bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Theorizing and Rethinking Linkages Between the Natural Environment and the Modern World-System: Deforestation in the Late 20th Century
Authors: Burns Thomas J. , Kick Edward L. , Davis Byron L.
Published: September 2015

Building on prior work in world-system analysis and human ecology, we test a macro-level theory that social and demographic causes of deforestation will vary across zones of the modern world-system. Using multivariate regression analysis, we examine models of deforestation over the period 1990-2000. We test for main effects of world-system posmon, two different population variables (urbanization and proportion under working age), and economic development within zone, as well as for the contextual effects of these variables as they operate differently across world-system positions. Our findings indicate that generic models of deforestation need to be qualified, because the particular social factors most closely associated with deforestation tend to vary by position in the global hierarchy. Deforestation at the macro level is best explained by considering effects of socio-demographic processes contextually, in terms of world-system dynamics. We discuss the findings in a more general world-systems and behavioral ecological framework, and suggest the field will be well served with more precise theorizing and closer attention to scope conditions.
Social Roots of Global Environmental Change: A World-Systems Analysis of Carbon Dioxide Emissions
Authors: Roberts J. Timmons , Grimes Peter E. , Manale Jodie L.
Published: September 2015

Carbon dioxide is understood to be the most important greenhouse gas believed to be altering the global climate. This article applies world-system theory to environmental damage. An analysis of 154 countries examines the contribution of both position in the world economy and internal class and political forces in determining a nation's CO, intensity. CO, intensity is defined here as the amount of carbon dioxide released per unit of economic output. An inverted U distribution of CO, intensity across the range of countries in the global stratification system is identified and discussed. Ordinary Least Squares regression suggests that the least efficient consumers of fossil fuels are some countries within the semi-periphery and upper periphery, spe-cifically those nations which are high exporters, those highly in debt, nations with higher military spending, and those with a repressive social structure.
Introduction: Globalization and the Environment
Authors: Jorgenson Andrew K. , Kick Edward L.
Published: September 2015

Human societies have long experienced the increasingly rapid expansion of the modern world-economy; an economy that has existed since at least the middle 1400s, meeting crisis after crisis in accumulation (e.g.Abu-Lughod 1989; Arrighi 1994; Chase-Dunn 1998; Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997; Chew 2001; Frank 1978, 1998; Frank and Gills 1993; Kentor 2000; Moore 2003; Pomeranz 2000; Wallerstein 1974, 1979). Rapid technological growth has been part and parcel of this expansion that has tightened the global division of labor and importance of distant events for all humans. This division of labor permits further expansion in rationalized production, and it reaches everywhere to expand markets and offer up cheap labor and material resources to increase surplus value ( e.g. Marx 1906; see also Foster 1999, 2002; Harvey 1999).
Exporting the Greenhouse: Foreign Capital Penetration and CO? Emissions 19801996
Authors: Grimes Peter , Kentor Jeffrey
Published: September 2015

This research examines the impact of foreign investment dependence on carbon dioxide emissions between 1980 and 1996. In a cross-national panel regression analysis of 66 less developed countries, we find that foreign capital penetration in 1980 has a significant positive effect on the growth of C0 2 emissions between 1980 and 1996. Domestic investment, however, has no systematic effect. We suggest several reasons for these findings. Foreign investment is more concentrated in those industries that require more energy. Second, transnational corporations may relocate highly polluting industries to countries with fewer environmental controls. Third, the movement of inputs and outputs resulting from the global dispersion of production over the past 30 years is likely to be more energy-expensive in countries with poorer infrastructure. Finally, power generation in the countries receiving foreign investment is considerably less efficient than within the countries of the core.
Transnational Corporations in World Development  Still the Same Harmful Effects in an Increasingly Globalized World Economy?
Authors: Herkenrath Mark , Bornschier Volker
Published: September 2015

Transnational corporations (TNCs) have reached historically unprecedented weight and power in the worlds political economy. Thus, the old question of how these corporations a?ect global development is nowadays more signi?cant than ever. While some scholars claim that corporate globalization will eventually close the worldwide development gap, many others contend that TNC activities lead to insu?cient exploitation of growth potentials within the host country, thereby hindering convergence of national income levels. The present study aims at assessing the validity of these controversial positions by confronting them with the results of past and present empirical research. In the ?rst part, we examine the e?ect of TNC presence on intra-national income inequality by reviewing the most recent cross-national studies dealing with this issue. In the second part, we present the results of our own research, which analyzes the e?ect of TNC presence on economic growth in a sample of 84 countries. The contemporary empirical evidence discussed in the ?rst part as well as the results of our own analyses tend to con?rm earlier ?ndings. They suggest that dependence on TNC activities increases inequality without adding to economic growth. However, the strong negative e?ect of TNC presence on growth found in analyses of data from the late 1960s cannot be reproduced in our contemporary analysis. In a signi?cant number of cases, the potentially harmful consequences of TNC activities seem to have been overcome by adequate countervailing state actions.
Forging a New Hegemony? The Role of Transnational Policy Groups in the Network and Discourses of Global Corporate Governance
Authors: Carroll William K. , Carson Colin
Published: September 2015

This study situates ?ve top transnational policy-planning groups within the larger structure of corporate power that is constituted through interlocking directorates among the worlds largest companies. Each group makes a distinct contribution toward transnational capitalist hegemony both by building consensus within the global corporate elite and by educating publics and states on the virtues of one or another variant of the neoliberal paradigm. Analysis of corporate-policy interlocks reveals that a few dozen cosmopolitansprimarily men based in Europe and North America and actively engaged in corporate management knit the network together via participation in transnational interlocking and/or multiple policy groups. As a structure underwriting transnational business activism, the network is highly centralized, yet from its core it extends unevenly to corporations and individuals positioned on its fringes. The policy groups pull the directorates of the worlds major corporations together, and collaterally integrate the lifeworld of the global corporate elite, but they do so selectively, reproducing regional di?erences in participation. These ?ndings support the claim that a well-integrated global corporate elite has formed, and that global policy groups have contributed to its formation. Whether this elite con?rms the arrival of a transnational capitalist class is a matter partly of semantics and partly of substance.
Ethnic Conflict in the Modern World-System: The Dialectics of Counter-Hegemonic Resistance in an Age of Transition
Authors: Dunaway Wilma A.
Published: September 2015

This article recasts debates about the extent and causes of ethnic con?ict within the world-system framework. Ethni?cation and indigenism are inherent structural contradictions of the modern world-system, and there is the highest incidence of ethnic resistance at the peak of a hegemons ascendancy. Consequently, there has not been a dramatic increase in ethnic con?ict since the end of the Cold War. However, ethnic mobilizations pose an increased challenge to the continued functioning of the world-system during the current age of transition. Ethnic mobilizations erode the capitalist civilizational project and increase costs to the system in ways that exacerbate the growing pro?t squeeze. I identify ?ve ways in which the counter-hegemonic mobilizations of ethnic minorities are costly to the world-system and can push it toward bifurcation and transformation.
The Flickering Global City
Authors: Slater Eric
Published: September 2015

This article explores new dimensions of the global city in light of the correlation between hegemonic transition and the prominence of financial centers. It counterposes Braudels historical sequence of dominant cities to extant approaches in the literature, shifting the emphasis from a convergence of form and function to variations in history and structure. The marked increase of finance in the composition of London, New York and Tokyo has paralleled each citys occupation of a distinct niche in world financial markets: London is the principal center of currency exchange, New York is the primary equities market, and Tokyo is the leader in international banking. This division expresses the progression of world-economies since the nineteenth century and unfolds in the context of the present hegemonic transition. By combining world-historical and city-centered approaches, the article seeks to reframe the global city and overcome the limits inherent in the paradigm of globalization.
Empire and its Multitude: A Review Essay
Authors: Sherman Steven , Trichur Ganesh K.
Published: September 2015

Empire has received attention not comparable to any academic text in recent memory. The two collections of academic approaches to it¹ that we review below are one indication of this. But in addition, the book has been the subject of enthusiastic pieces in Th e New York Times² and Time.³ Furthermore, particularly in Europe, it has been in?uential within the global justice movement. It is the rare book, indeed, that appeals to such diverse constituencies. At the same time, judging by the responses in Debating Empire and Empires New Clothes, the work has important flaws.
Complexity, Diminishing Marginal Returns, and Serial Mesopotamian Fragmentation
Authors: Thompson William  R.
Published: September 2015

Following up on an earlier paper demonstrating statistically significant relationships between measures of recurring political-economic crises (hinterland incursions, trade collapses, economic contractions, and regime transitions) and a measure of climate deterioration (the interaction of falling Tigris-Euphrates river levels and years of warming/ drying), the inter-relationships among these variables are examined more closely for the 34001000 bce period. Theoretically focused on a test of Tainters diminishing marginal return theory of societal collapse, additional indicators are introduced encompassing population (urban population size, urban popula-tion growth rate) as a proxy for diminishing marginal returns, two measures of centralization/ fragmentation (including imperial size), and the indicators used for the climate interaction term in the earlier paper. The multivariate logit outcome for interactions among and between the 11 variables reinforces the earlier findings linking climate deterioration to political-economic crises, extends the climate deterioration linkage to fragmentation and population decline, and finds relatively strong support for the Tainter derived expectation that diminishing marginal returns and fragmentation are closely linked but that both are less closely linked to recurring political-economic crises than might otherwise have been anticipated.
American World Empire or Declining Hegemony
Authors: Boswell Terry
Published: September 2015

Gowan challenges the usefulness of world-system theory in accounting for the emergence of an American world empire. His argument is based on one fundamental assumption, that of overwhelming U.S. power in the contemporary period. The assumption, however, is flawed. The U.S. is clearly an uncontested military superpower, a world leader with the ability to project its power and interests around the world. But its economic hegemony is in decline, and it is no longer the overwhelming presence it once was in the world-economy. Moreover, Gowan is unable to support his thesis that the U.S. is becoming an empire over Europe. Although the U.S. occupation and administration of Iraq is an example of colonial imperialism, there is no evidence to show that the U.S. has begun to establish a core-wide empire. On the contrary, U.S. political control over Europe has declined to its lowest level in the post-WWII period. The persuasiveness of world-system theory in explaining the changing global political economy remains strong.
Dominant Capital and the New Wars
Authors: Bichler Shimshon , Nitzan Jonathan
Published: September 2015

The recent shift from global villageism to the new wars revealed a deep crisis in heterodox political economy. The popular belief in neoliberal globalization, peace dividends, fiscal conservatism and sound finance that dominated the 1980s and 1990s suddenly collapsed. The early 2000s brought rising xenophobia, growing military budgets and policy profligacy. Radicals were the first to identify this transition, but their attempts to explain it have been bogged down by two major hurdles: (1) most writers continue to apply nineteenth century theories and concepts to twenty-first century realities; and (2) few seem to bother with empirical analysis. This paper offers a radical alternative that is both theoretically new and empirically grounded. We use the new wars as a stepping stone to understand a triple transformation that altered the nature of capital, the accumulation of capital and the unit of capital. Specifically, our argument builds on a power understanding of capital that emphasizes differential accumulation by dominant capital groups. Accumulation, we argue, has little to do with the amassment of material things measured in utils or abstract labor. Instead, accumu-lation, or capitalization, represents a commodification of power by leading groups in society. Over the past century, this power has been restructured and concentrated through two distinct regimes of differential accumulationbreadth and depth. A breadth regime relies on proletarianization, on green-field investment and, particularly, on mergers and acquisitions. A depth regime builds on redistribution through stagflationthat is, on differential inflation in the midst of stagnation. In contrast to breadth which presupposes some measure of growth and stability, depth thrives on accumulation through crisis. The past twenty years were dominated by breadth, buttressed by neoliberal rhetoric, globalization and capital mobility. This regime started to run into mounting difficulties in the late 1990s, and eventually collapsed in 2000. For differential accumulation to continue, dominant capital now needs inflation, and inflation requires instability and social crisis. It is within this broader dynamics of power accumulation that the new wars need to be understood.
The Futures of Indigenous Peoples: 9-11 and the Trajectory of Indigenous Survival and Resistance
Authors: Hall Thomas D. , Fenelon James V.
Published: September 2015

This paper explores the past, present, and future resistance of indigenous peoples to capitalist expansion. The central argument is that the survival of indigenous peoples, their identities, and their cultures, constitutes strong antisystemic resistance against global capitalism and against the deepening and the broadening of modern world-systemic or globalization processes. Furthermore, we argue that recent events often touted as turning points in historythe collapse of the Soviet Union, the 9-11 attack on the twin towers, and even the war on Iraqare at most blips on the radar in a larger trajectory of change and resistance. Rather, the important features of indigenous survival are: (1) Indigenous peoples, despite an immense variety of forms of cultural and social organization, represent non-capitalist forms of organization. Their continued survival challenges the fundamental premises of capitalism and its increasingly global culture. (2) Indigenous peoples challenges to global domination succeed less on economic, political, or military force, and more as fundamental challenges to the underpinnings of the logic of capitalism and the interstate system. (3) In order to learn from these resistance models, it is necessary to ground our understanding in two seemingly antithetical forms of knowledge: (a) information arising from indigenous cultures and values and (b) research about how the longue duree of the world-system shapes the form and timing of such movements. (4) Indigenous successes may serve as models and/ or inspirations for other forms of resistance. An important task is to discover what is unique to indigenous resistance and to specify what indigenous resistance has in common with other forms of resistance.
Global Social Movement(s) at the Crossroads: Some Observations on the Trajectory of the Anti-Corporate Globalization Movement
Authors: Buttel Frederick H. , Gould Kenneth A.
Published: September 2015

This paper examines the major structural characteristics of the anti-corporate globalization movement, its key bases and antecedents, its relationship with other global social movements (GSMs) and the key challenges it faces in the post-9/11 period. We suggest that despite the potential of the anti-corporate globalization movement to usher in major social changes, the movement faces a number of major crossroads in terms of ideology, discursive approach, and overall strategy. We argue that there has been coalescence of a good many GSMs, including the international environmental movement, under the banner of the anti-corporate globalization movement. We focus primarily on the interrelations of these two GSMs, noting that over the past decade there have been trends toward both the environmentalization and de-environmentalization of the anti-corporate globalization movement. While the defection of many mainstream environmental groups fromthe Washington consensus and the resulting environmentalization of the trade and globalization issue were critical to the Seattle coalition, there has been a signi?cant decline in the movements embrace of environmental claims and discourses, and a corresponding increase in its use of social justice discourses. One implication of our analysis is the hypothesis that while the current vitality of the anti-corporate globalization movement can be gauged by its having adopted an increasingly coherent ideological stance in which international inequality and global corporate dominance are targeted, to be successful the movement will need to coherently ideologically integrate social justice with environmental and sustainability agendas. The amenability of the environmental GSM to such ideological integration will have important rami?cations for the future trajectory of the anti-corporate globalization movement.
Adventures of Emancipatory Labour Strategy as the New Global Movement Challenges International Unionism
Authors: Waterman Peter
Published: September 2015

First suggested in the Netherlands, in the late-1980s, the notion of Social Movement Unionism was ?rst applied in South Africa, where it had both political and academic impact. The South-African formulation combined the class and the popular: a response to this combined class and new social movement theory/practice. The Class/Popular understanding was, however, more widely adopted, and applied (to and/or in Brazil, the Philippines, the USA, internationally), receiving its most in?uential formulation in the work of Kim Moody (USA). A Class/New Social Movement response to this was restated in terms of the New Social Unionism. The continuing impact of globalization and neo-liberalism has had a disorienting e?ect on even the unions supposed by the South African/USschool to best exemplify SMU, whilst simultaneously increasing trade union need for some kind of such an alternative model. Use and discussion of the notion continues. The development of the global justice and solidarity movement (symbolized by Seattle, 1999), and in particular the World Social Forum process, since 2001, may be putting the matter on the international trade-union agenda. But is this matter a Class/Popular alliance, a Class/New Social Movement alliance? Or both? Or something else? And are there other ways of recreating an international/ist labour movement with emancipatory intentions and e?ect? What is the future of emancipatory or utopian labour strategy in the epoch of a globalized networked capitalism, and the challenge of the Global Justice and Solidarity Movement?
Transnational Corporate Ties: A Synopsis of Theories and Empirical Findings
Authors: Nollert Michael
Published: September 2015

In general, corporations are not isolated actors in an economic war of all against all but members of corporate networks of global reach. Although the literature on globalization emphasizes the increasing economic power of these networks and postulates the formation of a transnational capitalist class, there is still a lack of empirical findings. The article starts with a review of theoretical perspectives (resource dependence, social capital, coordination of markets, financial hegemony, class hegemony, inner circle, and transnational capitalist class) which focuses on the functions and structures of corporate interlocks at the national and the transnational level. The subsequent section offers an outline of empirical studies concerning transnational corporate networks. These analyses of corporate ties (interlocking directorates, financial participations and policy group affiliations) suggest the emergence of transnational economic elites whose members, however, have not lost their national identity. In the final section, the theoretical perspectives will be assessed and some prospects are sketched out. Finally, it will be argued that the disintegration of the world society, which is considerably driven by rent-seeking corporate networks, can only be restrained if a potential global regulatory agency will be anchored in a post-Washington consensus.
The Growth of Transnational Corporate Networks: 1962-1998
Authors: Kentor Jeffrey
Published: September 2015

This is a study of the growth of organizational power in the world-economy over the past forty years. It takes the position that transnational corporations (TNCs) are increasingly significant actors in the world-economy, independent of the nation-states within which they are located. The goal of this work is to identify the expansion, spatial distribution, and concentration of this global power over time, and to consider its impact on the global economy. The TNC networks are identified by locating the headquarters and foreign subsidiaries of the worlds 100 largest manufacturing corporations in 1962, 1971, 1983, 1991 and 1998. The distribution of ownership and location of these foreign subsidiaries are examined, both globally and bilaterally. I find high levels of concentration in ownership of these global networks that decrease over time, in contrast to a high degree of dispersion in the location of these linkages. U.S. corporations are clearly the dominant actors from 1962 to 1971 but decline dramatically through 1998, while Japanese and Western European TNC control over transnational networks grows significantly over this period. An empirical measure of economic dominance in the global economy is also presented.
How Global is Global Civil Society?
Authors: Chandhoke Neera
Published: September 2015

In recent times the concept of global civil society has made its appearance on national and international intellectual, as well as political agendas, in a major way. It is of some interest that two other concepts, both of which call for transcendence of national boundaries in precisely the same way as global civil society does, have also made their appearance on the scene of intellectual debates at roughly the same time: the concept of cosmopolitanism and that of transnational justice. All three concepts have dramatically expanded the notion of commitment to ones fellow beings beyond the nation state. And all three concepts have extended critiques of policies that violate the dignity of human beings from national governments to the practices of inter-national institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Forum. In sum the inter-related concepts of global civil society, cosmopolitanism, and transnational justice have greatly enlarged the traditional domain of political theory. And yet for any political theorist who is acutely conscious of the phenomenon of power, these concepts are not unproblematic. For the practices of global civil society may just reinforce the intellectual and the moral power of the West over the postcolonial world. This is particularly true of say global human rights organizations. This paper will attempt to raise some questions of the concept and the practices of global civil society from the perspective of the countries of the South.
Peripheral Solutions to Peripheral Development: The Case of Early 20th Century Romania
Authors: Boatca Manuela
Published: September 2015

The article furthers the claim that many of the weaknesses of Marxist theory that constituted the starting point of critical approaches from Latin American dependency theory to world-systems analysis had been addressed in very similar terms as early as the 1900s. The focus is on intellectual debates in early twentieth-century Romania, especially as engendered by the theory of forms without substance as an alternative project of modernization for the periphery and the follow-up confrontation between the socialist Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea and the Poporanist Constantin Stere on the issue of social and economic development.
Semiperipheries in the World-System: Reflecting Eastern European and Latin American Experiences
Authors: Boatca Manuela
Published: September 2015

This paper claims that, since many of the concepts relevant to our analysis of systemic change were coined in and about the core, the potential with which solutions to world-systemic crisis are credited in the long run should be assessed differently depending on the structural location of their origin. In the periphery, such concepts as conservatism, socialism and even liberalism took forms that often retained nothing of the original model but the name, such that strategies of applying them to (semi)peripheral situations ranged from stretching the ideology to discarding the (liberal) myth altogether. In a first step, the hypothesis of semiperipheral development (Chase-Dunn and Hall), according to which the semiperiphery represents the most likely locus of political, economical, and institutional change, is amended to say that, at least for the late modern world-system, the strength of the semiperiphery resides primarily in the cultural and epistemic sphere. In a second step, this contention is illustrated with the help of major challenges that the Eastern European and Latin American (semi)peripheries have posed to the world-systems political fields and institutional settings both in the past and to datewith different degrees of success corresponding to their respective structural position. In light of these examples, it is argued that a comparative analysis of continuities among political epistemologies developed in the semiperiphery can help us understand the ways in which similar attempts can become antisystemic today.
Diachronic Frontiers: Landscape Archaeology in Highland Albania
Authors: Schon Robert , Galaty Michael L.
Published: September 2015

The modern practice of archaeological surveyregional, intensive, diachronic, and interdisciplinaryis well-suited to the study of frontiers. In this paper we provide the example of the Shala Valley Project, which studies the northern Albanian mountain valley of Shala, home to the Shala tribe. Northern Albania is the only place in Europe where tribal societies survived into the 20th century. We attribute their survival to the frontier position of northern Albania, wherein tribal chiefs controlled access to and through valley systems. Shala provides a classic example of a refuge society, perched within a strongly contested peripheral zone. The tribe actively and creatively resisted state incorporation during both the Ottoman (Early Modern) and Modern periods. The northern Albanian frontier may have formed much earlier, though, perhaps as early as the Bronze Age. We bring a broad array of evidence to bear on this question, drawn from the ethno-historical, excavation, and of course, survey-archaeological records.
Board Interlocks and the Study of the Transnational Capitalist Class
Authors: Staples Clifford L.
Published: September 2015

In a recent synopsis of theories and findings on transnational corporate ties published in this journal, Nollert (2005) argues that while there may be good theoretical reasons to hypothesize the emergence of a Transnational Capitalist Class (tcc), to this point there is relatively little empirical evidence, aside from Sklairs (2001) work, to support the claim that such a class exists or is forming. However, a few researchers have attempted to apply the study of interlocking directorates to the search for a network of transnational directors who might be in a position to form such a class. Drawing on empirical findings on the worlds largest transnational corporations and banks reported elsewhere (Staples 2007a; Staples 2007b), as well as additional analyses done specifically for this paper, I argue that studies that rely exclusively on transnational corporate interlocks dramatically underestimate the extent of the tcc network because such studies count only transnational connections between corporations and miss transnational connections within corporationsconnections that have grown more numerous in recent years as corporate boards have become more multinational, largely as a result of the concentration of global capital. Counting both between and within transnational capitalist connections points to a far greater level of capitalist transnationality than is suggested by focusing exclusively on between corporate connections, as has been done in this work so far. And while the existence of such a network falls well short of convincing proof that a tcc exists, it does show that capitalists from different countries increasingly have opportunities to interact as they work together to run the worlds largest corporations, and it is out of such interactions that we would expect a tcc to emerge.
The Effect of Economic and Cultural Globalization on Anti-U.S. Transnational Terrorism 19712000*
Authors: Lizardo Omar
Published: September 2015

The events of 9/11 have rekindled interest in the social sciences concerning the global factors responsible for transnational terrorism. Two opposing frameworks currently dominate the scene: proponents of a destructive globalization approach argue that processes related to the transnationalization of capital produce native resistance in the more economically disadvantaged areas of the globe that is manifested as transnational terrorist attacks, especially against the U.S., civilizing globalization arguments point to precisely the opposite effect: economic globalization through the spread of markets and material goods brings with it prosperity and higher living standards, thus defusing the motivation to engage in high-risk political violence. In this paper, I propose an additional framework that goes beyond the narrow realism of the destructive globalization and civilizing globalization perspectives by examining the role of the globalization of world culture in theproduction of anti-u.s. terrorism. I argue that looking at the role of world cultural structuration is important because even though economic globalization may help create local grievances outside of the most economically advantaged areas of the world, cultural globalization provides the requisite models of individual and organizational action and the interpretive schemas that empower local actors with the constitutive capacity to engage in high-risk acts of political violence and allows them to make local/global connections. I test this framework using time-series world-level data in order to examine the global correlates of anti-u.s. terrorist activity for the last 30 years. The results provide mixed support for both civilizing globalization and destructive globalization viewpoints. Further, and in accord with the model proposed here, cultural globalization has a positive effect on the rate of anti-u.s. terrorist activity.
Turkish Managers as a Part of the Transnational Capitalist Class
Authors: Sener Meltem Yinaz
Published: September 2015

During the period after 1970s, capitalism has gone through a significant restructuring. This period has been primarily characterized by the process of globalization. Globalization has not emerged as the natural result of capitalism but it has been actively promoted and the appropriate conditions for the functioning of global capitalism have been created by certain actors. Many scholars argue that it is a newly emerging transnational capitalist class which transformed capitalism into a globalizing project. Although the members of this class are located in different parts of the world, they have a common interest in supporting globalization. They are aware of their common interests and they have a certain class consciousness. Moreover, their habits, tastes, and lifestyles are becoming increasingly similar. Considering these debates on transnational capitalist class, in a case study of the Turkish top managers working in the ?stanbul branch of a multinational corporation, this paper looks at the lifestyle characteristics of this group of managers, comparing them with those aspects of the lifestyle of the transnational capitalist class that are indicated by the scholars. A second question that has been considered is to what extent these managers feel themselves as part of a transnational class that has common goals and interests. This study shows that for this group of managers the primary identification is with the people who have the same position with them, regardless of their country or corporation, not with their fellow nationals.
The 21st Century as Whose Century?
Authors: Scott David
Published: September 2015

Macro-analysis and East-West encounter are shown through consideration of objective yet subjective constructed concepts for the international system and international economy in the 21st century. Three paradigms are considered, namely the 21st century as the Pacific Century, as Chinas Century and as the Asian Century. Overlaps are shown between these three paradigms, as also developments in time, and gradually shift in geographical location. The Pacific Century, and its associated Rimspeak, was the paradigm emerging in the late 1970s, knitting together Americas West Coast and the Japanese economy. By the late 1980s this was already shifting to talk of the 21st century likely to be an Asian Century model, mark-1, based on the Pacific Asia dynamism shown by the Asian Tigers and Japan. However, the Asian financial crash of 1997-8, and the economic downturn in Japan, meant that such an Asian Century seemed premature as the 21st century arrived. Instead, it was Chinas economic growth that seemed most evident, and with it the concept of the 21st century as Chinas Century. However, in turn that has already been modified during the first decade of the century by Indias arrival as a rapidly growing economy. Consequently the 21st century as Chinas Century and as Indias Century has been combined into talk of an Asian Century, mark-2.
Neoliberal Imperialism and Pan-African Resistance
Authors: Hahn Niels S.C.
Published: September 2015

Neoliberalism has in the past three decades had a tremendous impact on both thought and practice throughout most of the world, and has dominated international development since the early 1980s. Although neoliberalism presents itself as modern and progressive, it is argued that the underlying ideologies and power agendas have their origins in the political debates of the eighteenth century and earlier. Through an analysis of neoliberalism from a world-historical and global perspective, indications are seen that the international development agenda has more to do with political and economic interests than with benevolent pro-poor development. This leads to the debate about redistribution of resources and State-led Development versus Free-market Development, which is inextricable from the discussion of Liberal Democratic Peace Theory versus Realism. From this perspective it is argued that the notion of democratic peace is used as a popular seductive rhetoric, to legitimize western military interventions and the imposition of economic policies in the name of democracy, human rights and free market economy. In this context, it is argued that neoliberalism cannot be analysed without also considering inherent links to imperialism and neo-colonialism, which is being resisted by pan-African movements.
Convergence of World Stoppages  A Global Perspective
Authors: Perry L.J. , Wilson Patrick J.
Published: September 2015

This paper analyses the changing pattern of work stoppages at a global level for the period 1960 to 2002. Rather than analysing the pattern for individual economies, it analyses the data for a two-fold division of the worlds economy: namely the North American economy (comprising the USA and Canada) and the rest of the non-North American world economy (comprising the 36 economies for which data are available). This involves an approach to the analysis of international data and an accompanying perspective on global interdependence and convergence that has not thus far been explored. The evidence presented suggests that these two parts of the global economy display broadly converging patterns of stoppage rates. It is suggested that the converging pattern of stoppages is, in turn, symptomatic of a general worldwide convergence of general politico-economic perceptions broadly in favour of, or at least receptive to, an approach to political-economy management that might be summarily labelled: neoliberal.
FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT AND WAGES:A BARGAINING POWER APPROACH
Authors: Vijaya Ramya M. , Kaltani Linda
Published: September 2015

This paper presents a cross-country empirical investigation of the impact of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on manufacturing wages. Our results indicate that FDI-Flows have a negative impact on overall wages in the manufacturing sector and this impact is stronger for female wages. We argue that one possible explanation for such an impact may be a decrease in the bargaining power of labor due to new labor market arrangements in a global economy where capital is free to move across countries in search of more favorable conditions. This decline in labor power also tends to have a greater impact on the more vulnerable workers female workers whose bargainingpositions have been traditionally lower than male workers.
Defining and Theorizing Terrorism: A Global Actor-Centered Approach
Authors: Lizardo Omar
Published: September 2015

Arriving at a consensual definition of the phenomenon of terrorism has been a particularly difficult undertaking. Some definitions are either too specific or too vague, concentrating on some essential terrorist aspect of the actions, strategies, or types of non-state organizations that engage in terrorism. In this paper I draw on global approaches from international relations and world systems theories to propose a definition of terrorism that skirts these issues by concentrating on terrorist actors rather than terrorist behavior. I argue that this approach has several advantages, including the dissolution of several empirical and analytical problems produced by more essentialist definitions, and the location of terrorism within a two dimensional continuum of collective-violence phenomena in the international system which discloses important theoretical insights. I proceed to examine the characteristics of terrorism by comparing it with other forms of violence in the international system. I propose that terrorism may be part of the cycles and trends of unrest in the world system, responding to the same broad families of global dynamics as other forms of system-level conflict.
The Steel and Shipbuilding Industries of South Korea: Rising East Asia and Globalization
Authors: Shin Kyoung-ho , Ciccantell Paul S.
Published: September 2015

In this paper, we focus on the roles of the steel and shipbuilding industries as generative sectors in Koreas rapid economic ascent. We argue that a world-systems analysis focusing on these generative sectors provides a more complete understanding of Koreas rapid economic ascent than do other theoretical models. We outline the similarities between this case and those analyzed by Bunker and Ciccantell (2005, 2007) both in terms of the central role of generative sectors in raw materials and transport industries and how the creation and growth of these two industrial sectors shaped institutional patterns and the broader economic ascent of South Korea and East Asia. Even though South Korea has not and may never become a challenger for global hegemony, its rapid ascent has helped reshape East Asia and the capitalist world-economy. We use the model of generative sectors to analyze the critical industries that underlay and shaped South Koreas ascent from a low wage, light industry base to a world leader in electronics, automobiles, and other advanced industries.
People, Place, and Time: How Structural Fieldwork Helps World-Systems Analysis
Authors: Gellert Paul K. , Shefner Jon
Published: September 2015

Some of the most insightful work in the political economy of the world-system area has been produced by researchers whose extensive fieldwork offers them deep familiarity with people and locales. Few other methods are as useful to understand the impacts of structural change on daily life and the ways agents resist, alter, and shape emerging structures. Yet such structural fieldwork is marginalized by the over-reliance of pedagogical materials on social constructionist, social psychological, or interactionist perspectives and also in world-systems research and writing by the privileging of long durée historical or quantitative cross-national methods. This paper introduces the concept of structural fieldwork to describe a qualitative field methodology in which the researcher is self-consciously guided by considerations emerging out of macro-sociological theories. We identify four advantages of structural fieldwork: the illumination of powers multiple dimensions; examination of agency and its boundaries or limitations within broad political and economic structures; attention to nuances of change and durability, spatial and temporal specificities, and processes of change and durability; and challenging and extending social theory. These advantages are illustrated in select examples from existing literature and by discussion of the two authors fieldwork-based research. The paper concludes that explicit attention to fieldwork may strengthen political economy and world-systems research and also de-marginalize political economy informed by structural fieldwork.
The New Hegemon? Contingency and Agency in the Asian Age
Authors: Bair Jennifer
Published: September 2015

Adam Smith in Beijing is an ambitious sequel to the work that is widely regarded as Giovanni Arrighis most important, The Long Twentieth Century. Much like this earlier book, Adam Smith in Beijing is a long, sweeping and provocative exploration of capitalisms past, present, and future. In The Long Twentieth Century, Arrighi analyzed the 700 year history of the modern world system as a series of cycles of accumulation, each of which occurred under the auspices of a hegemonic power, and each of which included a period of material expansion followed, late in the cycle, by a shift in the locus of capital accumulation to the financial sector. Arrighis analysis of four successive regimesthe Genoese, Dutch, British, and U.S.drew on Braudels concept of the autumn of a hegemonic system, which refers to the period of financial expansion marking the maturation of a particular regime of accumulation and its eventual displacement by a new one. This perspective enabled Arrighi to understand the financialization of the world economy, proceeding apace at the time under then-President Clinton, in the context of the longue durée in which one (declining) hegemons autumn is another (rising) hegemons spring.
Giovanni Arrighis Tapestry of East & West
Authors: Gulick John
Published: September 2015

What a difference a year makes. While Giovanni Arrighis Adam Smith in Beijing is a complicated tapestry, threaded with multiple strands and sub-themes, if it offers any single master thesis, it is this: over the last four or so decades, the fading of US primacy and Chinas precipitous ascent are dialectically interconnected, structured processes abetting one another. And, for good measure: Chinas ascent just might culminate in the formation of a qualitatively novel, world community of market-linked states orbiting around East Asia, but without a dominant center (pp. 7-9). Were I putting together this review in mid-2008, I would express profound skepticism about both theses. Certainly, such skepticism would issue not from the conviction that US global power is invincible, but rather from an evidence-based belief that Arrighi habitually underestimates the extent to which Chinas ongoing rise in the world order will be traumatically disrupted by the inevitable wipeout of highly leveraged paper assets on Wall Street (and the City of London, for that matter). Well, in the wake of the planetary financial crisis and economic slump, the early returns on Chinas coping capacity are in. The ways in which China is responding to and weathering the storm vindicate more than a few of the claims and insights Arrighi advances in Adam Smith in Beijing, including some that I would have regarded with raised eyebrows a year ago. The thrust of this review is a critical assessment of Adam Smith in Beijing from the standpoint of how well or poorly its theoretical maneuvers and key arguments allow us to make sense of the current shake-up in the global system, with a focus on the interdigitated destinies of China and the US. In this evaluation I will take a page out of Arrighis own playbook and try to bear in mind the crucial distinction between geo-economic and geopolitical ebbs and flows of the moment and longer-term hegemonic ruptures and transformations.
Methodological Issues in Macro Comparative Research: An Introduction
Authors: Kentor Jeffrey
Published: September 2015

This special issue of JWSR is the offspring of an ASA Political Economy of the World System session that I organized in 2007. My thanks to Andrew Jorgenson, co-editor of JWSR, who moderated the session and proposed that I put together a special issue on this topic. In turn, I asked Timothy Moran to join me as co-editor of this issue. Tim is one of the foremost quantitative macro-comparative sociologists in the country, and was the discussant on the PEWS panel. Tim provides a summary and discussion of the contributions in the conclusion. As it turns out, only two of the panel presentations are included in this issue. The other two were submitted in response to a general call for papers. All four manuscripts were peer reviewed.