Suchergebnisse

This paper is a farewell and an intellectual tribute to one of the greatest masters of contemporary Marxist thought and one of the major references in contemporary social science. Immanuel Wallerstein died August 31, 2019, leaving a theoretical, historical, and intellectual legacy that is to be read, rethought, and actualized by social scientists in the coming decades. His world-systems theory gave rise to a whole new understanding of the genesis of the capitalist world-system. This contribution reviews the sources that inspired the world-system theory, as well as showing its main contributions and its dialogues with other proposals of critical social theory, such as the epistemologies of the South and decolonial thought. This article is also a new formulation of the perspectives that the world-systems theory opens for the historical and sociological research on Andalusia and southern Europe in the context of the historical genesis of world capitalism.

As we expand and extend our applications of world-system theory, as we explore the shifting interplay between cores and peripheries, as we see boundaries emerge and dissolve, we also fix world-systems theory itself on the map table. What is its core? What are its peripheries, or would it claim that all human interactions fall within its sway?Thomas Hall, for example, does not take quite the entire map, but takes "intersocietal interaction" as the world-systems domain.

The term "contested periphery" was recently coined by Mitchell Allen for use in his 1997 UCLA dissertation concerned with Philistia, the Neo-Assyrians, and World systems theory (Allen 1997: 49-51, 320-21, Fig. 1.4; cf. also Berquist 1995a, 1995b). Allen identi?ed "contested peripheries" as "border zones where different systems intersect" (Allen 1997: 320). Chase-Dunn and Hall immediately adopted this term and de?ned it more formally as "a peripheral region for which one or more core regions compete" (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997: 37).

This work analyzes the development in World-System Theory as produced by the flow of appropriation of global surplus value through the international division of labor, creating the divisions between center, semiperiphery and periphery in the capitalist world-economy. It thus aims to explore how the global appropriation of surplus value in the capitalist world-economy produces variations in the level of development of its different regions. To this end, it contextualizes and conceptualizes its elements on its spatial and temporal dimensions. It defines surplus value and the form of its global accumulation, and in this sense explores the succession of capitalist hegemonies, in their dialectical relationship with the system's progress, enabling the approach to the international division of labor, and how the monopoly over finance and technologies allows the center of the system to consolidate a structure that ensures the transfer of capital and surplus value from the other regions to it. It follows that the development of a particular country or region in the capitalist world-economy depends on its ability to accumulate surplus value globally. Additionally, it is observed that the conditions imposed by the system structure prevent initiatives of autonomous development by its parts, being necessary to break with them for such a project to be possible

This paper attempts to explain the middle-income trap from the lens of an amended world-systems theory, in which capitalists within the semi-periphery are taken into account. It rejects that developing countries should pursue an import-substitution industrialization strategy, and instead argues developing countries should pursue a strategy similar to South Korea's. An export-oriented industrialization strategy, with tight limits on foreign direct investment (FDI) and multinational corporations (MNCs) operating within the economy, building up state capacity in order to form a close collaborative, not corrupting relationship between private businesses and the state, and calls for heavy investments in human capital and industrial upgrading. This would ensure that surplus value does not leave the country nor does it lay idle in the hands of domestic capitalists. It also calls for changes to the global economic governance regime, such as common rules for FDI and taxes on MNCs, on the part of developing countries in order to create a more development friendly international economic system.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of information and communication technology (ICT) for promoting environmental sustainability in a changing society. Isolated studies exist, but few take a holistic view. Derived from a Marxian tradition, the authors propose Ecological World Systems Theory (WST) as a holistic framework to assess the environmental impact of ICT. The theory is adapted responding to theoretical critiques of absence of change, namely state-centrism and structuralism.Design/methodology/approach– Theoretical study. Empirical examples derived from already published literature.Findings– Ecological WST focuses on the unequal distribution of environmental degradation, sees technological development as a zero-sum game rather than cornucopia and holds that technology is often seen as a fetish in today ' s society. The findings are that popular discourses on ICT and sustainability are since the 1990s becoming increasingly cornucopian, while conditions in the ICT value chain are less cornucopian.Research limitations/implications– Theoretical contributions to Marxian critiques of ICT, with more environmental focus than earlier Marxian critiques, for example Fuchs' work. Develop a theoretical framework for ICT and sustainability which could be compared with works of e.g. Hilty, Patrignani and Whitehouse. The work is mostly based on existing empirical studies, which is a limitation.Practical implications– This theoretical framework implies that unequal environmental degradation in different parts of the world should be taken into account when assessing environmental impact, for example by means of LCA.Social implications– The framework brings together questions of environmental effects of ICT and global justice.Originality/value– The authors apply a rarely discussed theoretical framework to ICT and environmental sustainability. By doing this the authors suggest how the discourses and the value chain of ICT is intrinsically tied to the world system.

This paper evaluates Peter Gowan's musings on the topic of a U.S.-centered "capitalist world-empire." Gowan's heterodox concept of a "capitalist world-empire" is intellectually defensible. And his claim that U.S. hegemony is historically unique, because unlike previous dominant powers the U.S. has been able to distinctly mold the accumulation regimes and security environments of its would-be rivals in the core, is more than convincing. However, Gowan tends to overstate the degree to which the U.S. in the 1990's enjoyed a productive sector revival, rather than a mere super-inflation of dollar-denominated assets. This tendency prevents him from anticipating just how summarily the U.S. would ditch consensual approaches to managing the capitalistworld-economy once the Wall Street bubble collapsed, and hence from appreciating just how fed up Western European and East Asian elites would become with the predatory character of U.S. hegemony in decay. In conclusion the paper argues that while the U.S. may have neither the resources nor the credibility to politically control the global division of labor, something akin to a U.S.-East Asian geo-economic bloc may be in the process of forming. This is so because the Chinese and Japanese economic growth models remain wedded to the underwriting of the U.S.' seigniorage privileges', and because past and present frictions between China and Japan stand in the way of tighter Sino-Japanese political coordination.

O trabalho tem como objetivo fazer uma análise da realidade venezuelana sob o governo de Nicolás Maduro e sua capacidade de sobrevivência política frente aos inúmeros problemas que a Venezuela atualmente enfrenta, a saber: caos econômico, político e social. Após o período de atuação antissistêmica sob o governo Chávez, em meio a um contexto regional favorável, com governos ideologicamente próximos em diversos países da América Latina e, ao mesmo tempo, com um boom petrolero que permitiu o aumento da receita venezuelana, o país se defronta com um cenário totalmente adverso. No entanto, apesar de toda esta situação, o governo Maduro vem conseguindo manter o controle do país a despeito da grave crise econômica, de suaguinada autoritária e de uma oposição que, cada vez mais, parece apostar em saídas insurrecionais com o fim de aprofundar o isolamento do país. Convertido em uma questão regional, o conflito observado na Venezuela reflete a divisão que atualmente fratura toda a América Latina.


Abstract: This work´s objective is to make an analysis of the Venezuelan reality under Nicolás Maduro´s administration and his capacity of political survival in defiance of numerous problems currently faced by Venezuela, namely: the economic, political and social chaos. After the period of antisystemic performance under Chávez´s administration, in a favorable regional context, with ideologically close governments in several Latin American countries and, at the same time, with the petroleum boom that allowed Venezuelan income to increase, the country confronts a totally adverse scenario. However, despite this situation, Maduro´s administration has been able to maintain control of the country over the severe economic crisis, its authoritarian´s turn and the opposition, that increasingly seems to bet on insurrectional exits in order to deepen the country´s isolation. Converted into a regional issue, the conflict observed in Venezuela reflects the division that currently fractures the whole Latin America.
Key-words: Venezuela; Antisystemic movements; World-System Theory; Political crisis.


Recebido em: agosto/2018.Aprovado em: abril/2019.

As the field of health promotion grows, it is important to investigate new conceptual and theoretical models of health. To date, health promotion has relied primarily on theories and models from other fields. This limits the development of health promotion as a discipline. These limitations become apparent when health promotion programming is analyzed from three different "world views": formism, mechanism, and organicism. The health promotion professional's "world view" affects the manner in which they plan programs. As a discipline, health promotion needs to move beyond the current dominance of the mechanistic world view to organismic or systemic thinking. In doing so, general systems theory provides a generic, contentless theoretical framework to guide newly developing health promotion programs.

"Dependency and World-Systems Perspectives on Development" published on by Oxford University Press.

This work examines the historical, archaeological, and political interpretations of world-systems theory and geocivilizational analysis. The macrosociological issues of ancient and modern history are presented through five case-studies, concentrating on the Taurus-Caucasus region, which functioned as a contact zone throughout the different periods.