World-Systems Theory in Practice—Leadership, Production, and Exchange. – Review – book review
Dorothea A.L. Martin
P. Nick Kardulias, editor, World-Systems Theory in Practice–Leadership, Production, and Exchange. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999. xi + 326 pages, paper, no price listed.
A title with “world systems theory” (WST) in it would make most readers familiar with the work of I. Wallerstein immediately think of modern history topics. For this volume of converted conference papers such is not the case. It quickly becomes evident from the literature surveys at the start of the chapters that WST has moved far beyond the 1970s work of Wallerstein that defines the emergence of the modern world system of Western domination and, by extension, gave theoretical foundation to dependency theory with its core/periphery relationships.
The authors of these papers are for the most part anthropologists, in fact archaeologists who are interpreting material cultural evidence from digs. The usefulness of applying WST to ancient pre-capitalist societies, however, required so many variations in world-systems analysis that contributor Thomas Hall, in one of the two early theoretical chapters, suggests that it should now be called a “perspective” or even a paradigm that “is logically more general than a theory.” (p. 2) It is this “perspective” approach that guides this collection’s content and critique papers.
Since I am not an archaeologist or anthropologist, I can say nothing of substance about the evidence. But in many ways, the point of this book seems not so much the disclosure of new information on a variety of Meso- and North American (Maya, Incan, Mississippian), and bronze and iron age societies in the Aegean and Roman empire as it is the application of world-systems perspectives to that material.
The goal, as stated in the preface, is twofold: first to see what WST can do as an interpretive theory for anthropology and secondly to see what anthropology can do to finetune and extend the concepts of Wallerstein and others. The first goal is achieved; the second, ignored. The first two chapters, one by Hall and the other by Shutes, address theoretical questions and contribute ideas that help to redefine and localize the WST to apply to many different and sometimes very geographically restricted “worlds.” Hence the world may refer to the “world of the Inca.” With this in mind, Hall introduces the concept of the “negotiated periphery” (with a shifting core) which, when applied by Hall and other contributors, basically means that trade in this early era was often more symbiotic than hegemonic. This idea is central to Ian Morris’ explanation of the trade relationships between iron age Greece and powers to the East of its territory. Using Hall’s “negotiated periphery,” Morris details the expansion and contraction of Greek trade for the millennium after 1200 BCE. (I prefer to use Before the Common Era, BCE, and Common Era, CE, to make chronology less Eurocentric, the writer in this book, except for Frank, do not.)
World historians and others have been pushing back Wallerstein’s 1500 CE date for some time now in an attempt to give some theoretical structure to the emerging field of world history (see Andre Gunder Frank’s The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand?, 1991 for example). Indeed, this work has a chapter by Frank that is essentially a discussant-style critique of the articles in the collection. Frank, while admitting that he’s no expert in the pre-Columbian areas under study, does a fine job of addressing the theoretical aspects of papers.
Lest we think that all the anthropologists have been won over to using WST to interpret material culture, there are two other chapters that are clearly not supportive of the thrust of the WST perspective. Gil Stein’s “Rethinking World-Systems” is a negative assessment of the validity of WST applied to the pre- 1500 era, indeed he suggests that it only works well in the post-Industrial Revolutionary age. He even asserts that world-systems are not systems (pp. 159-160). Frank’s assessment of Stein is that he’s lacking in knowledge and appreciation of the intricacies of the pre-Industrial era.
The penultimate chapter by Darrell LaLone, too, is mostly a critique of the idea of WST from the perspective of ethnography, a very significant component of anthropological pursuit. LaLone’s main concern seems to be that WST has put too much emphasis on economics “and that it ignores critical dimensions such as culture, gender and local variation.” (pp. 298-299)
Perhaps to refocus the reader’s attention on the central objective of the collection of papers, the editor’s conclusion tries to rebut the rebuttals, arguing that a WST perspective is of value to anthropologists, ethnographers and historians for its ability to provide “a common framework within which scholars from various disciplines and with interest in diverse geographical zones and chronological periods can engage in a dialogue about recurring patterns of interaction among various cultures.” (p. 312) This is a laudable goal – sort of a unified field theory for the social sciences. This is an invigorating start. But much more will have to be done to demonstrate that WST is up to the task.
The fifteen content chapters of the book are bracketed by a preface and a conclusion by the editor (who also has a content chapter) and, although each chapter’s writer provides references at the end of his or her respective piece, there is also a helpful index covering the whole work.
Stylistically, the papers hang together very well and the level is appropriate for advanced undergraduates, graduates, and scholars in the fields of anthropology/archaeology and world history. Historians will find this work useful both as a crib source for both lecture detail and, more importantly, as a theoretical overview to their World Civilizations survey courses.
Dorothea A.L. Martin History Dept. Appalachian State University Boone, NC 28608
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