scholarly journals Introduction: Globalization and Race in World Capitalism

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
William I. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Real World ◽  
World System ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Capitalist World

Scholars of world-systems and global political economy have wrestled for decades with the genesis of 'race' as a social construct and its historical significance for the system of world capitalism.  Transformations in the world capitalist system pose a new challenge to Western theories of race.  Older colonial structures may be giving way in the face of capitalist globalization.  Racial or ethnic dimensions of the relations of exploitation in the capitalist world-system need to be reconceptualized.  This symposium aims to generated debate and interchange among scholars on such a reconceptualization and to contribute to real world struggles against racial inequities.

On Maoist Conceptualizations of the Capitalist World System

1979 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 806-837 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Systems Approach ◽  
World System ◽  
State Power ◽  
World Market ◽  
Market Force ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The World ◽  
Capitalist World

One of the less emphasized strengths of a world systems approach to national societies is its critical comprehension of the limited possibilities of ruling groups transforming their societies into ones of socialist relations. One limit placed on the part by the whole, on nation states by a capitalist world market, is the impossibility of building “true” socialism. The imperatives of the world market force state power-holders to act in a capitalist manner, that is, to organize their society for competition in world exchange.

scholarly journals Direito, devir negro e conflito ecológico distributivo

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-140
Author(s):  
Maria Cristina Vidotte Blanco Tárrega
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Black People ◽  
World System ◽  
Western World ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
The Face ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Globalized World

O escravismo colonial, como vetor de um processo de organização do capital e de construção de um sistema mundo, engendra uma perene desqualificação do Negro e o coloca às margens do mundo ocidental, transformando-o, no mundo globalizado contemporâneo, em sujeito de conflitos ecológicos distributivos, na luta por seus direitos. A partir disso e na perspectiva do direito, propõe-se refletir sobre a condição histórica do Negro como agente central e sujeito da luta e da resistência na conformação do capitalismo, para ressignificar o papel desses sujeitos de direito e de suas lutas nos conflitos originários do desenvolvimentismo globalizado. Faz-se uma abordagem analítica na literatura especializada sobre escravidão. Os conflitos ecológicos foram pensados a partir da ecologia política e o racismo foi abordado a partir da filosofia e da história críticas. Dos resultados, têm-se que o regime escravocrata foi central na construção do sistema mundo capitalista e que o direito estatal moderno serviu a instituição desse regime, negando a condição de sujeitos de direito aos escravizados.  O direito moderno legitimou a hegemonia dos senhores de escravos e a inexistência de direitos aos cativos, mas criou as condições necessárias para a insurgência e o devir de resistência do ser escravizado, no âmbito de sua humanidade prorrogada.  Essa resistência é perene diante do avanço das fronteiras do progresso, que invadem os territórios tradicionais ocupados pelos excluídos do direito no sistema capitalista, sobretudo os Negros. Instalam-se conflitos ecológicos distributivos e no âmbito deles as gentes resistem e os massacres acontecem. O racismo, como processo histórico continua. Abstract: The colonial slavery, as a vector of a process of capital organization and the construction of a world system, engenders a perennial disqualification of the Black people and places it on the margins of the Western world, transforming it into a subject of ecological conflicts in the contemporary globalized world distributive, in the fight for their rights. From this and from the perspective of law, it is proposed to reflect on the historical condition of the Negro as a central agent and subject of struggle and resistance in the conformation of capitalism, to re-signify the role of these subjects of law and their struggles in the conflicts originated in the development. An analytical approach is made in the specialized literature on slavery. The ecological conflicts were thought from the political ecology and the racism was approached from the critical philosophy and history. From the results, it is shown that the slave system was central to the construction of the capitalist world system and that modern state law served the institution of this regime, denying the condition of subjects of law to the enslaved. Modern law legitimized the hegemony of the slave owners and the lack of rights to the captives but created the necessary conditions for the insurgency and the becoming of resistance of the enslaved, within the scope of his extended humanity. This resistance is perennial in the face of the advance of the frontiers of progress, which invade the traditional territories occupied by those excluded from law in the capitalist system, especially the Blacks. Distributive ecological conflicts are set up and within them people resist and massacres happen. Racism as a historical process continues.

Orientalist Knowledge and Social Theories: China and the European Conceptions of East-West Differences from 1600 to 1900

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 254-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ho-Fung Hung
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
World System ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
The World ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
East West

This paper examines the long-term development of Orientalism as an intellectual field, with the European learning of China between ca.1600 and ca.1900 as an exemplary case. My analysis will be aided by a theoretical framework based on a synthesis of the world-system and network perspectives on long-run intellectual change. Analyzing recurrent debates on China within European intellectual circles, I demonstrate that the Western conception of the East has been oscillating between universalism and particularism, and between naive idealization and racist bias. This oscillation is a function as much of the changing political economy of the capitalist world-system as of the endogenous politics of the intellectual field. Despite their contrasting views, both admirers and despisers of the East viewed non-Western civilizations as uniform wholes that had never changed. I argue that the fundamental fallacy of Orientalism lay, not in its presumptions about the ontological differences between East and West and the former's inferiority, as previous critics of Orientalism have supposed, but in its reductionism. Understanding non-Western civilizations in their full dynamism and heterogeneity is a critical step toward the renewal of the twentieth-century social theories that were built upon and impaired by the Orientalist knowledge accumulated in the previous centuries.

Coal's Persistence in the Capitalist World-Economy

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul K. Gellert ◽  
Paul S. Ciccantell
Keyword(s):  
World Economy ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Ecological Modernization ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Coal Consumption ◽  
The World ◽  
Capitalist World Economy ◽  
Capitalist World

Predominant analyses of energy offer insufficient theoretical and political-economic insight into the persistence of coal and other fossil fuels. The dominant narrative of coal powering the Industrial Revolution, and Great Britain's world dominance in the nineteenth century giving way to a U.S.- and oil-dominated twentieth century, is marred by teleological assumptions. The key assumption that a complete energy “transition” will occur leads some to conceive of a renewable-energy-dominated twenty-first century led by China. After critiquing the teleological assumptions of modernization, ecological modernization, energetics, and even world-systems analysis of energy “transition,” this paper offers a world-systems perspective on the “raw” materialism of coal. Examining the material characteristics of coal and the unequal structure of the world-economy, the paper uses long-term data from governmental and private sources to reveal the lack of transition as new sources of energy are added. The increases in coal consumption in China and India as they have ascended in the capitalist world-economy have more than offset the leveling-off and decline in some core nations. A true global peak and decline (let alone full substitution) in energy generally and coal specifically has never happened. The future need not repeat the past, but technical, policy, and movement approaches will not get far without addressing the structural imperatives of capitalist growth and the uneven power structures and processes of long-term change of the world-system.

Anthropology and the Anthropocene: Criticisms, Experiments, and Collaborations

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew S. Mathews
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Human Impacts ◽  
Ecological Models ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Temporal Scales ◽  
The World ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
Natural Histories ◽  
Historical Epoch

The Anthropocene, a proposed name for a geological epoch marked by human impacts on global ecosystems, has inspired anthropologists to critique, to engage in theoretical and methodological experimentation, and to develop new forms of collaboration. Critics are concerned that the term Anthropocene overemphasizes human mastery or erases differential human responsibilities, including imperialism, capitalism, and racism, and new forms of technocratic governance. Others find the term helpful in drawing attention to disastrous environmental change, inspiring a reinvigorated attention to the ontological unruliness of the world, to multiple temporal scales, and to intertwined social and natural histories. New forms of noticing can be linked to systems analytics, including capitalist world systems, structural comparisons of patchy landscapes, infrastructures and ecological models, emerging sociotechnical assemblages, and spirits. Rather than a historical epoch defined by geologists, the Anthropocene is a problem that is pulling anthropologists into new forms of noticing and analysis, and into experiments and collaborations beyond anthropology.

Rise and Fall

2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 727-754 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Chase-Dunn ◽  
E. Susan Manning ◽  
Thomas D. Hall
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Global System ◽  
Systems Perspective ◽  
Early States ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Regional System

The world-systems perspective was invented for modeling and interpreting the expansion and deepening of the capitalist regional system as it emerged in Europe and incorporated the whole globe over the past 500 years (Wallerstein 1974; Chase-Dunn 1998; Arrighi 1994). The idea of a core/periphery hierarchy composed of “advanced” economically developed and powerful states dominating and exploiting “less developed” peripheral regions has been a central concept in the world-systems perspective. In the last decade the world-systems approach has been extended to the analysis of earlier and smaller intersocietal systems. Andre Gunder Frank and Barry Gills (1994) have argued that the contemporary global political economy is simply a continuation of a 5,000-year-old world system that emerged with the first states in Mesopotamia. Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas Hall (1997) have modified the basic world-systems concepts to make them useful for a comparative study of very different kinds of systems. They include very small intergroup networks composed of sedentary foragers, as well as larger systems containing chiefdoms, early states, agrarian empires, and the contemporary global system in their scope of comparison.

METAPHOR OF «DESTROYED WORLD» IN THE POLITICAL PROJECTION OF WORLD-SYSTEM ANALYSIS

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-86
Author(s):  
V.E. BAGDASARYAN ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
System Analysis ◽  
Political Process ◽  
World System ◽  
World Order ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Catastrophe ◽  
Systemic Nature ◽  
World Center

The purpose of the article is to present an analysis of modern global political processes characterized by the unipolarity of the destruction of the former world system. The current situation of political transit is assessed as a failure of technologies of controlled chaos and transition to a state of turbulence. The basic approach of the research was the methodology of world-systems analysis. The article provides arguments that substantiate the systemic nature of the crisis of the World Center, the problematic nature of the restoration of the unipolar system of the world order. Four scenario perspectives of further development of the world political process are considered: 1. restoration of the leadership legitimacy of the World Center; 2. change of the core of the world system; 3. transition of a state of chaos to a global catastrophe; 4. the establishment of a system of a multilateral world of civilizations. It is indicated that the West-centered world-system has paradoxically diverged at some stage from the values of the Western civilization itself. And it is obvious that the transition to a multilateral world should be linked to the basic civilizational values of the world-systems, their differences from the values of other communities. As a result, practical recommendations are presented for the activity steps of building a system of multilateral world order as a desirable prospect for overcoming the state of turbulence and preventing a new geopolitical hegemony.

Devolution processes and the theory of historical development by S. Sanderson

2021 ◽  
pp. 72-77
Author(s):  
A.V. Verkhoturov ◽  
◽  
A.A. Obukhov
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
World System ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Evolutionary Trend ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
American Historian ◽  
Immanuel Wallerstein ◽  
Main Ideas

Analyzed is one of the most comprehensive modern approaches to the problem of the existence of evolution of human society as such and of specific human communities, i.e. “General Theory of Historical Development” by American historian and sociologist Stephen Sanderson. While agreeing, in general, with its main ideas, we believe that it is important to note that the issue of existence of individual communities demonstrating devolution (regression to an earlier historical state), stagnation or degeneration at certain historical stages is practically ignored in the framework of the theory under consideration. This creates its vulnerability in the face of specific empirical data, indicating a deviation from the evolutionary trend. We believe that overcoming this theoretical difficulty is possible in the process of comprehending the theory of S. Sanderson in the context of ideas of the world-system approach of Immanuel Wallerstein. We want to show that examples of devolution, stagnation and degeneration of societies do not deny general progressive evolutionary tendencies, characteristic for the world-system as a whole, but only indicate the transition of a particular society to a lower level within the world-system (from the core to the semi-periphery, or from the semi-periphery to the periphery).

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