Wallerstein Üzerine Bahattin Akşit Dünya-Sistemleri Analizi, Yapısal Kriz ve Çatallanma

 Wallerstein Üzerine Bahattin Akşit Dünya Sistemleri Analizi, Yapısal Kriz ve Çatallanma

Immanuel Wallerstein'in araştırma programının gelişmesi ile benim kendi araştırma programımın gelişmesi arasında paralellik kurarak başlıyorum. Ben "Azgelişmiş Kapitalizm ve Köylere Girişi" kitabını yazdığım yıl, 1966, Andre Gunther Frank "Azgelişmişliğin Gelişmesi" makalesini yazıyor; Wallerstein ve Samir Amin ise Afrika üzerin araştırmalar ve uygulamalar yapıyorlar. Wallerstein 1974 yılında Modern Dünya-Sistemi kitap dizisinin birinci cildi olan "Tarımda Kapitalizmin Gelişmesi ve Avrupa Dünya-Ekonomisi" kitabını yayınlıyor. Ben bu videoda 1999 yılında yayınlanan ve 2000 yılında Türkçe olarak da yayınlanan "Bildiğimiz

Dünyanın Sonu" kitabından bazı bölümlerini ve "Commentaries" yazı dizisinin 500'üncüsü ve sonuncusu olan yazıyı özetleyip tartışıyorum. Dünyan sistemleri analizi, yapısal kriz ve çatallanma kavramlarını ve Wallerstein'in ulaştığı sonuçları anlatıyorum.

Wallerstein, I. 1999. The End of the World as We Know It, University of Minosata Press.

Wallerstein, I. 2001. Bildiğimiz Dünyanın Sonu, İstanbul: Metis. 

https://www.iwallerstein.com/commentaries/

https://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/commentaries/

https://bahattinaksit.blogspot.com/2019/09/2019-ylnda-kaybettigimiz-iki-sosyolog.html

Wallerstein: Bildiğimiz Dünyanın Sonu

Belirsizlik ve Yaratıcık (giriş);

Sosyal Değişme (bl.8)

Dünya Sistemi Analizinin yükselişi ve çöküşü (bl.13);

Sosyolojinin mirası (bl.15)

Öncüller:

1. Tarihsel sistemler, genesis/oluşum, gelişme/yapılaşma ve dönüşüm/çatallanma

2. Çatallanma, krizler: küçük girdiler büyük çıktılar

3. Belirsizilik: Korkunş ağır sonuçlar veya daha iyi ve adil bir dünya

Sonuçlar:

1. İlerileme kaçınılmaz değil, formel rayoniteden tözel rasyoneliteye geçiş

2. Gelecek kestirilemez, kesinliklerin sonu

3. Sosyal sitemeler en karmaşık sistemler

4. Belirsizliğin yaratıcılığa ve daha eşitlikçi ve adil bir dünyaya geçiş olasılığı

Toplumsal değişme:

"Değişim sonsuzdur. Hiçbir şey değişmez."

Feodal sistemin çöküşü ve kapitalist dünya ekonomisinin ortaya çıkıp gelişmesi ve yayılması

Hegomonik ülkeler, Hollanda, İngiltere, ABD ve son durum

dünya sistemi analizi, merkez ve çevre, yarı çevre ülkeler,

Dünya sistemi analizinin yükselişi ve çöküşü:

küreselliği, tarihselliği, tekdisiplinliği, bütüncülüğü,

Sosyolojinin Mirası ve Vaadi

Sosyoloji kültürünün, Kanonun temelleri:

Durkeheim: Rasyonal grup

Marx: Grupta hiyerarşi ve çatışma

Weber. Meşruluk, alt gruplar hayatta kalma/beka beklentisiyle için grup otoritesini kabul ediyor.

Meydan okumalar:

1.Bilinçaltı, rasyonel olmayan, formel rasyonalite ve tözel rasyonalite Freud

2. Avrupa merkezciliğe meydan okuma, Anwar Abdul-Malek/ Samir Amin

3. Tarih: epizodik zaman, toplumsal fizik: sonsuz zaman,

long duree zaman, konjonktürel zaman, Fernand Braudel

4. Karmaşıklık Araştırmaları, Prigogine

5. feminist meydan okuma.

6. karmaşıklık araştırmaları ve kültür araştırmaları, doğa-kültür hibridliği,

"Hiçbir zaman modern olmadık" Latour

Siborglar Haraway

long-duree döngüleri ve kondratiyef döngüleri,

tözel rasyonalite, belirsizlik ve kesinlik, 

Immanuel Wallerstien by Bahattin Akşit Emergence of World-System Analysis and Bifurcation

 I start this video by focusind on the beginnings of my own sociological research program and Wallestein's research program titled as "world-system analysis" approach. Here I give refernce ot his article in 1974 titled as "The rise and future demise of the world-system analysis" which is chapter 13 of his 1999 book "The end of the world as we know it". Basicly I try to summarize and discuss some chapters of this book: Introduction, Chapter 8 on social change, chapter 13 on rise and demise and chapter 15 on heritage and promise of sociology. In addition to these chapters I dwell on his last and 500th Coomentary titled as "This is the end, this is the beginning".

Wallerstein 2000 The end of the World as we know it

Uncertainty and Creativity Premises and Conclusions 

Social Change? Change Is Eternal. Nothing Ever Changes chap.8

Rise and fall of world system analysis chap. XIII

Heritage of sociology chap XV: 

Historical systems, bifurcation, crises,

long-duree cycles and Kondratiyef cycles,

substansive rationality, uncertainity and certainity,

Genesis, functioning and demise of capitaist world system

world system analysis, core, periphery and semi periphery,

globality, historicity, unidisciplinarity, and wholism of world system analysis, 

challenge to Euro-centrism,

concepts of time,

time of the social physics X episodical time,

long duree time X conjectural time,

feminist challenge;

prigogine: complexity studies;

cultural studies.

Wallerstein 2000 The end of the World as we know it

Uncertainty and Creativity Premises and Conclusions 

Social Change? Change Is Eternal. Nothing Ever Changes chap.8

Rise and fall of world system analysis chap. XIII

Heritage of sociology chap XV: 

Historical systems, bifurcation, crises,

long-duree cycles and Kondratiyef cycles,

substansive rationality, uncertainity and certainity,

Genesis, functioning and demise of capitaist world system

world system analysis, core, periphery and semi periphery,

globality, historicity, unidisciplinarity, and wholism of world system analysis, 

challenge to Euro-centrism,

concepts of time,

time of the social physics X episodical time,

long duree time X conjectural time,

feminist challenge;

prigogine: complexity studies;

cultural studies.

Commentary No. 500, July 1, 2019

“This is the end; this is the beginning”

My first commentary appeared on October 1, 1998. It was published by the Fernand Braudel Center (FBC) at Binghamton University. I have produced commentaries on the first and the fifteenth of every month since then without exception. This is the 500th such commentary. This will be the last commentary ever.

I have devoted myself to writing these commentaries with complete regularity. But no one lives forever, and there is no way I can continue doing these commentaries much longer.

So, sometime ago I said to myself I will try to make it to number 500 and then call it quits. I have made it to 500 and I am calling it quits.

My commentaries have a special format. They are not blogs, which are writings that the next to the last writer changes at his will. On the contrary, my commentaries are meant to be permanent and to never change.

The commentaries have a clear format. Sometimes as in commentary number one, the title is the theme. But most frequently the title is the theme in the following particular fashion.

The commentary opens with a few words that attract the attention of the reader followed either by a question mark or by a colon. There follows what might be thought of as a subtitle in which I indicate the concrete references to which this commentary makes allusion. This is usually another five or six words.

All commentaries may be translated, and I seek to have as many as possible translated. The translations have a strict format. We give rights gratis for the first 1,000 copies initial translation. This is to pay for the costs of translation.

But after that, the commentaries must follow certain rules. Nothing can be added, and nothing can be subtracted from the commentary, which must be reproduced in all fidelity. In order to ensure that this is the case, a proposer of a new translation is answered in the following manner.

First, we check to see whether previously a commentary has been translated. If it has, we thank the proposer for his or her interest and indicate that the translation has already been made. We indicate to the proposer the location of the completed translation. There can only be one translation, as there can only be one English language version.

There is only one language in which all 500 commentaries have been translated. This language is Mandarin Chinese. Furthermore, the translator has always been the same person. She is a former student of mine and is very familiar with my thought. Other languages have multiple issues translated, but only Mandarin Chinese has everything.

For a long time now, the commentaries are available for purchase by profit-seeking publications. They may enter into agreement with my agent – Agence Global. I take the occasion to thank all those who have been involved in fulfilling this arrangement.

It is I, and no one else, who chooses the theme of the commentary and who guarantees the uniqueness of the translation. All commentaries and all translations on an archive are available to anyone whatsoever, whether the person writes to us regularly or is simply someone who tunes in this one time. These commentaries are permanent members of a community of commentaries.

This is the sense in which the present commentary is at an end.

It is the future that is more important and more interesting, but also inherently unknowable. Because of the structural crisis of the modern-world system, it is possible, possible but not absolutely certain, that a transformatory use of a 1968 complex will be achieved by someone or some group. It will probably take much time and will continue on past the point of the end of commentaries. What form this new activity will take is hard to predict.

So, the world might go down further by-paths. Or it may not. I have indicated in the past that I thought the crucial struggle was a class struggle, using class in a very broadly defined sense. What those who will be alive in the future can do is to struggle with themselves so this change may be a real one. I still think that and therefore I think there is a 50-50 chance that we’ll make it to transformatory change, but only 50-50.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

© Immanuel Wallerstein 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019

https://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/commentaries/

Wallerstein 2000 The end of the World as we know it

Uncertainty and Creativity Premises and Conclusions 

"The first premise is that historical systems, like all systems, have finite lives.

They have beginnings, a long development,and finally;as they move far from equilibrium and reach points of bifurcation, a demise.

The second premise is that two things are true at these points of bifurcation: small inputs have large outputs (as opposed to times of the normal development of a system, when large inputs have small outputs); and

the outcome of such bifurcations is inherently indeterminate.

The third premise is that the modern world-system, as a historical system, has entered into a terminal crisis and is unlikely to exist in fifty years.

However, since its outcome is uncertain, we do not know whether the resulting system (or systems) will be better or worse than the one in which we are living,

of troubles, since the stakes of the transition are so high, the outcome so uncertain, and the ability of small inputs to affect the outcome so great." Wallerstein, 1999, p. 1).

"I wish therefore simply to draw the moral and political conclusions from my premises. The first conclusion is that progess, unlike what the enlightenment in all its forms preached, is not at all inevitable. But I do not accept that it is therefore impossible. The world has not morally advanced in the last several thousand years, but it could. We can move in the direction of what Max Weber called "substantive rationality," that is, rational values and rational ends, arrived at collectively and intelligently.

The second conclusion is that the belief in certainties, a fundamental premise of modernity, is blinding and crippling. Modern science, that is, Cartesian-Newtonian science, has been based on the certainty of certainty. The basic assumption is that there exist objective universal laws governing all natural phenomena, that these laws can be ascertained by scientific inquiry, and that once such laws are known, we can starting from any set of initial conditions, predict perfectly the future and the past." p.2

"The third conclusion is that in human social systems, the most complex systems in the universe, therefore the hardest to analyze, the struggle for the good society is a continuing one. Furthermore, it is precisely in periods of transition from one historical system to another one (whose nature we cannot know in advance) that human struggle takes on the most meaning. Or to put it another way, it is only in such times of transition that what we call free will outweighs the pressures of the existing system to return to equilibria. Thus, fundamental change is possible, albeit never certain, and this fact makes claims on our moral responsibility to act rationally, in good faith, and with strength to seek a better historical system. p.3

"The fourth conclusion I draw is that uncertainty is wondrous; and that certainty, were it to be real, would be moral death. If we were certain of the future, there could be no moral compulsion to do anything. We would be free to indulge every passion and pursue every egoism, since all actions fall within the certainty that has been ordained. If everything is uncertain, then the future is open to creativity, not merely human creativity but the creativity of all nature. It is open to possibility, and therefore to a better world. But we can only get there as we are ready to invest our moral energies in its achievement, and as we are ready to struggle with those who, under whatever guise and for whatever excuse, prefer an inegalitarian, undemocratic world. p4. 

Wallerstein 2000 The end of the World as we know it

Chapter 8 Social Change?

Change Is Eternal. Nothing Ever Changes

"I have included in my title the opening sentences of The Modern WorldSystem: "Change is eternal. Nothing ever changes." It is a theme that seems to me to be central to our modern intellectual endeavor. That change is eternal is the defining belief of the modern world. That nothing ever changes is the recurrent wail of all those who have been disabused of the so-called progress of modern times. But it is also a recurrent theme of the universalizing scientific ethos. In any case, both statements are intended to be assertions about empirical reality. And of course both often, even usually, reflect normative preferences.

The empirical evidence is very incomplete and ultimately unconvincing. For one thing, the kind of evidence one can offer and the conclusions one can draw from the evidence seem to depend on the time periods measured. Measurement over short periods of time in some ways best captures the enormity of social change. Who does not think that the world looks different in 1996 from 1966? and even more from 1936? not to speak of 1906?" p. 118.

"What I should like therefore to present is a rationale for a social science that has an alternative logic to one based on a belief in progress. I believe we no longer need to be prisoners of a Methodenstreit between idiographic and nomothetic forms of knowledge. I believe that the presumed fundamental split between the "two cultures" - science versus philosophy/ literature - is a lure and a deception and must be overcome. I believe that neither statement about social change - change is eternal; nothing ever changes - can be accepted as valid as stated. I believe, in short, that we need to find another and better language with which to describe social reality. " p122.

"For the origin of our current concept of "society" lies not too very far in the past. It came into use in the fifty-year period following the French Revolution, when it became common practice in the European world to assert (or at least assume) that social life in the modern world was divided into three different spheres - the state, the market, and the civil society. The boundaries of the state were defined juridically. And implicitly, never explicitly, the boundaries of the other two spheres were assumed to share those of the state, if for no other reason than that the state asserted that this was true. France, or Great Britain, or Portugal was each assumed to have a national state, a national market or national economy, and a national society. These were a priori assertions, for which evidence was rarely offered." p.122-123

"That is to say, I do not believe that "differentiation" is a distinguishing feature of modernity. Nor do I believe that we live within multiple, distinctive "societies" within the modern world, that each state contains one and only one "society," and that each of us is a member essentially of only one such "society." p.124

"There are various kinds of historical systems. The capitalist worldeconomy in which we are presently living is one of them. The Roman Empire was another. The Maya structures in Central America comprised another. And there have been countless tiny historical systems. How to decide when any one of these came into existence and when it then ceased to exist is a difficult and contentious empirical question; but theoretically there is no problem at all. By definition, the label of historicaf system is assigned to entities that have a division of labor with integrated production structures, a set of organizing principles and institutions, and a definable life span. Our task as social scientists is to analyze such historical systems, that is, to demonstrate the nature of their division of labor, to uncover their organizing principles, to describe the functioning of their institutions, and to account for the systems' historical trajectory, including both their genesis and their demise." p125.

"The first is the question of genesis. H ow is it that this historical system came into existence, at the time and place that it did and in the way that it did? The second is the question of systemic structure. What are the rules by which this particular historical system, or perhaps more generally, this type of historical system, functions? What are the institutions through which these rules are implemented? Who are the social actors in conflict with each other? What are the secular trends of the system? The third is the question of demise. What are the contradictions of the historical system, and at what point do they become intractable, leading to a bifurcation in the system, entailing the demise of the system, and the emergence of one (or more) replacement system(s)?" p.126 

"The first thing we must note is, far from being inevitable, this was a surprising and unanticipatable development. And the second thing to note is that it was not necessarily a happy solution. In any case, how did this occur, or why? I would suggest that it occurred primarily because the normal external renewal of ruling strata was accidentally and unusually not possible. The most plausible conquering stratum, the Mongols, had themselves just collapsed for reasons quite external to what was happening in western Europe, and there happened to be no other conquering force immediately available. The Ottomans came along a little too late, and by the time they tried to conquer Europe, the new European system was already strong enough (but just) to keep them from advancing beyond the Balkans." p128.

"What I have offered here is a model with which to approach the analysis of a particular historical system in terms of social change, illustrating the issues by an analysis of the modern world-system. When a historical system is in genesis or demise (the demise of one is always the genesis of one or more others), we may designate it as social ch�nge if the category of historical system that existed is replaced by a different category of historical system. This is what occurred in western Europe when feudalism was replaced by capitalism. But it is not social change if it is replaced by the same kind of historical system. This is what happened when the Ming Chinese world-empire was replaced by the Manchu world-empire. They were different in many ways, but not in their essential form. We are going through such a process of systemic transformation right now in the modern worldwide world-system, and we do not know yet whether this involves a fundamental social change or not." p132-133.

Chapter 13 The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems Analysis

"World-systems analysis as an explicit perspective within social science dates from the 1970s, although of course it reflects a point of view that has a long history and builds on much earlier work. It never put itself forward as a branch of sociology or of social science. It did not think of itself as the "sociology of the world," side by side with urban sociology or the sociology of small groups or political sociology. Rather it presented itself as a critique of many of the premises of existing social science, as a mode of what I have called "unthinking social science." p.192

"Of course, these political implications were the object of ferocious refusal by the revolutionaries of 1968. It was an easy jump for them (and others) to deny the epistemological premises. This created the atmosphere in which there was receptivity for the kind of protest that world-systems analysis represented. It is important to remember this original intention of world-systems analysis, the protest against modernization theory, if we are to understand the directions in which it has moved since. I see four major thrusts to the work we have done collectively. None of these thrusts has been exclusively the work of persons involved in world-systems analysis per se. But in each case, those involved in world-systems analysis have played an important role in pursuing and defining the thrust. p194-195

"The first thrust was globality. It followed from the famous concern with the unit of analysis, said to be a world-system rather than a society/ state. To be sure, modernization theory had been international, in that it insisted on comparing systematically all states. But it had never been global, since it posited no emergent characteristics of a world-system, indeed never spoke of a world-system at all. World-systems analysis insisted on seeing all parts of the world-system as parts of a "world," the parts being impossible to understand or analyze separately. The characteristics of any given state at T 2 were said to be not the result of some "primordial" characteristic at Ti. but rather the outcome of processes of the system, the world-system. This is the meaning of Gunder Frank's famous formula, the "development of underdevelopment."

The second thrust was historicity, and it followed from the first. If the processes were systemic, then the history- the entire history - of the system (as opposed to the history of subunits, taken separately and comparatively) was the crucial element in understanding the present state of the system. To be sure, for this purpose one had to make a decision on the temporal boundaries of the systemic processes, and in practice this has been the subject of contentious debate. Nonetheless, the overall . thrust was to push analysis away from exclusively contemporary data, or even from data covering only the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in the direction of Braudel's longue durie.

The third thrust was unidisciplinarity, and it followed from the second. If there were historically emergent and historically evolving processes in the world-system, what would lead us to assume that these processes could be separated into distinguishable and segregated streams with particular (even opposed) logics? The burden of proof was surely on those who argued the distinctiveness of the economic, political, and sociocultural arenas. World-systems analy!>is pref erred to insist on seeing "totalities."

The fourth thrust was therefore ho/ism. This thrust was historicoepistemological, and it followed from all the previous ones." p.195  2

Chapter 15 The Heritage of Sociology, the Promise of Social Science

"I wish here to discuss the subject of social knowledge and its heritage, challenges, and perspectives. I shall argue that the heritage of sociology is something I shall call "the culture of sociology," and I shall try to define what I think this is. I shall further argue that, for several decades now, there have been significant challenges precisely to that culture. These challenges essentially consist of calls to unthink the culture of sociology. Given both the persistent reassertion of the culture of sociology and the strength of these challenges, I shall try finally to argue convincingly that the only perspective we have that is plausible and rewarding is to create a new open culture, this time not of sociology but of social science, and (most importantly) one that is located within an epistemologically reunified world of knowledge.

We divide and bound knowledge in three different ways: intellectually as disciplines; organizationally as corporate structures; and culturally as communities of scholars sharing certain elementary premises. We may think of a discipline as an intellectual construct, a sort of heuristic device. It is a mode of laying claim to a so-called field of study, with its particular domain, its appropriate methods, and consequently its boundaries. It is a discipline in the sense that it seeks to discipline the intellect. A discipline defines not only what to think about and how to think about it, but also what is outside its purview. To say that a given subject is a discipline is to say not only what it is but what it is not. To assert therefore that sociology is a discipline is, among other things, to assert that it is not economics or history or anthropology. And sociology is said not to be these other names because it is considered to have a different field of study, a different set of methods, a different approach to social knowledge." p. 220

Geçerli sayfa için yardım

Wallerstein 2000 The end of the World as we know it

Uncertainty and Creativity Premises and Conclusions 

Social Change? Change Is Eternal. Nothing Ever Changes chap.8

Rise and fall of world system analysis chap. XIII

Heritage of sociology chap XV: 

Historical systems, bifurcation, crises,

long-duree cycles and Kondratiyef cycles,

substansive rationality, uncertainity and certainity,

Genesis, functioning and demise of capitaist world system

world system analysis, core, periphery and semi periphery,

globality, historicity, unidisciplinarity, and wholism of world system analysis, 

challenge to Euro-centrism,

concepts of time,

time of the social physics X episodical time,

long duree time X conjectural time,

feminist challenge;

prigogine: complexity studies;

cultural studies.

Commentary No. 500, July 1, 2019

“This is the end; this is the beginning”

My first commentary appeared on October 1, 1998. It was published by the Fernand Braudel Center (FBC) at Binghamton University. I have produced commentaries on the first and the fifteenth of every month since then without exception. This is the 500th such commentary. This will be the last commentary ever.

I have devoted myself to writing these commentaries with complete regularity. But no one lives forever, and there is no way I can continue doing these commentaries much longer.

So, sometime ago I said to myself I will try to make it to number 500 and then call it quits. I have made it to 500 and I am calling it quits.

My commentaries have a special format. They are not blogs, which are writings that the next to the last writer changes at his will. On the contrary, my commentaries are meant to be permanent and to never change.

The commentaries have a clear format. Sometimes as in commentary number one, the title is the theme. But most frequently the title is the theme in the following particular fashion.

The commentary opens with a few words that attract the attention of the reader followed either by a question mark or by a colon. There follows what might be thought of as a subtitle in which I indicate the concrete references to which this commentary makes allusion. This is usually another five or six words.

All commentaries may be translated, and I seek to have as many as possible translated. The translations have a strict format. We give rights gratis for the first 1,000 copies initial translation. This is to pay for the costs of translation.

But after that, the commentaries must follow certain rules. Nothing can be added, and nothing can be subtracted from the commentary, which must be reproduced in all fidelity. In order to ensure that this is the case, a proposer of a new translation is answered in the following manner.

First, we check to see whether previously a commentary has been translated. If it has, we thank the proposer for his or her interest and indicate that the translation has already been made. We indicate to the proposer the location of the completed translation. There can only be one translation, as there can only be one English language version.

There is only one language in which all 500 commentaries have been translated. This language is Mandarin Chinese. Furthermore, the translator has always been the same person. She is a former student of mine and is very familiar with my thought. Other languages have multiple issues translated, but only Mandarin Chinese has everything.

For a long time now, the commentaries are available for purchase by profit-seeking publications. They may enter into agreement with my agent – Agence Global. I take the occasion to thank all those who have been involved in fulfilling this arrangement.

It is I, and no one else, who chooses the theme of the commentary and who guarantees the uniqueness of the translation. All commentaries and all translations on an archive are available to anyone whatsoever, whether the person writes to us regularly or is simply someone who tunes in this one time. These commentaries are permanent members of a community of commentaries.

This is the sense in which the present commentary is at an end.

It is the future that is more important and more interesting, but also inherently unknowable. Because of the structural crisis of the modern-world system, it is possible, possible but not absolutely certain, that a transformatory use of a 1968 complex will be achieved by someone or some group. It will probably take much time and will continue on past the point of the end of commentaries. What form this new activity will take is hard to predict.

So, the world might go down further by-paths. Or it may not. I have indicated in the past that I thought the crucial struggle was a class struggle, using class in a very broadly defined sense. What those who will be alive in the future can do is to struggle with themselves so this change may be a real one. I still think that and therefore I think there is a 50-50 chance that we’ll make it to transformatory change, but only 50-50.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

© Immanuel Wallerstein 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019

https://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/commentaries/

Wallerstein 2000 The end of the World as we know it

Uncertainty and Creativity Premises and Conclusions 

"The first premise is that historical systems, like all systems, have finite lives.

They have beginnings, a long development,and finally;as they move far from equilibrium and reach points of bifurcation, a demise.

The second premise is that two things are true at these points of bifurcation: small inputs have large outputs (as opposed to times of the normal development of a system, when large inputs have small outputs); and

the outcome of such bifurcations is inherently indeterminate.

The third premise is that the modern world-system, as a historical system, has entered into a terminal crisis and is unlikely to exist in fifty years.

However, since its outcome is uncertain, we do not know whether the resulting system (or systems) will be better or worse than the one in which we are living,

of troubles, since the stakes of the transition are so high, the outcome so uncertain, and the ability of small inputs to affect the outcome so great." Wallerstein, 1999, p. 1).

"I wish therefore simply to draw the moral and political conclusions from my premises. The first conclusion is that progess, unlike what the enlightenment in all its forms preached, is not at all inevitable. But I do not accept that it is therefore impossible. The world has not morally advanced in the last several thousand years, but it could. We can move in the direction of what Max Weber called "substantive rationality," that is, rational values and rational ends, arrived at collectively and intelligently.

The second conclusion is that the belief in certainties, a fundamental premise of modernity, is blinding and crippling. Modern science, that is, Cartesian-Newtonian science, has been based on the certainty of certainty. The basic assumption is that there exist objective universal laws governing all natural phenomena, that these laws can be ascertained by scientific inquiry, and that once such laws are known, we can starting from any set of initial conditions, predict perfectly the future and the past." p.2

"The third conclusion is that in human social systems, the most complex systems in the universe, therefore the hardest to analyze, the struggle for the good society is a continuing one. Furthermore, it is precisely in periods of transition from one historical system to another one (whose nature we cannot know in advance) that human struggle takes on the most meaning. Or to put it another way, it is only in such times of transition that what we call free will outweighs the pressures of the existing system to return to equilibria. Thus, fundamental change is possible, albeit never certain, and this fact makes claims on our moral responsibility to act rationally, in good faith, and with strength to seek a better historical system. p.3

"The fourth conclusion I draw is that uncertainty is wondrous; and that certainty, were it to be real, would be moral death. If we were certain of the future, there could be no moral compulsion to do anything. We would be free to indulge every passion and pursue every egoism, since all actions fall within the certainty that has been ordained. If everything is uncertain, then the future is open to creativity, not merely human creativity but the creativity of all nature. It is open to possibility, and therefore to a better world. But we can only get there as we are ready to invest our moral energies in its achievement, and as we are ready to struggle with those who, under whatever guise and for whatever excuse, prefer an inegalitarian, undemocratic world. p4. 

Wallerstein 2000 The end of the World as we know it

Chapter 8 Social Change?

Change Is Eternal. Nothing Ever Changes

"I have included in my title the opening sentences of The Modern WorldSystem: "Change is eternal. Nothing ever changes." It is a theme that seems to me to be central to our modern intellectual endeavor. That change is eternal is the defining belief of the modern world. That nothing ever changes is the recurrent wail of all those who have been disabused of the so-called progress of modern times. But it is also a recurrent theme of the universalizing scientific ethos. In any case, both statements are intended to be assertions about empirical reality. And of course both often, even usually, reflect normative preferences.

The empirical evidence is very incomplete and ultimately unconvincing. For one thing, the kind of evidence one can offer and the conclusions one can draw from the evidence seem to depend on the time periods measured. Measurement over short periods of time in some ways best captures the enormity of social change. Who does not think that the world looks different in 1996 from 1966? and even more from 1936? not to speak of 1906?" p. 118.

"What I should like therefore to present is a rationale for a social science that has an alternative logic to one based on a belief in progress. I believe we no longer need to be prisoners of a Methodenstreit between idiographic and nomothetic forms of knowledge. I believe that the presumed fundamental split between the "two cultures" - science versus philosophy/ literature - is a lure and a deception and must be overcome. I believe that neither statement about social change - change is eternal; nothing ever changes - can be accepted as valid as stated. I believe, in short, that we need to find another and better language with which to describe social reality. " p122.

"For the origin of our current concept of "society" lies not too very far in the past. It came into use in the fifty-year period following the French Revolution, when it became common practice in the European world to assert (or at least assume) that social life in the modern world was divided into three different spheres - the state, the market, and the civil society. The boundaries of the state were defined juridically. And implicitly, never explicitly, the boundaries of the other two spheres were assumed to share those of the state, if for no other reason than that the state asserted that this was true. France, or Great Britain, or Portugal was each assumed to have a national state, a national market or national economy, and a national society. These were a priori assertions, for which evidence was rarely offered." p.122-123

"That is to say, I do not believe that "differentiation" is a distinguishing feature of modernity. Nor do I believe that we live within multiple, distinctive "societies" within the modern world, that each state contains one and only one "society," and that each of us is a member essentially of only one such "society." p.124

"There are various kinds of historical systems. The capitalist worldeconomy in which we are presently living is one of them. The Roman Empire was another. The Maya structures in Central America comprised another. And there have been countless tiny historical systems. How to decide when any one of these came into existence and when it then ceased to exist is a difficult and contentious empirical question; but theoretically there is no problem at all. By definition, the label of historicaf system is assigned to entities that have a division of labor with integrated production structures, a set of organizing principles and institutions, and a definable life span. Our task as social scientists is to analyze such historical systems, that is, to demonstrate the nature of their division of labor, to uncover their organizing principles, to describe the functioning of their institutions, and to account for the systems' historical trajectory, including both their genesis and their demise." p125.

"The first is the question of genesis. H ow is it that this historical system came into existence, at the time and place that it did and in the way that it did? The second is the question of systemic structure. What are the rules by which this particular historical system, or perhaps more generally, this type of historical system, functions? What are the institutions through which these rules are implemented? Who are the social actors in conflict with each other? What are the secular trends of the system? The third is the question of demise. What are the contradictions of the historical system, and at what point do they become intractable, leading to a bifurcation in the system, entailing the demise of the system, and the emergence of one (or more) replacement system(s)?" p.126 

"The first thing we must note is, far from being inevitable, this was a surprising and unanticipatable development. And the second thing to note is that it was not necessarily a happy solution. In any case, how did this occur, or why? I would suggest that it occurred primarily because the normal external renewal of ruling strata was accidentally and unusually not possible. The most plausible conquering stratum, the Mongols, had themselves just collapsed for reasons quite external to what was happening in western Europe, and there happened to be no other conquering force immediately available. The Ottomans came along a little too late, and by the time they tried to conquer Europe, the new European system was already strong enough (but just) to keep them from advancing beyond the Balkans." p128.

"What I have offered here is a model with which to approach the analysis of a particular historical system in terms of social change, illustrating the issues by an analysis of the modern world-system. When a historical system is in genesis or demise (the demise of one is always the genesis of one or more others), we may designate it as social ch�nge if the category of historical system that existed is replaced by a different category of historical system. This is what occurred in western Europe when feudalism was replaced by capitalism. But it is not social change if it is replaced by the same kind of historical system. This is what happened when the Ming Chinese world-empire was replaced by the Manchu world-empire. They were different in many ways, but not in their essential form. We are going through such a process of systemic transformation right now in the modern worldwide world-system, and we do not know yet whether this involves a fundamental social change or not." p132-133.

Chapter 13 The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems Analysis

"World-systems analysis as an explicit perspective within social science dates from the 1970s, although of course it reflects a point of view that has a long history and builds on much earlier work. It never put itself forward as a branch of sociology or of social science. It did not think of itself as the "sociology of the world," side by side with urban sociology or the sociology of small groups or political sociology. Rather it presented itself as a critique of many of the premises of existing social science, as a mode of what I have called "unthinking social science." p.192

"Of course, these political implications were the object of ferocious refusal by the revolutionaries of 1968. It was an easy jump for them (and others) to deny the epistemological premises. This created the atmosphere in which there was receptivity for the kind of protest that world-systems analysis represented. It is important to remember this original intention of world-systems analysis, the protest against modernization theory, if we are to understand the directions in which it has moved since. I see four major thrusts to the work we have done collectively. None of these thrusts has been exclusively the work of persons involved in world-systems analysis per se. But in each case, those involved in world-systems analysis have played an important role in pursuing and defining the thrust. p194-195

"The first thrust was globality. It followed from the famous concern with the unit of analysis, said to be a world-system rather than a society/ state. To be sure, modernization theory had been international, in that it insisted on comparing systematically all states. But it had never been global, since it posited no emergent characteristics of a world-system, indeed never spoke of a world-system at all. World-systems analysis insisted on seeing all parts of the world-system as parts of a "world," the parts being impossible to understand or analyze separately. The characteristics of any given state at T 2 were said to be not the result of some "primordial" characteristic at Ti. but rather the outcome of processes of the system, the world-system. This is the meaning of Gunder Frank's famous formula, the "development of underdevelopment."

The second thrust was historicity, and it followed from the first. If the processes were systemic, then the history- the entire history - of the system (as opposed to the history of subunits, taken separately and comparatively) was the crucial element in understanding the present state of the system. To be sure, for this purpose one had to make a decision on the temporal boundaries of the systemic processes, and in practice this has been the subject of contentious debate. Nonetheless, the overall . thrust was to push analysis away from exclusively contemporary data, or even from data covering only the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in the direction of Braudel's longue durie.

The third thrust was unidisciplinarity, and it followed from the second. If there were historically emergent and historically evolving processes in the world-system, what would lead us to assume that these processes could be separated into distinguishable and segregated streams with particular (even opposed) logics? The burden of proof was surely on those who argued the distinctiveness of the economic, political, and sociocultural arenas. World-systems analy!>is pref erred to insist on seeing "totalities."

The fourth thrust was therefore ho/ism. This thrust was historicoepistemological, and it followed from all the previous ones." p.195  2

Chapter 15 The Heritage of Sociology, the Promise of Social Science

"I wish here to discuss the subject of social knowledge and its heritage, challenges, and perspectives. I shall argue that the heritage of sociology is something I shall call "the culture of sociology," and I shall try to define what I think this is. I shall further argue that, for several decades now, there have been significant challenges precisely to that culture. These challenges essentially consist of calls to unthink the culture of sociology. Given both the persistent reassertion of the culture of sociology and the strength of these challenges, I shall try finally to argue convincingly that the only perspective we have that is plausible and rewarding is to create a new open culture, this time not of sociology but of social science, and (most importantly) one that is located within an epistemologically reunified world of knowledge.

We divide and bound knowledge in three different ways: intellectually as disciplines; organizationally as corporate structures; and culturally as communities of scholars sharing certain elementary premises. We may think of a discipline as an intellectual construct, a sort of heuristic device. It is a mode of laying claim to a so-called field of study, with its particular domain, its appropriate methods, and consequently its boundaries. It is a discipline in the sense that it seeks to discipline the intellect. A discipline defines not only what to think about and how to think about it, but also what is outside its purview. To say that a given subject is a discipline is to say not only what it is but what it is not. To assert therefore that sociology is a discipline is, among other things, to assert that it is not economics or history or anthropology. And sociology is said not to be these other names because it is considered to have a different field of study, a different set of methods, a different approach to social knowledge." p. 220

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