Destabilizing the Semiperiphery: The Counterturn of China’s Ascendance in the World-Economy

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 365-385
Author(s):  
Vincent H. Shie ◽  
Chih-Yuan Weng
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
World Economy ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Global Development ◽  
World Systems Theory ◽  
Intermediate Group ◽  
The World ◽  
Rise Of China ◽  
The Rise Of China

Abstract In an article in Perspectives on Global Development and Technology (PGDT), Kwangkun Lee revisits the debate on whether the semiperiphery is persistent or short-lived in the long-term historical structure. Lee concludes that semiperipheries only have a brief lifespan due to their (assumed) polarizing tendency. We provisionally agree with Lee’s conclusion, but we diverge in our reasoning for upholding this hypothesis. Proponents of the World-Systems Theory claim that an intermediate group of states stabilizes the world-economy. For instance, Giovanni Arrighi posits that the semiperiphery will be persistent in the longue durée. But in our view, the rise of China will ultimately destabilize the so-called constant stratum of the semiperiphery.

Coal's Persistence in the Capitalist World-Economy

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul K. Gellert ◽  
Paul S. Ciccantell
Keyword(s):  
World Economy ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Ecological Modernization ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Coal Consumption ◽  
The World ◽  
Capitalist World Economy ◽  
Capitalist World

Predominant analyses of energy offer insufficient theoretical and political-economic insight into the persistence of coal and other fossil fuels. The dominant narrative of coal powering the Industrial Revolution, and Great Britain's world dominance in the nineteenth century giving way to a U.S.- and oil-dominated twentieth century, is marred by teleological assumptions. The key assumption that a complete energy “transition” will occur leads some to conceive of a renewable-energy-dominated twenty-first century led by China. After critiquing the teleological assumptions of modernization, ecological modernization, energetics, and even world-systems analysis of energy “transition,” this paper offers a world-systems perspective on the “raw” materialism of coal. Examining the material characteristics of coal and the unequal structure of the world-economy, the paper uses long-term data from governmental and private sources to reveal the lack of transition as new sources of energy are added. The increases in coal consumption in China and India as they have ascended in the capitalist world-economy have more than offset the leveling-off and decline in some core nations. A true global peak and decline (let alone full substitution) in energy generally and coal specifically has never happened. The future need not repeat the past, but technical, policy, and movement approaches will not get far without addressing the structural imperatives of capitalist growth and the uneven power structures and processes of long-term change of the world-system.

scholarly journals Interdependent Hegemony: China’s Rise Under the Emerging New World Order

2018 ◽  
Vol 04 (02) ◽  
pp. 159-175
Author(s):  
Xing Li ◽  
Shengjun Zhang
Keyword(s):  
World Economy ◽  
World Order ◽  
Conceptual Tool ◽  
The World ◽  
Rise Of China ◽  
Capitalist World Economy ◽  
Basic Features ◽  
Emerging Powers ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
The Rise Of China

To better assess the global impact of the ascendance of emerging powers brought about by globalization, this paper attempts to provide a conceptual framework of “interdependent hegemony,” which can serve as an alternative conceptual tool for analyzing the dynamics between the role of emerging powers as a counter-hegemonic, socio-political force and the hegemonic resilience of the existing international order. The paper also regards the capitalist world economy as a dynamic system which is under constant changes over time, whereas certain basic features of the system remain in place. It is argued that despite the rise of emerging powers, the functioning of the world economy will always generate inequalities with positional changes in the stratification of the core-semiperiphery-periphery structure. In this context, the rise of China as both a recipient and provider of global production and investment is fundamentally a positive driving force behind the evolution of the world system.

The World

2017 ◽  
pp. 65-99
Keyword(s):  
Population Density ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Systems Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
World Systems ◽  
World Systems Theory ◽  
Model Classification ◽  
Economic Complexity ◽  
The World

We will now look at the general results from the ? model (developed in Chapter II). The chapter examines the overlap between the world-systems theory classification of core and periphery countries and the ? model classification of sink (economically efficient) and source (economically inefficient) countries. Core countries exhibit not only economic complexity but also complex institutions. However, some of these countries, such as Australia and Canada, are not economically efficient, mainly due to their large footprint and low population density. On the other hand, some semi-periphery countries, such as South Korea and Turkey, are economically efficient according to the model.

Globalization Under and After Socialism

2018 ◽  
pp. 8-31
Author(s):  
Besnik Pula
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
World Systems ◽  
World Systems Theory ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
Political Economies ◽  
Capitalist World Economy ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The literature on globalization has often ignored Europe’s periphery and has particularly remained silent on how the structural changes in the world economy beginning in the 1970s affected the ex-socialist world. In the late twentieth century, among the few critical theories that broke from Cold War understandings of socialist political economies was world-systems theory. While making a number of counterintuitive and provocative claims, world-systems theory and its offshoots (including the “dual dependency” perspective) failed to account for the transformations from socialism to postsocialism and took little heed of the institutional realities and contradictions of Soviet socialism by relying on system-functionalist explanations of change. This chapter proposes a framework for an historical-institutionalist account of globalization that considers both structural changes in the capitalist world economy and political and economic reform in the socialist world that prefigured Central and Eastern Europe’s path of transformation after 1989.

World Systems, Cores, and Peripheries in Prehistoric Europe

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 378-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Harding
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
World Systems ◽  
World Systems Theory ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Network Methods ◽  
The World ◽  
Systems View ◽  
The Bronze Age

The paper reviews the rise and utility of World Systems Theory in archaeology, with particular reference to Europe and the Bronze Age. After a consideration of its origins in the 1970s and 1980s, the main aspects of the theory are discussed. The evidence that shows that the Bronze Age world was highly interconnected is presented, and the implications of a World Systems view of the period considered. In an attempt to work towards a new narrative of the European Bronze Age, a brief discussion of network methods is introduced, since these offer an alternative, ‘bottom-up’, approach to the period which, it is argued, is more appropriate to the data than the World Systems approach.

World

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Allan
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Edward Said ◽  
World Systems ◽  
World Systems Theory ◽  
Normative Force ◽  
The World ◽  
Modern Egypt

This chapter focuses on the world of world literature—understood as either the site at which a literary work is produced (for world systems theory) or the site disclosed in the literary work itself (through practices of close reading). It examines the scholarship of Franco Moretti, Pascale Casanova, and Edward Said in order to elucidate dominant frames for understanding world literature and interweaves these different frames with selected scenes from modern Egypt: the first, the protests on the streets of Cairo of a Syrian novel deemed blasphemous, Haydar Haydar's Walīmah li-aʻshāb al-bahr (A Banquet for Seaweed); and the second, the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Naguib Mahfouz. Drawing from Said's notion of secular criticism, the chapter argues that reading—and not solely textuality—should be understood as worldly activity with a normative force across interpretative communities.

Geographic Perspectives on World-Systems Theory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Flint
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Political Geography ◽  
World System ◽  
The Body ◽  
Theoretical Development ◽  
World Systems ◽  
World Systems Theory ◽  
Politics Of Place ◽  
Macro Scale ◽  
The World

World-systems theory is a multidisciplinary, macro-scale approach to world history and social change which emphasizes the world-system as the primary (but not exclusive) unit of social analysis. “World-system” refers to the inter-regional and transnational division of labor, which divides the world into core countries, semi-periphery countries, and the periphery countries. Though intrinsically geographical, world-systems perspectives did not receive geographers’ attention until the 1980s, mostly in economic and political geography. Nevertheless, geographers have made important contributions in shaping world-systems perspectives through theoretical development and critique, particularly in the understanding of urban processes, states, and geopolitics. The world-systems theory can be considered as a sub-discipline of the study of political geography. Although sharing many of the theories, methods, and interests as human geography, political geography has a particular interest in territory, the state, power, and boundaries (including borders), across a range of scales from the body to the planet. Political geography has extended the scope of traditional political science approaches by acknowledging that the exercise of power is not restricted to states and bureaucracies, but is part of everyday life. This has resulted in the concerns of political geography increasingly overlapping with those of other sub-disciplines such as economic geography, and, particularly, with those of social and cultural geography in relation to the study of the politics of place.

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