INTRODUCTION

Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas D. Hall

The rise of the world-systems perspective on

social change in the modern world has trans-

formed our understanding of how societies

develop. Though we may argue about the rela-

tive importance of "internal" versus "exter-

nal" factors, almost all social scientists now

agree that the larger intersocietal context

and hierarchical relations among societies are

significant factors in societal development.

And it is increasingly agreed that the larger

system which is composed of societies is

itself an important unit of analysis which can

be studied historically and structurally. This

volume is dedicated to the project of extend-

ing these insights to precapitalist societies

and intersocietal systems. We want to deter-

mine the extent to which regional world-sys-

tems in the past were similar to or different

from the contemporary global political econo-

my. And we want to utilize the study of dif-

ferent kinds of world-systems to help us

understand how fundamental logics of social

reproduction become transformed.

The first task is to examine the concepts

which have been developed to describe and

analyze the modern world-system to determine

their usefulness when applied to earlier

systems. Sociologists, historians, political

scientists, anthropologists and archaeologists

have applied world-system concepts to earlier

systems, as reported in the chapters which

follow. These efforts to study precapitalist

world-systems have led to new, or renewed,

disputes over the definitions of capitalism,

modes of production, cores, peripheries, and

indeed, of world-systems themselves. It is our

contention that these disputes should be

resolved on the terrain of actual empirical

studies of particular intersocietal systems

and comparative studies of different types of

systems.

Chapter 1 is a prolegomena to the compara-

tive study of world-systems by the editors.

As will be obvious, our thinking is still

shuttling fairly rapidly between "historical

data" and concept formation and theory build-

ing. We are exerting efforts to not read the

present into the past, nor read the past into

the present, but to use each to learn about

the other. We review and critique the litera-

ture which addresses conceptualization of

world-systems and core/periphery hierarchies

and propose synthetic definitions of our own.

We outline a preliminary typology of world-

systems and propose hypotheses about variation

in world-system structures. Most importantly,

we argue that world-systems should not be

assumed to have core/periphery hierarchies,

but rather the existence and nature of inter-

societal inequalities should be the focus of

research.

Chapter 2 is Jane Schneider's now classic

sympathetic critique of Volume 1 of Immanuel

Wallerstein's Modern World-System which ap-

peared originally in the journal Peasant

Studies in 1977. Six of the seven other

chapters in our collection cite Schneider's

article. We feel fortunate to be able to make

this valuable contribution more accessible.

Schneider takes Wallerstein to task for not

pushing world-system analysis far enough (into

precapitalist settings) and for defining trade

interconnections too narrowly by excluding

prestige goods, which she argues are crucial

for understanding power relations in precapit-

alist systems.

Chapter 3 is joint effort by Barry Gills

and Andre Gunder Frank, which argues, contra

our position, that there has been only one

world system (without the hyphen) for the last

5000 years. This system is based on the accu-

mulation of wealth and power by ruling classes

at the expense of exploited classes in which

the centers of power have shifted over time.

Gills and Frank replace the concept of mode of

production with "mode of accumulation" and

contend that there have not been major trans-

formations in the logic of accumulation such

as is implied in the notion of the transition

from feudalism to capitalism. Rather they

contend that commodity production, private

wealth and state-based forms of accumulation

have been mixed in different ways during the

history of the world system.

Chapter 4, by David Wilkinson, comes from

the "civilizationist" tradition. He briefly

outlines work he has done elsewhere which

examines the expansion of "Central Civiliza-

tion" and its incorporation by force of twelve

formerly autonomous regional systems. Contrary

to other civilizationists, who define civili-

zations in terms of institutional and cultural

homogeneity, Wilkinson defines his unit of

analysis in terms of interconnections--those

constituted by sustained political/military

conflict or cooperation. This produces a

roster of urban-based civilizations beginning

with that which emerged in Mesopotamia in the

fourth millennium B.C. Wilkinson contends

that these are world systems in the sense that

they are self-contained entities which do not

interact in any sustained or important way

with outsiders. In Chapter 4 Wilkinson pro-

vides his own definitions of core, periphery

and semiperiphery and describes the shifting

boundaries of these zones (as he has defined

them) for the fourteen civilizations/world

systems produced by his approach. This results

in a fascinating conclusion: civilizations do

not fall; rather they change their centers

and expand.

Stephen Sanderson, in Chapter 5, summarizes

the intellectual history of evolutionary

theory and places world-system theory and its

extension to precapitalist systems in the

context of debates about social evolution. His

major point is that world-system theory is, in

fact, a type of evolutionary theory. We do not

disagree with this if evolutionary theory is

understood to include possibilities for his-

torical open-endedness. We prefer to call our

approach "historical development" in order to

emphasize this aspect, but we agree with

Sanderson that the literature on social evolu-

tion is a fertile source of hypotheses for

understanding world-system processes. Sander-

son also claims that world-systems theory

overstates the importance of "external" deter-

minants over "internal" (intrasocietal) deter-

minants of social change. Hopefully systemat-

ic comparative research can help resolve this

issue.

Chapters 6, 7, and 8 differ from the pre-

ceding chapters in their emphasis on specific

case materials. In Chapter 6 Peter Peregrine

explores the Cahokia-centered world-system

located in the North American mid-continent

around A.D. 900. This is the mound-building

system which Wilkinson calls Mississippian

civilization. Peregrine supports Schneider's

claim that prestige goods exchanges are a

central form of integration, especially in

stratified chiefdoms. Following work by Meil-

lassoux, and Friedman and Rowlands, Peregrine

argues that a regionally stratified intersoci-

etal system is built on the monopolization and

distribution of sumptuary goods. Chapter 6

summarizes the results of his Purdue Universi-

ty archaeology dissertation on Cahokia.

In Chapter 7 Thomas Hall examines the

variable roles of nomads in nomad-sedentary

relations, and especially their peculiar role

in core/periphery hierarchies. The comparison

of Central Asian nomads and nomadic Indians in

the American Southwest gives a special angle

from which to view worldsystems comparatively.

Among other things, this comparison sug-

gests that nomadic and sedentary peoples

always have problematic relations, but seden-

tary peoples have steadily gained the upper

hand through time and technology. However,

because of frequent misunderstandings between

these two types of societies, and because most

of history has been written by sedentary

peoples, future comparative studies must

proceed with careful attention to details of

nomadic social organization. Clearly, further

study of nomad-sedentary relations is vital to

informed comparisons of world-systems.

Gary Feinman and Linda Nicholas, in Chapter

8, explicate a model of the Zapotec world-

system centered in Monte Alb n near modern

Oaxaca, Mexico. There are several innovations

reported in their research. The most striking

is the systematic archaeological survey of a

large area to a considerable time depth --

obviously the result of years of work by a

large research team. Within that rich source

of data they demonstrate how archaeological

evidence of a core/periphery hierarchy can,

literally, be uncovered. Finally, most ger-

mane to this collection, they provide an

empirical example of how a local core/peri-

phery hierarchy forms and evolves.

Finally, editorship, like rank, hath its

privileges. We exercise ours in a brief

Epilogue wherein we assess what has been done,

what we have learned, and where we should go

next.