The core-periphery model. Source: Mirkyton, available here.
World Systems Analysis provides a general yet significant analysis of the interactions of global market capitalism. Wallerstein divides the world into 3 different categories of economic output and exchange, the core, periphery, and semi periphery. This division essentially describes the western world and certain westernized countries as existing within the core of economic output, with countries like Brazil and India taking the place of the semi-periphery and the rest of the developing world within the peripheral sphere of economic output. This model is coupled with Wallerstein’s analysis of the unequal exchange involved in capitalism which keeps certain nations within the core and others in the periphery and semi-periphery.
Wallerstein asserts that this world system had its origins in 16th century Europe as the western world began to conquer and colonize new territory and bring the process of capitalism to the larger world. Through the process of colonialism, the beginning of a global system of capitalist interaction began. Wallerstein also describes the monumental change of the French Revolution which brought about the normalization and institution of liberalism as a political ideology associated with the global world system. However, Wallerstein also asserts that the global system of capitalism was thrown into crisis with the world revolution of 1968. This leads to Wallerstein’s final chapter and larger argument for the eventual dissolution of the world system and its potential replacement with a new system.
World Systems Analysis provides a general yet beneficial analysis of the world system of capitalism in unifying fields such as history, sociology, and economics. The problems of World Systems analysis rests in its inherent eurocentrism which discounts the reality that the system of European hegemony was built upon the empires of Asia and the Middle East during the 13th and 14th centuries. Janet Abu-Lughod provides a detailed criticism of Wallerstein’s Eurocentric assertions in Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 by describing the world system which preceded European hegemony and the world system we recognize today.
The other problem of Wallerstein’s World Systems Analysis rests in its final argument that capitalism and the global order are in crisis and therefore on the brink of replacement. Capitalism is always in a state of crisis as it constantly evolves. Products and commodities are constantly shifting from the core to the periphery and nations constantly move on the pendulum of development. Wallerstein’s final argument while moving to a degree, is not necessarily based in reality. The importance of World Systems Analysis is not in its direct accuracy or prophetic notions of a changing future but in its understanding of the movement of capitalism and the understanding of global economic and political interactions. This book stands as a great opening to a global dialectic but it does not necessarily present the final or most compelling word on analyzing the world system.
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Bibliography
Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice. World-Systems Analysis An Introduction. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004.
Abu-Lughod, Janet L. Before European Hegemony The World System A.D. 1250-1350. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
