Rise and demise
Subtitle: comparing world-systems
By: Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas D. Hall.
Contributors: Hall, Thomas D., 1946-
Series: New perspectives in sociology; New perspectives in sociology (Boulder, Colo.)
Publisher: Westview Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Boulder, Colo
Language: eng
Number of pages: 322
Subjects: Social change -- History; Capitalism -- History; Economic history
Description: Spanning ten thousand years of social change, this book examines the ways in which world-systems evolve. A comparative study of stateless societies, state-based regional empires, and the modern global capitalist political economy, it reveals the underlying processes at work in the reproduction and transformation of social, economic, and political structures.

Looking at the systematic similarities and differences among small scale, middle-sized and global world-systems, the authors address such questions as: Do all world-systems have core/periphery hierarchies in which the development of one area necessitates the underdevelopment of another?

How were kin-based logics of social integration transformed into state-based tributary logics, how did capitalism emerge within the interstices of tributary states and empires to eventually become the predominant logic of accumulation? How did the rise of commodity production and the eventual dominance of capitalist accumulation modify the processes by which political centers rise and fall?

Rise and Demise offers far-reaching explanations of social change, showing how the comparative study of world-systems increases our understanding of early history, the contemporary global system, and future possibilities for world society.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 276-306) and index.