradition and strengthening of heteronomic trends in social sciences in the region but also at the global level.

Immanuel Wallerstein’s Legacy in Southern Europe

Javier García Fernández — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0400

This paper is a farewell and an intellectual tribute to one of the greatest masters of contemporary Marxist thought and one of the major references in contemporary social science. Immanuel Wallerstein died August 31, 2019, leaving a theoretical, historical, and intellectual legacy that is to be read, rethought, and actualized by social scientists in the coming decades. His world-systems theory gave rise to a whole new understanding of the genesis of the capitalist world-system. This contribution reviews the sources that inspired the world-system theory, as well as showing its main contributions and its dialogues with other proposals of critical social theory, such as the epistemologies of the South and decolonial thought. This article is also a new formulation of the perspectives that the world-systems theory opens for the historical and sociological research on Andalusia and southern Europe in the context of the historical genesis of world capitalism.

Analyzing Global Commodity Chains and Social Reproduction

Anouk Patel-Campillo — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

World-systems analysts argue that households take on a structural role within the capitalist system to mediate pressures exerted by the state and economic actors. Underpinning this view is the supply of low-paid and waged labor by household members in the process of social reproduction and the role of households as sites of commodity consumption. Here, I argue that the analytical choice to use the features of low-waged households renders a partial analysis of their structural location within a multi-sited capitalist system. While acknowledging that households across the Global Commodity Chain (GCC) are neither spatially segregated (i.e., global North, global South) nor solely spaces of production or consumption, I suggest that households differ in their structural location within a multi-sited capitalist system, subject to their incidence on the instantiation of hierarchical capitalist relations. First, “core” households differ from their peripheral counterparts via their reliance on financial assetization and capital accumulation in the core for (intergenerational) social reproduction. Second, in the process of social reproduction, core household excess commodity consumption generates metabolic differentials that fuel hierarchical relations of production and place core households in a more central location within a multi-sited capitalist system compared to peripheral ones. Third, the analysis of hierarchical capitalist relations and GCCs focuses on capital accumulation and the extraction of (women’s) household unpaid labor in the periphery. I argue that to more fully capture the extraction of unpaid labor across the GCC, household fluidity and heterogeneity and associated variation in intra-household divisions of labor must be analytically considered.

Editorial Note

Andrej Grubačić — Sat, 26 Mar 2022 00:00:00 -0400

The editor's introduction for the Winter/Spring 2022 issue of Journal of World-Systems Research.

How to Read Capitalism in the Web of Life

Jason W Moore — Sat, 26 Mar 2022 00:00:00 -0400

Give and Take

Patricia Ward — Sat, 26 Mar 2022 00:00:00 -0400

Leaning on the BRICS as a Geopolitical Counterweight Leads Only to Faux-Polyarchic, Subimperial “Spalling”

Patrick Bond — Sat, 26 Mar 2022 00:00:00 -0400