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- Title
The Historical Evolution of World-Systems.
- Authors
Chase-Dunn, Christopher; Hall, Thomas D.
- Abstract
This article presents a synthesis of an account of world-system evolution from cultural materialist, Marxist and Weberian theories of social change. Recent dramatic changes in global political arrangements have caused a spate of speculations about the future or have inspired cavalier dismissals of all social theories with Marxian roots. The juxtaposition of the theoretical and empirical successes of world-system theory with dramatic social changes suggests that questions about transformations of past world-systems, including the origin of the modern world-system, might shed some light on the possibilities and probabilities of future transformations. The key questions are: How did the modern world-system begin? How and why did older world-systems give rise to the modern world-system? There is more to the world-system approach than a change in the unit of analysis. The concept of "society" is too often taken to refer to a social structure that is clearly bounded in the social world. This is far from true. Societies are internally heterogeneous, boundaries are permeable, and memberships are fluid. They are subject to constant change and redefinition. World-system processes are a major cause of those changes. Indeed, a major contribution of a world-system approach to historical evolution is that it accounts for the variations in those entities which are typically lump under the label "society."
- Subjects
SOCIAL change; SOCIAL theory; SOCIAL systems; SOCIOLOGY; SYSTEMS theory; MACROSOCIOLOGY
- Publication
Sociological Inquiry, 1994, Vol 64, Issue 3, p257
- ISSN
0038-0245
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1475-682X.1994.tb00392.x