Christopher Chase- Dunn
Institute for Research
on World-Systems
University of
California, Riverside
(v. 8-2-04)
An earlier version was published in Volker Bornschier and Peter Lengyel (
eds .) World Society Studies, Volume 2. Frankfurt and New York: Campus,
1991.
The purpose of this essay is to examine
the relationships between human settlement systems, intersocietal networks
(world-systems) and transformations of modes of production. What has been the
role of cities with regard to changes in the basic logic of social
reproduction? I will examine how the roles of cities and systems of cities have
changed depending on the nature of the world - systems in which they are
embedded.
After introducing several theoretical
problems that motivate the comparative study of world -systems I will discuss:
·
a class of
world-systems without cities ,
·
the rise of the
first cities and settlement systems,
·
interstate systems
composed of city-states,
·
the effects of empire-formation on cities,
·
the effects of
capitalist city-states on tributary empires,
·
the role of cities
in the rise of Europe and the emerging predominance of the capitalist mode of
production,
·
the subordination
of cities to national states and capitalist firms in the capitalist world
-economy, and
I do not believe that urban sociology
or the study of cities ought to constitute a theoretically separate topic from
the general study of social change. The consideration of urban-rural
relationships, larger societal structures, core/periphery relations, and whole
world -systems are necessary to the understanding of the development of cities.
But the study of cities does provide an interesting angle from which to analyze
whole socio-economic systems and the historical processes by which the deep
structural logics of systems become transformed. I will choose as my empirical
scope for comparison, not the contemporary global political economy, nor even
the expanding Europe-centered world-system over the last 500 years, but rather
the set of sedentary small, medium-sized and large world -systems that have
been on Earth over the last ten thousand years.
There are three justifications for this
unusually broad scope of comparison. It is possible that the comparative study
of whole intersocietal systems will produce a more powerful theory of social
evolution than has emerged from the more traditional focus on societies. The
broad temporal scope of comparison maximizes variation in the structural
characteristics of world - systems. And it allows for empirical study of
fundamental watersheds in the transformation of systemic logics: We can analyze
how tributary modes of production[1]
emerged out of kin-based modes, and the processes by which the capitalist mode
became predominant over tributary modes. This scope of comparison may also be
useful for helping us to understand contemporary and future processes by which
systemic logic may fundamentally change.
I will be employing a set of
theoretical distinctions about modes of production[2]
developed by Amin (1980) and Wolf( 1982) , and supplemented to some extent by
the approach to forms of social integration developed by Karl Polanyi(1977) .
To summarize briefly, I distinguish between four classes of systemic logics
that are designated as:
1. kin-based modes of production (in which social labor,
distribution, and collective accumulation is mobilized by means of normative
integration based on consensual definitions of value, obligations and rules of
conduct --amoral order).
2. tributary modes (in which social order is produced by
politically institutionalized coercion based on codified law and formally
organized military power).
3. capitalist modes (in which land,
labor, wealth and goods are commodified and strongly exposed to the forces of
price-setting markets; and the logic of accumulation through the production of
commodities using commodified labor is predominant) , and
4. socialist modes (in which major
policy and investment decisions are controlled democratically by the people
they affect according to a logic of collective rationality)
The world-systems perspective has
stimulated a new approach to the understanding of capitalism, one which
emphasizes the necessity of peripheral forms of capitalism, the importance of
the interstate system, and the various forms and degrees of the commodification
of labor within the capitalist world - economy (Chase-Dunn 1989) .The application
of the world -systems perspective to pre capitalist systems raises new
questions and reopens old debates about other modes of production and their
transformations.[3]
Since Karl Polanyi
and his colleagues developed the substantivist approach to economic sociology
in the 1950s a debate has waned and waxed among archaeologists,
anthropologists, historians and sociologists over the
"substantivist/formalist" question. The substantivists argue that
exchange relations are embedded in social structures, and that markets are
historically created institutions, not timeless logics expressing the
truck-and-barter instincts of "economic man. " Polanyi distinguished
between three qualitatively distinct forms of integration: reciprocity,
redistribution and market exchange.[4]
The formalists argue that economic rationality has similar properties in all
human societies, and they emphasize the importance of rational choice approaches for nomadic foragers as well
as contemporary consumers.[5]
A related debate over the similarities and
differences between modern, classical, and ancient societies has raged
among "primitivists" and "modernists”[6]
The modernists argue that economic development in the classical or ancient
worlds already involved commodified relations and processes of economic
development quite similar in their basic nature to modern societies ( e. g.
Rostovtzeff, 1941). The primitivists
emphasize the importance of differences in the logic of competition, the
rationality of accounting practices , the nature of taxation, forms of
property, types of labor control, etc. between modern and classical societies
(e .g. Finley, 1973) .
These old debates have received a new
incarnation in the context of the effort to use the world-system perspective to
understand precapitalist social change. The earliest and most influential
formulation of the dynamics of ancient and classical world-systems argues that
these share a common "capital- imperialist" mode of production with
the modern world-system (Ekholm and Friedman, 1982). More recently Gills and
Frank (1991) contend that accumulation occurred historically within the context
of a continuous world -system over the
last 5000 years, and they
explicitly reject the idea that transitions have occurred between qualitatively
different modes of production. Though these scholars focus explicitly on a new
unit of analysis, whole world-systems, their theoretical contentions are
similar in form to those of the formalists and modernists mentioned above. On
the other side are those world-system Marxists and recalcitrant Polanyians who
insist that qualitative transformations have occurred in the development of
world-systems .The analysis of the growth of cities and systems of cities is
germane to the many issues which these contending perspectives raise.
Does it make sense
to think of the interaction networks among stateless, classless, city-less
societies as constituting world-systems ? Certainly these were very different
from the modern world -system. Are they so different as to be non-comparable? I
will argue that most of the very small intersocietal systems composed of
unstratified societies fit the definition of a world -system based on the
necessity of the whole for the parts. And I will contend that it is important
to study this class of world -systems because they provide instances of
historical transformation of one mode of production into another. We need to
understand how kin -based systems were reproduced in order to analyze how
classes, states and cities emerged and transformed the kin-based mode into a
tributary mode.
Wallerstein (1984: Chapter 14) has
classified stateless societies as "minisystems" --not world-systems
--in which each cultural entity encompasses an autonomous system of the production
of basic goods. It is implied that these are non-comparable with world-systems,
which are defined as a division of labor of the production of basic goods (bulk
foods and raw materials) which encompasses a set of separate cultures. In other
words, cross-cultural trade of basic goods is the main criterion in
Wallerstein's distinction between world -systems and minisystems. I contend
that, though trade of basic goods is an important aspect of interaction for
defining and bounding world -systems, it is not the only important kind of
interaction that constitutes systemness. It can be demonstrated that many
stateless intersocietal systems fit Wallerstein's definition of a world-system
(based on cross-cultural bulk-goods exchanges) , and manyothers fit a somewhat
broader definition proposed by Chase-Dunn and Hall (1991) which includes
political/military competition and prestige goods exchange along with trade in
basic goods as important intersocietal interactions which produce systemness .
There are several fundamental issues
that arise when we extend world- system concepts to stateless societies. In
many such systems it would appear that there is little in the way of
core/periphery hierarchy. In order to understand why core/periphery hierarchies
emerge and are reproduced it is desireable to compare systems that have such
structural features with those that do not. To explore these conceptual and
comparative problems further I have undertaken to study a very small and very
different system, that of "precontact" Northern California
(Chase-Dunn and Mann 1998). Though one case study cannot be the arbiter of such
basic theoretical problems, I believe that this study will show that a broadly
construed world -system perspective can be fruitful for understanding the
reproduction and historical development of social structures in an
intertribelet network of sedentary foragers. Other studies already confirm that
intersocietal relations are important for reproduction and transformation in
somewhat more complex stateless societies.[7]
Though there are
no cities in these systems, there are settlements and socially constructed
space.[8] Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997) argued that we
should begin world-systems analysis with the emergence of sedentism. But nomads
do not wander aimlessly across space and so it does make sense to study
world-systems composed solely of nomads. The yearly migration cycles of nomads reflect
both the seasonal location of resources and interactions with other groups of
humans. The sequence in which larger yearly migration routes become gradually
smaller, and the emergence of regional differences in Paleolithic toolkits
shows that the same processes of growing population density that affect
sedentary peoples are also operating on nomads.
Once some of the
actors are territorial it is no great leap to study intergroup interactions to
see if they are indeed systemic or not. In California, sedentary foragers built
villages and defined communally- held territory with definite boundaries between
adjacent groups. The regulation of land use was an extremely important aspect
of intergroup relations because foraging is space-extensive and resources can
easily be overexploited. My analysis of this little world-system will focus on
whether or not, and how, intervillage and intertribelet relations are important
for the reproduction and/ or transformation of local social structures and
forms of resource use. My study will also search for evidence of unequal
exchange and domination among tribelets and villages. If none is found I will
try to understand how such an regionally-egalitarian world -system was
reproduced .
I have also studied more hierarchical
stateless systems, such as that of the “precontact” Hawaiians (Chase- Dunn and
Ermolaeva 1994). Here was a system in which classes had emerged and
hierarchical accumulation was occurring, but there was no state in the sense of
a specialized organization exercising regional control that is substantially
autonomous from kin-based obligations. Johnson and Earle (1987) classify the
Hawaiian system as composed of “complex
chiefdoms” in which the polities are more hierarchical and larger than “big man
“ or simple chiefdom systems. Class exploitation in Hawaii was based on the
control of land and other resources by means of hierarchical forms of kinship.
The work of Gailey (1987) examines the interaction of gender hierarchies and
forms of marriage that are involved in the emergence of more hierarchical class
societies. Friedman (1982) and Friedman and Rowlands (1977) add to this the
consideration of relations among societies, especially intermarriage, warfare
and prestige goods economies.
These authors have
modified Leach's (1954) work on the alternation between more and less
hierarchical forms of social organization to explain the emergence of class-
based accumulation and intersocietal hierarchies. The processes of the rise and
fall of chiefdoms[9] in
interchief systems are roughly analogous to sequences of political
centralization/ decentralization which occur in larger-scale world-systems
--state formation, empire formation and the rise and fall of hegemonic core
powers in interstate systems --but the differences are undoubtedly more
important than the similarities.
The systemness of world-systems
composed of chiefdoms is not in doubt, but the nature of this systemness needs
closer analysis. What kind of core/periphery relations existed in these systems
and what role did these play in reproduction and transformation? Friedman and
Rowlands(1977) argue that interpolity hierarchy in such systems relied heavily
on prestige goods economies and that these hierarchies were unstable because it
was relatively easy for peripheral groups to redefine the hierarchical
ideologies and to find local substitutes for the symbolic goods which the core
societies were trying to monopolize.[10]
The way in which
such societies organize space is important, and a matter for which
archaeological surveys are directly relevant. It is to be expected that complex
chiefdoms produced the first settlement systems in which villages exhibited a
two-tiered size distribution --larger villages were systematically surrounded
by smaller villages (Nissen,1988:41; Lightfoot and Feinman,1982) . Of interest
is whether or not three-tiered settlement systems sometimes emerged in complex
chiefdoms, or whether this more hierarchical spatial system was only found in
state-based systems.[11]
Though many of the important questions
about the transformation from kin-based logics to state-based logics of
accumulation have not been directly addressed from a world -systems
perspective, I can make a few observations here. First, this transformation did
not begin with the emergence of states, but rather with the emergence of
classes. Complex chiefdoms use hierarchically politicized kinship metaphors (e
.g. conical clans, ranked lineages) to extract surplus product from direct
producers. The way in which kin -based relations are made more hierarchical is
through the restructuring of gender hierarchy (Gailey, 1987) and the reorganization
of intermarriage-based intersocietal alliances (Friedman, 1982).
These kinds of hierarchies are
reinforced by prestige-goods economies in which symbolic goods are used to
distinguish between nobles and commoners, and to reward subalterns. These hierarchies
can be further stabilized, however, by the creation of specialized and more
autonomous organizations which control important societal resources directly
and which use politically organized coercion in order to enforce these
controls.
Erech, now usually
called Uruk, --the city of Gilgamesh --is considered to have been the first true
city on Earth. Uruk was built on the Mesopotamian plain in about 3200 BC. The
distinction between a city and a town can be drawn in many ways but, however
this is done, there was a qualitative difference in population size and spatial
extent of the built-up area between Uruk and any earlier settlements. True, a
three-tiered settlement system had emerged earlier on the Susiana plain
(adjacent to the Mesopotamian plain) but the Uruk settlement system had four
tiers and the size of Uruk was much greater than any prior settlement (Nissen,
1988:65-72).[12]
The state-based system which emerged in
Lower Mesopotamia has been studied using world -system concepts by a number of
archaeologists and anthropologists. Adams's (1966) comparison of early
urbanization and state formation in Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica emphasized the
importance of settlement systems, regional analysis and the transformation of
kinship relations. This was undoubtedly an important stimulus to Friedman and
Rowlands(1977) , who have formulated the most comparative and theoretically
polished approach to the emergence of early states and “civilization “ from a world -systems
perspective. Important empirical work which has addressed questions about the
nature of core/periphery relations in the Mesopotamian system has been done by
Lamberg-Karlovsky(1975), Kohl(1987a,1987b) and Algaze (1988,1989).
The “pristine”[13]
state in Mesopotamia was a city-state and there quickly emerged a rather
long-lasting interstate system composed of city-states. This state system
exhibited many of the characteristics of the modern interstate system. The
shifting alliances among different city-states exhibited features of a balance
of power mechanism which prevented, for a long while, takeover by any single
state (Cooper, 1983) .[14]
Before the Akkadian conquest created an empire composed of formerly-autonomous
core city-states, there were earlier and nearly successful efforts at empire-formation
which resembled in some respects the process of the rise and fall of hegemonic
core powers in the modern world -system.
Theories of the emergence of the
ancient cities are numerous and varied.
The general connections between increases in social hierarchy,
intensification of production and the formation of states are agreed upon by
everyone, but very different explanations of these transformations are offered.
Many approaches take account of regional and inter-regional aspects of the
process of pristine state-formation and the emergence of “civilizations.”[15]
Older emphases on the development of productive technology (e.g. Lenski and
Lenski 1987) have given way to theories which emphasize the importance of
increasing population pressure within a region (e.g. Johnson and Earle,1987)
.Renfrew(1975) has developed the notion of the Early State Module (ESM) , an
approach which emphasizes co-evolutionary interaction among a set of states
within a region (see also Renfrew and Cherry ,1986) .
Carneiro's(1970)
circumscription theory is perhaps now the most widely accepted explanation of
pristine state formation. Michael Mann (1986) has interpreted
and applied Carniero's approach in a way which combines population pressure,
resistance to hierarchy, intensified production and the historical development
of "technologies of power. " Mann (1986) and Johnson and Earle (1987)
apply this general approach to both chiefdom-formation and state- formation.
The basic idea is that intensified production allows higher population density
(people per unit of land), but it involves harder work compared to foraging.
Foragers enjoyed "the original affluent society" (Sahlins 1972) . Methods of planting were known long
before they became intensively used. People preferred to forage as long as this
was possible. Population growth leads to "hiving off" and emigration
as long as there are new places to go. Increasing general population density,
however, leads to the adoption of more intensified types of production that
allows population density to go higher within a region. As
population density increases this exacerbates competition for land and other
resources, which increases the prevalence of warfare. People will emigrate if
there are ecologically appropriate less populated areas to which to go. But if
available options for emigration are circumscribed, hierarchical organizational
forms may emerge to regulate group interaction. People resist this, as the
cyclical rise and fall of chiefdoms shows. More stable hierarchies depend on
the development of new technologies of control -the state.
This
general formulation is admirable because it integrates several elements in a
convincing way. It also is much less functionalist than earlier explanations
that focused only on the socially desirable consequences of hierarchies
--conflict management, social investment and savings, and facilitation
of trade (e .g. Service, 1975). But there still remain problems of
functionalist emphasis in some applications of the circumscription approach
(e.g. Johnson and Earle 1987:256-69). The alternative to this should not be a
rigid "class struggle model" which argues that all hierarchies are
equally exploitative, but rather a more historical approach which studies how
particular institutional changes actually occurred.
Mann's (1986) emphasis on the
historical nature of social development is admirable in many ways, but his
analysis falters when he examines stateless, classless societies. The word
"prehistoric" has traditionally been used to refer to non-literate
peoples who have not written down their own histories. Mann claims that
stateless peoples are prehistoric in a different sense. He argues that general and
deterministic evolutionary models adequately describe human social change up
until the emergence of the state and "civilization" because the
constraints on action produced generally similar processes that occurred
everywhere. He points to the small number of places where pristine state
formation occurred as evidence for the idea that history in the sense of less-
constrained, more conjunctural and intentional action had begun. I follow Eric
Wolf (1982) in arguing that the idea of history, in the sense of historical
action that is to some extent open -ended, should also be applied to stateless,
classless societies. Indeed the Neolithic adoption of horticulture, like state-
formation, occurred "pristinely" in only a very few places on Earth,
and all of these were pre-literate, stateless, and classless, but not
"prehistoric" in Mann's sense.
Some authors stress the
predatory or parasitical nature of ancient cities compared to modern industrial
cities that, it is alleged, produce something in exchange for the resources
they extract from the countryside ( e .g. Sjoberg , 1955) .While this broad
comparison may be of some value, a closer look reveals that cities within
tributary modes of production varied greatly in the extent to which they were
predatory. Algaze's (1988,1989) work argues that the Uruk expansion extracted
resources from the periphery by building major urban trading centers in the
periphery at key transportation sites and smaller trading posts closer to the
origins of valuable raw materials. Algaze argues that these Sumerian traders
located in the periphery were able to carry out core/periphery exchange on
terms advantageous to the core for a time, but that this exchange led to
changes in peripheral societies that worsened the terms of trade for the core.
Trade not backed up by military force was not a stable way to extract
resources, and the core Sumerian cities were unable to organize effective
military control of the periphery.
Urbanization spread within the core
region creating competing core city- states and leap-frogged to distant new areas,
creating competing core regions (Kohl, 1987a, 1987b). Even those regions that
did not develop their own cities and states were often able to resist unequal
exchange. It is probably the case that chiefdoms and early states were less
exploitative than later states and empires, and that there are important
connections between the forms of hierarchy within societies and the nature of
core/periphery hierarchies (see Chase- Dunn and Hall 1991) .
In the early state-based world-systems
the tributary mode took forms which were partial and imposed over the top of
kin-based structures (Zagarell 1986) .The "temple economy" existed
beside and above a kin-based system, and the emergent autonomy of military
leaders in the context of rising inter-city-state military competition added a
greater degree of coercion to class relations .
Diakonoff (1973) has argued that early
states in Mesopotamia relied largely on the exploitation of their own local
direct producers while later "despotic states" relied more on
exploitation of peripheral regions. In these systems "backwash
effects" were weak and “spread effects” diffused core characteristics to
new regions, creating new cores[16]
and overcoming the “development of underdevelopment.” Kohl (1987b 1988) argues that key military and productive
technologies could easily be adopted by peripheral regions and that the
"techniques of power" (Mann,1986) for concentrating resources and
cumulating inequalities were not well developed in these early state-based
world-systems.
The first imperial capital in
Mesopotamia was Akkad (Agade) , an new city built to be the capital of the
Akkadian empire when its king, Sargon, successfully conquered the entire
Sumerian core region and beyond. The nature of this conquest is related to both
core/periphery relations and the development of class and ethnic relations in
the core city-states. Both Diakonoff (1989) and Mann (1986) argue that part of
Sargon's advantage was that he combined core and peripheral military techniques
in away that gave him an advantage over the older Sumerian core states. Both
authors also focus on the important fact that Akkad’s ruling class displayed
greater solidarity than did the ruling classes of the older city-states. In
addition Diakonoff adds conflict between classes to his explanation. The
older core city-states had developed differentiated ruling classes with
competing and contradictory interests among priesthoods, military men and holders
of private wealth. They had also become very stratified, with wide differences
between rich and poor that corresponded with ethnic differences (Yoffee 1988).
The Akkadian conquerors were Semitic-speakers who had greater solidarity with
their soldiers and were able to exploit the class and ethnic divisions in the core
city-states that they conquered.
Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997) interpreted the
Akkadian Empre as an early instance of what they call "semiperipheral
development". But the evidence
that Akkadian speakers had long been present within the Sumerian core societies
challenges this interpretation. Semiperipheral marchers are usually recent
settlers on the edge of an old core (such as the Aztecs). The Akkadian conquest
may have been more akin to an ethnic rebellion than a true semiperipheral marcher
state conquest. Older core cities lose
dominance to a semiperipheral city. The rising centrality of the former
semiperiphery is at least partly due to its ability to combine elements of core
forms of organization with peripheral forms to create new techniques that
produce a comparative advantage. We do know that the pattern of
"semiperipheral marcher states" is repeated over and over again in
the spiraling rise, fall and territorial expansion of empires that occurs in
the Near East, India, China, Mesoamerica and Peru. To mention a few well-known
cases of semiperipheral marcher states: the Assyrians, the Persians, the
Macedonians , the Romans, and the Islamic Caliphates.
The first state-based world-systems had
cities only in the core, but soon world-systems developed in which
semiperipheral and, eventually, peripheral regions also contained cities. While
some of these systems approximated the definition of a "world-empire"
in which a single overarching state encompassed the territorial network of the
exchange of fundamental goods, many others did not. There were many systems in
which, though political power in the core was centralized in a single empire,
basic goods exchange occurred within a much wider area outside of the direct
control of the empire-state. In many other systems empires interacted with one
another in the context of a larger division of labor, and non-contiguous core
regions interacted with each other indirectly through intervening peripheral
zones.
In the early
state-based world-systems specialized kinds of cities emerged. Already within
the Sumerian system there was Nippur, a pan- Sumerian religious city. Nippur
was accorded special religious status by the competing city-states despite the
fact that intercity rivalry was represented in the Sumerian religious pantheon
as competition for ascendancy among city deities. With empire formation cities
also soon diverged with respect to there specialization in
trade versus as political centers.
The "port of trade" concept
developed by Polanyi and his colleagues (Polanyi, Arensberg and Pearson, 1957)
is of relevance to the issue of modes of production and transformation. Polanyi
argued that trading in the Babylonian-centered world-system was
"marketless" redistribution. He saw the extensive local and regional
trade networks as "state-administered" trade. He characterized the
specialized traders involved with long-distance trade (which many other
scholars have called merchants) as political functionaries who carried out
state-administered exchange, not market trade.
Polanyi and his colleagues noticed a
number of instances in which politically autonomous cities located in the
interstices between empires specialized in trade, and the "ports of
trade" category was developed to deal with these. A "port of
trade" is understood as neutral territory on which political exchange can
be carried out between two redistributive empires.
Unfortunately the
particular traders that Polanyi (1957a) chose to illustrate his notion of state
trade functionaries have been shown by more recently discovered evidence to
have been trading on their own account and paying great attention to prices
(Curtin 1984:70). The Old Assyrian City-State (Assur) and its colonies left
records that showed that merchants were trading on their own account, not as
agents of the king. Convincing evidence of the existence of commodified forms
of wealth, land and goods has been found for the Mesopotamian world-system such
that no one now claims that these societies were completely marketless. On the
other hand, it is obvious that there have been marketless societies --smaller
and less hierarchical ones --, and so the general Polanyian point that markets
are an institutional invention, not a timeless historical logic, is much easier
to defend if we are willing to consider stateless world -systems within our
scope of comparison. The existence of some commodified relations in early
state-based systems does not tell us how important these were for social
reproduction. Rather our attention ought to focus on how, where and why the
processes of commodification emerged and became more important. Once we
acknowledge that the importance of commodified forms varies across different
world-systems (or in the same world- system over time) the analysis of
transformation can proceed. I will argue that autonomous trading cities very
early took up the role of promoting commodification in the interstices between
empires and in peripheral regions. This does not require the conclusion that
true ports of trade never existed. It may well be that Dilmun was a port of
trade in the Polanyian sense. In each case it is important to look for evidence
of market exchange and to try to determine its importance relative to
state-administered trade.
Most autonomous city-states in world
-systems dominated by larger tributary states and empires maintained their
autonomy by a combination of serving the interests of more powerful neighbors
and the exercise of their own coercive power. We know that the early Phoenician
city-states (Byblos , Tyre , Sidon, Arados) acted as trade intermediaries among
empires, naval allies of empires, and agents of the expansion of trade networks
to smaller states and stateless regions in the Mediterranean (Frankenstein,
1979) .Were these cities only passive ports of trade? I will argue instead that
they were active agents of commodification that ought to be designated as the
first capitalist states.
The Phoenician city-states certainly
engaged in merchant capitalism (buying cheap and selling dear) and in that way
they expanded and intensified the territorial division of labor in the
Mediterranean littoral and beyond. Their activities encouraged the production
of surplus for sale and the partial economic integration of formerly separate
societies. True, they did this in a context in which tributary modes of
production were dominant in many regions and kin- based modes in others. I am
not saying that capitalism was predominant in the Near Eastern world-system,
but that the Phoenicians were agents of commodification who spread the logic of
markets and the production of commodities.
So, as Marx (1973) affirms[17],
they were merchant capitalists. A more complex question is whether or not they
were also production capitalists. We know that they not only bought and sold,
but they also produced commodities for sale. The dye for imperial purple came
from a sea snail that they harvested. They made cheap mass produced copies of
Egyptian glass, Greek pottery and statuary that they sold throughout the
Mediterranean. They were the Taiwanese of the ancient world. But did they
produce these commodities with wage labor or other semi-commodified labor?
Elayi (1982) finds evidence that there may have been a Greek quarter within the
Phoenician city of Arados, and thus it may have been Greek artisans who
produced the vases and statues that the merchants of Arados sold throughout the
Mediterranean. But later Phoenician city-states apparently produced manufactures
for export without the help of the Greeks (Tsirkin, 1979) .I argue that the
Phoenicians engaged in production capitalism, though the nature of the labor
process was, perhaps, less commodified than in modern production capitalism.
I also contend that semiperipheral
capitalist city-states played an important role in the processes of growing
commercialization that occurred in the tributary world-systems. Few would deny
this of the later Italian city- states. Chaudhuri(1985) , Curtin(1984) and
Braudel(1984) have examined the role of Malacca in the Indian Ocean in this
light .
Cox's (1959:26-7) typology of
capitalist cities is a helpful beginning for understanding the roles that
cities played in the spread of market integration and the development of
capitalist institutional forms inside world-systems in which the tributary
modes of production were still predominant. The comparative world -system
approach to understanding the development of capitalism within the tributary
modes still faces many basic problems despite the great strides that have been
made by Braudel(1984) , Lane(1973) , Chaudhuri(1985) and Abu-Lughod(1989).
Weber's (1978) insistence on a radical disjuncture between East and West
continues to find resonance ( e .g . Chirot, 1986) despite important efforts to
qualify or displace it [ e .g . Chaudhuri(1985); Abu-Lughod(1989)]. [18]
World-system theory's interpretation of
the role of state action in successful capitalist accumulation in the modern
world -system ( e .g. Chase- Dunn, 1989: Part 2) allows us to look at earlier
city-states in a new light. Lane's (1979) analysis of protection rent and
"violence-controlling enterprises" is relevant for both modern
national states (e .g. Bornschier, 1988) and ancient capitalist city-states.
The issue of the "capitalist state" involves two related aspects: who
controls the state? , and the purposes for which state power is used. Clearly
the Phoenician cities used their naval power in pursuit of a strategy of
accumulation through commodity trade and commodity production. Of course their
enemies, Greeks and Romans, characterized them as pirates rather
than traders. Violence-controlling organizations can be used
either to provide protection rents to merchants and capitalists or for direct
appropriation of surplus product.[19]
In this second usage they are instruments of tribute- gathering, not
capitalism. These uses are usually mixed, but the balance in the Phoenician
cities was typically closer to Cox's (1959) "Venetian model. "
I should mention that other than maritime
and naval cities have been commercially important and may have served as agents
of commodification as well. Caravan cities and fairs certainly have played some
role. Cox's (1959:26- 7) typology of capitalist cities is organized around the
distinction between those that were politically autonomous or sovereign and
those were which dependent on larger polities. Maritime cities were often in a
better position to prevent conquest by empires because they could employ naval
power to protect themselves. The Phoenicians built their cities on promontories
or on islands that could be defended from land armies by naval power --like
Venice. Political autonomy made maritime city-states more important agents of
commodification and they also had advantages in terms of transport costs, but
the roles of other kinds of trading cities should not be neglected. Moseley
(1983 ) makes this point about caravan cities in her study of the
precolonial development of West Africa.
Abu-Lughod's(1989: Chapter 2) discussion of Champagne fair towns demonstrates
the political and geographical constraints on non-maritime trading cities. The
Silk Road caravan cities need to be
investigated with regard to their role in the development of
commodification .
Carthage was a prototypical example of a semiperipheral capitalist
city-state, but the Carthaginian settlements in Spain took the other road --
development of a land-based empire. Hannibal's attack on the Romans was more
similar to the marcher state approach, and the delay and weakness of support
from Carthage (which was fateful in his defeat) was partly the result of
ambivalence over the adoption of the tributary strategy. Braudel's(1984)
discussion of the tradeoffs for maritime city-states of leaving agriculture to
others is of relevance here. While such states are almost completely dependent
on their trade networks for obtaining necessities, they need not invest in the
protection of their own agricultural and raw material hinterland, and may thus
devote all their resources to trade. The capitalists also avoid having to make
compromises with landed aristocrats. This works well in a world in which there
are many alternative sources for obtaining necessities, but growing competition
for trade opportunities or politically-centralized control of such
opportunities decreases the viability of the pure Venetian model.
The Greek city-states were in some ways
intermediate between the Phoenicians and the larger states and empires. While
they allowed more latitude for markets and commodity production than the
empires did, they were not as specialized in trade and commodity production as
were the Phoenicians. Greek agriculture combined subsistence production with
production for the urban market, a model which allowed the Greeks to colonize
widely in the Mediterranean and to develop a system in which local and
long-distance market interactions were relatively balanced and integrated (
Rostovtzeff 1941). The result was a
less purely capitalist state than that of the Phoenicians, but a society that
nevertheless was at an advanced level of commercialization.
Braudel (1984:27) contended that early
world-economies had a single city at their centers. If we broaden our
definition of world-system connections to include prestige goods exchange and
interconnections produced by political/military rivalry, [20]
the capitalist city-states were never the political centers of any world
-system. They were, of course, the center of their own trading networks, but
these were always parts of larger systems of production and exchange. After the
rise of empires world-systems have never been centered on a single city-state.
Braudel(1984:91) himself implies as much when he says of the capitalist
city-states ,
Nor is it paradoxical to think that the
cities needed the space
around them, the markets, the protected
circulation zones --in
short that they required larger states
to batten on: they were
obliged to prey on others to survive.
Venice would have been
unthinkable without first the Byzantine
and later the Turkish Empire.
Most world-systems
are multicentric and some even contain non- contiguous core regions. The idea
of multicentric systems, however, does not mean that we should pay no attention
to the extent to which world -systems are politically centralized or decentralized.
Wallerstein's distinction between world- empires and interstate systems is
valuable precisely because it points to this important dimension. Most empire-
based world -systems alternate between periods in which there is a single
dominant empire controlling most of the core versus periods in which two or
three competing empires of unequal size and smaller states are interacting. A
statistic like the Ray-Singer (1973) power concentration index could be used to
measure the degree of concentration or dispersion of power among core states
and empires. If this measure was computed across systems I believe the
following would be found: though concentration varies with the rise and fall of
"universal states" in the tributary systems and with the rise and
fall of hegemonic core powers in the modern world -system, the modern world
-system has been, on the average, less politically centralized than pre
capitalist systems.[21]
This is really only a more nuanced way of understanding the point which
Wallerstein makes by contrasting world -empires with world-economies .
I would not argue that autonomous
capitalist city-states were the only agents of commodification in the world
-systems in which the logic of tribute was predominant. Obviously the tributary
empires themselves became increasingly commercialized in the sense that
commodity forms developed and expanded. The Persian rulers learned to grant a
certain amount of autonomy to cities such as Babylon in order to thereby be
able to tax the profits of successful merchants (Cook, 1983) .More direct
efforts to monopolize trade often stifled the golden goose. China, India and
Rome were rather commercialized systems with highly developed forms of money,
credit, and markets. Polanyi (1957b)
granted that classical Athens was a rather highly commodified society because
money in small denominations was in wide use and it was possible to purchase a
prepared meal. Markets, money, rather complex institutions of credit, the
substantial commodification of land, and the commodification of labor in the
form of chattel slavery and even wage labor --all these things played an
important part in the commercializing world-systems, and yet capitalism was not
yet predominant. In China market forces and capitalist accumulation threatened
the tributary empire powerfully (especially during the Sung dynasty) , but
these were always brought back under the control of the mandarins. In Rome,
Byzantium, the Islamic empires and the Ottoman Empire market forces were
strong, but the logic of tribute gathering was never overcome.
In my judgment the
problem of the development of capitalism and the rise of the West needs further
work from the point of view of a comparative Marxist world -system perspective.
In response to the overemphasis on the uniquenesses of Europe it is natural to
emphasize the similarities and the connections between Europe and the larger
Afroeurasian world-system. But a more sophisticated comparative world-system
approach will allow us to reexamine which of Europe's special characteristics
were indeed relevant for its rise, while taking account of its important
interactions with older core regions.
Capitalism does not become predominant
until: 1. capitalists control important core states, not just semiperipheral
city-states, and 2. market forces and the logic of capitalist accumulation
becomes predominant over accumulation by direct political means. Capitalism
grew strong in the interstices of tributary modes, and especially in the
extremely decentralized tributary mode that was European feudalism. The
medieval European cities in which capitalists took state power were not unique
in kind, but their dense concentration within a small region amplified their
effects on the logic of accumulation in that region. Earlier capitalist
city-states had been dispersed in the interstices of empires.
The period from
235 AD to the twelfth century was a period of devolution of political power and
of economic networks in Europe and the geographical shift of dominant state
power "back East" to the older core region. According to Pirenne
(1980) Western political decentralization was not accompanied by full economic
decline until the rise of Islam turned the Mediterranean into a "Moslem
Lake," cutting off the long distance trade of Western Europe with the East.
Political and
economic involution in Europe led to the "manorial economy, " and
feudalism, a very decentralized version of the tributary mode of production.
This was based on a synthesis of Roman and Teutonic cultural institutions
(Anderson, 1974), and was fertile soil for the growth of capitalist trade and
production when the long distance trade started up again. The very
decentralization of the polity and the "parcellization of
sovereignty" (Anderson, 1974) created great latitude for market forces and
frequent interstices within which merchants and commodity producers could find
political protection. Many of the medieval cities of Europe were similar to the
capitalist city-states of old, except that the tributary mode of production
within which they operated was itself fragmented and unable to repress the
growth of merchant wealth or to prevent the escape of serfs to the cities. The
social inventions which made capitalist commodity production possible --money,
credit, commodified labor, price-setting markets, contract law, etc. --were
present within the semi-commercialized tributary empires, especially the Roman
Empire, but they had not dominated the logic of accumulation as they were to do
once imported and planted in the fertile and unconstrained soil of medieval
Europe.
There had been feudalism in other
places at other times without the florescence of capitalism. Mann (1986) has
claimed that the cultural integration of elites by the ideology and
organization of Christendom provided a "normative pacification" which
facilitated the development of market forces and agricultural technology. But
earlier interstate systems and feudal structures had shared religious
ideologies, and though this may have facilitated communication , cooperation
and alliances, these effects did not lead to exceptionally strong market forces
in the absence of opportunities for long distance trade or the other
institutional elements necessary for a market economy. It was the
semiperipheral position of certain European regions within the larger
multicentric Afroeurasian super-world-system (in which commercialized relations
and the institutional and cultural artifacts of capitalism had already been
developed [Abu-Lughod 1989]), which made it possible for capitalism to become a
dominant regional mode of production for the first time. European feudalism,
unlike earlier decentralized polities, was in the right place at the right
time.
It was the growth of capitalism which
provided the resources which enabled kings to centralize power sufficiently to
create the European states, and thus the European interstate system. The first
half of the "longevity of the interstate system" in the European
sub-system since the fall of Rome was thus a period in which parts of Europe
became semiperipheral relative to the core states of Byzantium, the Arab
Caliphates, and the Islamic Empires. This was followed by a period that saw the
upward mobility of parts of Europe based on the development of market forces,
the strengthening of the European states, and the creation of a regional
interstate system with several core national states at its center. The rise of
capitalist national states (as opposed to city-states) was a European
first, and the first of these was the Dutch Republic of the seventeenth
century.
Many scholars have compared the
hegemonies of Venice and Amsterdam, and claimed that the Dutch hegemony was
more similar to that of a city-state than a national state (e.g. Barbour 1963)
.True, the federal structure of the Dutch state allowed Amsterdam a great deal
of autonomy and facilitated its leading influence within the state. But the
Dutch hegemony also revealed the growing importance of a protected home market
for the most successful players in a world -system in which capitalist
accumulation had become more important than tributary accumulation. If we draw
a line in time from Venice to the Netherlands, through the United Kingdom to
the United States we see that the size of the hegemon's home market has grown
with the size of the world-system.
Charles Tilly's (1989) important study
of European cities and states from AD 900 to the present illustrates how
countries pursued different strategies of state formation. The optimum
territorial scale of state power was changing with the increased
institutionalization of capitalism in Europe. The earlier capitalist cities
that resisted the formation of large states in their territories were
superceded by larger states that were able to exploit the growing scale of
production, transportation and regional integration. Tilly's study, while it is
far superior to both those "state-centric" political scientists who
completely ignore capitalism (e .g. Wilkinson, 1987) those students of cities
who assume that market competition is the only relevant form of interaction ( e
.g. Jacobs , 1984) , nevertheless employs an ahistorical definition of
capitalism[22] and
oversimplifies the relationship between capitalism and cities. Though
differentiation among states is an important part his story, Tilly ignores the
emergence of a new core/periphery hierarchy in which some regions of Europe
come to dominate other areas. He does not analyze the rise and fall of hegemons
and neither does he try to explain why Europe is so resistant to empire
formation.
As capitalism became predominant in the
European core, the modern interstate system --composed primarily of national
states --came into existence and eventually spread to the whole globe.
Polanyi(1944) and Braudel(1984) discuss the importance of a protected and
integrated home market for competition in a capitalist world-economy. With the
rise of capitalist national states sovereign capitalist city-states could no
longer compete with larger players who took up the accumulation of resources
through commodity production and trade. A few survived as ex-colonial enclaves
or trade entrepots, but no longer were city-states the main bearers of
commodification. Most cities had long been the hostages of empires, while a
small number of sovereign capitalist city-states operated in the semiperipheral
interstices. Now national states and capitalist firms became the main players
in a world -system in which the logic of capitalist accumulation had become
predominant over other logics of accumulation.
There has been a lot of
excellent research on urban development, national city-systems and the role of
world cities in the cyclical processes and secular trends that characterize the
capitalist world-economy. Some of the best of this is contained in Timberlake
(1985). More recent studies have examined the connections between core
financial and global service cities and peripheral and semiperipheral countries
(e.g. Meyer,1986; Sassen,1988) and the development of single cities in a
world-system context (e.g. Hill and Feagin,1987; Feagin, 1988) .These excellent
studies add immensely to our understanding of how cities have changed in the
context of the restructuring of the international division of labor. My only
criticism of this work is its often somewhat limited time horizon that portrays
very recent changes as completely new departures. If you think a global economy
first emerged in the 1960s your analysis of world cities will be likely to
neglect comparisons with earlier periods that are entirely relevant for
understanding recent changes. Now that we have a fairly well specified
description of long-run world-system cycles and trends it becomes possible to
find out what is really new about recent changes.
The most recent restructuring of the
global division of labor has exported manufacturing and heavy industry from
core states to the semiperiphery and concentrated global services in world
cities such as New York and Los Angeles. Sassen(1988) convincingly argues that
this reorganization is connected to new flows of immigrants into these world
cities from peripheral countries which have received heavy doses of recent
foreign investment. The expansion of the informal sector and the polarization
of income distributions in these world cities is partly due to global
restructuring and new immigration.
This recent set of
developments bears comparison with earlier world - system periods in which a
hegemon was declining and the international division of labor was being
reorganized. London experienced a pattern of development in the 1870s similar
in some respects to that of contemporary New York. The nineteenth century
English city system had been moving toward a less hierarchical city-size
distribution because of the rapid growth of the industrial cities (Manchester,
Birmingham, etc.), but with the beginning of the British industrial loss of
leadership London's rate of growth increased relative to the industrial cities.
London became an increasingly important center of world financial services and
markets as the British position in industry was eroding. The inflow of Irish
immigrants into the East End provided a supply of cheap labor to the burgeoning
"informal sector" in the world city (Jones 1971) .There is some
evidence that Amsterdam became similarly more important as a world city during
the Dutch hegemonic decline .
The study of the world city system as
such was first advocated by John Walton(1976) .The structure of exchange
connections among cities in the world- system has long been a nested hierarchy
with regional and national city systems woven into a global network of cities.
Core cities are more interconnected with one another than peripheral cities
are, just as is the case with core and peripheral countries. If we had a global
map of trade, communications and other interactions among all the cities on
Earth it would resemble an airline flight map. In order to get from one part of
the periphery to another you have to go through the core. This hierarchical network
feature undoubtedly varies to some extent over time. Unfortunately,
comprehensive data are not available to study connections among cities for the
whole world, but it is likely that network studies in which national states
rather than cities are the nodes of the analysis give us a fairly close
approximation of how the hierarchical structure changes over time (e. g. Smith
and White, 1989). Unfortunately such studies have only been done for very
recent time periods.
Using the population sizes of the largest
cities within the Europe- centered system I have shown that the world city size
distribution varies approximately with the rise and fall of hegemonic core
powers (Chase- Dunn 1985b ).[23] The rise of the semiperipheral megacities
has flattened the world city-size distribution in recent decades. In 1975
Mexico City was the fourth largest urban agglomeration in the world and Sao
Paolo was seventh (Chase-Dunn 1985b:Table 12.1) .My analysis of changes in the
world city-size distribution shows that the trend toward a flatter global city
system began in 1875 with the downturn of the British hegemony
(Chase-Dunn,1985b:Figure 12.2) .The former correspondence between the hegemonic
sequence and the steepness/flatness of the world city-size distribution failed
with the rise of the United States hegemony. It is possible that this has been
partly due to certain ceiling-effects that slow the growth of the very largest
megacities and allow smaller ones to catch up.
Is this flattening of the world city
size hierarchy and movement of semiperipheral cities in to the club of the very
largest world cities in anyway associated with a reduction in core/periphery
inequalities? Certainly the industrialization of the semiperipheral
"NICs" has reorganized the international division of labor. Formerly
core specialties like heavy industry have migrated to the semiperiphery while
new lead industries have emerged in the core. There is considerable evidence
that all this reorganization has not, however, reduced the magnitude of relative
inequalities between core and periphery. Table 1 shows that, though world
relative energy usage has grown in the semiperipheral countries as we would
expect, relative world income has not become more equally distributed. Other
data on recent changes in the distribution of world resources is reviewed in
Chase-Dunn (1989: Chapter 12) and supports the conclusion that core/periphery
inequalities have not diminished.
Table 1: Concentration of resources among countries in the
world -system: 1960-1980
1960
1970 1980
% % %
The proportion of world energy consumed by:
the countries highest on per capita energy consumption
with 20% of world population 83.3
80.3 69.9
the middle countries on per capita energy consumption
with 60% of world population 16.1 18.8
29.1
the countries lowest on per capita energy consumption
with 20% of world
population .6 .9
1.0
N=126
The
proportion of world GNP going to:
the countries highest on GNP per capita
with 20% of world population 79.2 79.8 81.1
the middle countries on GNP per capita
with 60% of world population 19.4 18.9
18.1
the countries lowest on GNP per capita
with 20% of world population 1.4 1.3 .8
N=112
Percentages
are based in sets of countries for which data are available for all time
points. Thus comparisons over time are not confounded by missing data. N =
Number of countries . Sources: GNP
is from World Bank's Economic Analysis and Projections Department. Energy
consumption is from World Tables, 1983, Volume II.
The general connection between
urbanization (the rise in the proportion of the population of national societies
who live in cities) and industrialization in the core societies is well-known.
Comparative research has shown, however, that the causes and consequences of
urbanization are quite different for core and peripheral countries (Bairoch
1975; Kentor,1981; Timberlake,1985). Colonialism and the processes of
peripheralization heavily influenced the city systems of most peripheral
countries. In many of these countries the largest cities functioned as
administrative centers of core colonialism and as ports for exporting
peripheral products and importing core goods. These observations were used by
several analysts of peripheral urbanization to explain why peripheral
city-systems displayed greater "urban primacy than core city- systems.”
Urban primacy is a situation in which the largest city is many times larger in
population than the second largest city, and the size distribution of cities is
generally steep. A country in which all the cities were of the same size would
have a perfectly flat city-size distribution. The relative steepness of the
national city-size distribution is a characteristic of urban systems that can
be measured for many countries over a relatively long time period by gathering
data on the population sizes of cities. A research project at Johns Hopkins
University gathered data on the population size of the ten largest cities in
each country from 1800 to 1980 (Chase-Dunn,1982,1983; Walters,1985) .
Analyses of these data show that
significant differences in the level of urban primacy between core and
peripheral countries did not emerge until
the 1930s and 1940s (Chase-Dunn,1984a,1985a,). It is well known that
some core national city-systems have long been primate (e. g. England, France)
and that some peripheral countries had relatively flat city-size distributions
(e .g . Colombia) .Our research has shown that peripheral city systems had
indeed become, on the average, much more primate than core ones, but that this
did not happen during colonization or original peripheralization but rather during
the 1930's and '40s.
Another finding
was that the El-Shakhs(1972) hypothesis that national city systems go through a
sequence from flat to primate to "log-normal" is not supported by the
data (Chase-Dunn,1984b) .A more recent and thorough multivariate crossnational
analysis of these data (Lyman,1989) shows that the level of economic
development ( GNP per capita) decreases urban primacy in the 1960's and 1970's.
The causes of the shift of the periphery toward urban primacy in the middle
decades of this century are still not well understood.
Portes(1989) has shown that the trend
toward urban primacy in Latin America has stemmed and even reversed in the
1980's. Though these countries now seem to be moving toward what appears on the
surface to be a more core- like distribution of population across cities, this
is unlikely to be the result of processes associated with core development such
as industrialization, the growth of middle-sized industrial cities, the
creation of a more integrated and balance national economy, etc. More likely
people have stopped flocking to the "megacities" because life in them
has become unsustainable in the period of debt crisis and stagnating economic
growth that has been the lot of most peripheral and semiperipheral countries in
the 1980's. The causes of this reversal need to be studied comparatively.
Boulding's (1978) discussion of cities
in the international system portrays cities as civil hostages to war-making
national states. From the long-run perspective I have used in this paper it is
obvious that we should not adopt a rigid general notion of pacific trading
cities and war-like states. Following my discussion above, the role of cities
has changed with the rise and fall of different logics of accumulation. Early
city-states were protagonists of the tributary mode of production. They
developed the techniques of power that made empire formation by conquest
possible. Later, in the context of already- formed tributary empires, a few city-states
in the semiperiphery became protagonists of the capitalist mode of production.
When the capitalist mode became predominant, national states and firms pushed
cities out of the transformational role. Is it possible for cities to become
important protagonists of socialism?
As the
marketization of socialist states proceeds, those of us who still want to
create a democratic and collectively rational world need to think of new
organization forms that can act as the bearers of socialist logic. The taking
of state power by socialist movements in many ways reproduced the logic of the
interstate system and worked against the logic of socialism at the world
-system level. Unlike capitalism, which thrives on competition and conflict in
the interstices of larger systems, socialism is a holistic logic of cooperation
that is undercut by external threats. Transnational and trans organizational
forms of organization will be important for constructing socialism at the level
of the world-system. Alliances of cities might be a contender for the role of
key transformational actor. Many would agree that it has now been conclusively
shown that a socialist mode of production in one country cannot be sustained in
a larger world -system in which capitalism remains a dynamic and expanding
force.[24] If this is true of even large countries such
as the Soviet Union and China, it would be absurd to assert that a self
-sustaining socialist mode of production could be constructed and sustained in
a single city. Most cities in the modern world -system are dependent on
national states and capitalist firms, and are pitted against each other in a
struggle for state support and private capital investment. Of course, states
differ in the extent to which cities are delegated autonomous political powers,
but no cities, even those few politically autonomous city-states which still
exist, have sufficient resources to do what large semiperipheral socialist
states have not been able to do. This does not mean that socialist politics in
the municipal arena is meaningless, but rather that such efforts must be
construed as part of a larger struggle.[25]
David Harvey
(1985: 275) has suggested that "federated structures of interurban
cooperation " might be organized to help progressive movements within countries.
A similar approach might be tried internationally. Transnational alliances of
cities might be able to mobilize movements that are transformative. Creating
alternative exchanges and political structures that would undermine the logic
of the interstate system and the world market could do this. A socialist
international of cities could (in principle) organize mutual aid and
collectively bargain with large firms and states. It could refuse to
participate in the madness of nuclear weaponry and pollution by organizing and
coordinating municipal nuclear-free zones. Chadwick Alger (1990) reviews the
international municipal movements that have confronted global issues of war
prevention, disarmament, poverty, and human rights.
The above proposal for a socialist
international of cities certainly seems utopian in the present climate. On the
other hand, the spiraling of interaction between capitalist expansion and
anti-systemic movements will undoubtedly continue. We need to think creatively
about new organizational forms for resistance and possibilities for the
creation of humane institutions. [26]
The explosion of awareness about globalism and increasing concern about the
structural conditions that threaten our species and our planet provide fertile
ground for new social movements. Municipal networks are one form of organization
that such movements should utilize.
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[2] The term "mode of production"
is used here in the general sense of the deep
structural
logic of production, distribution, exchange and accumulation
it does
not restrict the focus of analysis to the point of production.
[3] Because
the world -systems perspective was developed mainly to understand
the Europe-centered capitalist
world-economy some of the key concepts need
to be redefined in order to make them
appropriate for the task of comparing
very different
world-systems. The definition
of world-systems,
core I periphery hierarchies,
and methods of spatially bounding world -systems
all require revision. These problems
are confronted in Chase- Dunn and Hall
(1997).
[4] Important
statements of the substantivist position by Polanyi and his
colleagues are contained in Polanyi,
Arensberg and Pearson, eds. (1957) .
Marxist variants have been argued by
Sahlins(1972) and Wolf( 1982) .
[5] The
formalist perspective has been defended in a recent study by Blanton ,
Kowalewski,
Feinman and Appel(1981) .Curtin's(1984) studyof cross cultural
trade modllies ( and improves) the
formalist position by adding some new
concepts: the trade diaspora and trade
ecumenes. Gledhill and Larsen(1982)
present a review and critique of the
application of Polanyi's approach to the
study of societies
in the ancient Near East.
[7] Sahlins (1972) demonstrates the
necessity of the division of labor among
different horticulturalist and fishing
societies in the Huon Gulf .Kelly( 1985 )
analyses a
fascinating case of "tribal imperialism" based on systematic
raiding in
the Nuer-Dinka relationship. Friedman and Rowlands(1977) and
emergence of complex
chiefdoms and early states.
[8] Dodgshon's(1987) fascinating study of
social evolution and spatial order is
entirely relevant to the consideration
of the causes and consequences of
cities and city systems, and Dodgshon
also sheds important light on the way
in which
nomadic hunter-gathers approach space, but he misses the
interesting
category of sedentary foragers .
[9] Sahlins(1972:144-8) describes the rise
and fall of chiefdoms in Hawaii and
Mann(1986:Chapter
2) discusses this topic as resistance to power among
"prehistoric"
peoples based on his reading of archaeological studies in
Northern Europe.
[10] This argument is also made by
Kristiansen(1987) for bronze age Scandinavia. Peregrine (1991) applies the prestige goods economy paradigm to Cahokia-centered Mississippian
world-system of
middle North America.
[11] It
is hazardous to infer social hierarchy from spatial hierarchy as many
archaeologists do, but settlement
systems are an important feature of social
systems even if there is no direct
equivalence between space and power .
[12] A helpful compilation of city
population sizes for the Near Eastern-centered
world-system from 2250
B.C. to 1478 A.D. is presented in
Wilkinson(1987:Tables 2 & 3)
.Wilkinson (1990) also has compiled lists of all
the major cities in each of fourteen
civilizations/world-systems.
[13] The distinction between pristine (or
primary) states and secondary states
focusses on the differences between the
emergence of a state in a context
in which
there are no other such organizations vs. the emergence of states
in interaction with other states. The
same kind of distinction can be applied
to other organizational forms (
.e .g. chiefdoms, etc. )
[14] In the Egyptian world-system empire
formation occurred much more quickly,
leading to a complicated discussion
about the similarities and differences
between the Mesopotamian and Egyptian
cases (Friedman and Rowlands,1977;
Mann,1986) .It is generally agreed that
the emergence of "civilization" in
Egypt was, despite some similarities,
substantially independent from the
somewhat earlier developments in
Mesopotamia, thus constituting a truly
"pristine"
case of state formation. The other cases of pristine or primary
state
formation upon which there is substantial agreement are the lndus
River valley, China, Mesoamerica and Peru.
[15] Those
who pay attention to core/periphery hierarchies are chary about the
application
of the term "civilization" because it is often part of the
ideological justification for the exploitation
and domination of "barbarian " or
"savage" peoples. Contrary to the
notion that simpler, less
hierarchical human societies were
"precultural" is the ethnographic evidence that these
societies
were integrated primarily on the basis of normatively enforced
rights and
obligations based on consensually held definitions of reality and
the good.
In this sense they were more completely " cultural. " than larger
civilizations which need coercive
organizations and the "crass cash nexus"
to function .
[16] I am employing terms used by
Myrdal(1971) --spread effects and backwash
effects
--in his analysis of regional patterns of uneven development. The
relative
strength and basis of such affects differ across world-systems and
part of the
motivation for comparing different kinds of core/periphery
relations
is to enable us to understand why "co-evolution" occurs in some
systems while the development of
underdevelopment occurs in others .
[17] In
the famous discussion of the method of political economy in the Grundrisse
Marx
(1973:108)says,"The purity {abstract specificity) in which trading
peoples --Phoenicians , Carthaginians
--appear in the old world is
determined precisely by the predominance of
the agricultural peoples.
Capital, as trading-capital or as
money-capital, appears in this abstraction
precisely where capital is not yet the
predominant element of societies. “
[19] Lane's(1979) concept of protection rent
refers to returns to merchants and
production
capitalists who benefit from the provision of protection for their
operations by a state that operates
effectively and efficiently and provides
these services
at cost. Mann(1986) uses the term protection rent in a
completely different sense to refer to
the taxes and tributes which tributary
states place on merchants. Lane's concept provides the
basis for
understanding
capitalist states, while Mann's usage describes the operation
of tributary
states.
[20] The respecified definition of world
-system connections proposed by Chase-
Dunn and
Ha1l (1991) for the comparative study of world-systems includes
basic goods exchanges (food and raw
materials) , prestige good exchanges
(Wallerstein's "preciosities")
and interconnections formed by on-going
political/military interactions .
This last form of
interconnectedness is
proposed
and empirically applied by Wilkinson(1987) in his study of how
Near Eastern civilizations merged and
expanded to become the now-global
"Central
Civilization."
[21] An argument for the connection between the
resistance of the modern
interstate
system to empire formation and the emergent predominance of
capitalism is made in Chase-Dunn(1990)
.
[22]
Tilly (1989:17) defines capitalism as
"any tangible mobile resources, and enforceable claims on such
resources." Does this mean the cattle among the Nuer are capital? This definition
ignores the importance of price-setting markets and commodified wealth, as well
as production utilizing commodified labor.
[23] I used the boundaries of the European
world-system proposed by the
Braudel
Center scholars for my analysis of changes in the world city-size
distribution.
The redefinition of world-system boundaries for the purposes
of
comparing different world -systems proposed in Chase- Dunn and Hall
(1991)
would change my results to some extent. For example Constantinople
was excluded from the European world
-system in my analysis because of
world-system.
Wallerstein's contention is based on his usage of mode of
production as a criterion for spatially
bounding world -systems, a practice
of bounding
proposed in Chase-Dunn and Hall the European cities and
Constantinople
were part of the same system because of extensive trade in
basic goods, prestige goods and
political military interaction .
The very large size of Constantinople would
undoubtedly alter the outcome of my
analysis to some extent. A new study of
long-run changes in the world city
system is needed.
[24] World -system scholars have been
analyzing the reintegration of the socialist
states into the world market for some
time (e.g. Chase-Dunn,1982b) .The
recent
changes may be understood, as Wallerstein(1989) says of the French
Revolution, as the political and ideological
superstructure catching up with
the economic base.
[25] One reason I am thinking about the
possibility of cities as agents of the
transformation
to socialism is because in the United States there have been only
two major recent accomplishments in
progressive politics: the Jackson campaigns
of 1982 and
1988, and the electoral victories of progressives in Berkeley, Madison ,
Santa Monica
and Burlington. Unfortunately
these municipal victories have
illustrated
the limitations of local approaches as much as their possibilities for
transformation. Municipal socialists in
the U. S., as in Bologna, end up competing
with other players to efficiently
provide urban services in a context in which
capital and
its state hold most of the cards.
Certainly the “objective
conditions” of declining industrial cities in the U. S .
ought to
provide fertile ground for socialist politics. As the documentary
film , Roger and Me, illustrates
tourism and "flexible accumulation" have little hope
of success
in such places as Flint, Michigan. But the film also shows the many
ways in
which victims blame themselves and adopt strategies of survival rather
than struggle.
[26] Elsewhere
(Chase-Dunn,1989,1990c) I have argued that the world-system
perspective implies that the
semiperiphery is the weak link and that new
challenges to capitalism are likely to
again emerge from that zone.