The World-System

Perspective

Thounaojam Somokanta
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
SOC470A
somo@iitk.ac.in
Three dominant school of development
S c h o o l o f D e v e lo p m e n t

Modernization
M o d e r n iz a t io n Dependency
D ep end en cy W o r ld -S y s t e m
World-System

1). Modernization
1). Modernization 1).
1). Dependency
Dependency 1). World-System
World-System
1).

2).Classical
2). Classical 2). Classical
2). Classical 2). World-System
Modernization
Modernization Dependency
Dependency at Global Level

3).New
3). New
Modernization
3). New
3). New 3). World-System
Modernization Dependency
Dependency at National Level

Reference:
So, A.Y. (1990). Social change and development. Sage, Newbury Park
Brief introduction of World System Perspective
 In the mid-1970s, Wallerstein developed world system perspective which is a
macrosociological perspective that seeks to explain the dynamics of the
‘capitalist world economy’ as a ‘total social system’
 ‘World-system’ is characterized by the international division of labor,
consisting of a structured set of relations between:
 1). The core, or developed countries control world wages and monopolise
the production of manufactured goods.
 2). The semi-peripheral zone resemble the core in terms of their urban
centres but have areas of rural poverty resemble periphery
 3). Peripheral countries mainly in Africa, which provide the raw materials
(e.g., cash crops) to the core and semi periphery.
 World system perspective emerged as a response to the criticisms of
modernization theory and dependency theory
Note: I have introduced basic concept of world system perspective to give a brief idea, which I rely the
informations on external sources not text book
Source: http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/users/f/felwell/www/Theorists/Essays/Wallerstein1.htm
 Historical Comparison of
context dependency and
world-system

Theoretical Semi periphery History of the

heritage Methodology capitalist world-
country
economy
 THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
 After WW II, American social scientists studied the problems of
Third World development; this started the modernization school
dominated the field of development in 1950s
 However, the failure of modernization programs in Latin America in
1960s led to the emergence of a neo-Marxist Dependency School
 The coexistence of contrasting perspectives in the field of
development made the 1970s a time of intellectual fertility
 By mid-1970s, the ideological battle between the modernization
school and the dependency school began to subside
 Wallenstein found many new activities in the capitalist world
economy that could not be explained by dependency perspective:
The activities are:
 1). It is harder to portray East Asian economic miracle as
‘manufacturing imperialism’ or ‘dependent development’ because
they begun to challenge the economic superiority of the United States
 2). There was a crisis among the socialist states (e.g., economic
stagnation); radical researchers began to rethink whether delinking
from capitalist world-economy is an appropriate model for Third
World to apply
 3). There was a crisis in US capitalism; Vietnam war, 1975 oil
embargo, widening trade gap in 1980s, etc. signalled the demise of
American hegemony in the capitalist world economy
 In order to rethink the critical issues due to the changing world-
economy, Wallerstein developed a new ‘World-System Perspective’
 This Perspective has its genesis at the Fernand Braudel Center for the
Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilization; this centre
published Review Journal (analysis of economies over long historical
time, the socio-historical process, etc); this centre holds meeting
every year and publishes papers
 This Perspective has profound impact on Sociology (and beyond); In
the American Sociological Association, a new section titled ‘The
Political Economy of the World-System’ was established
 THE THEORETICAL HERITAGE
 According to Kaye, Wallerstein’s World-System Perspective has
drawn on two major intellectual sources:
 1) Neo-Marxist literature of development: Wallenstein’s earlier
works focused on the developmental problems in Africa; he used
many neo-Marxist concepts from dependency school (e.g., core-
periphery) into World-System Perspective
 It seemed, Wallerstein’s perspective moved beyond the domain of
Neo-Marxist dependency school; this shifting orientation may be
explained by Fernand Braudel and the French Annales school
 2) Fernand Braudel and French Annales school: arose as a protest
against the over specialization of social science disciplines within
conventional academic boundaries
 Annales school advanced the following arguments:
 1). Braudel sought to develop ‘total’ history or ‘global’ history;
historians must direct each observation to the totality of the
field of social force
 2). Braudel argues for the synthesis of history and social
sciences through an emphasis on la longue duree, which is the
historical study of long-term that the totality, the deepest layers
of social life, the ‘subterranean history’, and the continuing
structures of historical reality, are revealed
 3). Brandel was instrumental in shifting the centre of concern in
historical discourse from the histories of periods to problem-
oriented history with big questions (e.g., how did Europe grow
to global dominance?)
METHODOLOGY
 For Wallenstein, world-system perspective is a protest against the
ways in which social scientific inquiry was structured at its
inception in the mid-19th century
 Wallerstein feels uncomfortable about the following five
assumptions of traditional social scientific inquiry that have
informed our research process over the past 150 years:
 On Social Science Disciplines
 On History and Social Science
 On the Unit of Analysis: Society vs Historical System
 On the Definition of Capitalism
 On Progress
On Social Science Disciplines
 In traditional scientific inquiry, the social sciences are constituted
of a number of disciplines with distinct boundaries and structures
 All these social science disciplines (e.g., Sociology) are actually
derived intellectually from the dominant liberal ideology
 Wallerstein rejects the artificial boundary of social sciences
because it is a barrier to knowledge creation
 In short, the various social science disciplines are actually but a
single one
On History and Social Science
 In traditional scientific inquiry, history is the study explaining the
particular in the past, whereas social science gives the universal
set of rules which explains human/social behavior
 It shows the distinction between idiographic and nomothetic
modes of analysis
 Wallerstein looks at the trans-historical contexts at the general
levels with particularistic narrations
 Wallerstein argues that, there is neither historian nor social
scientist, but only a historical social scientist
On the Unit of Analysis: Society vs Historical System
 In traditional social scientific inquiry, “human beings are organized
in entities we may call societies, which constitute the fundamental
social frameworks within which human life is lived”
 In 19th century, the concept of ‘society’ (customs) was opposite to
that of ‘state’ (formal institutions)
 Wallerstein states that as time has passed, we have become
accustomed to thinking that the boundaries of a society and a state
are synonymous
 Wallerstein argued that the unit of analysis should be the historical
system rather than state/society
 According to him, there have been three forms of historical
systems: mini-systems, world-empires and world-economies
On the Definition of Capitalism
 In traditional social science inquiry, “capitalism is a system based on
competition between free producers using free labor with free
commodities, ‘free’ meaning its availability for sale and purchase on
a market”
 Wallerstein argues that “the situation of free laborers working for
wages in the enterprises of free producers is a minority situation in
the modern world. This is certainly true if our unit of analysis is the
world economy”
On Progress
 In traditional social science inquiry, “human history is progressive,
and inevitably so”
 For Wallerstein, world-system analysis wants to remove the idea of
progress from the status of a trajectory and open it up as an
analytical variable
 Wallerstein concludes, we are now living in the long moment of
transition in the capitalist world-economy
 World-systems analysis is a call for the construction of a historical
social science that feels comfortable with the uncertainties of
transition, that contributes to the transformation of the world
 Equipped with a new methodology, the world-system school has
developed a new perspective from which to re-examine the
critical issues in the field of development