Institute for

Research on

World-Systems

https://irows.ucr.edu/

University of California-Riverside

rise, fall and upward sweeps

IROWS Annual Report

September 2005

This is the annual report on IROWS’ projects, accomplishments and initiatives from September 2004 to September 2005. IROWS is the world’s premier institute doing research on globalization, global social change and the historical evolution of intersocietal systems.

The main purpose of the Institute for Research on World-Systems (IROWS) is to do long term, large scale interdisciplinary research on:

· Global Social Change,

· The Historical Evolution of Cities and Polities,

· Global and Regional Political Ecology,

· Biotechnology and Global Political Economy,

· Waves and Contours of Global Elite Integration Since 1840,

· The Rise, Fall and Upward Sweeps of Polity Formation and the Emergence of a Global State, and

· Transnational Social Movements and Global Party Formation.

The Institute serves as an incubator for collaborative research proposals by organizing interdisciplinary faculty seminars and research working groups. It has developed an electronic research archive, a working paper series, and publishes a scholarly electronic journal focusing on interdisciplinary global research, the Journal of World-Systems Research.

Thanks to Ken Barr, Nelda Thomas, Eric Titolo and Ed Kick for their hard work at IROWS and on JWSR.

IROWS 04-05 Accomplishments:

· Publications from PEWS02 Conference: IROWS hosted the annual spring Political Economy of World-Systems (PEWS) conference at UCR May 3-4, 2002 on the theme of “Hegemonic Declines: Present and Past.” See http://www.irows.ucr.edu/conferences/pews02/pews02page.htm

Three books composed mainly of papers presented at the conference have been published:

v Thomas E. Reifer (ed.) 2004 Hegemony, Globalization and Antisystemic Movements. Paradigm Press.

v Jonathan Friedman and Christopher Chase-Dunn (eds.) 2005 Hegemonic Declines: Present and Past. Paradigm Press, and

v Christopher Chase-Dunn and E. N. Anderson (eds.) 2005 The Historical Evolution of World-Systems, Palgrave

q JWSR Produces New Issues: The Journal of World-Systems Research, is housed at IROWS and electronically distributed by UCR. JWSR produced three new issues during this period, including a Special Section on “Premodern Historical Systems: The Rise and Fall of States and Empires.” The Political Economy of World-Systems (PEWS) section of the American Sociological Association is preparing a proposal to the ASA Publications Committee that will make JWSR the official journal of the PEWS section.

q Johns Hopkins Book Series: IROWS Director Chase-Dunn is the Editor of two book series at Johns Hopkins University Press. William I. Robinson’s A Theory of Global Capitalism was published in the series in 2004. Valentine Moghadam’s Globalizing Women appeared in 2005 and Stephen Bunker and Paul Ciccantell’s Globalization and the Race for Resources is forthcoming.

q POGS Speaker Series: IROWS Director Chase-Dunn and Juliann Allison of the UCR Department of Political Science are co-directors of the Riverside branch of the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) entitled the Program on Global Studies (POGS). Kenneth Barr is the Associate Director of POGS. He organized the speaker series on “Challenges of Global Democracy” , which is co-sponsored by the UCR Mellon Foundation Project. We have received new support from Mellon and IGCC for a 2005-2006 speaker series.

q International Sociological Association-RC02: IROWS Director Chase-Dunn is the President of the Research Committee on Economy and Society (RC02) of the International Sociological Association. He is organizing a program of sixteen sessions for the World Congress of Sociology in Durban, South Africa in July of 2006.

Research Projects: IROWS is currently participating in five on-going research projects:

• The Social Bases of Global Elite Integration: The National Science Foundation’s Sociology Program is funding our study of the waves and contours of global elite integration since 1840. Thomas E. Reifer of the University of San Diego is co-PI on this project and Kenneth Barr, the Associate Director of IROWS, is helping to lead the project as well. A paper from this project was presented at the International Sunbelt Social Network Conference and at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.
• Urbanization, Empires and Global State Formation: Another IROWS project focuses on time-mapping the growth of cities and empires in Afroeurasia over the past 3000 years and modeling the past and future of state-formation. A paper from this project was presented at the UC-Campus-wide World History Conference. This project is now funded by the NSF-HSD initiative. The research proposal is available at https://irows.ucr.edu/research/citemp/globstat/globstatprop.htm
• Biotechnology in the Global Political Economy: IROWS is time-mapping the global emergence of the biotechnology industry in order to consider its potential effects on regional and international economic comparative advantages. A new proposal, with co-PI Juliann Allison (Political Science, UCR), Kenneth Barr and Rick Niemeyer, will be submitted to the NSF Political Science program in January, 2006.
• Transnational Social Movements: Sociology Professor Ellen Reese and IROWS Director Chase-Dunn are the faculty sponsors of a research working group on transnational social movements. Five UCR sociology graduate students and Professor Ellen Reese attended the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil and obtained over 700 responses to a survey questionnaire on the characteristics of WSF participants and their involvement in transnational social movements. Reese and Chase-Dunn are preparing a research proposal on transnational social movements and global party formation to be submitted to the NSF Sociology Program in January of 2006. Papers from this project were presented at the annual meetings of the Society for the Study of Social Problems and the American Sociological Association.
• NSF-Biocomplexity: IROWS Director Chase-Dunn is a senior researcher on a project funded by the NSF Biocomplexity initiative. The main PI is Professor Norman Ellstrand (Botany, UCR) and the project title is “Spatiotemporal dynamics of engineered crop genes: natural and human constraints and consequences.”

New IROWS Initiatives:

IROWS has invested considerable effort in several major new research and educational initiatives:

• NSF-IGERT: An invited full proposal for an interdisciplinary UCR Integrated Human and Global Ecology graduate training program was submitted to the NSF-IGERT program in August of 2005. The proposed training program in world-systems ecology uses both the social and the natural sciences to study the sustainability and collapse of human societies in regional and global ecosystems. Co-PIs on the training program are Michael Allen, Edith Allen, Bai-Lian Li, and Roberto Sanchez-Rodriguez.
• Proposed Undergraduate Global Studies Major: With Anthropology Professor Anne Sutherland and History Professor Lynda Bell, IROWS Director Chase-Dunn is working on a proposal for an interdisciplinary undergraduate major in global studies that will teach about global and regional processes from the point of view of the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences.
• Proposed School of Public Policy: With Economist Anil Deolalikar and others, IROWS Director Chase-Dunn is working on the establishment of a proposed UCR School of Public Policy that will engage global policy issues.
• CI-Team Demonstration Project: With Victor Zordan (Computer Engineering) IROWS submitted an NSF-CI-Team proposal in May of 2005 to create a web-enabled “Cityscape Visualizer” that will allow the anyone with web access to input GIS maps of their neighborhood and to use models of urban growth to see what the neighborhood is likely to look like in future years.

IROWS Working Papers are available at: http://www.irows.ucr.edu/workpaptoc.htm