Core/periphery Relations In Precapitalist Worlds

Christopher Chase-Dunn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367014803
• eBook ISBN: 9780429714412
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Sociologia

This book demonstrates that Immanuel Wallerstein's reluctance to apply core and periphery to precapitalist transformations is a product of the way he views the luxury trade. It utilizes the study of different kinds of world-systems to explore how logics of social reproduction become transformed.

1
Conceptualizing Core/Periphery Hierarchies for Comparative Study

Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas D. Hall

The objectives of this chapter are to clarify basic concepts for the comparative study of world-systems and to explicate general propositions about the nature and role of core/periphery hierarchies in historical social change. It is now widely accepted that contemporary social change within national societies is importantly conditioned by the linkages and structural aspects of a global stratified intersocietal network composed of "developed" national societies in core regions, "less developed" peripheral nations, and intermediate semiperipheral countries. Both historical analysis and formal (quantitative) crossnational research have demonstrated this (Wallerstein, 1974; Meyer and Hannan, 1979; Bornschier and Chase-Dunn, 1985). But in order to understand the basic structural features and system logic of the contemporary global socio-economic system it is desirable to be able to compare it with intersocietal networks¹ which are structurally different. And in order to know how system logic changes (and thus to have insights about how the contemporary system logic might be transformed in the future) it is desirable to study how the logics of world-systems have become transformed in the past. Archaeologists and historians have begun to consider the relevance of core/periphery hierarchies for the evolution of earlier, smaller regional socio-economic systems, but few of these recent studies are explicitly comparative, and confusion about basic concepts undermines the value of even the implicit comparisons which have been made.

We propose to clarify concepts for comparative study and to put forth several hypotheses about core/periphery hierarchies. Concept formation involves both deduction and induction. Since existing concepts about core/periphery hierarchies have been developed primarily from studies of the modern world-system, they need to be modified for comparative use in a study of earlier and very different intersocietal hierarchies. It is important to avoid the mistake of simply imposing vocabularies developed to explain the modern system on earlier systems in ways which distort analysis. Our goal is to formulate concepts and propositions in a way which allows us to understand both similarities and differences among core/periphery hierarchies in stateless, state-based and capitalist world-systems.

This investigation is relevant for macrosociological theories of social change, historical development, and evolution. It has become rather well-accepted that the development of both modern and ancient societies has been importantly conditioned by the existence of larger intersocietal networks of exchange and interaction (e.g., Mann, 1986). There are important controversies over how to conceptualize and bound these larger systems. The strongest world-system position claims that there is usually an explicit boundedness to the larger intersocietal network, and that it is this larger unit which displays system logic and the dynamic processes which affect the historical development of societies. In other words it is world-systems which develop, not societies, and these are distinctly bounded units. A looser version simply acknowledges the importance of intersocietal interactions but does not assume that a particular larger unit is the determinant unit which develops or evolves. One of the main goals of future comparative research should be the evaluation of the fruitfulness of various formulations regarding the conceptualization and bounding of world-systems and their general effects on societal development.

What Are World-Systems?

Immanuel Wallerstein (1974,1979) defines a world-system as an entity with a single division of labor and multiple cultures, and within this category there are two sub-types: world-empires in which the intersocietal division of labor is encompassed by a single overarching imperial polity, and worldeconomies in which the political system is composed of many states competing with one another within an interstate system. Wallerstein excludes the analysis of stateless societies by characterising them as "mini-systems" in which, allegedly, production of basic subsistence goods is accomplished within a single cultural entity. The intent of Wallerstein's definition is to encompass those processes which are substantially important for the reproduction and historical development of social structures.

Our definition of world-systems has the same intent, but it is somewhat more general in order to facilitate the comparison of very different intersocietal networks. We define world-systems as intersocietal networks in which the interaction (trade, warfare, intermarriage, etc.) is an important condition of the reproduction of the internal structures of the composite units and importantly affects changes which occur in these local structures.

One of the most important structural features of the contemporary global intersocietal system is the stratified set of relations of dominance and -dependence between the "developed" and "developing" countries. The study of the mechanisms which reproduce international inequalities is a burgeoning field in cross-national comparative research (see review in Chase-Dunn, 1989: Chapter 11). The concepts of core, periphery and semiperiphery have been developed in studies of the modern world-system. Some scholars have begun the task of studying intersocietal hierarchies in earlier world-systems, but the conceptualizations being used are often confused and confusing. What is needed is an explicit effort to formulate competing notions of coreness and peripherality with an eye to a comparative study of intersocietal inequalities. It is certain that there have been intersocietal hierarchies in the past which operated in ways very different from that of the contemporary global relationship between "developed" and "developing" countries.

In the following we have taken a variation-maximizing approach to the study of intersocietal inequalities in order to explore both the general similarities and the important divergences among different sorts of worldsystems. We have been stimulated to search for differences by the very provocative general arguments made by Ekholm (1980) and Ekholm and Friedman (1982). They argue that all state-based world-systems can be characterized as operating according to a logic of "capital imperialism" in which core regions accumulate resources by exploiting peripheral regions. They also contend that conflicts within and between core societies are the primary factors which account for the demise of old cores and the rise of new ones. These general arguments, which are said to apply to both ancient world-systems and the modern world-system, require evaluation by means of systematic comparison of different world-systems. We have developed the hypotheses outlined below in order to elaborate possible differences, but we are also quite Interested in the extent to which state-based and capitalist intersocietal systems share certain general features.

It should not be assumed, however, that all intersocietal systems have core/periphery hierarchies. We can certainly imagine hypothetical worldsystems without intersocietal inequalities or exploitation. Indeed, most orthodox theories of modern international trade assume equal exchange. The existence of exploitation, domination or equal exchange should not be a matter of assumption, but rather of investigation. We suspect that some stateless inter societal systems did not have core/periphery hierarchies, while others had only mild and episodic ones. In order to understand the conditions which generate intersocietal inequalities it is necessary to examine cases in which they are absert.

In what follows we will outline our conceptualizations of world-system boundaries, core/periphery hierarchies and a qualitative typology of very different intersocietal systems. Then we will propose several hypotheses regarding the presence, nature and functioning of core/periphery hierarchies in different types of world-systems.

World-System Boundaries

In order to study world-systems comparatively we must conceptualize the spatial boundaries of such systems in a way which allows very different kinds of intersocietal networks to be compared to the modern global political economy. It is commonplace that everything in the universe is in some way connected or related to everything else. But if we are in the business of formulating and testing scientific theories of human historical development, it is desirable to concentrate on those types of interconnection which are most important to the reproduction and transformation of political and socioeconomic structures. Lenski and Lenski (1987: 51) refer to a single "world system of societies" as existing "throughout history." The number and sizes of world-systems are, of course, a function of the way in which we define the connections which count. As Lenski and Lenski (1987) say:

Throughout history, human societies have established and maintained relations with one another.... During much of the past direct ties were limited to neighboring societies, since direct relations with distant societies were not possible. But, even then, indirect relations existed. Society A maintained ties with Society B, which in turn, maintained ties with Society C, and so on throughout the system. No society was ever totally cut off from the world system of societies for long, since even the most isolated societies had occasional contacts with others. With advances in transportation and communication during the last five thousand years, relations between societies have increased greatly and direct relations have been established between societies far removed from one another. As a result, the world system of societies has grown more integrated and more complex, and has come to exercise a greater influence on the life of individual societies (1987: 51).

By almost any definition there has been a global world-system since the end of the nineteenth century. Despite what the Lenskis say, before that there were human intersocietal networks which were substantially separate and autonomous with regard to their material and cultural processes of reproduction and development. If we use trade, information flows, political authority, or military competition to define intersocietal system boundaries, the human population of the Earth has, over the last ten thousand years, gone from a situation in which there were thousands of small, substantially separate regional intersocietal networks to the single global network of today.

There are a number of problems which are encountered in all network analyses which need clarification if we want to bound world-systems theoretically and empirically. Differential interaction densities, nested structures, direct and indirect connections, hierarchical versus decentralized networks, levels of hierarchy, multicentric hierarchies in which the centers are either directly connected or only indirectly connected through shared peripheries these are ail possible problems in conceptualizing and empirically bounding intersocietal networks. And, in addition to these complexities, the type of connection and the institutional nature of interactions are important. Thus, even if we decide to focus on material exchanges, it is important to know what is being exchanged, and the institutional nature of the exchange (gift, tribute, commodity trade, etc.).

Before designating an eclectic approach to world-system boundaries we will review the proposals of other scholars. The shift of the unit of analysis from societies to world-systems encourages us to consider Interconnections rather than uniformities as the important features of boundedness. Scholars who have debated the best ways to bound "civilizations" (e.g., Melko and Scott, 1987) have divided into those "culturalists" who stress the homogeneity of central values as defining civilizational boundaries, and those other "structuralists" who use criteria of interconnection rather than homogeneity. Within the group of interconnectionists there are several possibilities. Information flows have been used by some archaeologists (e.g., Renfrew, 1977; Schortman and Urban, 1987) to bound regional systems. Most scholars, however, employ either political/military or trade-based interconnections.

Immanuel Wallerstein (1974, 1979) uses two different criteria when he bounds world-systems: 1. mode of production and, 2. trade in bulk goods. Mode of production is the structuralist Marxist terminology for the system logic of social structural reproduction, competition and cooperation. Thus capitalist, tributary, socialist, and kin-based modes of production are understood to be qualitatively different system logics. Wallerstein defines capitalism as a feature of the modern world-system as a whole. By this theoretical maneuver he incorporates peripheral capitalism into the capitalist mode of production, a decided advance over those who see the periphery of the modern world-system as exhibiting precapitalist modes of production. An unfortunate corollary of this "totality assumption" is that each world-system can have only one mode of production, and thus it is not possible for different modes to be articulated within a single world-system. Hence, according to Wallerstein (1989, Chapter 3), the Ottoman Empire was a separate system from the European world-system until it had been entirely peripheralized by the European powers in the nineteenth century, because capitalism was not the dominant mode of production in the Ottoman Empire. This requires defining the obviously important economic and political/military interactions between the Ottomans and the European powers over several centuries as epiphenomenal.

The other criterion used by Wallerstein is the network of exchange of basic goods -- everyday raw materials and foodstuffs. He argues that networks of the production, distribution and consumption of these basic goods unite people across societal boundaries and create the systemic unity of a world-system. In the modern world-system (the "capitalist world-economy") these forward and backward linkages are called "commodity chains," but Wallerstein's usage suggests that non-commodified exchange of material basic goods may also be understood as constituting the interconnections of world-systems in which commodified trade is nonexistent or little developed.

Chase-Dunn (1989: Chapters 1,16) has argued that Wallerstein's totality assumption is a theoretical mistake which makes the empirical bounding of world-systems in space nearly impossible. This is because we do not have clear conceptualizations of how modes of production are related to the spatial distribution of human activities. Chase-Dunn also argues that the totality assumption makes the study of the ways in which modes of production become dominant within world-systems, and are transformed into qualitatively different system logics, nearly impossible. If, by definition, each world-system has only one mode of prod...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Introduction, Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas D. Hall
• 1 Conceptualizing Core/Periphery Hierarchies for Comparative Study
• 2 Was There a Precapitalist World-System?
• 3 5000 Years of World System History: The Cumulation of Accumulation
• 4 Cores, Peripheries, and Civilizations
• 5 The Evolution of Societies and World-Systems
• 6 Prehistoric Chiefdoms on the American Midcontinent: A World-System Based on Prestige Goods
• 7 The Role of Nomads in Core/Periphery Relations
• 8 The Monte Albán State: A Diachronic Perspective on an Ancient Core and Its Periphery
• Epilogue
• Index