WORLD SYSTEMS THEORY

What structures the paths along which people, goods

and ideas flow through the world?
WORLD SYSTEM

Core

Semiperiphery

Periphery
WORLD SYSTEMS THEORY

“The secret of
capitalism was in
the establishment of
the division of labor
within the
framework of a
world-economy that
Immanuel Wallerstein 1974 was not an empire.”
TWO KINDS OF EMPIRES

Large bureaucratic
Large axial division of
structures with a single
labor with multiple
political center and an
political centers and
axial division of labor, but
multiple cultures
multiple cultures
Between 1450 and 1670, something new emerged…
Capitalism
MODE OF PRODUCTION

Market Economy Class Relations

1. Exchanges of goods and 1. Ownership of the means
services (trade) of production
2. calculated according to a – Skills and Knowledge
universal medium of
exchange/value – Tools
(money), – Land
3. and carried out by means 2. Accumulation of wealth
of a “supply + demand =
price” mechanism – Reinvestment
(market). – Inheritance
CAPITALISM

Capitalism is
only one of many
possible kinds of
economy
RESISTANCE

European trade with

Japan opened in 1543
Sakoku: Closed door
policy. Implemented in
1635
RESISTANCE

1858: US forces Japan to

reopen its ports to
international trade.
• Control over tariffs
• Extraterritoriality
MODERNITY

Modernity: A cultural Modernization: Japan

system marked by belief underwent a 77-year
in science, secularism, centralized transition to
planning, and progress. turn itself into a modern
empire on the European
model.

Japanese Battleship Asahi

THE WORLD ECONOMY

A world economy “encompasses within its bounds

empires, city-states, and the emerging nation-states.
It is a world economy not because it encompasses the
whole world but because it is larger than any juridical
defined political unit. It is a world-economy because
the basic linkage between the parts of the system is
economic.”
-- Immanuel Wallerstein
What is important is not the parts—states,
empires, transnational corporations, NGOs,
global insitutions—but the relations
between the parts.
PROBLEMS

1. Takes nation states for granted

2. Interconnections are between stable elements
3. All movements take place within structural system
(center-semiperiphery-periphery)
4. Doesn’t have a central place for culture
GLOBAL FLOWS

Ethnoscapes Transnational flows of people

Mediascapes Transnational flows of information

Technoscapes Transnational flows of technology

Financescapes Transnational flows of capital

Ideoscapes Transnational flows of ideas

MULTIPLE CENTERS AND PERIPHERIES

1. Not all “centers” are

central to all kinds of
flows
2. One may be “center” to
certain flows and
“peripheral” or
“semiperipheral” to
others in the global
system.
REGIONAL FLOWS

Cairo is on the global film

periphery but is the center of
regional film flows.

Cairo is a center of global

Islamic learning (flows of the
“ideoscape”); US is on the
periphery.
CULTURAL IMAGINATION

Imaginary Imagined

Fantasy Real
Escape Engagement
Opium of the Masses Selectivity & Resistance
Passivity Action

We collectively imagine the social world into existence

CENTRALITY OF THE MEDIA

• Resource for the

cultural imagination
• Media and
audiences in
simultaneous
circulation
• “Improvisation" in
the lives of both
groups and
individuals
• New forms of
sociality