Content area
Full Text
Abstract
World-system dynamics are re-conceptualized as inter-societal systems with some de-emphasis on the notions of core, periphery, and semi-periphery. This tri-part division has been useful in forcing sociology to rethink macro-level sociological analysis and in establishing the importance of considering inter-societal systems as a fundamental unit of human social organization, but this Weberian-like ideal type is constraining theoretical analysis. Moreover, core, periphery, and semi-periphery are not consistently found across a broad range of inter-societal systems, beginning with those among hunting and gathering societies and moving to the current capitalist inter-societal system. Furthermore, the often-implied view that the current geo-economic global system has replaced geo-political systems is overdrawn because geo-economics and geo-politics constantly intersect and interact in all inter-societal systems. Some illustrative general models are drawn for geo-political systems, while abstract principles for geo-political and geo-economic inter-societal relations are articulated. The goal of the paper, then, is to move current world-system analysis back, in a sense, to earlier conceptualizations of geo-economics and geo-politics and empire formations that have always existed among human populations and that now drive the dynamics of the globe today. In this analysis, the seminal work of Christopher Chase-Dunn is referenced as a source of inspiration for this small, but important, shift in analysis and modes of theorizing.
Keywords: theory, geo-economics, geo-politics, warfare, empires, rise and collapse
Christopher Chase-Dunn has for the last forty-five years added significantly to theorizing about world-system dynamics (e.g., Chase-Dunn 1988, 1990a, 1990b, 1992, 1998, 2001; Chase-Dunn and Inoue 2016; Chase-Dunn and Grimes 1995; Chase-Dunn and Hall 1991, 1997, 1998; ChaseDunn and Mann 1998; Chase-Dunn, Manning, and Hall 1998; Chase-Dunn et. al., 2000, 2009; Chase-Dunn and Lerro 2014; Chase-Dunn and Willard 1993, 1994). As a theorist, I have found much of his work important in my own theorizing about what I prefer to conceptualize as intersocietal dynamics rather than as world-system dynamics. Among his important contributions are: (a) a view of world system dynamics as unfolding in all stages of societal development, (b) an emphasis on the critical point that more is to be gained by viewing a system of societies as the fundamental unit rather than any of the constituent societies in this system, (c) a theory that views world-systems as [i] hierarchical formations among societies in...