Société québécoise de science politique

Review: [untitled]
Author(s): William Leiss
Reviewed work(s):
The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World
-Economy in the Sixteenth Century by Immanuel Wallerstein
Source: Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 10,
No. 1 (Mar., 1977), pp. 202-203
Published by: Canadian Political Science Association and the Société québécoise de science
politique
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3230514
Accessed: 12/09/2008 09:29

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202 Recensions I Reviews

reticence a propos de l'utilisation de donnees statistiques ou de notions de

comptabilit6 nationale sans une transposition d'usage. Par contre, il faut
remarquer les nombreuses indications m6thodologiques qui peuvent servir h
toute 6tude touchant de pres ou de loin le <<personnel politique >. Dans
l'ensemble, ce livre apparait comme une contribution positive et pr6cieuse a
l'analyse politique de toute formation sociale, et particulierement de
l'Argentine, a l'heure oi la f6rocite des luttes politiques et du maintien de la
domination classiste place ce pays parmi les plus ouvertement repressifs.
GERARDBOISMENU Paris

The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the Euro-
pean World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century
Immanuel Wallerstein
New York: Academic Press, 1974, pp. xiv, 410

Complaints about the cramped perspectives of academic specialists are an-

swered with a vengeance in this book, the first in a projected four-volume series,
which takes as its material nothing less than the "structure" of world history
beginning in the sixteenth century. Wallerstein explains in his introduction the
steps which led him to reject more conventional entities, such as the nation-
state, as the proper "unit of analysis" for sociological and historical inquiry,
steps which prompted him to argue that a "world-system" with unique charac-
teristics is the only adequate analytical framework for understanding how the
contemporary world emerged.
Wallerstein's method is to introduce a model for the structure of this
world-system and then to survey an immense historical literature in search of
support for the model. The result could easily overwhelm an unwary reader, for
the book is densely packed with footnotes-rivalling the text in overall
length-drawn from an enormous bibliography. Well-known historiographical
controversies, such as the spirited contest about the English gentry, are pulled
into the picture accompanied by differing calculations of population and mone-
tary matters, of social class alignments in Poland, and of how great was the role
of the Turks in the development of the Portuguese Indian Ocean trade.
What is the model? The modern world-system is first of all unique. Its
uniqueness consists in the fact that it emerged and developed as a world-
economy that was not transformed into a political empire such as ancient Rome.
Why not? Wallerstein's answer is that "the techniques of modern capitalism and
the technology of modern science, the two being somewhat linked as we know,
enabled this world-economy to thrive, produce, and expand without the
emergence of a unified political structure." I shall return to this thesis later; the
key point for Wallerstein is the construction of a world economy without an
enduring, centralized political empire.
The second important aspect of the model is its conception of the structural
differentiation of the "parts" that made up the world-system. Nations and
regions related to each other as representatives of three categories-core,
periphery, and semiperiphery. Also very significant is the contention that no
specific "part" had a stable place in this configuration; rather, the shifting
relationships maintained a dynamic tension that insured the growing hegemony
of the system as a whole. In general, however, Western Europe represented the
core-the organizing base for the world economy-Eastern Europe and the
Western Hemisphere the periphery, and parts of Southern Europe the semi-
periphery during the sixteenth century.
The defining characteristic for the three categories is the "mode of labor
organization." Wage-labor and self-employment were becoming dominant in
the core, slavery and feudal relations in the periphery, and sharecropping in the
Recensions I Reviews 203

semiperiphery. This differentiation was a necessary aspect of the system's

success: "The world-economy was based precisely on the assumption that there
were in fact these three zones and that they did in fact have different modes of
labor control. Were this not so, it would not have been possible to assure the
kind of flow of the surplus which enabled the capitalist system to come into
existence." Finally, two other factors, in combination with this structural dif-
ferentiation, were necessary conditions for the emergence of the modern
world-system: the expansion of the geographical size of the system and the
creation of strong, bureaucratic state organizations in the core areas.
There are obvious difficulties in attempting to assess a book such as this.
Perhaps its outstanding advantage is that one can learn much from the wealth of
historical detail, and from the opportunity to pursue points of interest through
the bibliographical apparatus, whatever one thinks of its underlying thesis. Very
few persons will be able to evaluate critically the author's judgment in selecting
sources over such a broad range of material or in adopting one stance or another
in response to the conflicting interpretations he summarizes on so many points at
issue in the literature.
The controversies which it is likely to generate, therefore, will revolve
around the author's motivation for this approach and the nature of his concep-
tual model. It is not clear that the results of the study will satisfy the objectives
which Wallerstein seems to have in mind. Moreover, the quantity of historical
evidence adduced in support of the model cannot be convincing, given the sweep
of the study: I suspect that equally convincing evidence could be found for
variants of the model.
More serious, in my view, is the author's failure to focus his discussion on
what seem to be the key points of interpretation, as given in the two passages
cited above. Neither the link between capitalism and a science-based technol-
ogy, nor the necessity of a tripartite differentiation of labor control for generat-
ing the "surplus" for the emergence of capitalism, is argued in a systematic
manner. A more concise argument on these key themes, rather than an accumu-
lation of historiographical controversies, might have better served the author's
own objectives.
WILLIAMLEISS York University

L'heterogeneite des espaces sociaux. Tome 1 : Caracteristiques sociales et mobilite

professionnelle
Marie Lavigne et Jean Renaud, avec la collaboration speciale de Serge Carlos
Montreal: Les Presses de l'Universit6 du Qu6bec, 1974, 231 p.
L'heterogeneite des espaces sociaux. Tome 2 : Vie de voisinage et vie de quartier
Marie Lavigne et Micheline Douville, avec la collaboration speciale de Serge
Carlos
Montreal: Les Presses de l'Universit6 du Qu6bec, 1975, 260 p.
L'6tude des quartiers de la ville est devenue depuis quelques annees un sujet
hautement int6ressant pour ceux qui s'interessent a la ville et au phenomene
d'urbanisation. Pour la science politique, l'interet de ces etudes vient surtout de
ce que celles-la peuvent offrir comme base pour discuter de la question de
decentralisation, tant au niveau des structures politiques qu'h celui de la
provision des services. II y a dix ans, la question prioritaire a l'6tude 6tait la
r6gionalisation : aujourd'hui, et en partie a cause de la regionalisation qui a ete
mise en vigueur, l'interet s'est port6 vers des entit6s infra-municipales. En
reconnaissant les limites du cadre municipal, on a cherche une centralisation au
palier regional, et une decentralisation vers un palier plus petit que la
municipalit6. Mais est-ce que cette decentralisation devait se faire vers le
voisinage, le quartier ou une entite plus grande que le quartier ? Et qu'est-ce