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Wallerstein's World-Economy: How Seriously Should We Take It?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Angus McDonald Jr
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Extract

Since well before the symposium on Sinology and the Social Sciences, carried in this journal more than a decade ago, modernization theory has provided a key theoretical orientation for many Western students of China. Immanuel Wallerstein has launched a major frontal attack on modernization theory and has proposed an alternative of considerable interest to those of us studying late imperial and modern China. Indeed, “Wallersteinism” is becoming something of a major academic growth industry. Wallerstein's perspective is not without problems, but his views deserve fuller exposure in the China field because of their implications for the study of change in Chinese society.

Type
Review Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , May 1979 , pp. 535 - 540
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1979

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References

1 JAS, 23:4 (August 1964)Google Scholar, with contributions by J. R. Levenson, Mary Wright, G. W. Skinner, Maurice Freedman, F. W. Mote, Rhoads Murphey, and B. I. Schwartz.

2 Wallerstein's, ImmanuelThe Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1974)Google Scholar is the first in a projected four volume series. The “text edition” (Academic Press, 1976) is an inferior product, lacking the footnoted parts of the argument. The Capitalist World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979)Google Scholar, a collection of essays, arrived too late for inclusion in this review. A summary of the Wallerstein thesis is sketched in “The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16 (September 1974)Google Scholar. Among works by his followers, see Moulder, Francis, Japan, China and the Modern World Economy (London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Hechter, Michael, Internal Colonialism: the Celtic Fringe in British National Development (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1975)Google Scholar; and Chirot, Daniel, Social Change in the 20th Century (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977)Google Scholar.

3 As Theda Skcopol points out in a thoughtful review, “Wallerstein's World Capitalist System: A Theoretical and Historical Critique,” American Journal of Sociology, 82:5 (March 1977)Google Scholar.

4 “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” Selected Works, I (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969), 112Google Scholar.

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6 “Modernization: Requiescat in Pace,” in Coser, L. A. and Larsen, O. N., eds., The Uses of Controversy in Sociology (New York: Free Press, 1976), p. 132Google Scholar.

7 Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, p. 347.

8 Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, p. 16.

9 “Semi-peripheral Countries and the Contemporary World Crisis,” Theory and Society, 3:4 (Winter 1976), p. 463Google Scholar.

10 Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, pp. 332. 335.

11 Wallerstein, The Modem World-System, p. 10.

12 Brenner, Robert, “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-industrial Europe,” Past and Present, 70 (February 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar argues, with numerous examples, that sixteenth century European economic development was the outcome of new class relations more favorable to new organization of production, technological innovations, and increasing levels of productive investment: “These new class relations were themselves the result of previous, relatively autonomous processes of class conflict” (p. 37).

13 See, for example, Tilly, Charles, ed., The Formation of Nation States in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 44–45Google Scholar; Gourevitch, Peter, “The International System and Regime Formation: A Critical Review of Anderson and Wallerstein,” Comparative Politics, 10:3 (April 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar lists most reviews.

14 Edward L. Farmer, “Institutional Choices and Social Innovation: Constitutional Developments in the Early Ming Dynasty (1350–1425)”; and Robert M. Somers, “Time, Space, and Structure in the Consolidation of the Tang Dynasty,” both given at the third annual meeting of the Social Science History Association, Columbus, Ohio, November 1978.

15 Adams, Richard N., “Power in Human Societies: A Synthesis,” in Fogelson, Raymond D. and Adams, Richard N., eds., The Anthropology of Power (New York: Academic Press, 1977)Google Scholar; and his Energy and Structure: A Theory of Social Power (Austin: Univ. of Texas, 1975)Google Scholar.

16 Skinner, G. William, ed., The City in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Smith, Carol A., ed., Regional Analysis: Vol. I, Economic Systems; Vol. II, Social Systems (New York: Academic Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Fox, Edward W., History in Geographic Perspective: The Other France (New York: Norton, 1971)Google Scholar.

17 Atwell, William S., “Notes on Silver, Foreign Trade, and the Late Ming Economy,” Ch'ing-shih wen-t'i, 3:8 (1977), 1–33Google Scholar; Cheong, W. E., “The Decline of Manila as a Spanish Entrepôt in the Far East, 1785–1826: Its Impact on the Pattern of Southeast Asian Trade,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 2:2 (September 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Huang, Ray, Taxation and Governmental Finance in Sixteenth Century Ming China (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Littrup, Leif, “The Early Single-Whip Policy in Shandong,” Papers on Far Eastern History, 15 (March 1977)Google Scholar.

19 F. W. Mote, “Yuan and Ming,” in Chang Kwang-chih, ed., Food in Chinese Culture, p. 195. See also Schneider, Jane, “Was There a Pre-Capitalist World-System?” Peasant Studies, 6:1 (1977), 20–29Google Scholar.

20 Since summer 1977, published at the State University of New York at Binghamton.