World-Systems Theory

CARMEN BUENO CASTELLANOS

Universidad Iberoamericana, Ciudad de México, Mexico

Anthropological studies of the world system are based mainly on the work of
Immanuel Wallerstein. Therefore, to show the importance and contemporariness of
the world-systems approach, this entry begins by presenting the context and underly-
ing theoretical and methodological influences of Wallerstein’s contributions. This first
section is important to an understanding of the influence of this approach on classic
texts in anthropology, at a time when American and British anthropology were delving
into more complex explanations than those offered by community studies. As Eric
Wolf (1982) noted, social problems have never been enclosed in their own dynamic;
focusing exclusively on the local arena distorts reality. The classical anthropological
contributions to the understanding of the world system are presented in the second
section. The third section highlights some current research based on Wallerstein’s
proposal and ends with a short reflection on the pertinence of this approach to social
phenomena in a globalized world.

Wallerstein’s main contributions to the world-systems

analysis

It is important to note the context and the influence that led to the development of
the world-systems theory. Wallerstein met Gionvanni Arrighi and Terence Hopkins on
research trips to Africa. These three authors were able to bring together their expe-
rience in postcolonial African affairs and agreed on their political activism and com-
mon approach. They worked together in the perfect place to develop their theories, the
Fernand Braudel Center in the United States where, from a cross-disciplinary perspec-
tive, they contributed to the understanding of the great cycles of humanity’s historical
development (Derluguian 2015).
Although Wallerstein has several publications on his world-systems theory, he devel-
oped his main proposal in a four-volume collection called The Modern World-System.
The first was published in 1974 and was a revolutionary breakthrough. In this first
volume he presents explicitly the theoretical proposal of his analysis and the origin of
the modern world system during the crisis of feudalism in Northeast Europe in the
fifteenth century. At that time, Europe gradually set off a world network of economic
exchange that led to a division of labor, including in European colonies in Africa and
America. This world system integrated cores and peripheries, leaving out several regions
of the world and placing them in an outside arena. The second volume was published

The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Edited by Hilary Callan.

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea2132
2 WO R L D- S Y S T E MS T H E O R Y

six years later and covers the consolidation of the world economy after 1600, integrating
new spaces referred to as semiperipheries that acted as buffers for the system. He also
recognizes the first power struggles in the core, which brought about changes in the
reorganization of the system.
The third volume was published nine years after the second, in 1989. It covers the
enormous expansion of the world system as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution,
which incorporated new zones into the system and coincided with the independence
of the colonies in America. The fourth volume was not published until 2011. In it,
Wallerstein centers his argument on the significance of ideologies that were born of
the French and American revolutions. Wallerstein highlights the social changes caused
by the implementation of conservatism, of radicalism/socialism, and of centrist liber-
alism. The latter contained and institutionalized social contradictions even as it made
legitimate and assured the accumulation of long-term capital, which is why liberalism
is still prominent today. In 1996, before the fourth volume of the world-system collec-
tion was published, Wallerstein and a group of researchers wrote a book titled The Age of
Transition: Trajectory of the World-System 1945–2025 arguing that today there is a world
capitalist economy that covers the entire planet and whose accelerated expansion began
in the nineteenth century.
There are three very significant influences in Wallerstein’s contribution. The first
is Marxism, which allows him to understand the workings and contradictions of
the world system, recognizing it as a worldwide capitalist system, a historical system
defined by the priority of the endless accumulation of capital. He differs from orthodox
Marxism, arguing that surplus value and class struggle are not the only factors that
explain capital accumulation; instead he affirms that capitalism is nourished by diverse
forms of labor control that can be more profitable, such as free work, forced work, and
slavery. His second influence is the Fernand Braudel methodology of long economic
cycles, which allows him to understand the evolution of the capitalist economy and
its mechanisms to change and adapt under the logic of accumulation. The third
influence is the theory of dependence that came out of Latin American academics as an
opposing proposal to the unilinear development models that had been implemented
in several countries of the world and encouraged by international organizations. The
development model maintained that all countries had to go through the same evolu-
tionary stages. The negative effects of their implementation were severely criticized
by the main representatives of dependency theory who argued that development
and subdevelopment were two sides of the same coin and therefore fed each other
mutually. The conjunction of these three influences can be seen in the contributions
of the world-systems approach and caught the attention of anthropologists seeking
global-level explanations.
In summary, Wallerstein’s main contribution is the historical-critical explanation
of social change based on commercial exchange between places that are different not
only geographically but also culturally and socially. Social change is analyzed as a
process of long cycles that result from different types of interaction, reaccommodation
of the power centers, and reconfiguration of the entire system. Another contribution is
that it is one social system with an international division of labor and several types of
labor control. The internal differences prefigure three areas. The first is the core, which
 WO R L D- S Y S T E MS T H E O R Y 3

controls commercial exchange and technological development, enjoys the benefits of

what is produced and circulates in the system, and is backed by powerful states. By
contrast, the second area is made up of peripheral regions characterized by poverty,
whose economy is based on labor-intensive activities—extraction of minerals and
agricultural production. Furthermore, the regulatory framework and governability are
weak, dependent, and subordinated to the interests of sovereign states. Lastly, there is a
third area, the semiperipheral regions, which is in the middle, participating as a buffer
and being coopted as an ally of the major powers.

Classical anthropological studies of world-systems theory

The world-systems approach led three anthropologists who represent multilinear

evolutionism to write iconic works, critically reevaluating what they considered to be
a Eurocentric position in Wallerstein’s legacy, in particular the contributions published
in the first two volumes on the modern world system. We must remember that, more
than any other social science, anthropology is concerned with what people think, feel,
and do. This idea is what basically inspired Ángel Palerm (1980), Eric Wolf (1982), and
Sydney Mintz (1985) to formulate a theoretical dialogue based on the historical
and ethnographic recounting of societies that maintained several interconnections,
weaving a dependence–subordination relationship with the hegemonic centers. They
gave priority to mapping interconnecting spaces and evolutionary trajectories through
people’s lives and purposes rather than reducing people in the periphery to passive
anonymous social groups. Studies done by these three authors broke with the tradition
of the Boasian school and dared to understand the larger forces of the modern world
system according to local responses. In the first paragraph of the introduction to
his book, Wolf states, “The world of humankind constitutes a manifold, a totality of
interconnected processes, and inquiries that disassemble this totality into bits and then
fail to reassemble it falsify reality” (1982, 3).
These authors agree on two large influences. To begin with, they hold Wallerstein’s
line of thinking with a reformed theoretical proposal, as is presented later. They reaffirm
the approach that explains the long cycles of the world-systems logic, noting the several
ways to create value and maximize capital accumulation in economic processes that
are interconnected and are supported or legitimized by diverse political and military
powers. The other important influence was multilinear evolutionism. This approach
maintains that there are several possible paths to the development of cultures and soci-
eties. One of its most renowned proponents is Julian Steward, who was Wolf and Mintz’s
professor and research coordinator. Steward’s theory of multilinear evolution proposes
that there is a causal relationship between the organization of social groups and the
exploitation of their natural resources, while technology, livelihood strategies, and the
articulation to the market are decisive factors to place them at different levels of socio-
cultural integration.
These studies by Palerm (1980), Wolf (1982), and Mintz (1985) show this influ-
ence, although their approach to world phenomena has certain specificities. Palerm,
a Spaniard who emigrated to Mexico during the Spanish Civil War, had a close
4 WO R L D- S Y S T E MS T H E O R Y

relationship with Wolf and Mintz. He tested Wallerstein’s world-systems proposal,

analyzing the economic and social organization for the extraction of silver in New
Spain and its overseas transportation, demonstrating the strategic importance of this
mineral in the positioning of Spain in a hegemonic position at a time when Europe
was a central node in the world system. Silver became a highly valued commodity in
Europe’s mercantile circuits with the Far East. To analyze colonial economies in the
sixteenth century, Palerm presents the structuring principles of silver extraction in
large mining centers in the Mexican territory. His interpretation is supported by the
symbiotic connection between three social institutions: mining–hacienda–indigenous
community. All three were regulated and even managed by a centralized political
system headed by representatives from the colony. With this argument, Palerm asserts
that capitalism was able to integrate successfully unequal strategies for extracting value
by transferring surplus from the colony of New Spain to the Spanish kingdom.
Wolf (1982) rebuilds several connections and links that led to the expansion and
consolidation of the world system and that had an effect on the livelihood of the local
people involved in producing, distributing, and consuming commodities that had a
transnational reach beginning in the sixteenth century. His main point of reference was
the vision of what he called “people without history.” It means giving ordinary people
located on the system’s periphery the agency to be drivers of historical change. He refers
to social groups that, from their dependent position, contributed strategically to sup-
porting and developing the world system. Wolf analyzed how uneven commodity paths
were built up all along the chain that altered the economies and the types of social orga-
nization of the “people without history.” His analytical proposal is built on what Wolf
calls the three modes of production. The first one is the capitalist mode of production,
where mainly economic mechanisms work to transfer surplus from the working class
to the owners of the means of production, and where the state is obligated to show its
power to maintain and guarantee the interests of the economically dominant class, to
support the regimes that discipline work, and to provide the infrastructure required
for production. The second is the tributary mode of production supported by coercive
instruments of domination. The economy is regulated by the concentration of tributes.
This production system predominates in extractive economies. Finally, the kin-ordered
mode of production is organized through kinship norms that fix the rules for the mobi-
lization of social work, mainly for collective ends.
Mintz (1985) offers a detailed description of the sugar trade over three decades, which
allows us to realize the strategic role this commodity had in the expansion of world
capitalism. He shows that the plantation production system based on slavery and tech-
nological innovations transformed the productivity of sugar, responding to an increase
in demand led by changing patterns of consumption. The methodological difference
with Palerm and Wolf is that Mintz rebuilds the production and distribution chains,
paying special attention to the cultural patterns of consumption and taste. He thus traces
several connections between places that are geographically distant and identifies sev-
eral institutions and political forms that supported the exponential growth of sugar and,
at the same time, the local appropriation of such processes, in both England and the
Caribbean. He shows a hybrid model of exploitation of labor that combined slavery
with a certain level of tolerance, so that plantation workers could produce their own
 WO R L D- S Y S T E MS T H E O R Y 5

food and create local commerce. This economic model reduced the costs of reproduc-
tion and increased the margins of value extraction from this commodity. Mintz also
provides evidence of the political and economic influence of plantation owners and
bankers who not only designed a series of regulations but also promoted sugar’s value
and cultural significance. He argues that the “desire” for sugar was not so much a con-
sumer demand but something prompted by the interests of the plantation owners and
the industrial businessmen.
These three works have had several impacts on current studies that analyze the effects
of the intensification and expansion of the many interconnections of the globalized
economy and maintain the interest in giving systemic explanations based on the point of
view of peripheral spaces. There are many challenges because there is no longer a georef-
erence of the world-systems configuration. Inequalities between hegemonic cores and
multiple peripheries continue being the consequence of relational processes but we can
find multiple circuits of goods distribution scattered everywhere, as well as extreme
exploitation in cosmopolitan cities. The following section presents some phenomena
that are identified with globalization processes and that have reconsidered and given
new meaning to the world-systems theory.

The present and future of the world-systems approach

As already stated, world interconnections not only persist but have also been redimen-
sioned and have become more complex. The metropolis–colony relationship no longer
exists; it faded, giving birth to new hegemonic zones such as China and intensifying
precarious conditions in peripheral areas such as Africa. There still prevails a double
interplay between a global logic of economic forces and the political forces that have
control over the local space. Inequalities within the world system are a consequence
of new types of technological, financial, and trade dependence that bring about new
processes of conflict and exploitation. Besides, as Wallerstein proposes in the fourth
volume of his The Modern World-System, the strengthening and expansion of the world
system is a response to the predominance of liberal thinking.
Something that stands out in the twenty-first-century world system is that the hege-
monic nodes are coopted by large global firms that have restructured their production
logic and their market penetration. These firms include value chains that are dispersed
all over the planet. This structural logic of the global firms has substituted modes of
production for modes of accumulation. The hegemonic nodes of the world system are
backed by the industrial logic of power holders, including international organizations
such as the World Trade Organization. State apparatus must comply with international
agreements and support the interests of global capital. Meanwhile, world-systems
peripheries are made up of flows of depreciated wages, mostly deregulated and unstable
jobs, the proliferation of distribution channels of cheap merchandise, and significant
changes in consumption patterns in society as a whole.
In this context, anthropology can contribute to the understanding of the current
world system, tracing paths traveled by goods and trajectories of commodities and
people that circulate internationally. It can follow the complex interactions in different
6 WO R L D- S Y S T E MS T H E O R Y

contexts, from the raw material extraction, the production and distribution spaces,
to new consumption circuits—the myriad regulations or deregulations as well as
social values and norms along different tracks of the trajectory. The methodological
strategy had already been tested by Palerm (1980), Wolf (1982), and Mintz (1985).
Like these authors, George Marcus also proposes a change of approach to studies
within and of the world system, following objects and merchandise that make up
part of dominant flows at the global level and that are involved in several narratives,
objects of study that are ultimately mobile and multiply situated. Marcus reiterates
that the role of the ethnographer is to contribute to social and cultural changes
brought about by the logic of connections and exchanges between sites, so as to
analyze the repercussions in the livelihood of societies involved in and affected by
global geopolitical and economic interests. Based on the world-systems approach,
anthropology today studies not only the hegemonic production chains and the strategic
importance of the technologies but also the production of a series of intensive labor
commodities that have generated a worldwide distribution and consumption pattern
that has been called “globalization from below” (Matthews, Lins Ribeiro, and Alba Vega
2012).
Some of the studies that maintain interest in the hegemonic centers of the world
system are those by Allen Batteau (2010) and Carmen Bueno (2016). The latter uses the
world-systems approach to understand the logic of the business network of commodity
production that includes a high technological content, such as auto production and
its fixity in areas within the semiperiphery. Leadership of the business network is
located in the central nodes of global firms; it is where strategic decisions about market
positioning, the viability of innovation projects, the investment strategy, and risk
management take place. These central nodes need spaces to expand their presence that
fulfill certain requisites such as adequate material and social infrastructure to relocate
the production processes of least value added, such as assembly processes. These
semiperipheral areas depend on off-the-shelf technology transfer to carry out the
manufacturing, which makes them reservoirs of innovation created in the neuralgic
centers of the system. The spread of machinery and labor processes include routines,
managerial and organizational skills, and principles of standardized operations. This
means that for this value-added production system to work, symbolic orders are
required that contain the risks of fragmentation of resources and knowledge. Roughly,
the business network maintains a hierarchical, asymmetric structure in which the
central nodes densify organic, flexible relations to coordinate core functions of the
system while, on the semiperiphery, relations of control and command predominate,
limiting the margin of decision making in the lowest-value-added units, whose main
compromise is to align with the directions given by the neuralgic centers of the
system.
To complement Carmen Bueno’s study, Allen Batteau analyzes a phenomenon that
is embedded in the modern world system, what he calls large-scale, tightly coupled
systems (LTCS). Industrial supply chains and air transport are examples of LTCS in
which he finds very narrow degrees of freedom in assemblages of social groups, social
problems, and social artifacts. The dynamics of this network produce tensions that
arise as a consequence of gaps and mismatches between the core and the rest of the
 WO R L D- S Y S T E MS T H E O R Y 7

system. The rest of the system is made up of regions with dense collaboration among
business, universities, and government, supported by institutional configurations that
are aligned with the needs of the LTCS. These nodes generate a “natural” ecosystem
where innovations are explored and exploited and later on diffused and adopted in
the semiperipheries and peripheries of the system. It is on the fringes of the system
where technology transfer faces less developed or even nonexistent material and social
infrastructure, different regulatory regimes, and different cultural assumptions and
expectations. These asymmetries lead to an incomplete and at times risky technology
appropriation in the nonhegemonic nodes of the system.
Marina Karides (2015) presents a summary of the book written by Nancy
Plankey-Videla, titled We Are in This Dance Together, where the author shows the
specific case of a high-end apparel production facility located in the semiperiphery
of global production and trade. We must remember that the apparel industry is labor
intensive and has therefore experienced rapid expansion, integrating a worldwide pro-
duction system that interconnects myriad semiperipheral and peripheral regions to a
globalized distribution system. This research illustrates the changing strategies owners,
managers, workers, and unions have been implementing in recent years to react to the
contemporary features of the capitalist world economy. The author describes everyday
strains and pressures of all the social actors already mentioned to survive in a world
system where they depend on business plans formulated in faraway central nodes,
where final decisions are taken concerning garment designs, consumption patterns,
price fixing, and bargaining terms. Karides states that subsisting on the periphery of
this system means participating in a culture of “maneuvering,” sacrificing mainly the
workers’ salaries and participating in a fierce competition between the peripheral and
semiperipheral regions of the system.
Mathews, Lins Ribeiro, and Alba Vega (2012) coordinated a book titled Globalization
from Below, which includes several case studies that illustrate the exponential growth of
a subaltern social and political world system structured by cross-border flows of people,
goods, information, and capital among different unregulated petty-production centers
and marketplaces where lower- and middle-class people purchase. China has become
the central node of this nonhegemonic system, as it concentrates the world’s man-
ufacturing powerhouse of “original copies” or cheap merchandise, supplying mostly
Africa, Asia, and Latin America’s street markets, with a presence also in European and
US low-income commerce. The authors argue that globalization from below cannot
be understood as separate from the hegemonic nodes; both systems maintain complex
connecting mechanisms. Their difference lies in access to fiscal, political, and economic
state power that is seen in mutual relations of conflict, cooperation, and contradiction.
Globalization from below is supported by socially sanctioned and protected norms
and regulations such as family relations and clientelism. In the last chapter of their
book, Mathews, Lins Ribeiro, and Alba Vega (2012) argue that the influence of the
world-systems approach in understanding nonhegemonic economic circuits is found
in its consideration of the systemic rules of a space–time transnational region that tra-
verses several political and cultural units.
All of the academic works presented here confirm the explanatory reach of the
world-systems approach in understanding the long cycle of modern capitalism since
8 WO R L D- S Y S T E MS T H E O R Y

its birth in the sixteenth century. Today this approach has demonstrated its pertinence
to understanding not only the logic of modes of production but also the multiple
modes of accumulation. As tested in several of the works presented, the hegemonic
world system is facing new challenges. Power is now concentrated in multilateral
institutions and global firms whose supranational logic is taken from local contexts so
as to build their own governability, which has led local contexts, especially those in the
periphery and semiperiphery, to reinforce their subordinate position. The hegemonic
world system coexists with another world system from below that has demonstrated
its aggressive expansion in the absence of regulations and barriers, such as alternative
flows of money and loans or informal production and distribution businesses that
operate in discontinuous spaces worldwide.
Unlike hegemonic globalization, this world system from below is supported by
cultural practices engrained in face-to-face relations and the persistence of informal
controls on the fringes of the law that are paradoxically sheltered by local gov-
ernments. Also, globalization from below has been indirectly encouraged by the
marketing of logos that have stimulated a process of emulation of consumption in
the hegemonic commercial spheres. The world-systems approach is also tested by
the relational practices that emerge in the virtual space. “The space of flows,” as
Manuel Castells (2006) has called it, has overtaken the conception of georeferenced
space. In the network society, alternative modes of accumulation are based on eco-
nomic strategies that are diluted within a relational logic, taking on a kaleidoscopic
morphology in constant expansion and contraction. The idea of “place” disappears,
making room for the social and relational construction of discontinuous spaces.
In this way the world system of the twenty-first century is re-creating different
topologies—hegemonic, nonhegemonic, and blurred in cyberspace. Nonetheless, these
world systems are permanently reconfiguring asymmetries and widening gaps among
center–periphery–semiperiphery.

SEE ALSO: Bateson, Gregory (1904–80); Capitalism; Capitalist Corporation, the;

Coloniality of Power; Corporations; Dependency Theory and Underdevelopment;
Diffusionism; Ethnography, Multisited; Export Processing Zones / Special Economic
Zones; Globalization; Glocalization; Immigration; Industrial Workers; Informal
Sector; Marx, Karl (1818–83); Palerm, Ángel (1917–80); Political Economy; Regional
Systems; Science and Technology in Development; Technology; Tourism, Travel, and
Pilgrimage; Transnational and Multinational Corporations; Transnationalism; Wolf,
Eric (1923–99)

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Batteau, Allen. 2010. “Technological Peripheralization.” Science, Technology & Human Values
35 (4): 554–74.
Bueno, Carmen. 2016. “La Empresa Red: Su Estructura y su Lógica [The Network Company:
Its Structure and Its Logic].” In Configuraciones productivas en la globalización: Trayectorias
a la Mexicana [Productive Configurations in Globalization: Trajectories with Mexican Style],
159–84. Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana.
 WO R L D- S Y S T E MS T H E O R Y 9

Castells, Manuel. 2006. “Informacionalismo, redes y sociedad red: Una propuesta teórica
[Informationalism, Networks and Society Network: A Theoretical Proposal.” In La sociedad
red: Una visión global [The Network Society: A Global Vision], 27–78. Madrid: Alianza
Editorial.
Derluguian, Georgi. 2015. “Spaces, Trajectories, Maps: Towards a World-Systems Biography
of Immanuel Wallerstein.” Journal of World-Systems Research 21 (2): 448. doi:10.5195/jwsr.
2015.14.
Eades, J. S. 2005. “Anthropology, Political Economy and World-System Theory.” In A Handbook
of Economic Anthropology, edited by James G. Carrier, 26–40. Northampton, MA: Edward
Elgar.
Karides, Marina. 2015. “Making Apparent the World-System in the Everyday Challenges of the
Apparel Industry.” Journal of World-Systems Research 21 (2): 523–27.
Marcus, George E. 1986. “Contemporary Problems of Ethnography in the Modern World
System.” In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, edited by James Clifford
and George E. Marcus, 165–93. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Mathews, Gordon, Gustavo Lins Ribeiro, and Carlos Alba Vega, eds. 2012. Globalization from
Below: The World’s Other Economy. New York: Routledge.
Mintz, Sidney W. 1985. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York:
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Palerm, Ángel. 1980. Antropología y Marxismo [Anthropology and Marxism]. Mexico City:
CIS-INAH / Editorial Nueva Imagen.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the
Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. San Diego, CA: Academic
Press.
Wolf, Eric R. 1982. Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: University of California
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