{"title":"Review Of: Creolizing the Modern","authors":"M. Jovanović","doi":"10.5195/jwsr.2023.1181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2023.1181","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36882,"journal":{"name":"Journal of World-Systems Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49236321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines the long-term rise of human civilization in terms of the emergence of socio-physical dissipative structures, including cities, agricultural systems, infrastructure and relevant economic enterprises. The laws of thermodynamics, the Principle of Least Time, and the phenomena of complexity and emergence are briefly reviewed and accepted as assumptions. The concepts of thermodynamic work, power and efficiency are likewise reviewed. Also examined are the emergence of medium-term dissipative structures, such as the rise and fall of dynasties, resource and economic bubbles in terms of thermodynamic theory. The impact of thermodynamic constraints on the emergence and fall of such structures is examined. Particular attention is paid to the interactions between physical resource use and the social progression of those structures. Areas of applicability to World-Systems is discussed.
{"title":"Thermodynamic Interpretation of the Progression of Historical Processes","authors":"Mark Paul Anthony Ciotola","doi":"10.5195/jwsr.2023.1175","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2023.1175","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the long-term rise of human civilization in terms of the emergence of socio-physical dissipative structures, including cities, agricultural systems, infrastructure and relevant economic enterprises. The laws of thermodynamics, the Principle of Least Time, and the phenomena of complexity and emergence are briefly reviewed and accepted as assumptions. The concepts of thermodynamic work, power and efficiency are likewise reviewed. Also examined are the emergence of medium-term dissipative structures, such as the rise and fall of dynasties, resource and economic bubbles in terms of thermodynamic theory. The impact of thermodynamic constraints on the emergence and fall of such structures is examined. Particular attention is paid to the interactions between physical resource use and the social progression of those structures. Areas of applicability to World-Systems is discussed.","PeriodicalId":36882,"journal":{"name":"Journal of World-Systems Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135001482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In recent decades, anti-systemic movements feature new forms of communication for organizing efforts: the use of information and communication technologies. Research on information and communication technologies suggests that mobile phones and internet access have increasingly facilitated horizontal communication for anti-systemic movements across the world-system, creating space for rapid and instantaneous organization and mobilization. However, existing scholarship benefits from a critical evaluation of claims about horizontality by addressing the political economy of information and communication technologies from a world-systems analysis perspective. Specifically, information and communication technology devices and platforms—from cellphones to social media channels—are designed by powerful corporations that are often based in powerful core and semi-periphery nations. The majority of these corporations are based in the hegemonic core of the United States. Within the present context of waning material resources across the world-system, these corporations profit from an online attention economy. Just as traditional material economies exploit the labor and natural resources from the periphery to extract wealth for core states, the attention economy exploits the psychologies and behaviors of periphery populations to extract wealth for core countries. Thus, some of the most powerful institutions in the world-system control the algorithms and structures where anti-systemic movements compete for peoples’ attention. This study utilizes the Mass Mobilization Data Project 1990-2018 historical dataset to determine which kinds of anti-systemic movements thrive as information and communication technology access expands globally. Using population-averaged negative binomial panel models on protest counts, I determine that as information and communication technologies expand, anti-systemic movements that are unlikely to threaten U.S. hegemony thrive, and conversely, anti-systemic movements that pose serious threats to U.S. hegemony and the present capitalist world-system are stifled. To unpack these findings, I draw from the cultural political economy approach, a framework that describes how some imaginations become a zeitgeist over competing imaginations for economic and political realities.
{"title":"Anti-Systemic Movements in the Attention Economy","authors":"Aarushi Bhandari","doi":"10.5195/jwsr.2023.1100","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2023.1100","url":null,"abstract":"In recent decades, anti-systemic movements feature new forms of communication for organizing efforts: the use of information and communication technologies. Research on information and communication technologies suggests that mobile phones and internet access have increasingly facilitated horizontal communication for anti-systemic movements across the world-system, creating space for rapid and instantaneous organization and mobilization. However, existing scholarship benefits from a critical evaluation of claims about horizontality by addressing the political economy of information and communication technologies from a world-systems analysis perspective. Specifically, information and communication technology devices and platforms—from cellphones to social media channels—are designed by powerful corporations that are often based in powerful core and semi-periphery nations. The majority of these corporations are based in the hegemonic core of the United States. Within the present context of waning material resources across the world-system, these corporations profit from an online attention economy. Just as traditional material economies exploit the labor and natural resources from the periphery to extract wealth for core states, the attention economy exploits the psychologies and behaviors of periphery populations to extract wealth for core countries. Thus, some of the most powerful institutions in the world-system control the algorithms and structures where anti-systemic movements compete for peoples’ attention. This study utilizes the Mass Mobilization Data Project 1990-2018 historical dataset to determine which kinds of anti-systemic movements thrive as information and communication technology access expands globally. Using population-averaged negative binomial panel models on protest counts, I determine that as information and communication technologies expand, anti-systemic movements that are unlikely to threaten U.S. hegemony thrive, and conversely, anti-systemic movements that pose serious threats to U.S. hegemony and the present capitalist world-system are stifled. To unpack these findings, I draw from the cultural political economy approach, a framework that describes how some imaginations become a zeitgeist over competing imaginations for economic and political realities.","PeriodicalId":36882,"journal":{"name":"Journal of World-Systems Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45347161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review Of: Creolizing the Modern","authors":"J. Itzigsohn","doi":"10.5195/jwsr.2023.1182","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2023.1182","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36882,"journal":{"name":"Journal of World-Systems Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46663149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper focuses upon the human migratory trajectory from eons on planet Earth to slowly moving out into orbital space and whether world-systems theory must craft new theoretical frames to grasp the possible problems arising from the existence of a single social system comprised of actors distributed across terrestrial and orbital platforms, dubbed here as “Einstein’s Problem.”
{"title":"Einstein’s Problem","authors":"Albert J. Bergesen","doi":"10.5195/jwsr.2023.1154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2023.1154","url":null,"abstract":"This paper focuses upon the human migratory trajectory from eons on planet Earth to slowly moving out into orbital space and whether world-systems theory must craft new theoretical frames to grasp the possible problems arising from the existence of a single social system comprised of actors distributed across terrestrial and orbital platforms, dubbed here as “Einstein’s Problem.”","PeriodicalId":36882,"journal":{"name":"Journal of World-Systems Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44375118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Will the pace of change in our global technological society continue to accelerate? Or will it follow the path of most previous technological waves, which slowed down as they matured? The purpose of this paper is to explore how historical general evolutionary processes involving increased energy flows and corresponding higher complexity levels might have contributed to the global problems we face today with regard to energy, environmental, inequality, and demographics. This situation will be compared with various integrated complexity evolutionary models of three major phases in evolution (life, humans, and civilization). While natural ecosystems seem to have both positive and negative feedback mechanisms to prevent the onset of senescence, the current economic system seems to have avoided constraints to enter a positive feedback loop that results in unsustainable resource use and pollution. There are still many contrasting interpretations of what this means for the near future, but integrating insights from these perspectives may help us better understand these processes.
{"title":"Insights from General Complexity Evolution for Our Current Situation","authors":"D. LePoire","doi":"10.5195/jwsr.2023.1176","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2023.1176","url":null,"abstract":"Will the pace of change in our global technological society continue to accelerate? Or will it follow the path of most previous technological waves, which slowed down as they matured? The purpose of this paper is to explore how historical general evolutionary processes involving increased energy flows and corresponding higher complexity levels might have contributed to the global problems we face today with regard to energy, environmental, inequality, and demographics. This situation will be compared with various integrated complexity evolutionary models of three major phases in evolution (life, humans, and civilization). While natural ecosystems seem to have both positive and negative feedback mechanisms to prevent the onset of senescence, the current economic system seems to have avoided constraints to enter a positive feedback loop that results in unsustainable resource use and pollution. There are still many contrasting interpretations of what this means for the near future, but integrating insights from these perspectives may help us better understand these processes.","PeriodicalId":36882,"journal":{"name":"Journal of World-Systems Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46387667","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Violent Crackup of the Post-WWII International Order","authors":"W. Robinson","doi":"10.5195/jwsr.2023.1153","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2023.1153","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36882,"journal":{"name":"Journal of World-Systems Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49225967","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article investigates a neglected issue of the influence of systemic transformation in Central and Eastern Europe on the (sub)field of social sciences and more broadly on local fields of power. Our case study concerns a vibrant and internationally connected network of scholars from various disciplines and generations who were involved in developing and popularizing a dependency paradigm in communist Poland. As we show that the fall of communism and related transformation in the Polish field of power brought about dramatic shift in terms of their career trajectories as well as their ideological orientation and in consequence a sudden disappearance of this academic ecosystem. On this basis we argue about wider changes—encompassing marginalization of the “critical,” autonomous tradition and strengthening of heteronomic trends in social sciences in the region but also at the global level.
{"title":"From Wallerstein to Rothschild","authors":"Andrzej Turkowski, Tomasz Zarycki","doi":"10.5195/jwsr.2023.1135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2023.1135","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates a neglected issue of the influence of systemic transformation in Central and Eastern Europe on the (sub)field of social sciences and more broadly on local fields of power. Our case study concerns a vibrant and internationally connected network of scholars from various disciplines and generations who were involved in developing and popularizing a dependency paradigm in communist Poland. As we show that the fall of communism and related transformation in the Polish field of power brought about dramatic shift in terms of their career trajectories as well as their ideological orientation and in consequence a sudden disappearance of this academic ecosystem. On this basis we argue about wider changes—encompassing marginalization of the “critical,” autonomous tradition and strengthening of heteronomic trends in social sciences in the region but also at the global level.","PeriodicalId":36882,"journal":{"name":"Journal of World-Systems Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48185903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper attempts to explain the middle-income trap from the lens of an amended world-systems theory, in which capitalists within the semi-periphery are taken into account. It rejects that developing countries should pursue an import-substitution industrialization strategy, and instead argues developing countries should pursue a strategy similar to South Korea’s. An export-oriented industrialization strategy, with tight limits on foreign direct investment (FDI) and multinational corporations (MNCs) operating within the economy, building up state capacity in order to form a close collaborative, not corrupting relationship between private businesses and the state, and calls for heavy investments in human capital and industrial upgrading. This would ensure that surplus value does not leave the country nor does it lay idle in the hands of domestic capitalists. It also calls for changes to the global economic governance regime, such as common rules for FDI and taxes on MNCs, on the part of developing countries in order to create a more development friendly international economic system.
{"title":"Trapped In The Semi-Periphery","authors":"A. Anastasi","doi":"10.5195/jwsr.2023.1119","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2023.1119","url":null,"abstract":"This paper attempts to explain the middle-income trap from the lens of an amended world-systems theory, in which capitalists within the semi-periphery are taken into account. It rejects that developing countries should pursue an import-substitution industrialization strategy, and instead argues developing countries should pursue a strategy similar to South Korea’s. An export-oriented industrialization strategy, with tight limits on foreign direct investment (FDI) and multinational corporations (MNCs) operating within the economy, building up state capacity in order to form a close collaborative, not corrupting relationship between private businesses and the state, and calls for heavy investments in human capital and industrial upgrading. This would ensure that surplus value does not leave the country nor does it lay idle in the hands of domestic capitalists. It also calls for changes to the global economic governance regime, such as common rules for FDI and taxes on MNCs, on the part of developing countries in order to create a more development friendly international economic system.","PeriodicalId":36882,"journal":{"name":"Journal of World-Systems Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42449176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The online censorship and subsequent arrest of scholar-activist Walden Bello is the latest instance of a disconcerting trend during a period of hegemonic crisis. To understand how a respected scholar ended up in jail and in grave legal trouble on very feeble accounts, we have to unpack the full implications of this case, and place it in relation to ongoing structural changes within the world-system—namely, the decline of the United States as global hegemon, the ascendancy of far-right authoritarianism as a popular political framework, and the use of institutions and technologies developed under liberal-democratic rule by authoritarian regimes for purposes of social control during a period of flux. The crisis offers an opportunity to reconfigure systemic arrangements through coordinated solidarity networks characterized by forms of organization and ways of relating that embody prerogatives and values different from those that predominate in the modern world-system and from those that reproduce the capitalist world-economy; which, more likely than not, will have authoritarian tendencies in the decades to come. As a conclusion, we offer some of the possibilities the global left has for these upcoming decades in regards of large coalitions aimed at changing the structure of the world-system at large.
{"title":"Reflections on Walden Bello","authors":"J. Ezcurdia, James J. Anderson","doi":"10.5195/jwsr.2023.1155","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2023.1155","url":null,"abstract":"The online censorship and subsequent arrest of scholar-activist Walden Bello is the latest instance of a disconcerting trend during a period of hegemonic crisis. To understand how a respected scholar ended up in jail and in grave legal trouble on very feeble accounts, we have to unpack the full implications of this case, and place it in relation to ongoing structural changes within the world-system—namely, the decline of the United States as global hegemon, the ascendancy of far-right authoritarianism as a popular political framework, and the use of institutions and technologies developed under liberal-democratic rule by authoritarian regimes for purposes of social control during a period of flux. The crisis offers an opportunity to reconfigure systemic arrangements through coordinated solidarity networks characterized by forms of organization and ways of relating that embody prerogatives and values different from those that predominate in the modern world-system and from those that reproduce the capitalist world-economy; which, more likely than not, will have authoritarian tendencies in the decades to come. As a conclusion, we offer some of the possibilities the global left has for these upcoming decades in regards of large coalitions aimed at changing the structure of the world-system at large.","PeriodicalId":36882,"journal":{"name":"Journal of World-Systems Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45640956","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}